#I was such upsetti spaghetti

[shannonsketches]

Nonnie you're so nice to me I'm so glad you weren't in chat when I played BotW the first time

[bamsara]

trying to figure out if the continued nausea is related to intense stress and travel schedule or something simple like food poisoning or an infection

[frnkiebby]

Youre actually so fucking parasocial. Seriously, youre an adult. Get a fucking life instead of weirdly obsessing over a married man with children you fucking freak.

this has got to be the absolute funniest fucking ask i’ve gotten to date. like hands down.

Sweetie. to be parasocial. for me to be in a parasocial relationship with a celebrity. with frank. i’d have to actually be delusional enough to believe i’m in a relationship with him.

thankfully i’m not. i’d need a whole different therapist for that issue.

weirdly obsessed? nah. lusting after a married man with kids? absolutely.

ig ultimately it depends on your definition, but at least i don’t have cardboard cutouts or a body pillow of frank. now that’d be weird.~🎃

(have a frank as congratulations for feeling safe enough to go on anon and express your feelings)

[lost-in-wond3rland]

Jfc I forgot how fucking SAD this whole Hizashi/Shota/Shirakumo situation was ffs

[thepastneverforgets]

zava's greatest accomplishment.

[crimeronan]

well! as promised, there's a new princess AU fic. consider this a prequel of sorts -- it's set when luz is seven and hunter is nine. complete oneshot, 8k words long! in addition to various upsetting things about hunter and luz's relationship itself, this is ALSO the first time i've written belos interacting with hunter alone in this series + the first time i've fleshed out darius and hunter's relationship.

summary:

"Your sister missed a morning lesson with me," the Emperor says, lightly, without preamble. Sweat breaks out on the back of Hunter's neck. The Emperor smiles down at him. He does not look angry, but that doesn't mean Hunter can relax. Sometimes the Emperor doesn't look angry until he does. Sometimes the genial tone is a trap. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes– "Is she here, by any chance?" - When Hunter is nine years old, the princess of the Boiling Isles goes missing. He has to find her before it's too late.

[leofromsomewhere]

having a real "what's whizzer doing here" moment

[daenerys-targaryen]

if you'd told march 2023 leah that her whole dash would be upsetty spaghetti over the outcome of the 2024 nfl super bowl game she would have laughed at you

[hipstergecko]

My boy.

Look what they've done to my boy.

This feels bad. I hate this. My childhood weeps.

[ilikedirt-04672]

It was my cat's night to make dinner, I forgot. Now the food's cold.

[dollypopup]

just gonna say that Colin's exclusion from all things release date announcement (and the lack of pushback about it) is just another instance in a long line of actions that demonstrate that no one gives a fuck about his character. he is constantly sidelined, constantly denied scenes, constantly denied perspective, talked down on, denied characterization and complexity in writing, basically only ever existing as Penelope's prize. The show began this trend, foisted it to the fandom, but the fandom has exacerbated Colin's mistreatment as a character beyond even the show's lack of care toward him

EVERYONE has just. . idk, decided it's better for Colin to exist as Penelope's HEA reward for her shitty family / being ignored or some shit when he's supposed to be HALF THE FUCKING PAIRING. Where is HIS depth? HIS motives? HIS struggles and celebrations? Where are all the meta analysis of his character? The character study stories that don't just make his entire existence Penelope? Where are the stories where his family defends him, where he can demonstrate and forge strong bonds with people who love him? Where are the explorations of his past and motives?

Nowhere.

This fandom has proven time and time again he's secondary to us. Colin isn't a character, Colin is a punching bag. Or a projection of the guy who rejected us. Or an empty minded sexy lamp. Or a flat cardboard cutout for people to dump whatever they want on him. BUT HE'S MEANT TO BE A CHARACTER. A character with desires and experiences and connections that deserve the fucking spotlight for ONCE

when is someone other than Luke Newton (and like 5 of my fellow Colin peeps) going to give Colin the credit he deserves? like who is in his corner? when is he finally going to get to be a character? when will he finally get explored? when will he get the time to shine? no one seems to think it needs a priority

not the showrunners, not Shonda (who once said she didn't even think he was 'clever enough' for Penelope, fuck you very much for that one), not the Bton fandom, certainly not Polin, not anyone

forget the two parter and the date release and the wait or whatever. my favorite fucking character is being sidelined in his own season and no one gives a damn

[frnkiebby]

Youre not funny. You think youre all that dont you?? Youre actually so pathetic to be acting like a kid at your age, responding to my ask like im some joke to you?

