#He “has no doubt she can burn the entire world to dry the oceans”

[lordofthestrix]

Lucien: Uh, just a tick. Aurora has Rebekah, hmm?

Aurora: No reason why I shouldn't be trusted with my sire's safety. Lucien: [scoffs] Of course... unless you were to have one of your episodes.

Tristan: Easy, Lucien. My sister sought leverage to protect herself. Who among us would do otherwise?

[rainbowtransform]

The steps are echoing around him. It feels like his house, too big without his father in it and too quiet without the booming laugher of others echoing.

He has to keep going, Fabian thinks. The others are behind him, but only his steps echo there is no others.

He wants to speak. He needs to. The quiet is surrounding him, only his breathing and the steps he’s taking and the blood roaring in his ears.

And they are right there, aren’t they? The people that make his house feel like a home again. They are behind him and they’re staring at him.

They can’t speak, either.

Or can they?

There has to be laughter, he thinks. He needs to have them again. Fabian can’t live without them. He needs to see them again, and so he keeps going.

What if they’re lying, comes a thought, unbidden. What if no one is behind you? There is no breathing.

“Are you there?” Fabian asks. It stops him in his tracks. There is light somewhere but Fabian doesn’t focus on it. “Guys?”

There is no response and Fabian’s heart is thumping and his mind is spinning and he’s stopped walking. Nobody is answering him and they always answer him. Why aren’t they answering him?

If they were there, they’d answer him.

So—

Kristen isn’t looking back. She holds her staff to her chest, and squeezes her eyes shut. She wants to pray, but it won’t work.

Cassandra was frantic when her connection began frazzling. She was already reaching to pluck them all out of whereever they were before it was cut off completely and now Kristen is alone.

Her friends are behind her.

Kristen won’t look back.

She’s read this myth when she was studying new religions. She knows it like the back of her hand and she refuses to look behind her and doom them all.

Kristen knows this. If she wants them to get out, she can’t lose focus. And she won’t.

She is Saint Kristen Applebees, Head Priestess of Cassandra, goddess of doubt and this is her god’s entire deal.

She can doubt their existence, and she will. Just until they get to the light and all pass through. And then she will spend her nights holding their warm, breathing bodies and checking pulses and casting heals on them.

She will ask Cassandra to grant her more spells for them.

She will ask Cassandra anything for them.

There’s a noise behind her, someone tripping on a rock and—

Gorgug is walking. He doesn’t remember how long he has been walking, but he knows it’s been a while. He closes his eyes, and remembers “It’s Gorgug, Keep Going,” and he keeps walking.

He talks. He talks about how he will take them home, how he will protect them in the night when they fall asleep. He talks about what he had for breakfast (he had nothing, they don’t need to know that) and he talks about how their parents are doing.

He tells them that their parents have torn apart the entire world, chewed through armies, and burned oceans for them.

He tells them that he’s sorry that he didn’t come sooner, but he wasn’t brave enough. He tells them how he spent weeks searching for where they’d went exactly in order to find them.

Gorgug tells them that he will get them out. He makes promises. He asks them to talk to him.

To say something.

His throat is dry and it feels clogged. There are tear tracks on his face, and he doesn’t wipe them away. The drops fall onto the ground and he falls to his knees.

“Please,” he begs. “Please say something. I’m—I can’t. I can’t do this alone.”

It feels like the Nightmare Forest, all alone. It feels like Orc Heaven, with all the flames for miles and with the gleaming eyes of the guidance counselor next to him.

Someone thumps behind to him, someone to their knees and—

Adaine takes another breath of air. There is nothing between her and the goal. It is her, her family, and the gleam of the sun high above her.

She climbs the steps, hearing nothing behind her. Riz would chide her for being stupid and thinking they’re not behind her.

Wherever she’d go, they’d follow. They proved it multiple times. So she knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are there.

They are always there.

Except that she can’t see the sparkle of gold hair beads in the sun. There is no bass thrumming steadily through her walk, no spark of a lighter to light another’s cigarette. There’s no tapping of a staff against the floor, not even a glimpse of a Mage Hand reaching out to snatch something from someone else.

Except, her friends aren’t there.

Her breathing becomes more panicked, her throat is closing up. She needs to see, she needs to—

They are behind him. Riz knows this for a fact, because he made sure they would be. He’d made the deal, had woven the contract himself and given it to the entity.

He had sneered at him, laughing and laughing before agreeing. Riz had a glimpse of his friends lining up behind him before he turned around and started walking.

They are behind him, and Riz will get them out because they are his best friends and he won’t leave them to this place.

The steps are hard. They’re one of the hardest things he’s ever done, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut and restrain himself from doing anything when he heard that one of them had fallen.

The others help them up, though, and Riz keeps going. He doesn’t ask them if they are alright. If he speaks to them, then he will falter and he can’t.

The sun is just above them, and he can taste the air. It’s almost sweet.

The doorway looms overhead, huge in the overwhelming silence but Riz can’t dwell on it. His watch feels cold on his skin, his father’s panicking voice is one of the things Riz can’t think about.

So he doesn’t.

The air tastes like victory, and Riz grins at the entrance, his watch beeping with his father’s screaming before—

Fig is thrumming her bass, the sound slowly moving through the place.

This is different than the Hell she’s used to. There is no flames, just emptyness and shells of something floating around.

Ankarna is silent, in Fig’s head. She hasn’t said a word since Fig made a deal and she thinks that her goddess is upset with her but—

But these are her friends. These are someone who has stuck by her, through and through and she loves them just as much as she loves Ankarna.

She can’t leave them.

So she keeps going, humming a lullaby she can’t quite remember. Her grandmother sang it to her when she lived with them and used to tuck Fig into bed.

Fig keeps playing. She wonders if drums would go good with the lullaby.

Nobody joins in. There is nothing except her own bass.

She doesn’t speak.

She doesn’t need to.

She just sings and plays, and hopes beyond hope that they are following her music. That they are following her.

She knows they are behind her. Knows it in the marrow of her bones, in the heart of her bass, in the echoes around her.

They are behind her.

They are always behind her.

Where is Fabian’s footsteps, and the rustle of his battle sheet?

Where is Gorgug’s tinker noises, or the heavy swing of his axe on his back?

Where is Adaine’s rustling jacket? Boggy’s croaking?

Where is Kristen’s tapping, her laugh?

Where is Riz’s shuffling papers or the tapping of his wristwatch?

Where are they?

The music stops and before she can even think better—

They look back.

[merge-conflict]

let me die on stage, singing the last song I know

cyberhanami day 1: "born to die"

content warning: grievous injury, death

summary: Johnny Silverhand was always a construct.

-----

It’s like a bad dream, waking nightmare, so that even as panic rises in Johnny’s throat– real panic, animal panic, whole fucking body panic– he feels like he’s been here before. The scent of scorched metal and burnt meat stirred up by the thunka-thunka-thunka of the chopper’s blades. He never thought he’d make it this far. The plan was always to descend into the tower to settle one last score, to blaze a path he can never come back from.

Seconds stretch into minutes stretch into hours, every ounce of his desperation driven into his spasming muscles as he sprints across the roof. The adrenaline screaming up the inside of his ribs has made him as light as a feather. Sharp too, like a blade with an edge, cutting through fire and steel. But none of that means more than a fart into the wind if he isn’t fast enough.

Behind him, an unholy marriage of chrome and fury is tearing through concrete barriers like tissue paper, and he can only see how narrow the gap is by seeing the hopelessness on Rogue’s face. Rogue, hanging so far out of the chopper she’s almost falling.

It’s worse. It’s all so much worse, making it this far.

It was all in the cards. It had all been in the cards. The fool and the tower.

It’s how it’s supposed to go. Some gonk kid dies in Nicaragua and Johnny Silverhand wakes up in in NUSA. Built– just like the tower. An entire fucking spectacle, for the world to see. For the world to wake up.

In front of him, Rogue stretches out her arm, the chopper rising, and he jumps. Like a bad dream, that falling feeling, that freezing fear– but Rogue always comes through, and their hands lock. For a moment he actually believes he’ll make it. He believes it, and as soon as he does he goes right from light as a feather to dead weight and slips right through her fingers.

His body smacks concrete, distant and unreal. He thinks he must have fallen apart– to his right an arm, to his left, his head rolling away. Pain melts every nerve he possesses, but his body hasn’t gotten the memo. It doesn’t want to be Johnny Silverhand, it wants to live. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. He isn’t supposed to be afraid.

Rogue is gone. It’s Smasher now, standing over him. Taunting him, no doubt, as though he could hear anything over the searing ring in his ears. Somewhere below them both is enough explosive power to level the block, but it’s no use to him now. He still can’t manage to give in entirely, but Smasher shatters his arm into pieces the moment he lifts it off the ground. Mercifully, the aftershocks that sweep through him finally send him directly into the sweet arms of oblivion.

He wakes again, still in unbearable agony, even through the haze of whatever painkiller was making his mouth dry and his mind high. It’s all he can do to keep his breathing shallow, to avoid the worst of the sharp pain in his ribs. No matter how hard he tries he can’t get enough air, can’t do anything but keep riding it out. His eyelids are gummed together, eyes hazy, but at least he can’t embarrass himself by weeping like some frightened kid. The floor to ceiling window offers a stunning view, and he keeps his focus on it, so he doesn’t have to see what’s left of him– whatever parts they have managed to scrape together to bolt into this chair.

He scarcely notices Saburo’s entrance until the old bastard passes in front of the tower, so tight with fury he looks like he might explode himself. The tone of his voice is dire, probably threatening him with something painful and unending, but it’s hard to consider anything worse than this.

There’s a soft chime overhead, and as if on cue, everyone turns away from the window. He keeps watching up until the end. It blinds him first, burning his eyes– scarcely a drop in the ocean of misery. The shockwave comes in almost the same instant, rattling the building so hard he thinks it might collapse. But it passes, and in the heavy silence after the only sound is his own labored breathing and the distant rumble of collapsing steel and concrete.

He smiles, too tired to laugh, and wishes he could still see the old man’s face. Someone roughly turns his head to the side, knocking the air out of his lungs with the pain, and says bitterly, “My husband was in that tower.”

He wants to scream when he feels the metal sliding into metal, like a spike being driven into the back of his brain. The best he can do is try not to move. “I didn’t want him to die.”

She doesn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t speak. There’s a pressure in his skull, building and expanding. It feels like dying. It is dying. He blazes, rapid fire like a muzzle flash, words still trapped in his throat, and then he's gone.

But he wakes up.

They've put him back together wrong, everything off in a way too spine-wrenchingly awful to be just a dream. His body staggers to the window as he drifts somewhere behind, lost, bewildered by the strange feeling his corpse has a mind of its own. There, in the reflection of glass is a stranger’s face, but he scarcely notices it– because all he can see is the building that should not exist.

Arasaka tower looms unbroken over Night City like some hellish monolith, and Johnny Silverhand is still dead.

[firstfullmoon]

sorry if this has been asked before, but what are your favorite quotes about (romantic) love?

• “I love you. I want us both to eat well.” 

— Christopher Citro, from “Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shriek”

• “You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun.”

— Shauna Barbosa, from “GPS”

• “August. We were arguing. You want love to be like this every day don’t you? 92 degrees even in the shade.”

“I used to be a hopeless romantic. I am still a hopeless romantic. I used to believe that love was the highest value. I still believe that love is the highest value. I don’t expect to be happy. I don’t imagine that I will find love, whatever that means, or that if I do find it, it will make me happy. I don’t think of love as the answer or the solution. I think of love as a force of nature - as strong as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming, as drought-making as it is life-giving. And when it burns out, the planet dies.”

“If love is going to be done differently I will have to do it. I don’t mean as a messiah-thing, I mean as a me-thing. I want to look into your eyes and not get blown up. I want you to see me as I am and not destroy me. I don’t want to retreat into plant life, or have the same bad dream every night. I don’t want to watch a city burn because I was there.”

— Jeanette Winterson

• “I’ll take care of you. / It’s rotten work. / Not to me. Not if it’s you.”

— from Anne Carson’s translation of Orestes

• “I think of you all the time and therefore have little to say that would not embarrass you, for instance my first feeling about the rain was that it was like you.”

— John Cage, from a letter to Merce Cunningham

• “I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.”

— Maggie Nelson, Bluets

• “I want to be a village full of sweethearts, / as you are, every second of the day, / cooking me soups & drawing me pictures / & holding me, my inexplicable & elephant sadness, / with your infinite arms. / But isn’t it true, you are not / always why I am happy. & I promise / it is true, you are almost never why, / why I am sad.”

— Chen Chen, from “Elegy for My Sadness”

• “Look here Vita—throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.”

“I always have such need to merely talk to you. Even when I have nothing to talk about – with you I just seem to go right ahead and sort of invent it. I invent it for you. Because I never seem to run out of tenderness for you and because I need to feel you near.”

“I could only think of you as being very distant and beautiful and calm. A lighthouse in clean waters.”

“What can one say — except that I love you and I’ve got to live through this strange quiet evening thinking of you sitting alone. Dearest — let me have a line… You have given me such happiness…”

— Virginia Woolf, from letters to Vita Sackville-West

• “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.” 

“Please, in all this muddle of life, continue to be a bright and constant star. Just a few things remain as beacons: poetry, and you, and solitude.”

— Vita Sackville-West, from letters to Virginia Woolf

• “Love is awful. It’s awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own. I was taught if we’re born with love then life is about choosing the right place to put it. People talk about that a lot, feeling right, when it feels right it’s easy. But I’m not sure that’s true. It takes strength to know what’s right. And love isn’t something that weak people do. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope. I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope.“

— Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in Fleabag

• “i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)”

— e.e. cummings, from “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”

• “There was once a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her-immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife’s hands were chapped and red when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love. When I met Ana I knew: I loved her to the point of invention.”

— Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House

• “oh god it’s wonderful / to get out of bed / and drink too much coffee / and smoke too many cigarettes / and love you so much”

— Frank O’Hara, from “Steps”

• “This morning there’s snow everywhere. We remark on it. You tell me you didn’t sleep well. I say I didn’t either. You had a terrible night. “Me too.” We’re extraordinarily calm and tender with each other as if sensing the other’s rickety state of mind. As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don’t, of course. We never do. No matter. It’s the tenderness I care about. That’s the gift this morning that moves and holds me. Same as every morning.”

— Raymond Carver, from “The Gift”

• “Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.”

— Leonard Cohen, in a letter to Marianna Ihlen

• “I think about love on a scale from 1 to 10. Most of us find a 6 or a 7, and that’s why we have divorce. It’s the truth. We settle for that 6 or 7. But I like to think Kevin is Chiron’s 10. He’s found that and he realizes that there’s no reason to settle for a 6 or a 7 because, “I know this person is my 10. Whether or not this person believes I’m his 10, I’m going to devote my life to this person entirely.” That’s why the line where he says, “You’re the only man that’s ever touched me,” for me, was the most amazing, most beautiful thing I’ve seen in cinema, period. Because that’s what we strive for as people, to find that one person because they’re there. If Kevin doesn’t feel that they should be together, Chiron is just going to die a miserable person because that’s his person and he won’t settle for anything else.“

— Trevante Rhodes about Moonlight

• “I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world”

— Frank O’Hara, from “Having a Coke with You” but the whole poem is !

• “The door slammed and someone came home and low voices could be heard, the single lilt of a question as it rose, “How was it?” or “Are you hungry?” Something plain and necessary, yet extra, with care, a voice like those tiny roofs over the phone booths along the train tracks, the ones made from the same shingles used for houses, except only four rows wide—just enough to keep the phone dry. And maybe that’s all I wanted—to be asked a question and have it cover me, like a roof the width of myself.”

— Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

• “I keep wishing for you, keep shutting up my eyes and looking toward the sky, asking with all my might for you, and yet you do not come. I thought of you, until the world grew rounder than it sometimes is, and I broke several dishes.”

— Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Minnie Holland

• “I don’t want you to be nervous. Maybe thinking of a walrus would help. Have you seen the video of the penguin accidentally stepping on a sleeping walrus? It thought it was a rock. The walrus wakes up like what the fuck and the penguin scurries off like oh shit. Sometimes it’s funny watching a surprise happen, and not just funny but kind of amazing — like, you never really know what’s what when it comes to this planet.

Then again, when it’s you getting surprised, that’s different. Especially for tender ones like us. What are we supposed to do? It’s bad for our hearts, you know. I hope you won’t need pills like I do. I think I get so scared because I’m greedy — I want to hold onto everything, the world wants to take it away. What the fuck. The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.”

— Mikko Harvey, “For M”

• “Willem sleeps on the left side of the bed, and he on the right, and the first night they slept in the same bed, he turned to his right on his side, the way he always did, and Willem pressed up against him, tucking his right arm under his neck and then across his shoulders, and his left arm around his stomach, moving his legs between his legs. He was surprised by this, but once he overcame his initial discomfort, he found he liked it, that it was like being swaddled. One night in June, however, Willem didn’t do it, and he worried he had done something wrong. The next morning–early mornings were the other time they talked about the things that seemed too tender, too difficult, to be said in the daylight–he asked Willem if he was upset with him, and Willem, looking surprised, said no, of course not. “I just wondered,” he began, stammering, “because last night you didn’t–” But he couldn’t finish the sentence; he was too embarrassed. But then he could see Willem’s expression clear, and he rolled into him and wrapped his arms around him. “This?” he asked, and he nodded. “It was just because it was so hot last night, Willem said, and he waited for Willem to laugh at him, but he didn’t. “That’s the only reason, Judy.” Since then, Willem has held him in the same way every night, even through July, when not even the air-conditioning could erase the heaviness from the air, and when they both woke damp with sweat. This, he realizes, is what he wanted from a relationship all along. This is what he meant when he hoped he might someday be touched.”

— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

• “No, I didn’t imagine my being alone with you the way you do. If I want the impossible, I want it in its entirety. Entirely alone, dearest, I wanted us to be entirely alone on this earth, entirely alone under the sky, and to lead my life, my life that is yours, without distraction and with complete concentration, in you.”

— Franz Kafka, from a letter to Felice Bauer

• “If I could attach our blood vessels so we could become each other I would. If I could attach our blood vessels in order to anchor you to the earth, to this present time, I would. If I could open up your body and slip inside your skin and look out your eyes and forever have my lips fused with yours, I would.”

— David Wojnarowicz, The Half-Life

• “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

— Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

• “If Moses had seen the way my friend’s face blushes when he’s drunk, and his beautiful curls and wonderful hands, he would not have written in his Torah: do not lie with a man”

— Rabbi Yehuda Al-Harizi/Judah Ben Solomon Harizi

• “I’ll rob the bank that gave you the impression that money is more fruitful than words, and I’ll cut holes in the ozone if it means you have one less day of rain. I’ll walk you to the hospital, I’ll wait in a white room that reeks of hand sanitizer and latex for the results from the MRI scan that tries to locate the malady that keeps your mind guessing, and I want to write you a poem every day until my hand breaks and assure you that you’ll find your place, it’s just the world has a funny way of hiding spots fertile enough for bodies like yours to grow roots. I hope our ghosts aren’t eating you alive. If i’m to speak for myself, I’ll tell you that the universe is twice as big as we think it is and you’re the only one that made that idea less devastating.”

— Lucas Regazzi, from “Small”

• “I thought she was sleeping until I heard her call out from across the room, “Will you bring me a glass of water?” I did. Then in her always-sleepy tone and drawl she said, “Do you remember when you were a little girl and you would ask your mama to bring you a glass of water?” Yeah. “You know how half the time you weren’t even thirsty. You just wanted that hand that was attached to that glass that was attached to that person you just wanted to stay there until you fell asleep.” She took the glass of water that I brought her and just sat it down full on the table next to her. Wow, I thought. What am I gonna do with love like this.”

— Dito Montiel, One Night

[twvstedsouls]

Movie Thoughts: King Kong (2005) / 3rd and final hour of the movie.

