#HeartInHand

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"The shattering of a heart when being broken is the loudest quiet ever." ~ Carroll Bryant

"Heart In Hand" by Jamie Nelson, 2015

Series: Love

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See It On Your Wall

[spirestar]

Being a million tiny pieces of nothing is a taxing job. Living a little life in each mote and cell, every invisible creature inside a drop of blood and each drop of blood in a stream and all the little bugs that aren't bugs at all that creep inside veins and sleep. There is nothing but the big vat of it all, of life, of living and wishing for dying and living too many times to count. Laughter inside of paper walls that glow like a candle in a lover's window. All the little creatures never go quiet under skin, always with their cicada wings rubbing noisily and their crying, mourning, sobbing. It makes the one they live inside's head feel like it may burst---And here's the doctor to diagnose them, to call them imagination and call them liars. In the warm, gentle arms of twyrine Peter can't hear them, not so much; If every dream of that wretched miracle is a song, he will hear them, but by the god that is his brother and his own hands made one, he wishes they'd leave him alone.

"You just ran into the wall. It's time to lie down." That voice swims in his ears for longer than he realizes, reverberating off the wide walls of center stage. The Bachelor, cast in a halo of light, a beam overhead blazing into the back of his head. And Peter is only backlit, a veritable shadow where he's landed / crashed / fallen to the wooden floor. Where is the wall? Where is his pen? Peter has seen angels in his sleep, has been sung to and flayed and used to create whatever masterpieces they deigned, but never has he touched one in a waking hour; He blinks blearily, the light too hot and bright in his face.

There's a hand on his arm--helping him up?--and that dingy orange light of his brother's watering hole has returned. Iron stings his tongue, thicker than ichor, and he laughs. Helpless. The world is a swirl of nothing at all, the same the same the same, and he is the only fraying end, unspooling himself onto the floor into tangles and knots that no one will ever dare gather up to salvage. Part of Peter misses that light. Dankovsky is all human again. There's nothing more beautiful than humans, mortal and fickle and true. Nothing more terrifying than the divine they create, the divine they empower and revere. Peter should know: He can remember killing god in his sleep, or was that his shadow?

"Bachelor," he breathes, the least coherent bits of him grasping for anything other than the fellow's name. For some reason it frightens him so now. "A wall where there was none--Just picture it." For effect, and perhaps for comedy that he no longer has any grasp of but once did, he knocks a trembling hand against said wall. The one he's clearly left him mark on, if the blood on it is any proof. His nose maybe? He can't really feel the source. "Now, why do you think my brother would do that to me. He knows I hate a cage," a willful smile, "and a jailer. That's not you, is it? Shepherding the little sheep and diseases to sleep?" Peter leans into the arm holding him up, but not because he means to. "Have you had a drink?"

@heartinhands

[necrosin]

IT FEELS AS IF THE WORLD IS TRYING TO EAT HIM ALIVE —— or, is he trying to eat the world alive? ( could he eat the world whole? no, no of course not, but —— ) the discrepancy is there, somewhere, it must be because the world cannot be something so amorphous and vile and yet —— the lines have become blurred, marred, massacred somewhere along the way, leaving behind a macabre mess soaking the hem of his school uniform. soaking up to the knees. higher and higher and higher and ——

exorcised / ingested. exorcised / ingested. EXORCISED / INGESTED. and it's never enough.

you've been spending a lot of time alone, lately, shouko had said to him once or twice or maybe even thrice, again and again and AGAIN : an undercurrent of concern in her voice, a tilt to her head, a slight pinch to her mouth, and he ( ... ) HE'S SO —— FUCKING ——

did you know infinity has gravity? or maybe it's that suguru knew @heartinhands instinctively, absolutely, by fleeting presence alone ; but then, didn't everyone? know the both of them? by presence alone? cursed energy pouring off of them in droves, in waves / the weight that satoru bears is SOUL CRUSHINGLY IMMENSE, it always had been, and suguru has always —— has always ——

❝ you're back, ❞ when was the last time he had seen him, face to face? ages, it felt like. long enough that the world was eating him alive, long enough that he had glutted himself on a psuedo—eternity and disgorged it and did it again and again and AGAIN / did you know curses have a taste? YOU'RE BACK feels both vast and small the the mere sight of satoru caused something dislodged in his chest to writhe ; had it always done that? yes, of course. in a way. not unlike a curse thrashing in his body.