I’m gonna be real fuckin’ honest with you babydoll.

If you wanted to voice your opinion on my blog/life/mental stability and be taken seriously, then you wouldn’t/shouldn’t have laced it with insults so as to degrade me.

Your ask is a joke. This ask is a joke.

Do I think that you’re a joke? That your existence, life, or opinion is a joke?

No. because I’m a kind human being who values other humans, their opinions, and their right to express them in a safe space that I’m more than happy to provide.

I respect people who voice their opinion intelligently and in such a way that shows they respect me as a human being. I respect people who can do that whether or not I share their opinion.

I don’t respect you. I value you because you’re a living breathing person, but with your first ask and especially with this ask, there is no part of me that respects you.

do better.~🎃

[jamiesfootball]

After careful consideration and a lot of angry tags, I think I have pinpointed for me where Ted Lasso, especially season three, fails to succeed all the way at the themes it explores.

The narrative uses the deconstruction of toxic masculinity to paint their characters as being stronger for having let go of their preconceived notions of acceptable behavior - but the narrative also never lets their characters be weak or fragile without having toxic masculinity to blame. And there are a lot of situations in this show where you would expect someone to go ‘hey man, are you okay? Are you doing alright? because that was a shit thing that happened. it’s okay if you’re not okay.’

And it never does.

There’s an undercurrent in how scenes play out that suggests that the male characters should be strong enough to deal with hand they’ve been dealt. The narrative suggests that they’re the ones who need corrected. They can act better, but they can not be treated better themselves as a result. The male characters are allowed to express themselves, but they are not allowed to ask for anything back from the situation.

Which is why you can have a fight with your assistant coach, but when he comes back to apologize you don’t articulate how it made you feel. You don’t tell your friend how he hurt your feelings. You just accept it and move on.

The Diamond Dogs give advice on how to handle external problems with  emotional roots. They never discuss how they feel internally on its own merit.

The closest we got to a male character just having a bad one and expressing it without a clear source of external conflict? Jamie in the boot room. And that was played for laughs.

Which is why you could be in a deep depression over losing your career of twenty years and part of your mobility, I guess. But also maybe that’s a problem of you not being able to let go, and maybe you should apologize for not moving on sooner? We should pity Roy for getting so stuck in his own shit all the time. Not because the man has lived an incredibly stressful and emotionally isolated life in a high pressure environment for so long he doesn’t have the tools to deal with it, but because the narrative would like us to know if he just stopped getting in his own way all the time, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Is your ex-wife seeing someone else, who happens to also be the person who was your marriage counselor? I don’t know man, relationships are hard. Don’t worry about how hard that must have shaken your trust in a profession that already made you feel skittish. Maybe you should stop obsessing over her and move on.

Your girlfriend can tell all your friends and coworkers how you’re too smothering. Yes, this is the ‘learn how to communicate better’ show, but that was on you, really. Good on you for apologizing for smothering her.

The women may have worrying relationships with people who love bomb them or turn out to be controlling, but Jane and Beard are just a bit weird. Don’t worry about it, Higgins.

You can take accountability for your actions, but if it was your email who was hacked - who cares? You apologized, and everyone is very proud of you. We won’t ever bring up how incredibly mortifying that must have been for you to realize, because something more mortifying happened to someone else.

You can show your emotions, but not the angry ones, not the bad ones - those you should get a hold on, no matter how warranted they are. The stronger you are, the more divorced from toxic masculinity you are, the less those things should matter.

Struggling with your abusive dad and how his relationship with you has literally scared you so badly that you keep looking over your shoulder, afraid he’ll be there? That is clearly the anger talking. This is definitely not a situation that calls for your pseudo-father figure to put his hand on your shoulder, look you in the eye, and say, “i’m really sorry to hear that, son, but you know we got your back. Ain’t nothing bad gonna happen to you while we’re here.” 