WARNING, these are sort of spoilers so if you haven’t watched the movie yet, here’s your warning.

doing this because I have the urge to shout into the void and think I’m kind of funny at times.

WHAT IS THIS MOVIE MAGIC?! There’s no way that Jimmy just shot all those bugs off Jack without shooting him. Tommy guns were unreliable, movie trying to bullshit you into believing they were not. I refuse to accept this, you should too.

HOLY SHIT. CAPTAIN TO THE RESCUE DEUS EX-MACHINA.

Baxter swinging on a rope shooting the insects being a hero: NO. I REFUSE. Not acknowledging this redemption arc, no way.

Random cheer up juggling: I approve. Still think they forgot to add on the comedy genre to this film.

Sunset watching. YES.

AWH He’s made a friend. 🥺❤️

THIS AWESOME INTERACTION:  😂

Captain: That’s the thing about cockroaches, no matter how many times you flush them down the toilet, they always crawl back up the bowl.

Denham: Hey buddy, I’m out of the bowl. I’m drying off my wings and trekking across the lid.

At the same time though...the guy hasn’t seen a single cent promised, and now he’s fucked. I get it. Still will be when he returns, helping a wanted criminal. Captain good guy. Sort of. 

Jack not giving up at finding Ann 🥺LOVE. IT BURNS.

WHY DID DENHAM’S ‘’I’M SORRY’’ SOUND SO OMINOUS AM I MISSING SOMETHING?!

When Ann sees Jack, not believing it’s not a dream, real, really him. SIS, I know you’ve made friends with Kong. But...THIS IS YOUR CHANCE GET OUT OF THERE BITCH. WHAT YOU BEING SLOW FOR?!

That roar: When you lose your friend. 

Jack...did you forget how swimming works? If not, that’s not how you do it.

FOUND THE OMINOUS ‘’I’M SORRY’’! CARL DENHAM YOU BITCH, LOWER THE BRIDGE ALREADY, YOUR FILM IS RUINED QUIT TRYING TO SAVE IT. 

OH. You’re just trying to trap it. Well...that’s dumb. When has trying to trap the giant ass monster ever worked?

Slow motion trying to look like slow motion but looking more like slow mo acting. No. Not in a good way. Plus, it’s taking too damn long.

Captain good guy is now captain profit guy.

Okay. Hold up. How the hell did they manage to tie the rope around those big boulders if they’re that heavy. And why does it look so perfect.

Kong: NO ONE MESSES WITH MY FRIEND.

Ann: It’s me he wants! So?! Just get in the boats and go, he didn’t go after you and jack when you jumped in the river, I doubt he’ll follow you into the ocean.

DAMN. He really just bit a guy’s head off.

Ann: Go back. HE WOULDN’T EVEN BE CHASING YOU ALL OF YOU IF YOU HADN’T FREAKED OUT AND KEPT FREAKING OUT!

OH NO! JIMMY CAN’T SWIM! He better live or I’m coming for you Kong.

Awww, Kong holding out his hand to Ann and that little whine. 🥺

THAT expression on Jack’s face as he witnessed it all, he understands now. Awesome acting by Naomi Scott and Adrien Brody.

BUT at the same time: HE’S JUST SLEEPING, HE DIDN’T DIE. YEEZ. RELAX PEOPLE.

Denham: The whole world will pay to see this. We’re millionaires boys!

Excuse me...What?

PRESTON’S BACK! Is he going to do a good guy thing? he looks like he’s about to do a good guy thing.

Jack’s expressions and the narration flashback scene to their conversation on the boat during the comedy play 🥺 THIS IS AMAZING.

And that’s when he told you how he felt? 

No, He never said it.

He never said it?!

He probably thought he didn’t need to say it.

Well, then how does she know that it’s real?

He said it was not about the words.

Oh, please!

If you feel it, you say it.  

He said we’d talk about it later.

Only, there was no later.

It never happened. 🥺❤️

My writer’s heart is beating loudly, this is just so, so, so good. And romantic ❤️

Almost put the entire scene in, that’s how much I love it.

SERIOUSLY FUCK DENHAM. I thought the Captain was the worst, or Baxter, but am now seeing it’s neither of them (though baxter comes a close second), it’s Denham. Since he’s there too, working with Denham.

POOR KONG. 😭

FUCK THE AUDIENCE TOO.

Ann not having a part in any of that tomfoolery. BRAVO!

WHY is the audience so dumb. Like can’t you see the difference between a performance and a wild animal about to break out? Plus, how deaf is that dude? Jack doesn’t want your seat man, he’s trying to save your life.

The women in the audience are the first to think something is off. That’s awesome. If he says it’s fine, and you have a feeling in your gut it isn’t, honey, just grab your bag and run, you’ll be doing yourself a favor.

Baxter sneaking off. I SEE YOU 👀

How the camera just goes to the guy who didn’t want to leave his seat. HAHAHA. CLASSIC. 😂

LOL. Kong throwing the girl away like that. That’s a human being sir. A crappy human being, but still.

OH DAMN. That dude getting crushed by Kong landing on him with that jump.

Police officer: Everybody slow down! LOL. NOPE.

HAHAHA. Jack what are you still there for? Like seriously? Did you wait for everyone to leave the theatre (leaving you the only target) and then not expect Kong to come after you?

OH. Denham is still there. Kong, think it through next time. 

Traffic is scary.

Kong doing donuts. 

When a stranger slaps your butt. Payback 1000000% Kong style.

What’s the plan Ann? What’s the plan?

Backwards driving. Cool. 

No way is a taxi faster than a giant ape monster.

Jack if you’re trying to get it away from people you’re doing a shit job.

That shot of Ann walking towards Kong. Beautiful.

Lights in trees that look suspiciously like christmas trees. Is King Kong a christmas movie?

Gorilla/Human Ice skating and laughing. What. kind. of. movie. is. this.

THE ARMY IS HERE. 

Kong just put her down, you can handle a bullet or two, Ann can’t.

WAS THAT A ROCKET LAUNCHER?!?!

Jack’s back. I thought he’d be out cold longer.

DAMN. He can run.

YESSSS. Another sunset.

Those are some nice looking planes.

Kong is hurt 🥺

Nobody past this point! You can’t go in there! Lol, officer, really? It’s Jack. He’ll just go, (if he had time for it and was petty): You can’t tell me what to do!

Damn Jack, that kick. Nothing’s stopping you, is there?

Scary ladder on the outside of the building. No thanks.

O M G. Stop fucking staring at each other, there’s a limit okay? And not exactly the right time now, is it? Ann? Kong? Ann?

More staring. STOP.

Get to Ann and Jack already. No offence Kong.

[witchygirl99]

ALONG CAME SHIPPO

Here! Have a 2.2k snippet because I don’t know if I’ll ever finish this:

The End of the World begins on a Tuesday.

Fucking finally.

X

Inuyasha taps out a rhythm on the old wooden desk he’s sitting at, his sharp nails creating tiny indents with each press. There’s no pattern to it really, just boredom shifting the beat from fast to slow, erratic to sedated. He’s sitting in some sort of bedroom, the furniture vintage and the curtains threadbare. The ceiling fan hums as it rotates, too loud to be pleasant. The bed is covered in some sort of ugly quilt, the white patches stained from age.

As far as punishments go, being in here is a good one.

It sucks, being as powerful as he is but as trapped as his current predicament shows. Inuyasha could burn the earth down, shatter the realms, rip apart dimensions. He could do anything he wanted really. For millennia, Inuyasha had done nothing terribly wrong. A few species were extinct, sure. The odd fireball. The whole witch rioting thing was a pain in the ass but overall, not really his fault, no matter what anyone else says.

He’d been just another Almighty Being, living his immortality.

And then the Winged Ones came. Idiots with too many feathers and not enough brain power who at first, Inuyasha will admit, seemed rather harmless. Just fluffy little things. Kind of like fleas but with too much of a complex and not enough use.

Hindsight is, of course, 20-20.

Stupid Winged Ones. Stupid, flying morons who thought they could rule the world. The End of the World is coming, he told them. Don’t be dumb, he pressed.

But no. The Winged Ones banded together, tore him open and flayed him screaming. They chained him, burned him and did the only thing they knew would keep an Almighty Being from gaining back his freedom: they locked him in the Pit, deep in the earth where Creation was born. It was a place so full of magic and power, that it was both everything and nothing at once.

Currently, it’s a bedroom with a shitty ceiling fan and some really disgusting curtains.

Inuyasha sighs. The Pit changes often and at random, too much power to stay as any one thing for too long. He vaguely hopes the next bit of scenery will be a little more interesting.

The ceiling fan suddenly stops. Not like a normal fan would, where it slows bit-by-bit until it grinds to a halt. No. The dingy ceiling fan stops so suddenly it was like it was never on at all, the humming silenced. Inuyasha doesn’t worry; this is actually the coolest thing to have happened to him since he Created fire. Still, something is happening. The Almighty Being can feel it in his bones, a deep, gut-wrenching knowingness that latches on and refuses to go away. The Pit around him is vibrating, fluctuating, pleased.

And then the bedroom door opens.

“Oh good.” A redheaded boy, looking no more than six years old, bursts in and grins up at him. It’s toothy and kind of weird, but the child doesn’t falter at Inuyasha’s lack of response. “I was worried you’d be somewhere else.”

Inuyasha’s not really sure what’s happening, but it’s probably good. The child is not a child at all. He’s not even an Almighty Being. He’s something… Inuyasha frowns, unable to get any sort of read. It’s the first real puzzle he’s stumbled upon since he opened his eyes to the galaxy and the stars sang to him. “Who are you?” he asks. His voice is deep and gruff, scratchy from disuse. The sound of it actually is a little startling. He’d forgotten what he sounded like over the past hundred thousand or so years.

The redhead waves dismissively at him. His eyes are a startling green, like emeralds. The smile never leaves his face. “You can call me Shippo. Names are strange, aren’t they?”

Inuyasha’s frown doesn’t deepen, but it sure as hell doesn’t lessen either. “Shippo.”

“Yep.” The kid bounces on the balls of his feet, hands clapping. “I’m glad I caught you.” Inuyasha wonders where the fuck else he would have been all this time. It’s not like he’s moved. “The End of the World is here so we gotta go.”

He’d like to remind everyone that this is, in fact, the oddest thing to have happened to him in a very, very long time. While he doubts the Pit is this creative in its scenery, Inuyasha figures it’s best to not take it for granted either way. “Go where?” Inuyasha asks. He doesn’t want to ask, but he does it anyways.

“To destroy the world?” Shippo levels him with an unimpressed glance, smile instantly gone. “Did you not get the whole End of the World thing?”

Inuyasha narrows his eyes. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Ugh!” Shippo throws his hands up in the air, looking exasperated beyond all measure. The expression looks peculiar on his face, too old and worn for a body so youthful. “It’s no wonder the Angels locked you up.”

“The–”

“Winged Ones, whatever,” Shippo interrupts, waving a dismissive hand yet again. “You Almighties really like to mess around with names. Seriously. Probably my fault, I was kind of absent but we can only move forward, you know?” He brushes back his bangs and lets out a long breath. “So, like I said. It’s the End of the World. Are you in or are you out?”

“Are the Winged Ones involved?”

Shippo makes a seesaw motion with his hands. “Kind of?”

“Can I destroy them?”

“No.” Shippo looks rather firm on this answer, which makes the next admission all the more startling. “But the End of the World will more or less dismantle all the shit they’ve been doing the last few centuries and will likely throw them into a pit of despair.”

“Can it be the literal Pit?” Inuyasha asks, because fair is fair. They started it.

Shippo gives him that flat look again, his green eyes too piercing for the monotony of the room. Eventually, he huffs out a breath and turns around. “Yeah, fine, whatever.”

Inuyasha gets up slowly and follows the redheaded child out the bedroom door and into the deepest, darkest part of the ocean. Bermuda, the creature of all creatures, opens a lazy eye at them before going back to sleep.

“She’s probably my favourite,” Shippo says then, grinning that big, toothy smile at the creature. “Top five best names, for sure.” He says it like he was the one that named her. Inuyasha opens his mouth to ask but Shippo skips ahead then, muttering to himself as he goes. “One down and three more to go. I should probably leave the easiest one last, right?”

Inuyasha half-swims, half-stumbles through the water. He has no idea how the kid can skip through like it’s nothing, “Wait, three more?”

“Three more,” Shippo confirms. “I’m thinking Miroku first, and then Sango. Sango will put up a much bigger fight if we do it the other way around and we’re on a time crunch.”

Yet another question he doesn’t want to ask, but does anyways. “Who the fuck are Miroku and Sango?”

“Uh, your co-Almighties?” It���s more of an incredulous statement than a question, but Inuyasha feels anger bubbling up in his system anyways, the familiar rage burning in his veins like an old friend. He’s missed feeling like this, feeling anything at all than the nothingness of the Pit. His hands curl into fists, his claws digging into flesh and though he doesn’t bleed, the pain of it is almost startlingly good.

Shippo eyes him like he can read every thought that’s racing through his mind. “Weirdo,” he lands on finally. “I really have been absent.”

“Explain,” Inuyasha grits out.

“You actually thought you were the only Almighty Being?” Shippo snorts, smacking a palm to his face. He looks rather disappointed, which is again such a strange look on a body so young. “Well then, you’ve got some catching up to do. There are four of you, all Created differently but Made at the same time. You grew from the ground. The Earth split itself in half to carve out your Creation.”

Inuyasha remembers it, though the memory is hazy at best. For all the things that he can do and recall, his Creation was fuzzy, like looking through layers of fogged glass. “I saw the galaxy.”

“You did,” Shippo answers. “While emerging from the earth, you only had but up to look.”

“And the others?”

“Miroku and Sango are kind of strange. Basically, a rock was–” He stops and winces. “Well, it was blessed. Long story. Anyways, when Sun shone its light down upon the Earth, Miroku grew. That night, when Moon filled the sky, its light shone upon that very same rock and Sango was Created. One rock, two Almighties… You see how it’s weird?”

Inuyasha doesn’t. He nods anyways.

“And then there’s Kagome.”

For some reason, the name stabs something within him. It brings about a pain that rivals Inuyasha’s memories of being dragged into the Pit. He doesn’t know why. Inuyasha’s entire existence was himself, the Earth, and the fucking Winged Ones.

Angels, whatever.

“She was Created first,” Shippo says, wistful. Bubbles leak from his mouth as he sighs, still deep are they in the ocean. “She was Made with intention.” He sneaks a glance at Inuyasha before grinning slyly. “Race you to the top?”

“The top of—?” But it’s too late. Shippo has already flown, jetting up towards the surface without having moved a muscle. Inuyasha stares for a long moment, baffled. He wishes, suddenly, that Shippo had gone for someone else first. Why hadn’t he gone for someone else first?

When he gets to the surface, the waves are all-consuming. Shippo hovers over the top like the water is a solid mass, a floor to be walked-upon. He laughs at Inuyasha’s struggle before snapping his fingers, and then – finally – Inuyasha is by his side, dry, and drowning no more. “You’re a mess,” the redhead tells him with glee.

“What intention?” Inuyasha demands instead, because he may have been chained to the Pit for a very long time, but he’s no fool. He knows a distraction when he sees one. Shippo’s flight out of the ocean was as clear as day, a neon sign of distrust.

Inuyasha is not dealing with this shit, free of the Pit or not.

For a moment, those green eyes pierce him. Shippo is six year’s old in body, but certainly not in mind. He’s difficult to get a read on, but the reverse doesn’t seem true. Finally, the kid shakes his head and sighs, long-suffering. “Still a pain in the ass,” he grumbles.

Still? “We only just met,” Inuyasha growls back, irritated. “Look, this has been a fun few minutes but—”

“Kagome was Made from the Light and the Dark,” Shippo interrupts. His body hovers higher, taking Inuyasha with him, though the child doesn’t seem to notice. “She was born out of love, staring down at the Earth.”

Inuyasha has no idea why this is such a secret. That thought must be written all over his face, or maybe Shippo doesn’t need to read expressions at all. Maybe the child simply knows.

“You were Created second,” Shippo tells him casually.

The comment means nothing. “And?”

A startled laugh comes out, oddly cheerful and childish. His tiny hands form fists around his stomach, like he’s trying to keep himself together. “Nothing,” he gasps out. “Oh, nothing. This is going to be great. The gang is back together!”

Back…together?

But before Inuyasha can ask anymore, Shippo whoops and flings them both into the sky.

[sylvanfreckles]

Torture (FebuWhump 21)

Fandom: Supernatural Summary: (Sequel to “Buried Alive”) Castiel has been captured by Raphael and is subjected to some of the worst tortures Heaven has ever conceived. Rescue is coming, but will there be anything left to save?

(I tried, but again, it might not live up to the hype)

* * *

“We're almost there,” Joash, the wind ruffling his dark hair, cast a smile back at Castiel. “Once you see it you'll understand what I mean.”

Joash was a recent convert in the battle against Raphael, and as such Castiel was trying to limit his interaction with the others until the angel could prove himself. So when he claimed he knew about a place that had been touched by their Father and had some deep, primordial power connected to it, Castiel went along himself rather than potentially endanger any of the others.

“Here we are!” Joash threw his arms wide and turned in a slow circle. They were in a small, cup-shaped valley deep in the Appalachian mountains. It was a beautiful place, to be sure, but Castiel couldn't see much worth beyond the aesthetic.

“You said there was a source of power here,” Castiel replied. He stood beside Joash, hands thrust in his pockets, and squinted at the scenery around them. While it was true that every atom of their Father's creation sang with the glory of His power, this was merely a place of physical beauty.

There was a rustle of wings, a burst of pressure, and Joash was gone. Castiel whirled around, trying to trace the other's path through the ether but the air around him was suddenly crackling with angelic power. He leaped, wings outstretched, trying to throw himself into the etherial plane only to be slammed back into the physical one.

Lightning arced out of a cloudless sky to burn the grass around him, tracing and dancing in complicated patterns. His true form was struck, his wings crippled, and he fell to one knee at the sudden weight of pressure descending on him.

Raphael was standing in front of him now. The archangel had found a new vessel, a dark-skinned woman with chin-length hair. She stared down at him imperiously, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Castiel.”

He tried to stand, but another jolt of power knocked him down to his hands and knees. “Resorting to lies and deceit, Raphael?”

“Joash told you there was heavenly power here,” Raphael countered. She took Castiel's chin in one hand and forced his head up. “He just didn't tell you it was mine.”

Castiel steeled himself, knowing what was coming next. Every day, every fight, there was always the risk that this would be the time Raphael caught up to him. This would be his last day, his last moment. “Go ahead,” he spat. “More will rise in my place. You will never have your apocalypse.”

Raphael clucked her tongue. “I'm not here to make a martyr out of you, little brother.” She leaned in, until the electric fury of her essence set the hairs of his vessel on end, practically pressing her cheek against his. “What was it you said? Ah, yes...I'm here because today you're my little bitch.”

* * *

They pulled him through the ether, Raphael's essence battering him the entire time, until he was dumped on the floor of a large, empty space with his true form too wounded to fight.

“Check for human devices,” Raphael ordered. Joash and another angel stepped forward to strip his coats away and pat through his pockets. She watched them intently, fiddling with the rings she wore on the index and middle finger of her right hand.

“What purpose does this serve?” Castiel demanded when Joash triumphantly held up his cell phone. He'd pushed himself up to his knees, trying to maintain some sense of dignity even as more and more celestial power gathered around him. Raphael was obviously mustering her forces to guard her new prisoner.

“I want you to yield to me,” Raphael announced. “Admit that you were misled in your zealotry and acknowledge that our Father's plan is just and true.”

“The apocalypse is not our Father's plan,” Castiel growled. He surged toward Raphael, but two angels were at his side to force him back to his knees. “You should know more than anyone. The apocalypse-”

Raphael raised one hand, the rings on her fingers glinting, and light coursed through Castiel's body.