❝ it went well? ❞ phrased a question but not : of course it had gone well. the world devours / satoru is the strongest / suguru is —— suguru looks into infinity and finds himself / WANTING.

( you've been spending a lot of time alone, lately. )

[hauntedurge]

@heartinhands : ❛ promise me? ❜ ( delight + medraut ) / accepting.

Sometimes, being with Medraut is hard. They're too alike, Delight thinks, in the ways that make it challenging not to look at one another and see the parts of yourself that chafe and sting. But this? This is easy.

Delight — likes who they are, most days. Doesn't hate it, nearly all. There are plenty of mistakes at their back and a great deal of pain always stinging at the soft center of their chest, but they've built up someone they can admire from the wreckage. And their savings are numerous enough to outweigh, or, at lease, to balance the lives lost because of a child's idiotic mistake.

There's an easy script, when someone asks the hero to promise. Promise you'll protect me? Promise you'll stay until I sleep? Promise you'll kill the man who killed my father? And the answer, even if it is scripted, is never a lie. For all that Medraut is hard, Delight does, badly, want to save her. To wrench her from the pain that makes her so like them. And they want to promise, too.

I'll be here as long as you all need me, Delight had said.

Delight smiles, all - hero and all - truth, no lie to the heroism, it's not a mask. It keeps them safe, keeps them separate, keeps the darkness out — but it isn't a deception.

"'Course I promise. Here — me an' the kids I grew up used to always do this. We'll link our pinkies together, and that means the promise is for real."

[sunhalf]

@heartinhands : ❛  i care about you, and i want to help you ... if you let me.  ❜ (not albedo who i am tentatively naming angstrom for not lumine )

Their name means 'Light.'

They'd looked it up, not terribly long after they woke up. It means light. Their name is Light. Light has a great deal of associations, too — others tend to associate it with warmth, safety, a kind of saving. Niamh's mind floods with something sterile instead, cold and swallowing.

Angstrom means something else. It's a measurement, one hundred - millionth of a centimeter, a space so small that is barely exists. That doesn't exist in any way that matters. Light, sterile and swallowing. Angstrom, so miniscule it doesn't exist. Does he envy her? Does she envy him?

"Isn't light supposed....save other people?" She asks, voice soft and hazy, a barely - there whisper. There's so much empty in Niamh, so much missing, aching for flight / for a long - dead half / for the godhood so close he can still taste it against his throat each time he swallows. There is so much empty in Niamh, with their memories so disordered — with their heart so disordered — and they are named Light, even if they can't remember, really, how long they've been Light. Would saving fill the empty? Would it make it worse?

Light swallows — Light saves — Light is God ———

And God is dead. So — ?

Their head tilts, blank expression giving way to something cavernous. The scar behind their bangs stings, and Angstrom is looking at them with that patient, empty, meaningless smile. Angstrom, so miniscule it doesn't exist, wants to save the devouring, empty Light. Light wants to tear her skin off, and doesn't. Light bleeds gold, but doesn't. Niamh just — breathes?

"Shouldn't I be — helping you?"

[badnikbreaker]

@spirestar & @heartinhands / varric & vergil & vsonic!

"Y'know, it kinda seems like yer thing about strength —" The quip's started at the end of a spindash and continues once the spindash is just barely deflected and Sonic bounces back, grin widening once he lands, "— means you neglected speed!"

Man, it's been a while since he got to go toe - to - toe with a new baddie — lotsa repeats in the roster lately! It's proving to be a lotta fun! He grins at their spectator, gesturing at the emo he's fighitng as if to say 'get a load'a this guy!' and maybe showing off a little, who's to say.

"Cool sword, but it ain't much good if y'can't hit me!"

[soulscrying]

@heartinhands: ❛ Hello, stranger danger. ❜

mello practically leaps a mile into the air. it isn’t in character for him to startle easily, yet given the circumstances, it would have actually been more surprising if he didn’t.

after all, he could barely remember the last time he heard a voice that wasn’t his inner monologue.

a sharp pain shoots through mello’s hand the instant he recomposes himself – because of fucking course it did. he studies the gash slathered across his palm before refocusing on the smears of blood splayed atop some of the generator’s loose gears.

wait. not only is he a coward, but now, he’s clumsy, too? suddenly, losing a fifth consecutive game of chess to near didn’t sound so bad in comparison.

after lamenting yet another ego death (and more importantly, the lack of bandages on his person), mello’s gaze settles on the final subject requiring his attention: some uniform-clad pretty boy sporting the most basic cut-and-color hair combo he’d ever seen.