No no, this is a you problem and you can correct it by forgiving that man who hurt you. In fact, you thank him for motivating you. It was the anger that got you this far. It wasn’t getting up at 4am every morning for extra training. It wasn’t your mentor, the one invested all his time in helping you. It wasn’t the coach who gave you a second chance when you blew your whole life up to get away from that man. It wasn’t your own drive and passion and love for the sport that pushed you towards succeeding in a career you only had a one-in-a-million chance of ever getting. No, it was the anger that carried you. You should let that go. And hey - what if hypothetically speaking, he might try to be better too one day? You can’t hold it against him. You should let that go too.

Breakdowns and displays of crying are fine, but expecting people to care or show concern afterwards? The narrative doesn’t know her. The narrative will not validate that. We don’t see what happened after Wembley. We don’t see what happened when Isaac came back to the locker room after blowing up. What the show will validate, however, is moving on. Just be a goldfish, or forgive and forget. 

And finally-

Embrace your feelings, but not too hard - you can’t be trusted with them, actually.

Can you imagine that we actually got a scene of Roy telling Jamie that he was worried if either of them pursued Keeley it might ruin their friendship? Can you imagine? From the beginning they have butted heads. From the beginning, Roy has struggled to actually articulate his feelings, especially to the people they involve. And here is Roy doing exactly what the narrative has been teaching him to do - he voiced a feeling that was bothering him to the person who was involved in the problem. Unprompted. He did that on his own. After three seasons of being told that is what he should do when he has a problem, that should have been the moment of narrative reward. That would have been the audience’s release of tension: they’re still at odds, they’re still the same bull-headed people they’ve always been, but they’ve learned to talk about it. No matter what happens next, at least, they’ve gotten this far.

Instead the narrative rewarded him, and us, by having them fight it out in a back alley. Because they’re idiots, and they can’t be trusted to handle their feelings without someone else in the narrative (Keeley) setting them straight.

Yes, people backslide in real life all the time. But when the narrative backslides at the very end of the story - that’s just nihilism. That’s what this felt like - all that progress and promise that you can be better, and two of the people who struggled the most tripped at the finish line. The audience don’t even get to see them pick back up. I mean they’re fine now, I guess. They went for kebabs. I have to assume it worked out. I guess after that they found a way to be happy, but I would have preferred to see them find a way to be happy by way of their own actions. Not in a fanfic. Not by way of imagining how it went afterwards. Not by what’s implied in a montage. By the story actually showing me they could get there on their own.

And the worst part about all of this is that when the show gets it right? It fucking sings. The team coming together to repair Ola’s? That sings. Ted’s ‘ain’t nobody in this room alone’ speech? Wonderful. Trent telling Colin that ‘some people need time to adjust; it’s not fair, but they do’? So delicately wielded, so painful. Beard’s speech to Nate about stealing a loaf of meth? Chef’s kiss. Ted forgiving Rebecca when he learns why she brought him to coach Richmond? The tears in his eyes when he tells her ‘divorce is hard’?

The hug at Wembley.

That’s what I wanted, from start to finale. When the show knew how to wield its empathy, it wielded it like a knife, cutting into the deepest parts of your heart.

Which is why when it does mess up, it hurts so much worse. Because by season three, the show has sunk so far into the deconstruction of things that it’s forgotten that what it fixed were not the only problems those characters ever faced. The show zoomed in too close on the themes. It forgot that at its roots, the its biggest strength has been its empathy. And that to me is where the show failed.

[pizzarink]

Bad quality animation wip? Sure why not. I’ve got nothing to post on here anyways.

shrivels up into a raisin just like this blog /hj

[crownedinmarigolds]

Joaquin and Raymond - our Hunters!

Joaquin Hidalgo - former Giovanni ghoul and "failure" firstborn son to necromancer Vincento Hidalgo and eldest brother of the necromantic prodigy, Noa Hidalgo. As a teenager, he had witnessed the death of his father at the hands of armed gunman, only to see him walk through the door some days later - cold and changed, the same but utterly different. Crueler. Joaquin knew this creature was not really his father, and his refusal to truly accept this change got him beaten and bruised by the one person he was supposed to trust in completely. Now a full grown man that has escaped the clutches of the Family, he is using his extensive knowledge of all things vampires and spirits to spitefully fight Supernatural creatures of the night with no mercy. Refusing to bow down against their supremacy over humans.