Blinding, burning, pitiless light. He could feel it crackling his skin, singing his feathers, feel his blood beginning to boil under the onslaught of sheer, terrible light.

She lowered her hand and Castiel sagged forward against the clutches of his captors, panting for breath. His entire being—true form and vessel—felt cracked and raw. “I'm sorry, little brother,” Raphael intoned, though her voice sounded far too triumphant. “You left me no choice. You've gone too far this time.”

Castiel craned his neck to look up at her. His vision was swimming with blinding after-images of that horrible burst of all-consuming light. He could still feel it, could hear it, under his skin and through his true form. “No.”

It was a whisper, not a shout, but it was still defiance. Raphael's eyes narrowed and she raised her hand again. “We have all the time in the world.”

The light consumed him.

* * *

He lay on his side, curled around himself, as the other angels moved about the space around him. They hadn't bothered to bind him after the third hour of torture—or was it the third year? Not with his wings burned to tatters under the onslaught of the Rings of the Accuser.

They had been a flail once, wielded by Zachariah to enforce discipline in the ranks of Heaven. The greater angel had taken delight in doling out discipline for even the smallest infraction, usually with his Flail of Admonishment. Castiel had felt it more than once, as had many of the angels in his flight.

Then the unthinkable had happened. Balthazar had enraged Zachariah on purpose, to protect one of the younger angels from his wrath. Zachariah had punished Balthazar so severely that when Castiel was finally able to haul him to the Rit Zien they had spoken only of a mercy-killing. Castiel had refused and fled, sheltering his injured brother with his own essence.

He'd carried Balthazar for days, weeks even (though time had very little meaning in Heaven). Sharing his own power to soothe his brother's wounds, lending him his strength, and bit-by-bit he brought Balthazar back from the brink of death.

Michael had ordered the flail destroyed, but Zachariah had only melted it down and reforged into five rings. The rings had disappeared along with the other weapons from Heaven's armory, but it appeared Raphael had gotten her hands on two of them.

Castiel was pulled out of his memories when he realized Raphael was standing above him again. She had her arms folded across her chest, her ringed fingers casually tapping against her bicep. “Do you yield, Castiel? This can all be over.”

He didn't have the strength to form the words. The skin of his vessel was scraped and bruised from his rough treatment at the hands of his brothers, and his true form was burned and ravaged from the Rings of the Accuser. There were no shadows left in his mind, no quiet places of peace or memory. He is friends' faces—Dean and Sam and Bobby—they were nothing but blurs in his mind's eye now. He could no longer remember the warmth of Jimmy's soul, or the glory of the firmament, or the dark peace of the bottom of the ocean.

“Still defiant,” Raphael sighed. She raised one finger and Castiel flinched back as light rushed over his true form. His ethereal eyes, already singed from her attacks, burned under the onslaught. The eyes of his vessel swelled as though in sympathy, the skin dry and needle-sharp from burn after burn after burn.

“Do you want me to find Naomi?”

Castiel shuddered at the new voice (familiar voice? Everything in his head was twisting back in on itself...had there been anyone but him and Raphael and the light?).

“He yields of his own will or not at all. Prepare the prism.”

“No!” Castiel found the strength to protest. He lunged up, barely catching the hem of Raphael's jacket.

Not the prism. Anything but the prism. Anything but the golden column, the light reflecting in on itself, the pressure erasing any sense of the outside world.

“Don't touch me,” Raphael hissed, backhanding him with the hand that wore the rings. “You dare to be insolent and defiant and still expect mercy? Yield to me, Castiel, or you will see that your suffering is only beginning.”

He had so little left. The only thing he could cling to was that this was wrong, and that even though his essence cried out for relief or oblivion he had to refuse her demand.

Raphael sneered. “So be it.”

They dragged him to his feet in the middle of the floor, at the center of the overlapping lines of spell circles. Raphael held her hand out, her face twisted in concentration, and a golden light streamed forward to wrap around his legs and ankles. Castiel struggled against it, but it was no use. It wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides, twisting his true form back in on itself.

Before the column closed he caught one last glance of Raphael's exultant face, then there was nothing.

Nothing but the all-consuming light.

* * *

Ages passed...or days, or hours. The light battered him, broke him, burned him. It swept through his mind and left a blank ruin in its wake. It tore through his wings until there was little more than ash remaining.

And then...silence.

Darkness.

Pain shuddered through his being, but there was something else there. Something familiar. Something warm, wrapping around his ruined body.

He tried to press in closer, begging for the protection of his brother's grace, only to be denied and kept at arm's length.

There were hands on his vessel now. An arm wrapped around his shoulders, cradling him close to another physical body. Fingers in his hair, tracing comforting shapes.

“Come back to me, Cassie. I've got you. You're safe now.”

Castiel shuddered and tried to burrow into Balthazar's grace, only to come up against a physical barrier. He longed to shed his vessel, but doubted he'd survive more than a few seconds in his current state.

“I've got you. It's safe to come back now.”

He followed the voice through the twisted wreckage of his own thoughts. The light was gone, but in its place darker shadows loomed. For so long he'd wished for darkness, for something to end the terrible, brutal light but now that it was here he was afraid.

Darkness hid what light revealed. Either way, something was always there.

“C'mon, Cas. Sammy's worried.”

Castiel started. He couldn't feel Balthazar anymore, but somehow the nearby presence was familiar anyway.

“Shut up, I was gonna—yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm worried about you, man. I guess...we just miss you, all right?”

There was a knee under his shoulders, a hand on his chest.

“They're hoping I can get through to you,” the familiar voice muttered. “Profound bond and all...look, man, I know the last year's been rough. And I know...I know we've got some things to work out. So just come back, all right?”

Suddenly, his mind was alight with hellfire. The roar of the pit, the scent of blood and sulfur, and the broken, beautiful soul he was sent to rescue.

“Hey, call the dickbag, I think he's coming around—Balthazar, Sammy. Yeah, and I hope he heard me; he's a dickbag. Just go!”

Castiel cracked his eyes open, his vision blurred in shifting colors of red and brown. There was movement overhead, voices raised in argument, but he focused on the paler shape above him. It slowly pulled into focus—a familiar face that he'd once forgotten, eyes bright with worry.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said gently. He was smiling, but his eyes seemed wet. He patted Castiel on the chest a couple of times, then gently took one of the angel's lax hands. “Good to have you back, man.”

He let his head loll into the crook of Dean's arm, his eyes tracing every shadow of the hunter's face. “Hello, Dean.”

* * *

See all this and more in “The Light of Attrition”. coming this Summer to an internet near you.

[letsbenditlikebennett]

Coming Home || Ariana & Ulfric

TIMING: Shortly after (x). Previously (x) and (x) PARTIES: @big-bad-ulf & @letsbenditlikebennett SUMMARY: After the events of the evening, Ariana finally makes her way home and has a heart to heart with Ulf.  CONTENT WARNINGS: Family death

The jacket Carrington had given her was wrapped tightly around her body as she walked back up to the trailer. Ariana hoped Ulfric was home by now. It had dawned on her during their walk that he likely had to deal with the bodies and as much made her feel queasy. This had been her fault. If she hadn’t been drinking, she would’ve heard them coming. They wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on her like that and they could have gone in together. Instead, she’d made a bad choice that put them at a disadvantage and because of it, she’d never see Celeste again. Part of her was filled with dread to return to the room they shared. Even though they’d been sharing a small space, she had no doubt it’d feel empty with her absence.

She gave Carrington a wave and walked up the property line in quiet. Looking up, she could vaguely see Ulf atop the trailer. It was a small comfort, seeing him there. Ariana still had no idea what the hell she was supposed to do next, but it felt a little more manageable knowing that whatever it was, she wouldn’t be facing it alone. Before she was even in range of greeting him, he had already jumped down. She clung on to the jacket a bit tighter, feeling a wave of grief hit her. There was no hiding how distraught she was over having to continue navigating the world with the one person who had always been by her side.

Ariana looked up at Ulfric with her eyes welling again, unsure of what to say. I’m sorry I ran off? I’m sorry I got us into this mess in the first place? She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but her throat felt impossibly dry. Instead she looked down to the ground at her bare and dirty feet before shakily mumbling, “I’m sorry, Ulf. I’m so--” Her voice cracked before she could finish her thought. She looked back up to Ulfric with her eyes pleading for him to not be upset with her. Not right now.

Ulfric had drifted through the last hours in a fog, or rather, surrounded by smoke. After the others had left he’d retrieved the gas can from the back of his truck and returned to the warehouse, setting the remains of the Aquillas ablaze then and there, leaving their bones to crumble to ash inside the dank testament to human ambition and greed. He couldn’t bring himself to subject Celeste to the same indignity. He misjudged a lot about her (with heavy, terrible consequences the weight of which was bound to descend fully on him in time, but now seemed to hover just over his head mockingly, reminding him of all the reasons he didn’t deserve to mourn her loss) but one thing he was certain of was that she wouldn’t want to share her progenitors’ resting place. Instead, for her, there was a walk carefully cradled and wrapped in a blanket to a secluded clearing with a good view of the stars, a funeral pyre, and someone to watch as the flames burnt away to embers. He then spread her ashes around the base of a young pine tree into which he carved her initials so that he could find it again, in case Ariana wanted to visit when she came back.

When she came back. What seemed like an ocean of time had passed since then, and that when had not eventuated. It had seemed like the right thing to do at time, to let Ariana strike the final blow. It was what his own pack elders would have told her to do, what they did tell him to do on his first hunt when he was a few years younger than she was now. It was meant to be a gift delivering closure and a clarity of purpose and place in the world, but the circumstances they were forced into had corrupted it. Ulfric hadn’t given her a taste of victory like he’d wanted to, but cold revenge. Would that scare her away for good, the ferocity within her and the fact he’d encouraged it? He’d been so sure it wouldn’t, but now—

Familiar footsteps pulled him from his thoughts and to her side in an instant, at which point he pulled her into a thankful, dazed embrace. “Hysj nå, Wolfling,” Ulfric murmured, ruffling her hair slightly. “There’s no need to apologize to me, I only ever wanted you to be safe.” He was reluctant to release her and see in her face the distress that having that wish granted had caused, but the weight of everything was finally settling in and he didn’t want to crush her, so he did.

Everything she’d been trying to hold in came flooding out as Ariana tucked her head into Ulfric. The weight in her chest was trying to free itself now that it was more than apparent she didn’t have to carry this on her own. There was no stopping the tears that began to fall as she clung to him like he was the only thing holding her up. Right now, he kind of was, both physically and metaphorically. Ulfric had already done so much for her and yet, she still needed him now more than ever. She wasn’t ready to face the world on her own and he was a comforting reminder that she didn’t have to. The thought left her feeling a little more steady as he released her.

Her hand carefully wiped away tears, cracking away at some of the dried blood and dirt that were still there, before she looked at him with a lost look in her eyes. “I-- Thank you,” she started with a shaky voice, “I still shouldn’t have run off on you guys.” Or drank irresponsibly. Or killed a man. There was a whole list of things she’d probably shouldn’t have done and Ariana would have given anything to hear Celeste chiding for any one of those decisions. Even an attempt at grounding her would be welcomed if it meant they could still be together. None of this felt right and the question she had to ask made her feel sick to her stomach. As much as she wanted to collapse on the ground and sleep this whole thing away, she had to know she wasn’t bringing more trouble their way. She squeezed her eyes shut and took another deep breath before she asked, “Where are they? Where is she? Is everything… well, you know.”

“That’s alright, you came back.” Ulfric replied, though it came out sounding a little like a question, as if he couldn’t fully believe she really was here and safe. But it was the truth, he couldn’t begrudge her wanting to escape the reality of what had unfolded for a time, even if he’d worried for her. He owed her that concern and more, after he’d failed to keep control of the situation in the warehouse in a new and pathetically human way compared to his usual control issues. “Yes, I—I took care of her, ashes to ashes” he assured her, though taking up the grim duties of cleaning up the aftermath didn’t even start to make it up to her. “I marked the spot, if you ever want to... talk to her, or something.” He fished in his pocket and retrieved a shiny circle of metal, freshly cleaned and polished of the stains of battle. When he’d retrieved it, he’d told himself it was because it wouldn’t burn, but then he hadn’t buried it with the weapons he retrieved from the scene. He realized now it was because he’d been saving it for Ariana. It had meant something to Celeste after all, that had been a key ingredient in the glamouring spell. Which like so many precautions he’d put in place, had amounted to dust. “Here,” he held the ring out to her, gingerly, “I think she’d want you to have this.”  

“Of course I did,” Ariana assured, trying to address the hint of a question in his tone. Her voice still sounded tired and unfamiliar to her, but she meant it. As long as he’d have her, she’d always come back. Ulfric had more than shown he was there for her and he was the closest thing to family she had left. It hadn’t come as a surprise to her that he’d taken care of the bodies. Thinking of Celeste as a body was still heart wrenching, but knowing the spot was marked and she could visit it when she was ready brought some small form of solace. “Thank you for taking care of… well, everything. Maybe you could show me tomorrow?” As much as she wanted to rush there right now, her eyes were struggling to stay open and her entire body felt ready to collapse from exhaustion. She watched as he pulled something out of his pocket. Even with sleep in her eyes, she recognized it almost immediately. Celeste’s ring. The first gift Ariana had ever given her with money she made herself. She’d done some gardening work for their nextdoor neighbor when they lived back in Austin and taking her earnings to the fair her school had been putting on. A local jewelry maker had made it. There was a small opal on it since it was her birthstone. Celeste had worn it nearly every day since.It had always been a happy memory, but now somehow, her grief seemed to taint it. She carefully took it from him, looking it over, before sliding it on her own finger. “Yeah, I’m glad you didn’t-- you know.” 

Ariana couldn’t help the dramatic yawn that came next. With her phone shattered, she had no idea what time it was, but with how the sky was beginning to turn a lighter shade, she knew it had to be getting close to dawn. She looked down at herself, still covered in dried blood and dirt and started toward the door. “I should probably--” She froze as she touched the handle of the door, realizing all of Celeste’s stuff would be there as if she had only just left. As if she could come back. A bunch of small reminders that she wasn’t quite ready to face just yet. “I forgot-- Her stuff is all there, isn’t it?”

Ulfric’s eyes widened in horror as when it dawned on him what she meant. “Yes, It’s still there. I haven’t had time to—” He pinched the bridge of his nose with a self-chastising sigh, because he’d been so fixated on watching the woods for her return, he hadn’t even thought about heading inside, and what remained there. “Wait, just a moment,” he pleaded, and gestured for her to take a seat on one of the camping chairs at the picnic table underneath the front awning, before he entered the trailer, opening and closing the door quickly. He tried to not to pay attention to the things Celeste had left behind as he went about his task, but it was impossible not to. She was everywhere; boots left by the door, a used coffee cup sitting on the edge of the sink, that ridiculous outfit she wore to Al’s poking out of the laundry hamper, and her scent still sealed into the tight space. All these signs used to drive him wild reminding him of the ‘hunter’s’ presence but seemed to torment him even more now in her absence.

A few minutes passed, and Ulfric returned to Ariana with a thick blanket draped over one arm and a bowl of water and washcloth in his hands which he deposited on the table in front of her. “Here, you should wash your face at least.” He urged her, eyeing the blood and dirt with worry. It seemed to all be dried and he couldn’t smell any fresh blood on her but he still wasn't sure what the extent of her injuries at the hands of the Aquilla’s had been, nor if there would be any lingering effects of the sedative cocktail they gave her. She’d need a place to recover, but a metal box full of mementos of her dead sister hardly seemed like the ideal place. “I’m sorry, perhaps you’d like to stay somewhere else, while I make arrangements, at least?” he offered, leaving the choice of whether she’d want to return after that up to her. “I could call Simon…” The man may have been inexperienced in the ways of wolves, but he’d shown he was no stranger to kindness. Then again, the news of what had transpired was likely to rattle him. “Or that Deirdre woman, she told me she cares for you a great deal. I think she’d be willing to take you in.”

Ariana drew in a sharp breath, feeling guilty as she saw the look on Ulfric’s face. Of course, when would he have had time to deal with Celeste’s stuff? Why would he have anyway? She was the one who needed to go through that, decide what to keep and what to get rid of, but the prospect of seeing it right now was too much. Everything was still so raw. The reminders, her smell, her books on the nightstand, she couldn't look at them right now. It hurt too much. She just wanted to sleep and pretend like none of this happened for a few hours.Maybe in a few days, they could go through some of it together. “No, it’s okay-- I should do it. I just,” she looked down at the ground, trying to stifle the crack in her voice, “I don’t think I can yet.” She nodded as Ulf told her to wait a moment and sat down in the lawn chair. Her feet rested on the chair as she hugged her knees close. It felt a little better to be sitting, she was so tired she could probably fall asleep as she was in the chair, but Ulfric returned with a blanket, water, and a rag. Right, she was still covered in dried blood and dirt.

Ariana carefully took the rag to her face, being sure not to look down at what was coming off on it. The loss of Celeste was so much that she didn’t even want to think of the implications of mauling a person, no matter how terrible a person they had been. Her stomach felt queasy even giving a small nod to the fact. She’d have to face that and unpack another day. For now, she’d let the cool water soothe her skin and try not to focus on anything outside this moment. He mentioned staying with Simon or Deirdre and she weighed her options for a moment. She didn’t want to be away from Ulfric, but right now, being there without Celeste would hurt too much. They’d been there a short amount of time, but the small space had already become filled with memories. She set the rag back down in the bowl and wrapped herself up in the blanket. Her eyes met Ulfric’s again as she spoke, her voice beginning to feel raspy. “Maybe just for a few nights. I know Deirdre has a lot of room, I think I’d rather go there if she’s okay with… Oh, her car! It’s at the hotel,” she tacked on the last part hurriedly as she had almost forgotten about the car. A few nights at Deirdre’s could be good though… nothing that would remind her of Celeste. At least not until she was ready to face it. She’d have to eventually and she wanted to come back home. She looked back up to him, her eyes tired and drooping, “But I can come back though, right? I can still, well, live here?”

Ulfric brought his palm to his forehead, he’d completely forgotten about the car. It had seemed so long that Ariana had been getting ready for prom, posing excitedly for pictures not too far from where they sat now. “We can pick it up and drop you and it off at the same time,” he assured her, hoping that with the night of teenage drunkenness that had gone on nearby one abandoned car in the hotel parking lot wouldn’t have attracted too much attention. With the combined sensations of worry, grief, guilt and numbness warring within him he was surprised he could register another emotion, but her question still managed to shock him. “Of course, you can. It’s just, I wasn’t sure you would want to after I—” I failed. I let this happen. If he’d just done something different. Gone with Luke, or forced the Aquillas out into the open where he could have fought them in earnest… If he hadn’t been so single-mindedly focussed on securing Ari’s immediate safety, he might have been able to spare her this ongoing hurt. “After everything. I’d understand if you needed some space.” He couldn’t stand the thought that she was saying this because of some misplaced sense of loyalty. What had he done to earn it, really, besides share the same species? The only promise he’d made her that mattered; that he’d keep them both safe, had been broken. She didn’t owe him anything. “You’ve always got a place with me if you ever want it, but you shouldn’t feel obligated.”