“fuck off with your ‘greetings and salutations’,” mello hisses. “cut this –“ he gestures to a fistful of frayed wires hanging out of the generator’s inlet box. “– or i’ll cut you.”

[esperhood]

@heartinhands : “  i can tell something’s bothering you.  ” ( idk junpei for yuuhime thats the not 999 one right )

She looks at him blankly for a long moment. Then, "I've been told I have a 'resting sad wet cat face.' I just look like this."

[lovesicklobotomy]

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[spirestar]

An art. That's certainly a way of putting it and Battler can't say he disagrees. It almost strikes him then how strange it is that their game -- one made by Beatrice, one he's forced to play, one with sacrificed pieces and taunting and strategy that he's nearly too slow to keep up with -- takes the form of a game he enjoys so greatly. If Beatrice really was a witch, she was trapped on his grandfather's island for a thousand years, like she says; Is it possible they just share a favorite game? He can't help wondering that as she laughs at him. Battler has heard the way her giggles twist into cackles and chortles and all out evil howls, and he never considers them beyond the moment, but now it's almost as though he understands her just a little.

Somehow -- Enough to tell that she's not really happy. And to tell that he's probably on the wrong track like always, two steps behind her at every turn, even when it comes to his own requests. Still, he almost misses that Beato of earlier. He'd never admit it. He can't. But Battler wishes he could've played chess with her instead.

"Hey, hey! I've learned plenty! I've got a huge brain up here," he points up at his head as he chuckles brightly, "s'that mean I can't be polite?" He may be too soft on her in times like these, but hey, he's just a guy -- Just a while ago, for a small pocket of time, it really felt like they were a guy and a girl teasing each other, playing a game. And it's a silly sort of weakness to have, a silly kind of thing to let shift his view of her, but he knows soon enough that full lens of her witchy-ness will return and pummel his heart to pulp, but. Well. Battler is kind of stupid sometimes. And he lets his heart lead him way too often. "Sure didn't learn it from the old bastard, but mom always bugged my about being nicer when I win." And about how to treat women, too, but he's not going to say that. Even if he's thinking it just an itsy bitsy bit.

When does it start feeling like magic? Battler won't know the answer to that for a long time yet, or it'll feel long, another thousand years, another October 4th and 5th of 1986, but he does have love, even the smallest fragment of it. It's a sliver of gold in his heart, a crack filled-in where the muscle's been gouged open again and again. It's not the love Beatrice may want yet -- he'll have to die for that, it's a story not yet found in its bottle -- but as he bounces excitedly in his seat and grins at her broadly, smugly, it might shine just a little for that girl. Wherever she is. "Maybe eternal torture isn't so torturous with cookies, though, thought of that?"

Where did you learn to play like that? -- A thousand years / six years / studying the books I - WE - loved / stuck in the chrysalis of the homunculi's body / puffing on her pipe in the parlor... yes, that will do. Scratch that into the lore. "Do you really think an esteemed witch would avoid humans that much? Magic comes as easy to me as breathing now, of course I had to enliven my boring eternity by fully understanding some of your human tricks!" She rolls her pipe around between her fingers. "Yes...I, too, would call chess an art." Better than Battler looking at her. Seeing but not REALLY seeing -- a gaze with fondness but no love. When does it get easier? -- is what she really wants to ask the body she left behind -- when does it stop feeling like oil? when does it start feeling like magic?

Believe, Beato. Believe. -- OR THE CERTAINTY LAMBDADELTA PROMISED YOU CAN NEVER EXIST. so believe. hold that tiny seed. fate belongs to you and you alone now. you are the endless witch --

She loves that stupid grin of his, the way it twists up half of his face. "Really? No preference? My, you're easy to please, aren't you?" A triumphant giggle. "Well, that makes Ronove's job easy...you're too softhearted, immediately giving up the ground you lost to your enemy." The giggle grows wide-eyed, witch's sneer tossing up her expression into a shower of gold, "Haven't you learned anything over the course of this eternal torture, Baaaaaattlerrr?"

The witch can't exactly fault him for not noticing her disappointment. She is an illusion made to obscure the truth from him -- and yet riddles do not exist so they can stay unsolved. Otherwise why would anyone ever bother with them? It would be easier to say things outright. But witches don't exist in truth and neither does this love. "Hoh. Lemon shortbread it is, then."