Raymond Mulder - former Chicago PD, the most normal of normies and black coffee addict, suddenly thrusted into the world of Kindred and their politics after the "suicide" of his lieutenant upon the discovery of vampires within the local government. Not wanting to be a part of this, he attempted to flee with his at the time girlfriend back to her parents in another state, only to find that she was a Kinfolk with a toxic ex-partner who hurt Raymond even further. Scarred both psychologically and physically from dealing with the Supernatural and finding some ACTUAL power bore from that, Ray finally is accepting his fate of being a protector of humanity, unable to ignore the call to action any further.

[sabotsen]

In This Moment

Pairing: ‘Noan’ x (gn!) ‘Commandant’/Reader

Notes: Single quotes used to refer to the originals bc I didn’t want to fill the entire fic with quotations. Cross posted to ao3; Word count 3.3k

Inspired by: Azure_mei02’s comic on twitter

Warnings: Major Ch26 spoilers! Also major (canon) character death, mild blood & (brief) implied gore

You find him first. 

Or maybe he is the one to find you — to pull you from the muck and the red, to wrap himself a blanket around your battered form and shield your ears from the cacophony. 

It’s hard to say, harder still to focus when ‘Mother’ still claws at the back of your mind. Her presence lingers at the base of your skull, carving out a place for herself so she may strip away what cannot — will not — be accepted. 

He is here, though, and in this moment that is all that matters. 

You feel him curved around you, his presence discernible only by absence — of yourself, of ‘Mother’ and her children. An extension, both a part of yet separate from yourself — near but not close enough to blur the edge of him and you into a stitched mess of blood and regrets. He is simply there, curved carefully around you like a gargoyle over the arched entrance of a church — reverent, forlorn. 

You feel him before you see him. The pressure of his arm draped over the curve of your hip, the gentle touch of his fingers against your back. The faint brush of his hair against the crown of your head as he bows his near you. The momentary press of his chest against yours when he pulls you close, large hands firm on your hips as he shifts the two of you up, propping you just enough to keep your head and chest above the red waters before he peels himself away like bloodied gauze from a weeping wound.

It takes longer than it should to open your eyes — or maybe it takes just long enough. It’s difficult to think when dreams bleed into one another, memories and pasts that never could have been seeping into your mind like a toxin as ‘Mother’ swaddles you in an embrace too suffocating to be called loving. When you open your eyes, the world is much too blurry for you to immediately discern anything but the black that curls and brushes against your forehead. Soft. It is only as your vision shifts and swims, shuddering into proper shapes, that the memories bubble to the surface.

Hair. ‘His’ hair.

‘Your’ hands combing through dark strands, plucking bits of confetti as Simeon fretted and plucked the mess hanging off your shoulders and back — his constant apologies and worries drowning out ‘your’ soft chuckle. ‘Your’ hands tucking ‘his’ bangs away from ‘his’ eyes whenever ‘he’ bowed ‘his’ head to avoid a question. ‘Your’ hands ruffling ‘his’ hair when ‘he’ buried ‘his’ head in ‘his’ arms on the cafe counter, exasperated by ‘your’ antics. 

Instinctively, your fingers twitch — itching to reach up and relive those moments. 

But those memories are not ‘yours’ and the man before you is not ‘him’. 

Close. Almost. 

But not quite. Not enough — and you two are left here, beneath the sea to rot. 

That single thought is enough of a distraction for ‘Mother’ to sink her claws into you once more. The world shifts and shudders, bleeds and weeps, as it changes. For a moment — or maybe even longer — you do not feel him curled beside you. 

Instead, you feel ‘Mother’ as she holds your hand and guides you through black waters. Her voice is distant, despite how close she stands, and it resounds with every voice — feminine, masculine, young, old — and yet none at all. Her hand digs into your wrist, tightening like a hunter’s trap upon the fragile bones as your blood slips between her fingers and drips into the waters below. It doesn’t matter how much you dig your heels into the muddy banks or claw at her hand upon your wrist to break free; she leads you on out to sea. The black water rises from your shins to your thighs and then up to your waist. Still she pulls you along, her voice garbled yet comforting — strange yet familiar. Even as the water rises to your chest and your hands are hidden beneath the waters, she pulls you forward. 