Ariana nodded slowly and wrapped the blanket tighter around herself, ignoring the dull pain in her side. She was sure the car was fine, but the keys were still up in the hotel room with her stuff and Jessie. Crap. She had told her she’d be right back and now it’d look like she totally bailed. Somehow, that seemed a better assumption than the truth. Maybe she could text Jessie and ask-- Oh. Phone. Smashed somewhere. Instead, she weakly explained, “I shouldn’t drive right now. They keys are in the hotel room with Jessie-- If I can use your phone, I can message her to drive it over.” As an afterthought, she added, “Should also make sure Deirdre doesn’t mind me staying with her for a few nights.” Though everything still felt overwhelming and weighed on her, there was some comfort in knowing she’d still have a home with Ulfric. She knew her brows were indicative of her confusion? Why would she want space? Well, aside from some time away before dealing with Celeste’s things, space was the opposite of what she wanted. “Of course I want to come back. You’re,” she stopped momentarily, knowing they didn’t usually express the sentiment, but with how much she wished she told Celeste, she had to say it. You only had so many chances to tell the people you loved how much they meant to you. “You’re family,” she stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. To her, it was. Ulfric had done so much for her while never asking for anything in return. Her hands still clung tightly to the edges of the blanket, as if somehow kept her tethered, but she let one hand go to reach over and give his hand a squeeze. The same way Celeste had always done with her whenever she felt upset. “Why would I feel-- Ulf, this isn’t,” she took a breath, unable to fully understand why he thought she’d feel obligated to come back. It was important he knew she wanted to be there with him, especially now, after-- No. She didn’t want to think about what happened anymore than she already had tonight. He just needed to know. “I’m coming back because I want to.”  

Ulfric handed over his phone without a second thought. He would have handed over anything in his possession if Ariana asked for it in that moment and scoured the town for anything he didn’t already have. “Of course, I did intend to ask her first. Best to show respect where people like her are concerned.” Not that he had much of a clue exactly what her deal was, but her affection for Ari read as sincere and if she was fae, that meant she had some type of power. It would comfort him to know that whoever was looking after the young wolf was capable of defending them both, though he hoped that wouldn’t be necessary anytime soon. Ariana deserved some rest, some stability, or else what was the point of everything that had transpired? “Good, that’s settled then,” Ulfric squeezed her hand in return and nodded acceptance of her words. He had promised Celeste that he would do everything he could to keep her sister safe and let her build the life of her choosing. If Ari’s choice was to stand by him, he wouldn’t deny her. It would make it that much easier to keep his word, to make sure Celeste’s sacrifice mattered. “You’ll have a home waiting for you, when you’re ready for it.”

Ariana took the phone from Ulfric and logged into her own social media. Her mind blanked when she tried to think of what to tell Jessie. She opted to be vague and mention a family emergency. She gave her the address to return the car to. The breath she breathed caught in her throat several times at the realization of how many times she was going to have to explain what happened. With a message to Deirdre up, she realized she’d need more explanation. Her fingers hovered over the screen, unable to type out the words of what happened to her or Celeste. If she was going to stay there, Deirdre was owed some sort of explanation. She swallowed down a sob that threatened to spill over. She pushed the phone back to Ulfric. “Can you ask her-- I can’t-- I don’t know how to tell her.” She looked down, tears forming again. More than anything, she wanted to wake up and for this to all just be a bad dream. She could barely say it outloud, but seeing it typed out on a screen. Her chest already felt heavier. She could only quietly nod in acknowledgment of having a home here with Ulfric. She wanted to say she was grateful. She wanted to tell him how much everything he’d done for her and Celeste meant to her, but the words wouldn’t come out. She found herself crying again and just hugged her knees a little tighter, trying to push away the memory of earlier tonight. That’s not how she wanted to remember Celeste, but the image of her lying on the warehouse floor with blood pooling around her seemed to be what kept resurfacing in her mind.

“Yes, I can do that.” Ulfric took the phone back even faster than he’d given it to her, gladly taking on the weight of the responsibility. The weight of his choices over the past weeks was already a leaden load, but he felt he could be strong enough to carry it, if it was on her behalf. He paused halfway through typing his first message to Deidre, distracted by her shaking as her sobs wracked through her. He moved behind the chair to pat her on the back reassuringly while she cried, but didn’t comment to try and stop her or tell her it was okay. She didn’t need his permission to feel whatever it was she was feeling. Instead, he quietly waited until she had calmed, dabbing at the edges of his own eyes while she still faced the other way before he spoke again. “How about you come sit in the truck? I can turn the heater on, and you can warm up, perhaps take a nap?” He suggested, noticing her exhaustion, and thinking perhaps sleep might give her some reprieve if only for a few moments, but knowing she wasn’t likely to find the inside of the trailer restful in its current state. “Then once I get the all clear from Deirdre I can drive you over there. How does that sound?”

Now that she was sitting still, trying to navigate through how she was going to face the world without Celeste, Ariana found it impossible to shake the image of her body from her mind. That’s not how she wanted to remember Celeste. She wanted to remember Saturday morning waffles. Hiking through so many different states. Making fun of her for being so damn anal about how her books were organized. Those stung, but the memory of her laying there, lifeless and bleeding, felt like a knife to the gut over and over. She hadn’t even realized her quiet tears had turned into full on sobs until she felt a gentle hand on her back. A small comfort that slightly dulled the full body ache every new sob brought. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that before she finally tired. Her body had nothing left to give. She looked to Ulf, who cried a few tears with her and nodded at the suggestion of getting some rest in the truck. Sleep would be better. “Yeah, I’ll do that,” she answered, voice still raw from crying. She curled up in her normal spot in the passenger seat, extending the chair fully back, and wrapping the blanket around her. She tried to find comfort in the warmth and the familiar smell of Ulf throughout the truck. It wasn’t long before she finally dozed off into a dreamless sleep.

[wootensmith]

Mortalitasi

He’d seen it the night she’d found her way back to him. The cloth-bound book lying at the bottom of the slight stack of documents Abelas had pulled from her pack. He’d ignored it then, assuming it was just an idle interest, something Dorian had given her to pass the time or because she had asked a question. He’d put it back with her things and forgotten. Seeing it again, carefully placed beside the sprawling map she was creating in the Vir dirthara made him wonder. The bone-white paint of the letters almost glowed in the light of the veilfire lamp, though there was no enchantment in the thing. Rites of the Mortalitasi. Solas reached to pick it up and she half-jumped, suddenly realizing he was there at her shoulder.

“Apologies,” he said, abandoning the book. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I meant to check the anchor. I feared it might be wearing on your ward again.” She laughed, low and loose. “You really do think I’m one of Vivienne’s plants. Hamin, emma lath. I am not so fragile.” She placed her quill carefully down and extended her ink spattered hand toward him. “I shouldn’t tell you so. If it means I see you more, you can check the anchor as often as you please.” He slid onto the bench beside her, rubbing gently at the lacy edges of the ink on her fingers. “I, too, wish that we had more time together.” “Shh,” she told him, leaning toward him. “Don’t fret. What we have is more than I had expected.”

“Yes,” he agreed with a quick smile, though he wasn’t certain whether he were not still grieved at all they had missed. Would miss. “But let me steal as much as I am able to.” He pushed the fabric of her shirt gently down her shoulder and closed his palm over the tangle of light that threaded through her skin. His imagination had made the mark more intense than it actually was, but not by much. Her eyes still slipped closed in relief as he siphoned the power from it. The anchor’s light diminished to a dull glow and he released her. Pressed her shirt back into place. She opened her eyes as he loosened his fingers from hers.

“Stay,” she asked, “just another moment.” “For as many as I am able.” He ran his thumb over one of the winding lines on the vellum map. “You have found far more of the Deep Roads than I realized,” he admitted. She frowned slightly and he regretted choosing the topic. “I didn’t travel all of them. Some I have found here, in the books and memories. Any of them could be the road to the center of the mass. How will we find the right one?” “I dreamed, during the last Blight. And after, when Wisdom began to awaken me. I couldn’t tell you which road, but I know we will not mistake it for another. It should lie just beneath us. Somewhere far, far below. In the dream, the darkspawn were like a roaring, seething ocean. Perhaps the infected heart of the titan draws them. Or perhaps it spawns them. Either way— all the roads will lead us there.” “But will they lead us there in time?” she asked, rubbing at the strand of emerald light that crossed the bridge of her nose. He wondered if it pained her. “Perhaps I should go ahead. Now. So that I don’t—” “No. Not alone. All of your focus is on containing the mark. You have no power left to defend yourself.” “I don’t need magic to defend myself.” He wanted to argue with her. To point out the utter futility of one person against a horde of darkspawn. To show her all the memories of Gray Wardens who had tried the same and failed. But to tell her that was to show her how hopeless her entire plan was, Wardens and the Legion and a dragon notwithstanding. Besides, it wouldn’t have been what he truly meant. So he chose the truth instead. “I could not bear it, my love. Stay. For me, if you will listen to no other reason. I will not let it overtake you until we reach the Deep Roads. Trust in me.” It was a foolish thing to ask of her, after all that had happened. “I do. It isn’t you I doubt, but my own strength.” She pressed her fingers into her marked shoulder and he was very certain that it did pain her, even now, even when he’d just shrunk its pulse as much as he was able.

Like burning alive from the inside out, Abelas said. He tried a healing spell, knowing it would do little good, sliding it over all the visible, crackling of green in her skin that he could see. “Ar nuven’in…” “What?” she asked leaning into the soothing spell that slipped over her. “What do you wish?” “Many things. That I could carry it for you, above all else. Not to— never to undo what you’ve done. Or to take the good you’ve accomplished with it. Only to ease this. Only to free you from this hurt.” “It is not so sharp, just now. Let’s talk of something else. If we have only a little while before the world calls you away, we should use it for something better than this.” She waved vaguely at the space where her other hand had once been.

He abandoned the map for the strange tome he’d noted earlier. It could at least serve as a distraction to wipe the worry and exhaustion from her face, erase his misstep. He picked up the book, turning the pages idly. “You have an— eclectic collection of reading material.” He closed the book, held it up to show her. “Was Dorian trying to train you?” It shocked him to see her expression immediately darken further. “No,” she said, “Nothing like that. That one is— nothing of import.” The way she said it struck him as false. It was definitely something of import. But what it meant was nothing she wanted to tell him. Leave it, he warned himself, she’s earned her secrets. But he could not bear the trouble in her face. And she did not reach for the book. It wasn’t something she was actively trying to hide. “Ir abelas, Vhenan. I didn’t intend to—” “It was only to— comfort me. That’s all. That’s why Dorian gave it to me,” she blurted out. He looked down at the cover again. Necromancy? How is this meant to comfort her? “It was another plan. In case things went awry. Bull said we ought to have one.” She laughed but it was a sad, dry thing and he was startled to see she was close to weeping. “He’s good at contingencies. I don’t think what we came up with is what he wanted though.” She touched his knee. “They weren’t sure you’d help us. And I wasn’t certain how long it would take to wake them, if you agreed. We didn’t know how much time remained.”

“I don’t understand what the Mortalitasi have to do with the Blight,” he told her, wondering if he should let it lie instead. She sighed, drew back. “When I was— before I met you in the Crossroads, Dorian and I traveled to Tevinter. We met a spirit on the way. Locked on a ghost ship. She told me—” “I have the letter,” he admitted. She nodded. “Then you know what I did to her.” “Yes. You let it return to the Fade.” It tipped her over the edge into a sudden burst of tears. “Ir abelas,” she sobbed. “I tried to fix it, I searched for her, weeks and weeks, I tried to undo it—” He dropped the book onto the table and pulled her closer to him. “Don’t grieve,” he said, pressing a kiss to her brow. “It would not have given you what it offered. Not in the way you expected. Whatever it was before the ship, it was something different when you met it. Returning it to the Fade was a kindness—” “I didn’t do it to be kind,” she said into his shoulder. “I know. I know why you sent it back. But the decision saved you, however you came to it, and for that, I cannot help but be grateful.” He waited until she calmed. Thought about letting the whole thing go. It is a book. What difference could it make now, what it was meant to do? It clearly disturbed her peace. And he desperately wished for these last days to be untroubled. “What did that spirit have to do with the Mortalitasi, Vhenan?” he asked at last, hoping it wasn’t the wrong thing to ask.

She was silent another moment, smoothing his sleeve again and again with her fingertips. “Do you remember the trip back from Emprise du Lion— when Cole met us? I asked you then what the plan was if you fell. Who was meant to take your place. Do you recall?” “I do.” “I needed a plan for me. For what happens after I fall. I had to help the others. If there were any way to save them, I wanted to find it. The anchor is— a tool. It wasn’t meant for me to pick up, but I did. And was able to use it, to help. I— wasn’t certain I’d last until we got to the center of the darkspawn horde. I’m still… Especially if you had refused to aid us. But we intended to try to get there anyway. If I didn’t— don’t make it there, maybe something else could. Pick up the anchor and carry it for me. For them. All of them. The Mortalitasi help spirits find bodies that aren’t being used. Why not mine?” “This was your plan?” he asked, trying and failing to keep the horror from his voice. “Bind a spirit to your corpse—” “Not bind. Never that,” she tipped her face up to check his reaction. He struggled to slip back into calm, into polite interest that was nothing close to what he felt at the idea. “I know better,” she insisted, thinking the distress he could not mask was for the idea of a spirit alone and not for her. “Varric has a friend.” “Varric? Has a— spirit friend?” “Of a sort. It has shared a body with a mage for some time now, and before that, it took a corpse. We knew it would know how. It agreed to help, should the need arise. It— lost its way in Kirkwall. Drifted from what it once was. I thought— we thought, if it could finish a just cause, maybe it would remember itself better.” “You couldn’t have been certain it would follow through with your plan once it found itself in possession of such power. Even Cole struggled with his impulses for a time. This spirit could just as easily take your— take the anchor and use it for its own intentions.” “Would it have been any worse than doing nothing?”

He hesitated, slid his thumb over the winding path of the anchor in her skin, as if it were a road on her map. “I cannot fault the logic but— yes. It could jeopardize this spirit, pervert it from its purpose—” “It is already losing itself. Once it was a spirit of Justice but now— we talked a long time. Before Cole left, I asked him. We all agreed, this might bring it back to its original self. I was careful, Solas.” “It isn’t just the spirit— it’s the idea of you being gone. Of someone else trying to replace you. I know there is little difference between this plan and what we intend to do with the dragon but— the idea of something using what was once yours unsettles me. I admit, it is an irrational discomfort, yet I can’t pretend this plan would be in any way pleasant.” “In truth, I am unsettled by it as well. But my discomfort would not stop me from allowing it anyway. Not that I would have much say in what happens to this body after I’m dead. Dorian wanted to— they wanted my blessing. That is why he gave me the book. So that I would know what was going to happen. So I could make peace with it.” “And— have you?” The words felt too thick, jagged and catching in his throat. The muscle in her jaw pulsed under his thumb. “I was selfish, Vhenan,” she told him, her voice a toneless husk, a half-rasp of pain. “We should have done it a month ago. They were ready, Dorian and Anders. Bull too, and the Wardens were already gathering for a push into the Deep Roads. I was there. And the anchor was already pressing so hard against the ward. But I wanted— I asked for one chance to find you. To ask for your help. So that this wouldn’t be just… a last stand. So it could maybe be more. Mean more. A chance. And— to see you one more time. Varric was convinced you wouldn’t bend. He wanted to come with me. I’m not certain if he wanted to be sure I returned— or make sure that I didn’t. He was not happy about this.” “But Dorian and Iron Bull were?” cried Solas. “So early? You had time yet. They were willing to slay you?” “It would not have been slaying, Solas. My fate was sealed a long time ago. Only— opening the dam a few days early. That’s all.” He shook his head, too grieved to do more. Dorian had been right. He might have accepted her death, but to give up the time between—

“Shh,” she told him, loosening the tense grip he’d kept on her shoulder. “The plan has changed. For now. You don’t need to think of it. If you can find him, perhaps Cole will do it in Justice’s stead. If it is more comfortable for you.” “It is not.” He grasped the book. With a thought it was ash that spun away in a soft breeze that floated through the Vir dirthara. “The book was not an instruction manual, emma lath,” she reminded him. “And burning it does not solve the problem of the anchor. I am failing. I must find someone to finish this. If it is not Justice or Cole, who would you have it be?” “Only you. There can be no other. Not because of my affection— not solely because of that. The anchor will not leave your body behind, Vhenan. If— when you fall, nothing can contain it. Your will, alone, is what holds it in check. When you are gone the anchor will consume everything. For leagues. That is the goal, is it not? The Mortalitasi cannot help us. Justice cannot help us. Nor Cole. Not in this way. Ir abelas. I cannot claim to regret that.” He stroked her cheek. “And those fools would have done it early.” “It was only a month, Solas,” she said. “What is a month to you? Hardly a breath, lost among so many others.” “Not this month. Not these breaths.” His chest was too tight, his throat closing with a kind of delayed panic. Her fingers on his cheek seemed his only tether. “Shh,” she said again and kissed him. “It’s behind us now. I’m here,for as many moments as I’m able.” “Ar nuvan nedan. I understand Alexius now, Vhenan. I have the power to erase the Veil and still not enough to save you. Ar elvyrlinor. Tel’vara, fanor. Tel’vara.”

[rose-gold-romantic]

Whatever It Takes: Epilogue

A Loki x Reader based in the Tesseract fic universe! Avengers: Infinity War follow-up fic. Next in the Tesseract fic series. Links to Tesseract, Lokasenna, What Heroes Do, and Fidelity. Also to my AU Feel You.

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Just a forewarning, this one has a major POV shift from the past entries, since Reader was Dusted at the end of Fidelity! Keeping with my recent trend in fic titles, it’s named after a track on the official soundtrack. I also constantly watch this Video, and recommend it to hype you up!

Tony’s funeral was held at his house, and there was not a dry eye to be seen. Everyone stood silently to watch Pepper put a wreath out onto the lake, Stark’s first ARC reactor floating in the center. Most lingered after the ceremony to show their support for Pepper and Morgan, and celebrate the life that had been given for the universe’s well-being.

It was touching to see just how many lives Tony had directly affected, how many people came to pay their respects.

As some began to trickle out, Bruce and Steve asked for help in assembling a the miniature Quantum tunnel that would take the stones back to their proper timeline. When the work had been finished, Bruce began punching numbers into the console, prepping the tunnel for travel.

“Now Steve, are you sure you want to do this alone?” Bruce asked. “That’s a lot of stones to be carrying around all by yourself.”

“I think I can manage.” Steve responded, picking up Mjolnir and stepping onto the platform. “But I wouldn’t exactly mind the company.”

“I’ll go.” (Y/N) suggested, “I want to see what it’s like!”

“I’ll go with as well.” I said, tossing her a spare Quantum nanosuit. “Many hands make light work.”

“I’ll trust you guys to take back the scepter and the Tesseract then.” Steve said, passing those to us in separate containers.

“Are you guys ready?” Bruce asked, “I’ve got the new configuration all punched in.”

“Go ahead.” Steve said, all of our helmets engaging in unison.

I gripped (Y/N)’s hand, the other holding the scepter that I had to return to the proper Shield agents. (Y/N) and I warped to the alley, and made our way towards the tower quickly. I placed the scepter carefully into the open case it had been taken from, closing and locking the mechanism silently.

“How are we going to get this back there?” (Y/N) asked, “There’s some kind of craziness happening in there.”

“Bruce must have returned us to when Tony and Scott were initially stealing it, or trying to.” I answered. “Our best bet would be to slide the Tesseract as close to them as we can get it, since the case was knocked open at this point.”

“You’ve got it.” (Y/N) said, walking forward before I could stop her, opening the case. “I’ll do it since during this time I’m still a Shield agent.”

“Wait, you shouldn’t-” before my warning could fully leave my lips, (Y/N) touched the Tesseract. Though it did not burn her hand, I could instantly see its blue glowing energy seeping through her skin.

“Oh no.” She murmured, “I have to move, NOW.”

She ran into the tower, nearly throwing the cube across the floor towards the group of Avengers, 2012 Tony still on the ground from the cardiac issue that Scott had given him. The Tesseract slid to a stop next to 2012 Thor, and this time, it was retrieved before my 2012 self could grab it.

(Y/N) gripped her hand, hissing and groaning in discomfort as we hurriedly left the tower.

“Are you alright?” I asked repeatedly, trying to see the damage that had been done to her right palm.