[spirestar]

Magic is strange. Something that shouldn't exist but always has, that has always been a part of her but was rarely hers. Cam tries not to think too hard about it--The more she considers, the more she'll damage her own wish. A desire for knowledge and understanding can only survive for so long before it seeks the truth. The single one. And that truth could very well crush the world she's built. Perhaps that's why the Golden Witch has invited her to visit her board; Cam hardly has so many glorious titles or important functions as a witch of her stature, but Beatrice, known for her fickleness and strength of heart, is also recognized for her creativity.

Cam glares down at the board beneath them, her feet heavy on nonexistent solid ground. The teacup in her hand wafts tendrils of steam between the two of them. Hot coffee for her, though she's sure Beatrice is having her own black tea. Nodding toward one particular piece--the one who matches the witch's opponent, red hair bright in the murky darkness of the island's veil--she says, "You'd better let me help you with that." Her dark eyes are void-like in their depths of distaste. Abandoned / Forgotten. Cam has often wondered if she lacks empathy, but in this she is sure she doesn't. "Or am I here only to watch?" She looks inquisitively to Beatrice and finds that endless blue gaze on her. It would be more than enough to stagger her were she already a the witch's piece for this game. But she's yet to be claimed; Still only borrowed in name alone, nothing official. It only makes Cam more curious.

@heartinhands

[necrosin]

a corpse of a place / a ghost of a girl —— there is no certainty nor reason nor certain reason, she is simply here and present and cast in golden light that feels too warm against her skin, like sunlight filtering through paper-thin white curtains, like sunlight peaking through dusty window panes, as if she were fading —— away ——

the wall is high and not so high, after all, easily reachable yet so very far. the woods are safe, now, no nobodies to linger and lurk in its shadows. they are simply dark and cool and seemingly endless but a lighthearted schoolboy and his companions could wander through them / even the ghost-girl could traverse them well enough. there is no reason why she remains within ( or rather, atop ) the towering walls of twilight town except that —— except that ——

difficult to conceptualize. difficult to put to thought. difficult to perceive wholly and fully. this, or you?

she : who is nothing and shall become nothing and will always be ——

circular thoughts. tangential thoughts. there is that rotting roof and those creaking walls and she can imagine it with ease, how the third step always whined, how the doors could do nothing but shriek. that room / her sham of a room / pure white and covered and papered in shattered fragments that she had pieced together, bit by bit. that room, that place, where the pitiable non-hero ( but he had been, but he is, he's just —— ) sat before her and who she told, voice soft and carrying and trying to be gentle, that he was never supposed to exist.

unkind words / she had tried / but had she, truly? always, always she had been guiding him towards oblivion, towards a lack of existence separate from the lightened hero trapped in the dark / she had not hesitated for all that, to her, @heartinhands seemed like a falling star. ephemeral, entrancing, never meant to last, but deep inside there had been that quiet hope : that he would carry on, still.

that he would : appear, real and whole and individual, as if out of nowhere at all. as if she had pulled him from memories and made him real once more, as if by mere thought she could bring him forth, as if she had been hoping and lonely and WHEN HAD SHE NOT BEEN LONLEY, AFTER ALL?

it takes a moment to register. and then another. warmth around her shoulders, a steadiness near her / against her / a touch that makes her shoulders tighten for all of a moment / a presence that registers as NON-THREATENING with such immediacy that for a moment she finds herself confused with the instinct. as if pulled out of her memories, ❝ —— roxas, ❞ surprise lilts her tone. she feels somehow caught, something twisting in her chest, strange and ill-shapen and odd. she hadn't expected / hadn't known to foresee / but then : roxas loves twilight town, doesn't he?

she wonders what he's thinking about, to touch her so casually, to look over the towering walls of twilight town and over and over and over to that haunted place. haunted, still, because while the wraith no longer wandered those halls, there were still ghosts that lingered in every corner. every room. every last place they had touched.

for a moment, she doesn't know what to say. can't offer heartening words, eternally incapable of such a paradoxical thing. she wonders if roxas recalls what she does with such clarity. supposes that he does, surely / but he's too kind to her to hold it against her, isn't he? he's bright in her vision / everyone is / a falling star in the dead of night. ❝ i was thinking... ❞ she looks back to that barely visible roof and wonders over physicality and existence.

roxas existed, and it had been mournfully wondrous to see, and she —— had not, had NOT, had not in any sense of the word and he had been —— a falling star —— and NOW there is his arm and there is him and there is her / a ghost / and a house full of ghosts, weeping and screaming in sorrow.

a ghost of a place / a corpse of a girl.