A wave crests, gaping like an ill-begotten beast’s maw. 

It swallows her. 

It swallows you. 

All you can feel is the crushing weight of something other — 

It burns away at your skin, burrows into your bones, and buzzes like a hornet’s nest in your ears. The pressure steals your breath away and you drown in those black waters, far from ‘Mother’ — farther still from any friend or help. Emotions and memories jumble together, digging knives into the back of your skull and you can’t help but splinter apart. It all floods in — the relenting pressure of a waterfall squeezing into the fragile crack of a dam, gradually and painfully clawing a larger opening. Hopes, dreams, first loves, last regrets, bitter nostalgia, nursed grudges — people you never were and could never be press against the very fabric that makes you and rip at the seams to see if they might fit in your place. Or you in theirs. 

It’s wrong. 

But their cries echo in the blackness and scream even louder in your mind. They are all you hear without ‘Mother’ to guide you and you are the only one they see. To live again. To die again. Birth and rebirth. Hope and despair. The cycle of ouroboros. 

It’s all you can do to cling to the shreds of yourself as they pour themselves into you. 

You feel it suddenly, amidst the noise and chaos — between the agony of your flesh peeling away and forming again, too much and too small all at once. Where all the ‘children’ and the remnants of the ‘materials’ clamor and claw at every molecule of your being, there lingers something at the very far edge of perception. Separate, connected only by the thinnest of strands to a place the ‘children’ have yet to reach. Desperately, with the agony of a sailor grasping at the lighthouse’s shadow, you cling to that strand — that feeling — and trace it. A piano wire you wind around your fingers and wrist, you pull yourself away from the ‘children’ clawing at you, screaming for you, begging for you. 

It is only when the black waters recede, peeling away from your flesh like tar — thick and molten — that you feel it. A faint prickle of emotion — too jumbled and knotted to be your own — and a buzz just beneath the skin that you could not notice when surrounded by others. But it’s there, familiar and gentle in the measured distance it keeps.  The more you focus on it and trace its source, the quieter the ‘children’ become. 

So you follow it, back to the source — a moth trembling towards the warmth of the fire. 

And when you open your eyes again, you feel his hand on your waist and his other gently cupping the back of your head to his shoulder. He’s moving you again. Red water laps at your chest and an odd numbing sensation gnaws away at your lower extremities. Carefully, his hand at the back of your head falls away, his arm serving as a cushion. A small part of you is grateful for his kindness, because if you spare enough thought to focus, you can feel what it is the two of you lay upon. 

There’s a warmth to it — clammy and ill. 

There’s a pulse to it — unsteady and too quick. 

There’s a texture to it — soft yet firm, rough in the way of something stretched too tight. 

You don’t have the strength or time left to worry if it is a piece of ‘Mother,’ one of her children, or the unused remains of people who never escaped this cradle at the bottom of the sea. In the end, it doesn’t matter. When the red tide rises far enough — when ‘Mother’ claws her way deep enough into your mind — none of it will matter anymore. 

Instead you focus on this moment — fragile though it is. 

You still feel it, that gentle string you’ve wrapped around your soul as a shield and comfort. It leads right where you knew it would — the only place it could. 

It is an effort to keep your eyes open, especially as the voice of ‘Mother’ echoes in your ears — muffled like a whale song underwater. But you do, you have to. Because his eye is on you, crimson and tired. Shadows curve beneath his left eye, and the bandages that cover his right are stained crimson — perhaps by the red tide, or perhaps by blood. Knowing ‘his’ ill luck, it is probably both. There’s a familiarity to his expression now as he watches you, his gaze seeing through you more than anything else. While there are subtle differences between them — Noan and ‘Noan’ — right there, like an ingrained habit, is the barely noticeable furrow in his brow on his otherwise carefully neutral expression. 

Weary though it is, the smile the spreads that across your lips is soft and delicate. Warmth blooms in your chest at the sight. It’s such a small thing, but it’s there. It’s there and it’s still him. And you’re still you. Despite it all. Because of it all. 