“I’m fine, I think.” She said, gazing up to me with glowing blue eyes.“But I don’t think I’m Tesseract-free anymore.”

“What are we going to do with-” I was cut off by the Quantum tunnel sucking us back in, depositing us back on the platform in front of Bruce.

“What happened?” Bruce asked, worried. “Everything seemed normal, but then (Y/N)’s signature shifted so quickly I almost lost it!”

“(Y/N) is host to the tesseract once more.” I sighed. “Though I don’t know just how much of it.”

“I think she’ll be fine.” Danvers said, having been called over to assist if needed. “I got nearly blown to smithereens by it, and here I am. If anything wierd happens, you can give me a ring, but I think that it’s such a small amount, I doubt she’d even know it happened if it wasn’t for her eyes. And even that’s dimming.”

“It’s because I’m not close to it.” (Y/N) said. “I guess I never will be again, given that the Tesseract is gone now.”

“Then I guess we’re all of it that’s left.” Danvers smiled.

“Where’s Steve?” Thor asked, “Wasn’t he supposed to come back too?”

“Yea,” Bruce agreed, “But I’m giving him a little extra time, since he’s got more stones to put away.”

“Does that even matter, if he’s in the time machin-”

“I’m working on it, okay?” Bruce said, cutting Thor off. “I’ve only got one functional hand right now. I’ll get him back.”

“No you won’t.” Bucky murmured, almost too quietly for me to hear.

“Well, if that craziness is over, I’m ready to go home.” Thor said.

“I keep forgetting that you have a new home here.” (Y/N) smiled softly, “There’s so much for me to catch up on.”

“I’m sure you’re not the only one that feels that way.” Thor laughed, “Five years is a lot to miss. In any case, I have some things to sort out there, and you would love it, (Y/N).”

“Allow me to introduce you to New Asgard, and catch you up on at least a small part of what you weren’t around to see.” I said, taking her hand.

“I can help with that.” Strange said as he walked by, opening a portal that gave a brilliant view of the cliffs that overlooked New Asgard as dawn began to break.

“Thank you, Stephen.” I nodded.

The portal closed once we had stepped through it, the fresh sea breeze blowing in our faces as we approached the cliff’s edge.

We chose to sit down and watch the sun slowly rise into the sky, the gulls beginning to awaken for the day.

“I spoke to mother when I went to Asgard.” Thor said quietly.

“What did you say?” I asked as (Y/N) leaned onto my shoulder.

“Lots of things.” Thor replied, sighing. “I might have divulged our entire plan, and the problem leading up to it.”

“That seems like a risky decision.” I smiled.

“Since when do I make any other kind?” Thor replied, chuckling. After a pause, he turned to look at me. “She was very proud of you, brother. She almost couldn’t believe how much you’ve changed.”

“She always saw the worst of me, and loved me through it.” I replied, squeezing (Y/N)’s hand.

“She also brought it to my mind just how much you’ve changed, you’ve matured.” Thor continued, gazing out to the sun. “How much wiser you’ve become. You’re a real leader now.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” I said.

“Well Mjolnir seemed to indicate otherwise.” Thor countered, a kind smile on his face. “I suppose I’d better go speak with Valkyrie.”

Thor rose, dusting off himself before turning to walk away.

“Why’s that?” I asked, looking to him.

“She needs to know about the change of leadership that will happen when I leave.”

“You’re leaving?” (Y/N) and I asked at the same time in bewilderment.

“I’ve never been right for this.” Thor said, gesturing to New Asgard below. “You know how much I always want to move, to do new things. That’s not befitting for a King with a people that need his help.”

“Is Valkyrie replacing you?” I asked, “I’m not sure she’ll want that responsibility quite this fast.”

“No, brother.” Thor replied. “The line of the throne falls to you.”

“I beg your pardon?” I stammered. “Thor, I don’t appreciate this kind of gaming.”

“I’m not kidding.” Thor said, “You’ll make a far better king than I’ve been for the past five years. New Asgard will flourish under your leadership. It’s time for me to be who I am, rather than who I’m supposed to be. And the same is true of you.”

“But where will you go?” (Y/N) asked, standing up.

I followed suit, “What will you do?”

“I’m not sure.” Thor answered. “For the first time in a thousand years, I… I have no path. But I will have a ride. Rabbit will be here soon with the Benatar. Wherever we go, I know that it will be the right path for me.”

“Will you ever come back?” I asked.

“I’ll of course visit you.” Thor smiled. “There’s sure to be nieces and nephews in my future, and I wouldn’t miss that for every world in the universe.”

(Y/N) and I both flushed red, the head in our cheeks increasing the more we thought about it.

“And look, brother.” Thor said, gesturing out to the sunrise and open ocean. “You were right all along. The sun is shining on us again.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I said, mind still spinning. “Other than thank you, and I will do my very best to protect Asgard, and help it to thrive.”

“I know you will.” Thor said, beginning to walk away. “You’ve worked too hard, and come too far, to allow anything else.”

Thor walked away, leaving (Y/N) and I alone on the cliff.

“So what now, my king?” (Y/N) said, smiling as she buried herself in my chest.

“We could keep Thor from leaving.” I joked, “Give him that nephew and niece he seems to want so badly.”

(Y/N) laughed, the golden sunlight bathing her skin in a heavenly glow. The sweet sound of her laughter melted me, and my pulse jumped as I greedily took in her beauty.

“Maybe we should finally get married before we jump into starting a family.” She smiled, wrapping her arm around me. “I’m too selfish to share you quite yet.”

“Whatever you wish.” I said, wrapping her in my arms and pressing my lips to hers before whispering into her ear.

“My Queen.”

[gwiiyeoweo]

Noctis makes a well-needed visit to his watery friends.

Pairing: Noctis & Ignis & Prompto & Gladio (aka: chocobros) Rating: G

He makes the long drive to Cape Caem by himself.

It had been dark, whether in the middle of the night or in the too early hours of the morning he wasn't sure, with the sky still black and the stars shining white, when Noctis threw off the downy covers and grabbed for his keys. It had been quiet, he had been quiet, silent as a thief stealing the King’s crown, when he tiptoed around his room and threw on whatever looked comfortable, one hand roughly tugging down on a cotton shirt as his other fished under his bed for a duffel bag. Always ready and filled with the essentials — extra clothes, toiletries, snacks and water, a firestarter. He had scribbled a note, saying he would be “heading out for a couple days dont call b safe. love, noctis” in chicken scratch, compared to the perfect cursive of his signature, and tossed the bag over his shoulder.

He had used his keys as his focal point, opening his window and climbing onto the sill, tossing them as far as he could manage and warping to the trees. Then down and below, to the parking garage.

When Noctis finally makes it to Caem, he carefully pulls the Star off road, navigating through the sparse trees and bushes into the deeper forest. He already knows there will be dried ocean spray and salt on her, dirt in her wheels and stray twigs here and there, but nothing a good wash can’t fix. He parks her under a familiar tree, flanked by some fallen logs and dense brush; despite her shining black coat, she’s a hard beauty to spot in her little safe corner. No one comes to these parts anyway, but he wants to be safe and sure.

He takes his bag with him before locking her up, two light beeps saying she’s secured and armed, and he squints through the canopy of the overhead trees and their reaching branches, sees the delicate baby blues and white clouds drifting overhead. It’s only warm right now, the ocean breeze helping to cool the heat off his skin, but he knows the sun will no doubt be beating its fire down once the morning waxes fully into day. He's greeted by lively birdsong, mating cries of insects, and a soft scurry of some small critter his presence scares off, and he takes a second to appreciate the serene music of the trees and the distant call of the waves. In the next, he hauls ass and briskly walks through the trees, down the invisible trail only he can recognize. Small markers he’s left and made during his many trips here, to help find his way — the stray torn cotton by the rotten log, the snapped twigs by the berry bush, knife carvings into bark and stone.

The area is off-limits, decreed by the local government here, on basis that the cliffs just ahead are too steep and too dangerous, that several travelers and tourists had already sustained grievous injuries and worse due to a poor step or improper footing. There's rusty metal signs that read "Keep Out" and warnings to trespassers with threats of heavy fines and even jail, along with the classic chain link fencing that cuts through the nature.

And though they're not false claims, Noctis knows better. He knows where the hole in the fence is, and he knows secrets.

He made the request after all, to his father, to cut off this stretch of shore and land from the rest of the public. And to have a tiny cabin hidden away in this “restricted” area, where he could hide away for a few days and nights, when he grew too antsy in both his apartment and the Citadel and needed air. A time for himself, to forget and breathe, to get away from the sleepless nights and the suffocating politics.

To visit friends.

He walks past the hidden trail leading to his home-away-from-home, and heads for the the dirt and grass that gives way to sand and rocks. Rather than scaling down the craggy cliffs, where the slip of a foot or a crumbling handhold would spell death among the jagged stones below, he tosses his keys down and warps, softening his landing in the fine white sands. Another trick, in essence, to keep wayward travelers out but allowing a way in for Noctis.

Alone as he is, his presence doesn’t go unnoticed. He catches a flash of orange and red, briefly breaching the grey-blue surfs and white seafoam, and the flick of a tail before diving back under. He feels eyes on him too, predatory almost, and if he was a man of less faith, he’d be scrambling up the rocks lest he fall victim to their guiles and deadly songs.

Noctis, though, has nothing to fear but sunburn. He checks the rocks and finds a spot to tuck his bag away, just in case someone really does trespass, somehow making it down the slippery and crumbling cliffs, and decides to play thief. He stuffs his keys into the side pocket, then fishes out his phone from his pants, checking for any missed calls or texts. He finds one, and he only smiles.

Give them my greetings. Enjoy yourself but next time, do try to leave more than a sticky note. The morning staff nearly had a heart attack.

Technically, he didn't call, Noctis gives him that. He laughs to himself at his father's message and types out a quick reply before stuffing it alongside his keys.

I'll try no promises tho

It probably says something, that his father didn't even need to ask where his son flew off to and that there was no berating to be had, but as to who it applied to — him, his father, or both — he isn't sure. Regardless, he isn't going to complain about it, not with the trust and peace of mind he gets from it all.

He peels his simple shirt off, and his pants and underwear come off next in one swift go. He’s bare naked and vulnerable to the elements, and he had been embarrassed the first few weeks when he stripped down to nothing on the beach, but now it’s just another motion to go through. The first time he tried going straight into the waters with his clothes on, he was trapped in a tangled mess while his friends just watched with watery laughter. Begrudgingly, at that time, he learned his lesson.

He catches another glimpse of scales, an iridescent blue that glitters brighter than the ocean’s waves, and he knows they’re getting impatient, eager to welcome him in their waters again. Noctis lightly tugs on the thin chain around his neck, a string of four black pearls and three scales — orange, green, blue — woven with a certain magic not even the Caelums could craft. It's a gift, a treasure that would turn the entire black market upside down, turn collectors and aristocrats into rabid animals trying to lay claim on it.

He keeps it close to his heart not because of the value the world holds it at, but because it's made of love and loyalty and kinship. They each gave their most beautiful scale, a declaration of devotion and something else he's sure they're not telling him — or some cultural tradition that's over his head — and sealed threads of their own magic into the pearls. All so they could spend time with him.

Sometimes, he's still amazed by such sincerity. Noctis knows far too well the lengths that the councilmen and politicians will go to reach their ambitions, all blue-eyed snakes faking venom as warm honey and covering their death traps with false flowers. He sees it everyday, in the posters asking for votes, in the talks and gossip when no one thinks the Royals are listening, the documents that only hint at the under-the-table deals but aren't enough to convict. His father sees it too, knows more about it than Noctis, handles it far better than the son can, who has to take a break from it all and escape while the King sits in the den of wolves.

Regis assured him it all came with time, that a King — a decent one, at least — is not made overnight, but Noctis can't help but feel the burden and frustrations the crown lays upon him. And Noctis needs to vent, to breathe and get his mind back in focus, if he wants to better himself and face what his father does everyday.

He must be thinking too much, or too slow, because this time he sees a pair of green eyes peeking just above the water, narrowed in what Noctis recognizes as scrutiny and impatience. He'd come over and drag him into the ocean if he could, Noctis thinks.

Noctis shakes his head, and the gaze withdraws back into the water, followed by a flick of his tail. Feeling the heat of the sun burn at his shoulders, he figures it's time to get going anyhow, so he picks up a stone and draws his arm as far back as he can. He lobs it high into the air, over the crashing tides and foaming crests, and counts the milliseconds just before the stone falls. He warps, feels his body blink through time and space, unravelling and stitching itself back together all in one instant, and instead of watching by the shore, he watches from the skies.

He has a bird’s eye view, for only a moment, as he looks down from above. And they, with their three gazes, stare up from just below the water’s surface. Then Noctis plummets, and he has just enough airtime to turn his body headfirst, his arms outstretched before him and one hand over the other, pointed down in a dive.

It’s the same as warping, just as instantaneous, and he feels his skin give way to scales. His neck grows hot, for just a fraction of time, and the heat spreads from the necklace like a web. His body itches, like there’s dry skin everywhere and he needs a good scrub to get it all off, and he fights the urge to stretch out his legs as they feel like they’ve been trapped in saran wrap for hours. The change isn't pleasant, it never is, but the discomfort lasts for only a moment.

When he breathes, it’s not through his nose, and he doesn’t choke or gasp for air. There’s a pair of hands on him, catching him through his break of the waters, curbing the momentum and making sure he doesn’t dive past them, and he feels the gentle scratch of claws, perfect for ripping through flesh — fish and human. But he knows they’ll never hurt him, will never dare to think of it.

Noctis blinks, no sting of salt to redden his eyes, and he sees Gladio with a full grin, sporting his stark white canines.

“About damn time, Noctis!”

He hears it clearly, as if they were on land, as if the sunny voice isn’t drowned and silenced in the deep ocean, and he turns his head just in time to see Prompto wrap his arms around his shoulders, essentially stealing him out of Gladio’s hands like a ragdoll.

“We missed you, bud,” Prompto says, giving an extra hard squeeze, “Plus, I was wondering when you could develop these pictures for me.”  

Right. Last time Noctis came, almost an agonizing long month, he bought a water-proof camera for Prompto as something of a gag gift. He never expected the thing to last as long as it did, figured something would crack or bust and turn the camera useless. “So I can see what you guys are up to while I’m gone,” he had said as a joke, after teaching Prompto how to use it.

“It’s still working?” Noctis asks, trying to wiggle away from Prompto's vice grip. He flicks his tail, an inky black that shimmers like sapphires in the right light, and gently thwacks the blonde on the small of his back. The mer may as well be an octopus, with how easily he attaches himself.

Prompto relents, but as soon as he unwraps himself, another arm heavily drapes itself around Noctis' shoulders, the weight enough to have him lurch forward, and Noctis spots the unmistakable ink colored into the skin. Gladio rests his chin on top of Noctis' hair, even digging into the top of his skull, much to the latter's chagrin.

Noctis grumbles and makes a sour face, but it doesn’t deter Gladio from draping his other arm around him as well and leaning even more of his bulking weight on him. Gladio feels like an anchor, threatening to drag Noctis down to the ocean floor, and while the magic gifted to him by the three grants him this form and all the advantages of it, Noctis would rather not get squished by a giant merman.  

"Yeah, little goldfish here wouldn't stop taking pictures until the battery ran out," Gladio says, flicking his eyes over to Prompto. Noctis can see the grin in his voice, the very obvious smirk of satisfaction from pestering him. Payback, he knows, for being away for so long.

"By Leviathan's maw, give the poor man space to breathe." Finally, Ignis swims over and lightly swats at Gladio's forearm, essentially shooing him away like he would a wayward school of minnows.

Noctis lets Ignis usher him behind his arm, a wall between the prince and Gladio, and he sticks his tongue out in childish vindication. He tastes salt, but only the barest hint, and not like he’s drowning in an ocean full of it. Grinning still, Gladio makes a grabby motion, fingers ominously flexing as he reaches a hand over Ignis’ arm to ruffle that dark flowy hair. Noctis squeaks, ducks farther behind Ignis, then darts away with a powerful beat of his tail. Thus, an impromptu game of tag.

Noctis knows how this will end, how it will always end, because they’re all better swimmers than he is — as attuned to the ocean and their own bodies they are, Noctis is on borrowed magic. But they play, Prompto tackling him to the soft sand floor and rolling both of them along, laughing and smiling, Gladio and Ignis already gunning it out of there lest Noctis tags one of them next.

Here, they swim and race through the currents, hide among the tangled seaweeds, and dart in and under the arching coral beds. Noctis is glad for it, glad for them especially. Their bright eyes and soft smiles, compared to the fright and hopelessness that clung to them like the mud on their fins all those years ago — when they all were but children. When the Crownsguard finally smoked out the illegal traders in the underground world of Insomnia, and found three little mers crowded into a dirty tank with the wrong ratio of salt to water. When Noctis wheeled into one of the Citadel’s safe rooms, where Regis and his council had placed them with no idea how to care for children of an entirely different race, and placed his little palms up to the plexiglass of the biggest fish tank he had ever seen.

They were so small back then, just like him, but with dull scales and ripped fins. and such sad eyes. Broken in their own little ways, though the damage was by no means small, ripped away from their home and families to be bought and sold like exotic goods. Noctis wasn’t so different, his own fresh scars and wheelchair to show for it.

And fishes of a scale swim together, apparently.

And maybe, they could walk together.

Noctis turns over and sits back on his propped up elbows, admiring the catches of sunrays filtering from the surface, light sparkling and piercing in a myriad of lines and angles. Prompto settles on his stomach, digging his fingers through the soft sand and unearthing tiny clams, while Ignis and Gladio take to drifting just above them.

“So,” Noctis starts, lightly touching his necklace, after catching his breath from their rousing game of tag, “um, good news?”

“Oh?” Ignis swims by closer, peering upon him with his question. “How good are we talking?”

Noctis grins. They’ve lamented over this before. In the beginning when they parted, the boys to their open ocean and Noctis remaining on land, there were tears to be had over the separation; they couldn’t grow legs in place of their tails, and Noctis couldn’t turn his lungs to gills. Though they eventually figured out some old secrets and could give their dear Prince a borrowed form, Noctis couldn’t do the same for them. But they make do, and he visits when he can. And even Regis, King of Lucis and Protector of the Stone who would search the entirety of Eos for his son’s happiness, hadn’t the faintest idea on how to do the same for the three mers.

But Noctis believes, finally, he’s found a way, thanks to the help of Lunafreya. “I dunno, how good do magic legs sound?”

Prompto yelps. He jerks his hand away from the sand and flings it around like a madman, and Noctis barely sees the stone crab sling off through the water. He curls his hand to his chest and nurses his angry red finger, his expression a sadly amusing twist of pain and delight.

It’s easier to tell of Ignis and Gladio though, as their fins twitch in that characteristic way whenever they fall to excitement, and both their faces light up like the sun shining above. Prompto, though, still gets to him first and topples him over again, being careful to not put pressure on his crab-nipped finger.

“Seriously?”

“Truly?”

“Dude!”

Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto all share incredulous looks while simultaneously wielding all the hope they can muster in those sparkling eyes of theirs. And once again, Noctis can’t help but feel the surge of absolute gratitude that wells in his chest, hitting him like a rushing tidal wave and swallowing him up in one sweep. He doesn’t have much to offer them, really. They’re no citizens of Insomnia who he could grant special Lucian favors to, or foreign diplomats looking to make alliances or trade agreements. There’s no money to offer when they have no need of it, no fame or glory to be bestowed upon them. They live in a world vastly different from his, living with a different set of rules and freedoms, and he has little power in their own vast ocean.  

Yet, they defend him so fiercely, love him so greatly, and treat him like one of their own despite him being of the very species that had wanted to sell them off as pets. They have the whole underwater world to see and explore, to Altissia and her reefs full of colorful coral and plentiful fish, but they choose to stay in the seas of Lucis, just off the rocky shores of Cape Caem.