❝ that... even though you weren't meant to exist, ❞ can a ghost learn kindness? is it still unkind, to repeat those words? WHY WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT... EVEN IF IT WAS TRUE? a star, a world, a meteor falling and burning. roxas, roxas, who looks at her with a face that is a mirror / isn't a mirror / who looks at her and is that something pensive, on his face?

everything would be easier, would everyone just hate her.

❝ ... i'm happy you exist, ❞ can something such as happiness exist within her? ( yes / no / certainly ... not : but hadn't it been happiness when he had come for her, when the hero had come for her? ) his arm is warm against her shoulders / and it's a wonder he can touch her / can reach her / that there's anything to touch at all, and he's so —— perhaps a falling star cannot encompass it all. perhaps it is more apt to say that he is simply a boy who wants to exist. WHO DOES EXIST.

and isn't that more profound than a falling star?

❝ i'm... happy to have met you. ❞

[ wrap ]  –  for the sender’s muse to casually wrap their arms around the receiver’s neck and lean on their shoulder from behind.

[hauntedurge]

@heartinhands : "My life has made a mess of me." ( i have no idea. angstrom and shadowheart now ) / accepting.

Her first thought is selfish — at least you have a life, which is to say a past. She lacks one, offered up to her loving God, and she is glad to serve Her in whatever way she may and she is grateful that her beloved Lady has seen fit to use her, to put her to work, but — but she misses the past that might have made her a person rather than a — well, what she is now, which is barely a shadow.

Her second thought is something else. She isn't one who often finds herself caring about the pain of others; she doesn't ever aim to cause it herself, and does not wish suffering upon any except those who her Goddess has directed her to battle. But she doesn't pretend to herself that she's kind. It's a sin, to love any but her Goddess, to be distracted from Her, and yet — an inescapable flaw, the way she sees suffering and so often hopes it can be soothed. She can only pray her Lady will be merciful.

"Your life's hardly over," she says airily, as if it doesn't matter. "If it hasn't served you so far, there's still a future where it might. And —" A beat. A sin. "I hardly you're think you're so broken."

[sunhalf]

@heartinhands liked! / v & aika! / in my mouth by black dresses.

It's flirtatious, the girl's voice as she leans forward, popping the sucker out of her mouth just for this, "I wanna put you in my mouth." The sucker goes right back, and there's an audible crack as her teeth bite down, hard on it. All that exits her lips this time is a small stick, a flash of purple crystal left on her tongue. "I wanna crush you in my jaws!"

[badnikbreaker]

@heartinhands : “you’re safe.” (sonic + amy) / accepting.

She is. She knows she is. She brushes the dirt from her dress and the blood from her lip, teeth gritting and not gritting when she turns to look at him. Hands curled to trembling fists when she turns to look at him. She's safe. She's not afraid, despite the shaking. She's safe, and she knows that, and she's not afraid, she's ——

—— I'm Frustrated, their mind settles on, trying for a word that doesn't make them feel stupid or like they're feeling too much for no reason like always.

He must take the wrong lesson from the stiffness of their shoulders because he says, again, "you're safe." Amy's teeth grit, now, even with him looking at them.

She's not afraid, but why would Sonic think otherwise? He had to rescue the helpless damsel again. It's been years since Eggman got the upper hand and could trap her or use her as bait. She's stronger, better, not deadweight that needs saving anymore.

She presses her lips together like that'll hide her molars as they grind together. Sonic saved her from Eggman, and she's safe. Her hands cross over her chest and she says, "I know," and wonders where her skill at hiding her feelings went, after the war ended and she didn't have to as much. "I'm not scared."

I'm frustrated. I'm annoyed. Their hands around their arms tighten. Their foot taps. I'm irritated. I'm disappointed. Sonic takes a step closer and they look away so he can't see their expression. I'M ANGRY.

"Thought I was past this," the heroine mutters, not sure which of them they're offering the explanation to. They're stronger, better, not deadweight that needs a hero to rescue them anymore. They're stronger, better, not the tag - along or a burden. They can't be a burden. They can't go back to being the burden.

They feel their arms bruising under their fingers. They want to summon their hammer and destroy something. One time doesn't prove anything. One time doesn't mean they're weak again. They feel an ache pounding behind their brow.

I'M SO ANGRY AT ME.

"Sorry, I — I'm fine. I just wish you didn't have to rescue me again." They don't know where they evenness of their voice is coming from. Certainly not their chest, alight with anger they can't express. "Sorry."