A weight lingers in your limbs, it takes more energy than it should to recognize your arm as your own as you pull it from the red tide. There’s a numbness that you can’t shake in your fingertips, a sensation that the limb is not entirely your own even if it still appears as such. But slowly, just shy of clumsy from the pain that still gnaws on your nerves, your hand lands on his bicep. A gentle tap. 

“You’re thinking too loud,” your voice is a small thing, laced with a chuckle and as fragile as a dandelion. 

But he hears you all the same and you feel his arms around you tense, bewilderment bleeding through his mask as he blinks at you. That expression, too, is so achingly familiar.

Even without a beacon connection, the red tide and ‘Mother’ both are erasing what little remains separating you from him. 

You’d rather him pour himself into you than all the nameless, faceless strangers who have long since lost themselves in the red waters. So you gently and slowly wind that string around yourself and feel the subtle shift of his emotions. He feels safe, familiar — foreign only in the way a companion’s reflection is after a long lapse of time. 

Your hand curls up over his shoulder as you try to shift closer — a comrade, a friend, a lover curling close to share a secret. There is hardly space between you to begin with, and you have so little strength left. But still you seek that comforting closeness — because it’s him. Because it’s you. Because in this moment, it is all that remains in the cradle. 

Noan is quiet as you settle once more, your face tilted up to catch his gaze. It’s still there, that furrow in his brow, but now a frown hangs upon his lips. Confusion still paints his features, and while his attention is focused solely on you, there is something just beneath the surface pulling at his thoughts. You feel it through the thin thread connecting you like a trembling vibration — subtle noise easily overlooked. 

“What are you thinking about?” 

For a moment, he does not answer you, but you know ‘him’ well enough to know the way he presses his lips into a tight line when he chews over his words before speaking. Careful, ‘he’ is always so careful with the words he chooses. If only there was more time, if only things had played out differently — perhaps you could sit in quiet company with him just like this and learn where ‘he’ ends and this man begins. 

Touch, gentle and nearly missed due to the numbness that has set in, his hand that had idly rested near your hip glides over your side and settles upon your back, just beneath where the red tide rises. Only when the lazy ripples in the water vanish does his lips part and break the silence. “You.” 

Oh.

A feeling flutters in your chest, warm and comforting — light and freeing, the flutter of a butterfly in the summer. 

But still you feel that emotion from him, knotted and wounded, bleeding through your connection. 

Noan bows his head towards, you his voice dropping as that knotted feeling within him seems to bristle and shudder, writhing like a dying beast. “I’m here because I made the wrong choice. But you…” 

A pause, only as brief as a heartbeat, but you see the emotion that flickers across his face — the way shadows collapse in the crimson of his eye and something almost akin to grief shimmers like a comet. His arm cushioning your head shifts and you feel the ghost of his touch as his fingers hover just shy of brushing your hair. 

“You of all people shouldn’t be here.” 

Oh…

Of course. He would worry about that, despite everything — because of everything — wouldn’t he? Even here, at the bottom of the sea, in the depths of hell even the devil forgot about, he worried for you. The measured distance, the bandages, the way he bit his lips when you stumbled from pain and blood loss and struggled to stand. He has always been like this. 

“Noan.”

His name is warmth on your lips. As gentle as April showers upon flower petals and as open as the dandelion seeds dancing in the wind. 

The smile that comes to you is genuine and effortless, the only brightness in a sea of crimson and loss. Your hand, which had curled over his shoulder, glides over it. No pain blossoms in the wake of your touch, though it is only by tracing the shape of him can you even move your hand despite the trembling and numbness. Over his shoulder and along the tattered folds of his scarf — you really wish you could have gifted him a new one, a warm one that smelled of flowers and springtime — your fingers finally find their home cradling his cheek. Gently, kindly, your thumb brushes against his skin, just beneath his crimson eye — wiping away the tears he never allowed himself to shed. 

“Was the last choice you made a wrong one?” 

A light flickers in the depths of his crimson eye, blooming to life like countless fireflies in the night. You catch sight of his lips trembling before he bows his head and presses it against your shoulder, his arms pulling you close against him and erasing the crimson space between. 