Noctis bites the inside of his cheek, chomping down the quiet anxieties and lurking doubts that rear up. He reminds himself, that their adoration is plenty proof enough, that they truly wish to stay by his side instead of seeking the freedoms beyond Lucis, that their suffocating hugs and excited questions must mean they’re at least happy.

“I’ve been talking to Luna about it,” he finally says, after realizing he hasn’t answered their demands to know the juicy details, “And she’s visiting Insomnia next month, so we’re gonna flesh out the details then.”

"Aww c'mon, man, give us the deets!" Prompto wails, nudging his elbow into Noctis' arm.

Noctis only smiles and keeps his lips sealed. He can be as stubborn as a starfish prying open a clam, and he certainly gets a particular satisfaction from watching his friends squirm in anticipation. Though the bigger reason, he believes, is because none of them would probably like his answer, and he can only hope they don’t make the connection to Luna before he makes his secret trip to Altissia — secret, in that, it’ll be a secret to them. If he told them now, that his plan involved visiting the shrine and seeking an audience with the ocean all-mother Leviathan herself, he’s sure they’d tie him up in a bed of seaweed until he promises not to.

So he rolls with the punches and lets them try to squeeze out the specifics from him, lets Prompto roll him around and tickle his sensitive spots, suffers Gladio roughhousing (that never bruises, never hurts) and grumbles through the noogies, and cringes at Ignis’ lecture on the reproduction and life cycle of the Galahd Anglerfish.

“Just make sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew,” Ignis sighs, realizing they won’t be getting anything out of him.

Noctis wants to laugh, because his morbid sense of humor says he’ll be the one getting chewed up if things go south, but he feels for his necklace and runs his fingers over their three scales, feeling oddly confident things will work his way. “Don’t twist your fins into a knot, it’ll be fine,” he says, wading through the waters ahead of them. He twists his torso around to glance back at them then nods his head toward the west. “C’mon, I wanna see this sunken airship you’ve been talking about.”

Prompto whoops, immediately darting off ahead. “Last one there’s a rotten fish egg!” he hollers back.

Gladio and Ignis roll their eyes; but regardless, they follow suit and chase after the mer. Noctis allows himself just a moment’s pause to watch them swim off, admiring their smooth fins and shining tails that glitter in the cascading sunrays, all new skin and scales that replaced their ruined sheddings from bleak days long gone. He wonders how they’ll look with legs, if they’ll all be as tall as he imagines them to be, if the muscle of their tails will translate into their calves as well. They’ll have to do a bit of learning, just how Noctis had to when he first tried out his tail, going from two legs to one a jarring experience, but he has no doubt they’ll pick up just as quickly, if not quicker. They’ve always been a smart bunch.

Noctis swims after them, lest he fall too far back. Still, he doesn’t mind being placed dead last and called a rotten fish egg, not when he can see his friends swim with such spirit, with laughter in their eyes and freedom in their smiles.

[selemina]

Moonlight guidance

“So, what can an old priest like me do for you, traveler?” the old man asked with a soft smile. There was the same kindness, the same wisdom in his eyes than Father Williams had, and Walker couldn’t help but think about how far from home he was… Except he had no home anymore. Temples seemed to be the closest thing, for him, now.

“I… I am not sure.” He admitted, glancing around to make sure nobody else was there. Fortunately, they seemed to be alone in the dusty temple. “Well, what drove you here, then? Curiosity? The search for a shelter, perhaps?” “....A difficult choice.”

The priest nodded sagely at the gravity of the newcomer, sensing the turmoil inside. He motioned to the first row of pillows, closer to the statue of the Moon godess. “Please, come have a seat. What you say under the Moon is kept a secret, as is one of her many sides. Speak freely, I have all the time in the world.” a small chuckle. “One of the advantages of living this old.”

Walker let out a deep sigh, and a small unseen smile, before walking forward, joining the priest. He did not expect the cushions to be this thin, but a lot of people must have sat there over the years… “So. You said you had a choice to make?” “...Yes. I have to decide between being selfish, and being selfless. But either way, people -a great number of people- will suffer, including if I don’t act.” Walker sighed, looking down. The priest listened silently, neutral. “Matters of pure numbers never offer a satisfying solution, do they.” “No. But I have to decide between immediately angering a deity or slowly allowing an evil god to evolve and appear.” At that, the priest’s eyebrows shot up, and he chuckled. “Now this is indeed a heavy burden! Are you sure you’re not an angel?” “Quite sure. ...I… I do worship the god of Death, but I am trying to look for the purest way to do so, distancing myself from the murderous aspect people have tainted him with.” Walker suddenly looked nervous. “...Maybe I shouldn’t talk about this in another God’s house. I meant no disrespect.”

“I would be very surprised if our Lady took offense to this!” the old priest smiled kindly, amused. “She is also a neutral deity, after all. She is the light at night, the silent eye that sees all secrets, the gem in the sky that fascinates and enthralls. Solace, secrets and charms are her aspects, and like all Gods she has her own dark sides. That you want to spare another god from being consumed by their dark side would not be an offense to her.” At the mention of the darker aspects, Walker frowned slightly, visions of the Prince flashing in his mind. “....What evil aspects does she suffer from, if it is alright of me to ask?” The old priest close his eyes, his expression betraying an ancient pain. “The royal family is probably the best representation of her aspects, both positive and negative. There is a balance in this bloodline, but it shifts with every generation.” He adjusted his position, sitting more comfortably. “A long time ago, this place was nothing more than a village on the verge of decay. The wells had run dry, and people were dying. The chief of this village prayed to the Godess for help, and she answered. A blessing and a curse wrapped in one, a charm and a hex : she would allow his bloodline to rule over a growing, thriving empire, but this glory would have its own shadow of madness. For each good thing done for the people, the active ruler would see darker and darker deeds bloom in their heart. Now, not all kings we had since then were bad! Some did amazing things, opened trade routes, created entire fields to cultivate where logic would not allow, magnificent temples and palaces came out of the ground under their rules… But each time, the price…” He shook his head sadly. “The fields had to be first irrigated with the blood of 20 newborns. People died building towers and walls, gardens grew over mass graves. Some monarchs had public blood sports in honor of the godess, some were simply constantly abusive and violent but never killed anybody, and some… Some killed quietly. Occasionally. To keep their dark balance in check.” Walker narrowed his eyes. “Like the Prince.” A sad nod from the priest. “Indeed. But you have to understand, he has been one of the better rulers we’ve had so far. The scarce disappearances, and occasional spouses he takes, are a very reasonable price to pay for all he has done. He has paved a safe route deeper into the desert and contacted other struggling towns to offer them trade and water, he has planted enough trees to stop the advance of the desert onto the town, and our relationships with neighbouring nations have gone up considerably!” “...Or so I hear in the streets, yes.” Walker remarked, sombre. The priest picked up on the dark tone, and studied the pale man’s expression for a moment. “Does your dilemma have anything to do with him, per chance?” Walker looked up. He didn’t know if he could trust someone so attached to the Prince. Hopefully the Moon godess looking down on them from her stone perch wouldn’t judge him too badly for lying. “It would be unfortunate. No, I am simply concerned for the safety of a friend of mine.” Once again, the old man chuckled, and a little spark of mischief appeared in his eyes. “My son, one does not become priest of the Moon without being able to discern lies, truths and untold truths. That is the one part you feel like sharing, and I will respect that, but know that what I said earlier is true : nothing said under the Moon will be told outside.” he leaned back, waiting to see if Walker would rethink his answer, and after a deep sigh, he did. “....My friend is being held captive by the Prince. He refuses to let him go. But said friend is a God-touched, and his god is slowly dying, consumed by his darker side. He’s on a mission to right people’s views of his god, and he can’t do so if the Prince keeps holding him captive!” The old man rubbed his chin, deep in thought. “And you fear the Prince might take it out on us if you get your friend back? Or do you fear his bargain for his safety will cost you too much?” “He did not want to bargain. He said as long as my friend was his plaything, the people of this town were safe from his impulses.” Walker narrowed his eyes, shooting daggers at the ground. “But if I know anything about sadists, it’s that they are never satisfied. The need to get stronger and stronger thrills always comes back. Eventually he will stop caring about him and go back to hurting you all, with a new twisted passion. But by then, it may be too late for my friend’s god…” Walker sighed. “What are your options, then, worshiper of Death?” the priest asked softly, impartial. Walker fell silent. On one hand, leaving things as they were. The god of Pain would become the god of Torture, and people around the world would start suffering from his followers. And eventually, the Prince would spit out a broken Seeker to go quench his thirst for blood on his own people, as his curse demanded. On the other, he could sneak into the palace, locate Seeker, and extract him with minimal casualties. The god of Pain would still have a chance to survive, the Prince would go back to kidnapping and torturing occasionally. That seemed like the least damaging option. Or… “Tell me, Father… If something were to happen to the Prince, what would become of this city? Or this kingdom?” He asked, still looking straight at the ground. He didn’t see the grin on the old priest’s lips. “Dangerous question, my son. The royal bloodline is protected by the Moon’s grace. So far, every assassin that tried to take a ruler’s life either died in the attempt, or succeeded only to be cursed to death by the Godess. All of them have been found burned to a crisp in the middle of the desert, and it didn’t stop the ruler’s child to take the throne and inherit the Moon’s light. We have never gone without a ruler. But since balance is important for neutral Gods, I would expect this kingdom to slowly crumble, stone by stone, time reclaiming what the blessing has offered. Maybe over the years we will go back to our dying village, and it will end up disappearing. Or maybe everything will collapse at once. Whichever our Lady prefers, I would assume.” He explained, sounding very disconnected from said fate. Walker looked up at him. “...Do you not care if your temple collapses on your head?” “I was ready to die today. I was ready yesterday. I will be ready tomorrow.” He smiled softly, age marking his face. “If the collapse happens, I will watch until the end, and die. I have lived my life, with its fair share of happiness, sorrow, passing of crowns and passing of friends and innocents. I’ve seen blood in the streets and hands joined in marriage, beautiful nights and dreadful, bloody moonlight. I’ve seen enough. I’m happy with my life.” He grinned again, in a way that suggested that he might have been quite the trickster back in the days. “Now, I’m not sure everybody outside would give you this answer. It is as you said : whatever you do, people will suffer. But remember this…” He leaned in and rested a boney, fatherly hand on Walker’s shoulder. “People survive. We’ve seen Gods merge and separate numerous times. Cataclysmic fits of holy rage, oceans rise, mountain crumble to dust, and we’re still here.” He gave Walker’s shoulder a soft shake. “We’ll survive. We’ll be fine. We’ll suffer and stand back up, like we do. In the end, whatever you do will only affect you. Selfishness, sometimes, is no sin ; and coming from somebody that cares about the fate of the whole world, I have no doubt you will do fine.” The old priest gave Walker a reassuring, confident smile, and the wanderer felt his heart tighten in his chest, inexplicably. “...I try not to resort to murder. I’ve… been misled before. I don’t want to fall back into bad habits, even if they… they feel so easy.” he said, hands instinctively resting on the weapon at his side. “Was it the same situation?” “No. I was told who to kill. But how different is it, if I tell myself who to kill?” “How different are you from the one who used to give you the order?” Walker growled. “Very.”

“I believe that is all you needed to realize.” the old priest smiled, painfully getting up from his pillow. “Oof, we need to replace these… Anyways. I would advise you sleep on it. See if your life is worth your friend’s, provided you decide to go for the Prince’s life. See if you want to cut this town’s poisonous lifeline, or simply leave it behind, live your own life. Forget people. Forget numbers. You can’t save everybody in this situation, so listen to yourself and be true to what you hear.” Walker got up, offering a hand to help the old man straighten up, but he waved him away. “....I think I understand. Thank you… for your guidance. I will try to find the better solution.” “If my temple crumbles over my head I’ll know what you chose!” The old priest chuckled. “And if your corpse gets tossed in the streets by the Prince, I will try and find you a proper grave. What name would you like on it?” A pause, then a small smile.

“Deathwalker.”

[capnjay21]

doubt truth to be a liar (never doubt I love) 1/1

I have missed writing for CS, so this is me throwing something back out into the ether and seeing who yells back.  In the weeks that follow their return from the Underworld, Killian begins to question the new revelations that have changed everything. CS, with effusively referenced Milah/Killian. 

Rating: T Words: 2,992 AO3

Even now, weeks on, Hell still clutches at his back.

It murmurs in his ear, brushes white hot caresses down his spine until he spasms, and conjures the scent of smoke and rotting flesh no matter how long he spends scrubbing his clothes to get it out. His neck occasionally smarts with phantom pain, and in hostile, fleeting flashes, the streets of his home burn in a mirage of orange and he panics, clutching at whomever is near to him to pull him back to the world above. In his quieter moments, he can hear the ground whispering, beckoning him back into the darkness underneath.

Zeus had put him back where he belonged, he daren’t doubt that; the souls of the departed do not always agree.

No matter how many times his friends suggest it might help, he does not return to the park. Not when a drop of his blood into the lake, the blood of a man restored, might lure the unworldly mist and summon the only beings with the power to drag him back to the Underworld. When he considers it, he cannot stop his breath from catching.

These are some of the new truths for Killian Jones. Not all, but some.

Others are far more pleasant.

Like the way he can wake up beside Emma in a house they call their own, and have her only tuck herself deeper into his side. The way he can join the Charmings for dinner at Granny’s without remark, how he can take Henry sailing when the weather is fair, how willing Regina is to trade barbs over a game of darts instead of a clash of wills; after their ordeals over the past year, he is finally a proud, welcome member of their family. It wasn’t just Emma’s quest to rescue him, it was all of theirs. He is happy. And when his soul burns red Killian can make love to Emma and she will be right there with him, loving him, begging for the sun to rise.

He loves Emma more than anything in any realm. This is not a new truth for Killian Jones.

What is, however, is the strength of that love. True Love, capital T, capital L. Emma lying atop him as an ancient door creaks open, you chose me. The most powerful magic of all, and he and Emma share it. That knowledge bolsters their interactions, pulls smiles from a light inside of him whenever it is mentioned, becomes the foundation for many a teasing jest mumbled into the juncture of her neck while she giggles into his shoulder.

Other than that, nothing feels different.

And it’s been gnawing away at him.

Emma Swan is his True Love. True Love like the kind that meant Snow White and Prince Charming could share a heart, the kind that could revive Henry from a sleeping curse, that could rescue entire worlds from darkness. With as much as he loves Emma, this does not feel entirely beyond the realm of reason. When they are together he feels like he can make entire kingdoms collide. That said, there wasn’t some shining moment he decided what he felt for her was pure — it built, it pounded against him gently first until it cascaded to a roar that nearly overwhelmed his senses. He didn’t know he felt it until he realised the ringing in his ears had already been there for what felt like centuries.

The only trouble is, this isn’t the only time he’s felt this way.

“What is it that makes love True?” he queries one afternoon, when he can suppress the question no longer. Beside him Snow starts, and he realises that although his thoughts have been full of their usual tumult, they had been working quite pleasantly in silence.

After lunch, David and Emma had been called away on some minor emergency on the other side of Storybrooke, and after they had insisted they would not need any assistance he had volunteered to stay with Snow and finish clearing up. They settled easily into a routine, her washing and him drying, and as he watched her he couldn’t help but imagine she was some sort of authority on the subject of True Love; she and David were the staple pair, surely. The story of Snow White and Prince Charming was practically synonymous with the concept. So, without thinking, he blurts the question forward.

When Snow turns to look at him curiously he feels a warm flush creep up from his collar, so he busies himself with putting a plate away, balancing the cloth on his hook.

“What do you mean?” she asks, not unkindly.

Killian offers an abashed shrug. “Just — this whole True Love palaver. I’m not entirely certain I understand it.”

Snow laughs. “I don’t know if there’s anything to understand,” she smiles as if he’s a child making a funny remark about something straightforward, and it irks him slightly. “You just feel it. You must know what I mean, you and Emma have it.”

“No, I do, I do feel it,” he says, drawing out the word, “I would do anything for Emma and she for me. What I mean is… who decides? Who decides when the love a heart feels is True or — or just regular love?”

(Is it wonderful, she had breathed, to travel so much?

He had told her of the air filled with spices, of distant queens in fleeting kingdoms —

— Sometimes he thinks he may have loved her even then.)

“Is there such a thing as regular love?”

“Well,” Killian scratches behind his ear, “not every impassioned couple has the ability to break a curse.”

“It’s not about that,” she turns fully to face him, drying her hands on a dishcloth. “It’s about building something together over time, it’s about sacrifice.” She lets out a long sigh. “I’ve never loved anybody like I love David. It’s just more. And those are all the answers I have, I’m afraid.”

She nudges his shoulder playfully with hers, and he knows she means to lighten the mood, but all she has said only vexes him further.

“I’m not a young man. I’ve loved before Emma,” it’s not quite a confession when the entirety of Storybrooke knew about his feud with the Crocodile, “fiercely. I would’ve easily given my life for her — I tried to, she didn’t let me.” He leans heavily against the counter, and although he can see Snow’s expression shifting into one of sympathy, he presses on. “But with all this talk of True Love, of its rarity, that you should consider yourself lucky to have felt it once…” Killian shrugs helplessly. “What does that mean for Milah?”

He feels a squeeze on his upper arm, sees Snow’s hand resting there. “Oh, Killian.”

“Did I not love her, then?” Three hundred years of all-encompassing grief and a vehement desire for revenge would, to him, suggest the contrary. Which left another possibility clutching suddenly at his insides with anguish. “Or did she not love me?”

The mere idea of it makes him seize up. She had risked Hades’ wrath to help Emma and the others get to him in the Underworld, and had lost her soul to eternal torment in the process. Even the satisfaction of knowing that Hades had been destroyed isn’t quite enough to soothe that particular ache. What if she had never truly loved him?

“Have you spoken to Emma about this?” Snow asks gently. Killian frowns, shakes his head. He doesn’t exactly think bringing up his past love is the most romantic of conversations. “I think you should.”

She’s probably right.

“But I will say this,” she continues, “what you and Emma have… it’s special. But it doesn’t make what came before any less so. We are all who we are because of our experiences.” She rises on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. “You’ve fought hard for your happiness — please remember to enjoy it.”

She leaves him in the kitchen then, her words having done little to soothe his troubled mind.

-/-

Killian takes a moment to observe the house they have built together as Emma rises from her position nestled into his side on the sofa. She reaches for their discarded plates, and heads out into the kitchen.

The room had felt enormous when she had first welcomed him inside it, all bare walls and scarcely populated floor space — it had been a reflection, really, on the darkened state of her mind that found itself projected onto the even colder space around them. Even when she had led him to the telescope and the stunning view of the sea he found it hard to imagine making a home out of it. Yet, on their return from the Underworld, they had done exactly that.

A fire burns in the hearth, bright and warm, golden light flickering from memory to memory across the room. The once exposed walls are now lined with Henry’s schoolwork, with photos of the Charmings, of Regina, of Robin. Robin. The man whose soul had been lost because of Emma’s quest to save him. They both owe him so much, it had felt important to honour him some way as they moved forward; he would never be forgotten.

Killian had never even considered finding a home apart from the sea — he had been abandoned first on the ocean, lost his brother to its lure, it was hard to even fathom another person becoming a reason to maroon himself away from its natural pull. Yet when he sees pieces of the life he and Emma are just beginning to stitch together from their rags of broken things, it is impossible to ignore the reality. Anchored, but exquisitely happy.

Lost in thought, Killian only just realises Emma has been speaking, her voice floating above the running of the tap in the next room.

“I told him if he wanted that kind of ‘favour’ he’d need to ask Regina — and whaddya know, he asks to stay at hers an extra night. He’s as transparent as they come. Still,” she continues, and he can hear the padding of her socks on the floor bringing her nearer, “we don’t mind the extra night on our own, do we?”