Your laughter fills the cradle, your hand that was on his cheek now lightly ruffling his hair, mindful of the bandages. The sensation feels like you remember — yet it feels entirely new, because it’s him, because it’s you. 

It would have been enough to remain like that, curved into the broken pieces of each other like mismatched puzzle pieces fitting together. But ‘Mother’ still calls at the edge of your hearing, still claws at the base of your skull. She pulls at you like a string of yarn, unraveling you bit by bit. If she pulls you under again, you fear you won’t have the strength — or time — to resurface, to see him again. 

Just a little longer. Just like this. 

If only, if only, if only… 

It takes more effort than it should to force sound past your lips, to form the shape of his name upon your tongue past the taste of blood that settles in. 

“Noan?”

He does not speak, but you feel his arms around you tighten. Clinging, desperate almost. 

Idly, you brush your cheek against his head, an unspoken request for his attention. When he does not move, you swallow past the building taste of copper in your mouth. A prickling sensation is needling through the numbness where the red tide has swallowed you and it takes a breath to realize what it is. Pain. It’s pain — twisting and winding and shredding through portions of your body you had given up to ‘Mother’. 

You feel her peeling away a piece of you — memories, hopes, emotions, thoughts — it’s hard to say what it was she took. You only know it from the void left in her wake. 

You swallow around the blood in your mouth and try again to speak and it is not merely to gain his attention that your head tilts to lean against his. “I don’t know much about magical girls…”

There’s a tremble you fight to keep out of your voice, but by the tension that coils in his arms and shoulders, he hears it. “Can you tell me a few stories?” 

A sound breaks upon his lips.

It sounds like a laugh.

It sounds like a sob. 

He tilts his head just a fraction, his breath ghosting over your neck. “Now?” 

“Yeah.” There’s a wetness to your breath that you can’t hide, and although he can’t see it with his head pressed to your shoulder, you smile. “I like the sound of your voice. It’s comforting.” 

He must hear your unspoken preference, though you do not know if he hears her as you do — feels her tearing and prying away pieces so that she may fit. If you could choose a sound to be the last one to echo in the cradle, it should be his. His voice, his stories. 

The sound of hopeful spring. 

The sound of fireflies gathering. 

Noan pulls you closer, nuzzling against the curve of your neck and shoulder. Although it is just a graze, a passing brush, you could swear you feel the thin line his lips are pressed into. 

Ah, you think, he’s biting his lips again… 

An ache blooms in your heart, a longing to run your fingers through his hair. But the pain has bled through your numbness entirely, and your arms no longer respond to your whims. You can feel ‘Mother’ burrowing deeper in your mind, peeling away memories you recall only for a glimpse before they slip between your fingers like blood — the stain of their absence the only proof they were there at all. 

There’s a brush, a faint sensation and you almost think you feel him slide his legs against yours — but the red tide has long since crawled up to your chest as you lie in the muck and grime. What lay beneath the waters is not your own anymore, but even so you’d like to think he did curl himself even closer — a shield, a comfort, a sunflower turning to its companion to entwine roots and pray in the darkest hours. 

He is closer, that is all you know, and when he speaks, you feel the soft rumble of his chest against yours and the warm brush of his breath against your neck. His voice is steady and even, a soothing note wrapping around you like a cloak. 

Your eyes close to the sound. Darkness swallows you, but it is comforting this time — the black shelter of a shield in the shape of the man curved against you. 

Noan speaks of normal origins. Of a home nestled in a bustling city. Of an everyday family and an everyday life. Of common worries like school and friends. 

He speaks of the dream you’ve been fighting ‘your’ whole life for. 

Blood is all you can taste. It slips past the seal of your lips and trickles like tears down your chin. 

He speaks of magical origins. Of fated destinies and legendary weapons. Of powerful allies and friendships forged through battle. Of prophecies and heroes. 

He speaks of hope that paves a path through the darkest of times and saves the world. 

He is all you can hear, his voice the single firefly in the blackness. 

And as ‘Mother’ reaches out, her claws finally sink into the deepest part of you —

Against the delicate skin of your neck — trembling lips pressed against a slowing pulse — Noan whispers three words…

They are the last you hear, and the light of that single firefly shudders alone for a lonely heartbeat before it, too, vanishes beneath the waters.