Mary Margaret’s advice rings quietly in his ear, like a murmur. When Killian lifts his head to see her standing in the doorway, he is as always stunned by her beauty. Even dressed down for an evening spent in their house, she could not appear lovelier.

“Emma,” he says softly, and maybe it’s his tone or his mood all evening, but the utterance gives her pause, “may I talk to you about something?”

“Of course,” she responds automatically, and as she crosses the room and drops down next to him he can see the light furrow in her brow. He wants nothing more than to smooth it over with his thumb, kiss the uncertainty from the line of her mouth. Trepidation stays his hand.

When he doesn’t immediately respond, Emma turns to face him on the sofa and reaches a hand across to squeeze his arm. “You were thrashing about in your sleep again last night.”

Hades had him dangled above the river of lost souls, only that time Emma had not made it before he found oblivion.

“Is it —?”

“Aye,” he says, partly to stop her dwelling on the subject. They had spoken enough of his ordeal to last a lifetime. “But I find my mind is frayed with thoughts of a different kind.” She waits, her expression open and kind. It is so far from the walls she threw up the moment they met that his heart squeezes with gratitude — it becomes stifling to even consider revealing that which he had quietly admitted to her mother that morning. “I don’t want to hurt you, Swan.”

(And perhaps maybe a year ago, that comment may have spooked her.)

Emma lifts his hand and squeezes it. Quietly determined. “Go ahead.”

“Recently,” he starts, and it is difficult to find the words, “recently I can’t help feeling… I love you,” he hastens to assure her, “and I know you love me. That this love is true. We have proof of that.”

“No broken curses in sight but we did open a creepy old door.”

Killian breathes out a laugh to match the glimmer of amusement in her expression, the way her mouth is tugged gently into a smirk. He feels some of the tension in his shoulders ease away even as he is drawn back into solemnity.

“I just — recently, I can’t help but feel this… veneration of what lies between us makes me a traitor to an old love.”

Emma’s eyes dawn with understanding. She nods slowly once.

“Milah.”

“It sounds ridiculous.”

“Hey, I met her, remember?” Emma sidesteps his attempt at a dismissal with ease. “She was kind, and brave, and nothing about you wanting to honour her memory is ridiculous.”

Killian slips his hand out of Emma’s, runs it through his hair.

“I find myself doubting even that which I’ve always taken for truth. Did she and I not love each other as much as you and I do? Why is one hailed as True where the other just… was?” He sighs. “I even pestered your mother today, such is the extent of my anxiety.”

Was he merely a fool?

Emma had turned her face slightly away from him, staring into the hearth with a soft frown, thoughtful in its most open corners. It makes Killian squirm to see it, and he instantly wishes he hadn’t been so thoughtless as to follow Snow White’s advice.

(Of course she would advocate for total honesty, spilling secrets was practically her modus operandi).

“I’m sorry.” He means it with a depth and severity he cannot measure, and reaches for her hand again. “I want to just enjoy what we have. I wish I weren’t thinking this way.”

“I love that you are.”

A damn lucky fool.

Killian’s bemusement must have shown on his face, because Emma smiles kindly as if he were Henry asking for help with a particularly challenging mathematical problem.

“You think I haven’t had similar thoughts?” she muses. “I loved before you too, you know.”

A vision of Baelfire stuns him then, the familiar rush of guilt and anguish and sorrow coming to the fore before he attempts to soothe them with thoughts of the peace of their last encounter. With Emma’s love, quietly earned and steadfastly valued. He knows the young man would approve — he can feel it in the deepest chambers of his heart.

“Neal might not have always been brave, but he was when it counted. He died for me and Henry. You and me, we’re…” Emma hesitates, and he can see her searching for the right words to pluck from the space between them. “We’re different to Mom and Dad. They fought hard for their love, sure, but they’ve never lost. Not really. Not the way you and I have.”

(I love you, she had whispered, before crumpling into his arms —

— the beast had laughed, cackled, taunted the extent of his despair —

Is it wonderful, she had breathed, to travel so much?)

“I never thought I would love again after Neal. I imagine things were the same for you.”

He had spent 300 years convinced he never would, he never could. Had foregone all else in his pursuit of revenge.

Until he met her.

“Aye,” he agrees, needlessly. She knows the answer already.

“Then maybe —” Emma begins with a renewed sense of purpose, adjusts her position next to him, demands his full focus as she tosses some of her hair over her shoulder impatiently. “Maybe it’s not some secret power or magical authority that decides what’s different this time. Maybe it’s just us.”

He frowns, waits for her to continue.

“We chose each other, Killian. After everything that’s happened to us.”

He thinks back to the test that had engulfed him in flame, how Emma had launched herself at him instead of her own heart.

“You chose me,” he echoes that moment with wonder, his mouth beginning to lift into a smile.

She mirrors it. “And you chose me.” As she leans forward he meets her halfway, allows the gentlest press of her lips to his before she pulls back. “I wanted to believe in us, so I did. And here we are.”

And it’s a damn near perfect place to be.

“Here we are.”

“It doesn’t mean we loved them less. It just means we loved again.”

He has no idea if they have reached a real conclusion – whether the breadth of True Love can really be measured in such a way — but he figures if mystical scales buried under miles of rock beneath the mortal realm are authorised to make that judgement, then so are they. It mutes the stir of his mind, in any case. The Milah of his soul can continue to smile, unimpeded by the cloud of his own uncertainty. They had loved. Bloody hell, they had loved. And they had lost.

Zeus had made it clear enough; he was where he belonged now.

“I like that,” he decides, kissing her again because he can’t not do it.

“Me too.”

“I like you.”

Emma laughs, and it’s an open and honest sound. “Yeah, the feeling’s mutual.”

As the embers die he finds comfort with her long into the night. When they make love he watches stars burst around them, feels her warmth carry him into a dreamless sleep. With her, he need not worry where his home might be anymore. The earth does not beckon him beneath its shell, and as the dark stretches until morning he does not again doubt that the sun will rise.

He knows it with a certainty, a surety, one only born of the privilege to deeply love, and be loved deeply in return.

[agentsokka]

Davekat Fic Recs [P2]

Continuation of my Davekat fic rec list from ye old 2016. An absolute metric shit ton of Damn Good Fics™ have dropped since then, and it’s criminal I haven’t updated that original list in so long. 

As per usual with these things, you won’t find much luck here with smut content. Some stories feature scenes, but for the most part, the fics themselves aren’t exclusively about such.

Cheers!

[Oneshots]

English is Full of Really Shitty Metaphors: You knew you probably shouldn't stay on a planet mostly inhabited by trolls once you finished your adult pupation and your blood color became more apparent. You also knew that you should learn a couple of other languages so that your weren't floundering around like an idiot when you eventually did move. Talking to random aliens on the internet seemed like a really good way to practice.

Fatalistic Humor, or, Jokes to Make Post-Mortem: ‘Head over heels’ is an appropriate turn of phrase because falling in love is exactly like throwing yourself down an endless staircase of inconvenient emotion.

i’m at the combination dunkin donuts & urgent care: Karkat Vantas is convinced beyond a doubt that his neighbor is some variety of murderer, until they actually meet in person. Highlights include blood at the laundromat, Dave's weird obsession with candles, and a box of shitty swords.

In Which a Loser is Sick: IN WHICH A LOSER IS SICK AND TRIES TO DENY IT, A TROLL IS ALSO A LOSER AND TRIES TO DENY IT, PISSING PANTS IS DISCUSSED IN THE SAME LINE OF CONVERSATION AS CALMING DOWN, VRISKA IS MENTIONED BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE IS, SOUP IS MADE AND SUBSEQUENTLY IGNORED, AND AN ACT OF AFFECTION IS REPAID BY THE WEAKENING OF AN IMMUNE SYSTEM. Dave gets sick and Karkat takes care of him.

Pretty Friggin’ MATRIMONIAL: Karkat is planning the proposal to end all proposals, but a clueless Dave has plans of his own.

Rumination: Dave and Karkat do some thinking, talking, kissing, and cuddling. Not necessarily in that order.

Self Sabotage and Other Symptoms of a Damaged Soul: Ok so everyone knows Dave and Dirk had a long amazing talk that presumably ended with Dave asking him for advice on the Being Not Straight stuff. My problem is, Dave also spent three years with his gloriously gay twin sister on a fucking space rock while he was right in the middle of coming to terms with all this stuff. So I wrote this mostly to reconcile the gap I think exists there, with a bunch of other Dave centric stuff thrown in with it.

Shitty Punchlines are the Purest Form of Self-Deprecation: Laying somewhere solidly post-credits and wondering, when do we start feeling like winners? Or is that not part of the package? Where's our fucking GameFAQs guide to navigating these stupid first steps into an eternity processing whatever the FUCK just happened, here? Going through that door was supposed to fix everything. Wasn't it? What's it going to take to fix ourselves?

Sleepwalk: Dave has unfortunate nocturnal habits. Karkat handles them better than anyone might've expected.

Start at the Beginning: Don't stop until eternity. And even then. (Davekat, meteor to can land to earth c and on. Happy anniversary.)

Sweatertown - Population: Two: Dave's cape gets hijacked, but Karkat knows what to do about it.

Tested: Dave and Karkat want to escape Aperture Science Laboratories.

That Cultural Divide: “Dave,” says Karkat neutrally, “why are they beating him up?” And your mouth runs dry.

Valentine’s Day: Valentine's Day through the three years on the meteor.

What to do When Your Boyfriend is Too Hot: Moving to a new universe and a new paradigm brings a lot of changes. And Dave kind of likes the way things were before, back on the Meteor, when he had Karkat all to himself and didn't spend sleepless nights waiting for the shoe to fall.

[Multichap]

About a Time I Failed: A doomed timeline AU. Instead of trolling John, Karkat finds himself scrolling through Dave's entire timeline. He is horrified by what he finds, and ends up in a pseudo-friendship with somewhat reluctant Dave. The story spans the rest of this timeline- Dave and Karkat's budding internet romance, the beta kids becoming friends, the start of SBURB, and, eventually, all of them realizing that Dave and Karkat's diversion from the Alpha Timeline has doomed them all. [Incomplete]

And it’s a Downward Spiral from There: One day, the whole world is going to acknowledge you as that one guy who finally made contact with aliens, but if you had known that getting drunk was going to lead up to abduction, a potential probing, and becoming the worst cult sacrifice this side of the galaxy, you probably would have just stayed at home. [Ongoing]

Astronomy in Reverse: Dave and Karkat are intergalactic pen pals, originally paired together for an extra credit school outreach project. Now, three years of correspondence later, they're best friends... and Karkat is finally immigrating to Earth. [Ongoing]

Breathe: Your name is Dave Strider, and there's nothing good about John and Rose changing schools. Without your twin sister and best friend, you've been left socially crippled at school, and barely coping at home. You're nearly certain that your mental health has been slowly spiraling downhill. You have no clue how you'll last the year to high school graduation. In all this, there's just one single ray of light. Your name is Dave Strider, and there's nothing good about John and Rose changing schools. Except for meeting Karkat Vantas. [Ongoing]

**The Calm is Terrifying When the Storm is All You’ve Known**: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist. Slow burn, shifting perspectives; romance really isn't the focus here but it'll still play a significant part; extra content warnings will be posted with each relevant chapter. [Ongoing] [y’all I’m serious read it it’ll water your crops and clear your chakras it’s Good Shit]

cold desert: Curiosity killed the cat. It probably just wasn't as good at being nosy as Dave is. [Ongoing]

Demon Eyes: In which Dave goes in to kill a demon for his bro, and things...don't exactly go as planned. [Ongoing]

Doc Scratch’s School for Supernaturally Gifted Adolescents: One minute you get a mysterious message from a man who types all in white like a jackass, and then the next thing you know you're being whisked away to a mystical school for kids with superpowers. If you weren't Dave fucking Strider, this sort of thing might bother you. [Ongoing]

Fortuitous: Dave and Karkat build a pillow fort and an unexpected chain of events occurs. [Ongoing]

If I Lose Everything in the Fire: The Kaiju - or Horrorterrors, as the trolls call them - first invaded Earth through a transdimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Serving the Condesce in her quest to add Earth to the Alternian Empire, these monsters have terrorized humanity for twelve years. With the help of rebel troll factions and the adaptation of Alternian mind integration technology - The Drift - the Interspecies Defense Program has fought back as the last line of defense between the Kaiju and Earth. Karkat Vantas was a Jaeger pilot, fought for freedom in the Assault on the Breach that brought trolls to Earth. The loss of his co-pilot left him bitter and full of rage, but desperate times have lead to him being recruited to join the fray once more. Dave Strider is the best and brightest the Interspec program has to offer. Jaeger Restoration Project Head, highest simulation score on record, and younger brother of the Deputy Marshal - except he's not allowed in a Jaeger. Nobody expects them to be Drift Compatible. [Ongoing]

i'm sick of the things i do when i'm nervous: Two idiots poke at recovery with a stick. [Complete]

IN WHICH TWO SETS OF HUMAN BROTHERLY BONDS ARE ESTABLISHED, SEVERAL CORRUPT INSTITUTIONS OF MORALITY ARE IDEOLOGICALY DEMOLISHED, A DOG WITCH USES GOD POWERS TO MESS WITH EXQUISTELY CAREFULLY PLANNED INFRASTRUCTURE PLANS FOR SOME TREES LIKE A JACKASS--: --APPROXIMATELY A BILLION FUCKING CONSORTS AND CHESS PEOPLE, ALONG WITH A LOT OF USELESS GOD MODED LAYABOUTS ARE LEAD TO SUCCESSFUL COLONIZATION AND ESTABLISHMENT BY A SUCCESSFUL AND COMPASSIONATE LEADER, AND LONG-SUNDERED SOULMATES TORN APART BY FEAR AND DEVASTATING, MIND-BOGGLING STUPIDITY ARE REUNITED AT LAST BY A WISE, COMPASSIONATE BOSS / GUIDANCE FIGURE AND HIS LOYAL, EFFICIENT RIGHT-HAND MAN. THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE CRYING SCENES, TWO KISSES, AND OVER TEN TOTAL MINUTES OF REAL-TIME DESCRIPTION OF LONGING GAZES AND TENDER HUGS. 2 RESOUNDING ENDORSEMENTS OF BELOVED MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS. PRIMERS ON HUMAN/TROLL INTERSPECIES ROMANCE. THIS TEXT IS SUGGESTED SCHOOLFEEDING MATERIAL FOR ALL REASONABLY GROWN HATCHLINGS GAZING OUT ON THE BLIGHTED WASTELAND OF THEIR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, WISHING THEY WERE DEAD, AND DESPERATELY YEARNING SOMEONE WOULD CLUE THEM IN ON JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. RATED 8(17)+ AND UP. [Complete]

M.C. Escher that's My Favorite MC [It’s the End of the World as We Know It]: Dirk has a plan, when he's 18 he's going to take Dave and get him the fuck out of their terrible lives and start over. Until then being the barrier between Dave and Bro is his only job, his soulmate is just going to have to wait goddamnit. Dave has a plan, it involves getting internet famous and not going gay, easy right? Karkat also has a plan, to repeatedly track down his dumb as rocks soulmate and get him to actually talk to him for fuck's sake. [Ongoing]

Midnight’s Son: Dave Strider's father, a prominent detective, is tasked with infiltrating the Midnight Crew. Dave, worried about his father's safety, decides to do a little undercover work of his own and tries to befriend the boss's son, Karkat Vantas. [Complete]

Nothing Risked, Nothing Lost: Try as he might, Dave remembered nothing from the first four years of his life. There were three signs of imminent upheaval. First, the King of Derse disappeared without a trace. Second, the Queen of Prospit dropped dead. The third sign was the return of long-lost royalty. Not like any of this was Dave's concern. Not the war between Prospit and Derse, not the horrorterrors of the Furthest Ring, not the failings of some dumb monarchs. He was a nobody. Not like Rose, a bona fide Seer of Light. He wasn't sure why she wanted them to go to Derse, but he followed her, anyway. Like he always did. [Hiatus]

Off Court: Your name is Dave Strider, and a hospital wasn’t the setting you had imagined when you thought of seeing your twin again. Your name is Karkat Vantas, and having Terezi drag you around her weird human legislacerator training probably wasn’t the worst way you could spend the rest of your sweeps. And then you meet him. [Ongoing]

Palisades, Palisades: In your memories, you see Dave Strider, fourteen-years-old and made up of lean muscle and awkward limbs that he would still need a few years to grow into fully. Crows surround him, all cawing impatiently, vying for the chicken sandwich in his backpack. He swears loudly as he swings a stick at them, trying to get them to leave him the fuck alone. “Stupid feathery assholes,” he’d always complain once he finally shooed them away. You tear yourself out of the memory. You miss him, and you hate yourself for it. [Complete]

The Red Thing: The first time you ever realised there was something wrong with you, you were two sweeps old. You still remember it like it was just yesterday. You were at the playground in your then-community, which you had long since moved from. You’d been playing ‘tag’ with some of the other young trolls, but had tripped and scraped your knees. One of the other troll’s custodial guardians had noticed what had happened, and wandered over to make sure you were alright. You don’t think you’ll ever forget the look on her face when she picked you up and saw the mutant-red seeping through the knees of your pants. Things spiraled downhill quickly after that. You’d never quite understood what was happening when you were young, but you’d known that you’d become an outcast. Other trolls around you started to avoid you. Sometimes they’d throw things at you – food, stones, anything that might hurt you. Other times, they’d call you names – mistake, mutant, freak. You preferred when they tried to hurt you. At least then you could fight back. [Ongoing]

space cowboy disaster zone: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and these nights you eke out a quiet living on Antoren-3, helping around the Caltira Inn or scavenging out in the rust plains. It’s a simple life, and the only excitement you get for the most part is from the stories of other scavengers, a handful of bar fights, and the occasional salvageable wreck. Fresh wrecks, you’ve only seen a handful of times, and when John spots the telltale streak of light from a distant crash in the middle of a rust storm, you’re eager to get first dibs on whatever it might contain, the elements be damned. You don’t expect a survivor. [Ongoing]

Stepping Stones: A series of vignettes concerning the evolution of the relationship between Karkat Vantas and Dave Strider. Or, the troll title: IN WHICH DAVE AND KARKAT DISCUSS THE VARIOUS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMAN AND TROLL GENITALS, THERE IS AN AWKWARD CONFESSION OF EMOTIONS, DAVE AND DIRK FINISH THEIR CONVERSATION ON THE ROOFTOP, DAVE GETS SOME ADVICE FROM A FEW OF THE LADIES IN HIS LIFE, AND THERE IS A SMUTTY EPILOGUE. [Complete]

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Dave was silent. YES. YOU. The voice answered him before he even had a chance to speak up and voice his confusion or curiosity with a lack of delicacy only a child was capable of. It had a harsh way of speaking, brash enough to be rude and so loud the sound of his voice practically echoed off his skull. In it he could feel the rich, crimson flow of blood, the drip, drip, of molten lava degrading stone so ancient not even the gods of old would have lived to see it form. A being so old, so vast, that even to speak his name would grant one with immeasurable power. It made him shudder, little hands clenching into fists against rough stone. HUMAN CHILD. In which Dave is alone and Dragons exist. Shenanigans ensue. [Ongoing]

Stow Away: Calm and collected, that's Dave Strider. The docking station around him is chaotic and loud but he is like ice, cool and clear. None of that is true of course, but nobody is looking closely enough to notice the way his hands shake and his eyes dart around underneath the opaque plastic of his vintage sunglasses. Dave Strider sneaks on board an Alternian ship in an attempt to flee his shitty situation on Earth. This is the first of many questionable decisions. [Complete]

Time Displacement: Side A: After the events of the game, Dave wakes up in a universe that is familiarly unfamiliar. Sburb didn't happen, all their guardians are alive, and Bro is...different. [Ongoing]

Transcend: Dave doesn't get troll romance, but that's okay because Karkat is bad at it anyway. A journey through all four quadrants and a bit more. [Complete]

[newstfionline]

Sunday, October 18, 2020

U.S. budget deficit breached $3.1 trillion in 2020 as pandemic slammed economy (Washington Post) The U.S. budget deficit eclipsed $3.1 trillion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to government data released Friday, by far the biggest one-year gap in U.S. history. The data are a stark reflection of the staggering blow that the coronavirus pandemic has dealt to the U.S. economy. The deficit—the gap between government spending and tax revenue—shows the dramatic surge in spending the U.S. government approved to contain the pandemic’s fallout earlier this year. The deficit last year was about $1 trillion, which represented an elevated level but pales in comparison with this year’s tally.

US divisions (AP) The overwhelming majority of voters believe the nation is deeply divided over its most important values, and many have doubts about the health of the democracy itself. And supporters of President Donald Trump and Joe Biden alike think the opposing candidate will make things even worse if elected, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Overall, 85% of registered voters describe Americans as being greatly divided in their values, and only 15% say that democracy in the United States is working extremely or very well. The poll shows voters overall are especially pessimistic about the impact of Trump’s reelection: 65% say divisions would worsen if the Republican president were reelected, a number that includes a quarter of his supporters.

Scammers seize on US election, but it’s not votes they want (AP) The email from a political action committee seemed harmless: if you support Joe Biden, it urged, click here to make sure you’re registered to vote. But Harvard University graduate student Maya James did not click. Instead, she Googled the name of the soliciting PAC. It didn’t exist—a clue the email was a phishing scam from swindlers trying to exploit the U.S. presidential election as a way to steal peoples’ personal information. American voters face an especially pivotal, polarized election this year, and scammers here and abroad are taking notice—posing as fundraisers and pollsters, impersonating candidates and campaigns, and launching fake voter registration drives. It’s not votes they’re after, but to win a voter’s trust, personal information and maybe a bank routing number. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Better Business Bureau and cybersecurity experts have recently warned of new and increasingly sophisticated online fraud schemes that use the election as an entry, reflecting both the proliferation of political misinformation and intense interest in this year’s presidential and Senate races. Online scams have flourished as so many of life’s routines move online during the pandemic. The FBI reported that complaints to its cybercrime reporting site jumped from 1,000 a day to 3,000-4,000 a day since the pandemic began.

Forecasters: Drought more likely than blizzards this winter (AP) Don’t expect much of a winter wallop this year, except for the pain of worsening drought, U.S. government forecasters said Thursday. Two-thirds of the United States should get a warmer than normal winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted. Only Washington, northern Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas and northwestern Minnesota, will get a colder than normal winter, forecasters said. The forecast for winter rain and snow splits the nation in three stripes. NOAA sees the entire south from southern California to North Carolina getting a dry winter. Forecasters see wetter weather for the northernmost states: Oregon and Washington to Michigan and dipping down to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and other parts of the Ohio Valley. The rest of the nation will likely be closer to normal, NOAA said. For the already dry Southwest and areas across the South, this could be a “big punch,” said NOAA drought expert David Miskus. About 45% of the nation is in drought, the highest level in more than seven years.

Who Was ‘El Padrino,’ Godfather to Drug Cartel? Mexico’s Defense Chief, U.S. Says (NYT) American law enforcement agents were listening in as Mexican cartel members chattered on a wiretap, talking about a powerful, shadowy figure known as El Padrino, or The Godfather. Agents had been closing in on him for months, suspecting that this central figure in the drug trade was a high-ranking official in the Mexican military. All of a sudden, one of the people under surveillance told his fellow cartel members that El Padrino happened to be on television at that very moment. The agents quickly checked to see who it was—and found it was the Mexican secretary of defense, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, according to four American officials involved in the investigation. In that moment, the authorities say, they finally confirmed that the mystery patron of one of the nation’s most violent drug cartels was actually the leader in charge of waging Mexico’s war against organized crime. It was a stunning display of how deep the tendrils of organized crime run in Mexico, and on Thursday night General Cienfuegos was taken into custody by the American authorities at the Los Angeles airport while traveling with his family. Even for Mexico, a country often inured to the unrelenting violence and corruption that have gripped it for years, the arrest was nothing less than extraordinary, piercing the veil of invincibility that the nation’s armed forces have long enjoyed.

Remote learning is deepening the divide between rich and poor (Washington Post) LIMA, Peru—Hunched over a rickety table in his family’s three-room shanty, Missael Soayne wrote diligently on a sheet of graph paper. It was Friday morning, time for reading comprehension. His father, out of work, had warned him not to waste paper, so the baby-faced 14-year-old carefully drew small, tight letters on the page. Peru, the nation with the world’s highest coronavirus mortality rate, is also one of dozens of countries where schools nationwide remain closed on account of the pandemic, with no reopening date in sight. The quarantine here is particularly severe; children 14 and under are permitted out of their homes only one hour per day. Some families can afford workarounds. Students from families wealthy enough to pay for private schools have kept their educations going with private tutors and interactive classes on home computers. Public schoolchildren with Internet at home can access extended lessons online. Missael has none of that. The son of a single father of four who lost his job during the pandemic, Missael has seen his education reduced to a 30-minute lesson broadcast on state TV and phone texts containing brief instructions for the next day’s self-study. He submits assignments to be graded through his family’s one cellphone. From the Andes to Africa to the United States, this is what falling through the cracks looks like: A pandemic generation of poor children shut out of schools and learning. Already disadvantaged by poverty and inequity, they are now in danger of falling further behind. Globally, roughly a third of the world’s schoolchildren, or nearly 600 million, remain affected by pandemic-related school closures, according to UNICEF, the United Nations agency responsible for aid to children. Some 463 million schoolchildren worldwide, UNICEF estimates, lacking Internet, television or radio, have been left with almost no access to education.

Former French president Sarkozy charged with criminal association in probe of Libya ties (Washington Post) French prosecutors charged former president Nicolas Sarkozy with “criminal association” as part of an investigation into the financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, particularly its alleged ties to the government of then-Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. Although Sarkozy was charged in 2018 with corruption and embezzling funds from Libya, the new charges are a dramatic escalation—the most serious indictment a former head of state has faced in the history of France’s Fifth Republic, the governing system established in 1958. Sarkozy denied any wrongdoing. The specter of alleged Libyan ties clouded Sarkozy’s tenure in the Élysée Palace and has haunted him since he left the presidency after one term in 2012. Friday’s “criminal association” charge breathes new life into the allegations that Sarkozy illegally secured millions of dollars in cash from the Gaddafi regime to fund his 2007 presidential bid. The charges also raise new questions about Sarkozy’s motives in orchestrating the 2011 NATO operation against the Gaddafi government. Gaddafi’s regime was overthrown that year and he was captured and killed by opposition fighters.

China passes amendments outlawing insulting national flag (AP) The Standing Committee of China’s congress on Saturday passed amendments to a law that will criminalize the intentional insulting of the national flag and emblem, after anti-government protesters in Hong Kong last year desecrated the Chinese flag. According to the newly amended National Flag and National Emblem Law, which will take effect on Jan. 1, those who intentionally burn, mutilate, paint, deface or trample the flag and emblem in public will be investigated for criminal responsibility. The law also states that that national flag must not be discarded, displayed upside down or used in any manner that impairs the dignity of the flag. The revised law will also apply to offices in Hong Kong and Macao that are set up by the central government.

Could Japan finally leave the fax behind? (Washington Post) At the height of the coronavirus outbreak in Japan, one doctor couldn’t take it any longer. It wasn’t the patients. It was Japan’s bureaucracy. Every new infection, he complained, involved medical professionals compiling lengthy reports by hand and then faxing them to the public health office. “Come on, let’s stop this already,” he wrote in a widely shared tweet. Japan’s government, which sometimes seems hopelessly addicted to paper and faxes, also began to realize the system wasn’t working. Doctors were overwhelmed with paperwork, public health offices were drowning in faxes, which were a marvel of data exchange in the 1980s and are now more of a curiosity from another age. The reporting system “made it difficult to grasp the spread of infection in real time nationwide, and exhausted health center staff,” an independent expert panel concluded in a new report on Japan’s coronavirus response. “The new coronavirus crisis was also Japan’s ‘digital defeat.’ ” Japan often feels like a country that rushed to embrace an exciting high-tech future decades ago, and then abruptly stopped when boom turned to bust in the 1990s, leaving islands of older technologies like stranded relics. There is the Japan of bullet trains and humanoid robots. And there is the Japan of printed documents, humming faxes and an economy still largely dependent on cash. Its bureaucracy lives with at least one foot in the past, with a deeply ingrained desire to do things as they have always been done. Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, wants all this to change. He has set the digitalization of the bureaucracy and ultimately of Japan’s entire society as a key priority of his new administration. Yet the scale of the task should not be underestimated. A survey by the Japan Research Institute found that of 55,000 administrative procedures involving the central government, only around 4,000, or 7.5 percent, could be completed entirely online.

Hundreds of Thai protesters defy warnings in Bangkok (Reuters) Hundreds of Thais chanted at protests that popped up across Bangkok on Saturday in defiance of a crackdown on three months of demonstrations aimed at the government and the powerful monarchy. After police used water cannon for the first time against a protest by thousands of people in central Bangkok on Friday, protesters agreed to assemble at different points across the city on Saturday. Protesters demand the removal of Prayuth, who first took power in a 2014 coup. He rejects protesters’ accusations that he engineered last year’s election to keep power. Breaking a longstanding taboo, protesters have also called for curbs on the power of the monarchy.

New Zealand’s Ardern headed for landslide win and 2nd term (AP) Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was headed for a landslide win and a second term in office Saturday in New Zealand’s general election. With more than half the votes counted, Ardern’s liberal Labour Party had nearly double the support of its main challenger, the conservative National Party. Labour was on the cusp of winning an outright majority in Parliament, something that hasn’t happened since New Zealand implemented a proportional voting system 24 years ago. Typically, parties must form alliances to govern, but this time Ardern and Labour may be able to go it alone.

After Lebanese revolt’s fury, waning protests face long road (AP) A year ago, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese took to the streets protesting taxes and a rapidly deteriorating economic crisis. A spontaneous and hopeful nationwide movement was born, denouncing an entire political establishment that had for decades pushed Lebanon toward collapse. Today, as crises multiply and the country dives deeper into uncertainty and poverty, protests seem to have petered out. Even widespread anger over a devastating explosion at Beirut’s port on Aug. 4, blamed on government negligence, failed to re-ignite the movement. Some argue the protests lost momentum because of the political elite’s moves to hijack and weaken the movement. Protesters have been met with violence, arrest and intimidation. Others say Lebanese have become numb to incompetence and corruption among the political class. But Lebanon’s confessional-based power-sharing system also proved difficult to bring down. A revolt against the status quo means breaking a sectarian patronage network cultivated by the ruling elite that many in the divided population benefit from. Even if dissatisfied, some blame other factions for the country’s problems or fear change will give another sect power over them—a fear politicians eagerly stoke. “We don’t have one head of state, it’s a group of men, they have agreed to divide the spoils of the state at every level. It’s a system that you can hardly topple,” said Carmen Geha, associate professor in public administration and an activist.

[hvarchivefinal]

Unify Gathering 2018: A Review

DAY 1

As someone who bussed down to Unify, I’m definitely glad I did. The relaxing and hassle free ride down to Tarwin was only interrupted when it started raining when we reached the coast.

With my tent set up in a matter of minutes (cheers Kmart), I met my fellow campers and was introduced to the ‘Unify Vibe’. Everyone was incredibly friendly and the atmosphere couldn’t even be dampened by the incessant rain.

I only caught the last few songs from Belle Haven, but if their charismatic Sunday acoustic set was anything to go by, they’re definitely a band worth keeping an eye on.

I was one of the lucky few to get my Unicoin wristband early, so I can’t really complain about the incredibly long line that I walked past after Belle Haven finished, but after running into some friends and waiting with them for their wristbands, I guess if there’s one thing to take away from Unify 2018, it’s that it definitely pays to get in early, especially at a festival of 7500 people.

Knocked Loose were up next and by god, the hype was palpable. The pit opened as soon as the band came onstage, and the crowd followed frontman Bryan Garris’ every move. Finger pointing goodness ensued as the band ran through fan favourites Counting Worms and Deadringer. Halfway through the set Garris asked how many people had heard of Knocked Loose, and was greeted with an entire crowd of raised arms. Hardcore is set to dominate 2018.

If Knocked Loose had already set the bar high, Sydneysiders Polaris absolutely obliterated it. Opening with ‘Lucid’, the band powered through a setlist comprised largely of songs off their debut album ‘The Mortal Coil’, much to the crowd’s delight. At points, fans almost drowned out the band, particularly during set closer and hottest 200 charting ‘The Remedy’. The band’s growth in the last 12 months is incredible, and proves that the Aussie scene is stronger than ever.

After going fucking hard to Polaris, I retreated to the campsite to have a drink and a game of Uno. I legged it to Tonight Alive’s Underworld release party at the bush bar, and was almost blinded with a sea of yellow. When Tonight Alive finally arrived they greeted every fan and thanked them, after spending so long overseas (Australia wasn’t even graced with a proper Limitless headliner), the release of ‘Underworld’ couldn’t come at a better time for the Sydney ‘Conscious Rockers’, Tonight Alive are definitely back. It was still raining by the time their set rolled around, but the mood was electric. Some in the crowd were still wearing yellow flower crowns from the release party, as the band belted out a mix of classics and newer songs. Welcome home Tonight Alive, we’ve missed you.

Next up was one of the most anticipated sets of the night, Architects burst onstage amid a flurry of lasers and cryo. Their set consisted mainly of songs from their last 2 albums, and while bodies hurled over the barrier during ‘Gravity’, everyone wanted to be in the mosh for crowd favourite ‘These Colours Don’t Run’. Rain split the light from the lasers as the crowd pulsed to the beat of every song. It was already set to be an emotional night, but following the new track ‘Doomsday’, everyone knelt on the ground as a tribute to Tom Searle as Sam Carter made a speech about loss and the importance of being able to grieve. There was barely a dry eye in the crowd as the band rolled onto ‘Gone With The Wind’. Architect’s Unify set was incredibly special, and will no doubt a favourite for many for years to come.

It’s been a while since Parkway Drive were last in Australia, but their first shows back were definitely special, celebrating a decade of metalcore classic ‘Horizons’. While the mosh had definitely gotten rowdy earlier in the day, Winston McCall definitely knows how to command a crowd. The Oompa Loompa boatrace was another highlight of the night, with other favourites ‘Wild Eyes’ and ‘Bottom Feeder’ chucked in for good measure. One last blast of confetti and it was over for the night, we all shuffled back to our tents, hoping that they had lasted the storm.

DAY 2

While I would’ve loved a sleep in, I was up bright and early (as in, 6am early) on Saturday, and was able to catch some of the brief glimpses of sun before the clouds began to roll in once again. I spent the morning hanging out at the campsite until it was time for my first set of the day.

I’ve heard about The Beautiful Monument quite a bit in the last few months, and so I was pleasantly surprised when I finally saw the band live, performing their own blend of synthcore and rock which ends up sounding a little like a PVRIS/Motionless in White mashup. Definitely a band worth checking out if you haven’t already, they also pulled a decent crowd for so early on in the day. Here’s hoping we see more of them in 2018.

I only caught the last of Outright’s set, but it was absolutely incredible.

A little more relaxing before what I like to call ‘The Marathon’, with back to back massive sets, starting off with Perth’s Cursed Earth. Applause was scattered as the band came onstage with a different vocalist, but they still gave an absolutely blistering set, full of hardcore mosh anthems off their newest double release ‘Cycles of Grief’.

Young Lions were a refreshing breather of rock goodness, and even the return of rain couldn’t stop the seemingly nonstop crowdsurfing. Ending with ‘Burn the Money’, Young Lions undoubtedly earned a load of new fans.

It was now raining heavily as Void of Vision finally came onstage, throwing merch into the crowd. The set relied heavily on cuts from their latest EP ‘Disturbia’, vocalist Jack Bergin climbed up the stage frame halfway through their set (what OHS?).

Roam were seemingly blown away with the size of the crowd during their set, pumping through a mix of old and new songs, before the crowd sang vocalist Alex Costello happy birthday. Watching the band’s growth just since the release of 2017’s ‘Great Heights & Nosedives’ has been incredible, and I can’t wait to see what the Roam camp has up their sleeves next.

The sun had just begun to peak through the clouds as Being As An Ocean took the stage. Playing songs mainly off their most recent album ‘Waiting For Morning To Come’, Joel Quartuccio dove into the audience to sing their last few songs. Despite a rough few months and a label dispute hindering the release of their 2017 album, the fan reaction to the newer songs (OK, Black & Blue, Thorns), proves that in 2018, fan support can still go a long way.

Next up was Make Them Suffer, who pulled a massive crowd following the incredible success of 2017’s ‘Worlds Apart’. As everyone has already heard by now, the walls of death and moshing was only interrupted by the absolute legends playing Uno in the pit (during Widower of all songs). The set was a perfect balance of old and new (though I was a bit emo when they didn’t play Fireworks).

Following a brief game of ping pong cricket in the pit, Knuckle Puck came out to give us all one final kick of Pop Punk for the night. The band seemed at home onstage, pumping out songs ‘Evergreen’ and ‘Gone’. Vocalist Joe Taylor proved he was a pro at Aussie festival culture, doing a shoey before the band had even played their first song.

The temperature had well and truly started to drop as Stick To Your Guns kicked off their set, full of cuts from their newest album ‘Married to the Noise’ as well as hits like ‘Amber’ and ‘We Still Believe’. Jesse Barnett took time out of the night to say how special it was that Unify gave bands the opportunity to play in front of massive audiences, and how mind blowing it was to see how many Aussie fans they had.

If anyone had any expectations for Hellion’s set, they were well and truly exceeded, to see how far the band have come since the release of ‘Opera Oblivia’ is incredible. Real Bad came out for his feature on ‘Hellions’, and a sneaky appearance from Northlane’s Marcus Bridge, as well as a debut of their still unreleased new song ‘X’, made the landmark set feel truly special.

Having seen Hands Like Houses multiple times on their ‘Dissonants’ cycle, I slid to the side of the crowd to watch the full show from the Canberra rockers. And by god I wasn’t disappointed. Confetti and cryo burst into the air as they powered through absolute bangers ‘I Am’, ‘Drift’, and slower songs like ‘A Tale of Outer Suburbia’.

It was bloody cold by the time The Amity Affliction came onstage, and despite being advertised as a ’15 Year Anniversary Show’, fans waiting for some deeper cuts were most likely disappointed, but the start of the set was full of classic hits pre ‘Let The Ocean Take Me’. Even the band seemed bored though as they dragged through the last few songs, and everyone seemed glad to be able to lug themselves back to the campsite.

DAY 3

Most people had left early on in the morning, so by the time I wandered down to the acoustic stage, the vibe was incredible. The sun had finally come out, and those who had waited around were greeted with clear blue skies and mellow tunes.

Belle Haven were the first acoustic I saw, and the intimate vibe seemed to suit them better as they chatted with the audience in between songs. Their cover of Paramore’s ‘Decode’ with an unbelievable feature from Brie (? My god, I’m sorry I can’t remember her name but she was so bloody good) was a particular highlight.

I didn’t know too many of the bands on the acoustic stage, but I’m now proudly a fan of Chasing Ghosts.

Introvert were up next, and even though the band seemed a little worse for wear from the previous night, they were still absolutely incredible.

I finally lugged all my shit to the bus area, which was full of people staring at the ground, eyes glazed. The ride home was a quiet one, with almost everyone on my bus taking the opportunity to have a nap on the 2 hour ride back to Melbourne. For my first Unify, I’m incredibly glad I went. Even though it rained all weekend, spending time with friends and making new ones all while listening to incredible bands made it a weekend I’ll never forget.