#Weird Words And Effigies

[wyrdwordsandeffigieshaunt]

Thank You For Coming - The Anatomy Of A Date Gone Wrong

I didn’t think I’d return to Tinder, but living in a remote village and being quite the recluse, meeting men offline isn’t easy. I’ve been single since breaking up with my ex in August 2022 and have been feeling starved of touch. I’ve been hungering for hugs, kisses and sex, hand-holding, hair stroking and shoulder rubbing.  So I paid my way (fun fact: did you know the older you get, the more…

[wyrdwordsandeffigies]

Thank You For Coming - The Anatomy Of A Date Gone Wrong

I didn’t think I’d return to Tinder, but living in a remote village and being quite the recluse, meeting men offline isn’t easy. I’ve been single since breaking up with my ex in August 2022 and have been feeling starved of touch. I’ve been hungering for hugs, kisses and sex, hand-holding, hair stroking and shoulder rubbing.  So I paid my way (fun fact: did you know the older you get, the more…

[the-troll-book-of-mormon]

@davekatweek day 1: plush!

in which dave does not want anything remotely puppet-like to watch the proceedings

(+ my rushed attempt at dialogue below)

DAVE: hey karkat sorry to totally crush your wildest selfcest dreams here but do you think maybe we could put that cool guy away before we go any further here

KARKAT: WHAT?

DAVE: your squishy dude over there with the sideways mohawk

DAVE: lil kat

KARKAT: ARE YOU REFERRING TO MY CUSHION EFFIGY?

DAVE: ok theres absolutely no way thats actually the troll word for plushies but ill let it slide without completely derailing the conversation this time

DAVE: yes that guy

DAVE: could we maybe do this without him watching

DAVE: idk something about the way hes been staring at me with those big yellow depression eyes is just killin my vibe

KARKAT: WOW DAVE, REALLY GLAD THAT AFTER ALL THIS TIME YOU FINALLY FOUND IT WITHIN THE ECHOING CAVERNS OF YOUR HOLLOW PUMP BISCUIT TO TELL ME THAT MY "DEPRESSION EYES" ALLEGEDLY "KILL YOUR VIBE".

KARKAT: ANY OTHER COMPLAINTS YOU WANT TO GET OFF YOUR NUB WHILE YOU'RE ALREADY SCUTTLING YOUR EFFRONTERY GASH?

DAVE: dude what

DAVE: thats totally different

DAVE: i love your depression eyes you know i love your depression eyes

KARKAT: I DON'T KNOW, DAVE, IS THIS A THING THAT I KNOW?

KARKAT: YOU DON'T THINK THERE COULD BE ANYTHING CONFUSING ABOUT THE FACT THAT YOU ARE CLAIMING TO "LOVE" AN ANATOMICAL FEATURE OF MINE THAT YOU SIMULTANEOUSLY FIND SO DISGUSTING THAT YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY BRING YOURSELF TO ENGAGE IN CONCUPISCENT ACTIVITIES IN ITS PRESENCE?

KARKAT: ONCE AGAIN I AM COMPLETELY MYSTIFIED BY THE BOUNDLESS GENIUS OF YOUR ATROPHYING SPONGE. HOW COULD I EVER HOPE TO KEEP UP?

DAVE: holy shit dude i cannot believe this is actually something youre stuck on

DAVE: this is a real unfortunate time to be getting into this but maybe its because your depression eyes are attached to the real life body of my sexy as fuck boyfriend and i can look at them and not get the weird fucking heebie jeebies about being watched or secretly filmed

KARKAT: OH.

DAVE: i mean look hes cute and all and on the one hand its genuinely hilarious that in a way were fulfilling plush karkats voyeuristic fantasies that he inherited from you

KARKAT: HEY!

DAVE: but on the other its kinda jarring that every time i glance up and see his weird little fabric face im getting flashbanged by my kid selfs fucked up programming and for a split second its like im seeing something completely different

DAVE: so yeah nothing wrong with his depression eyes specifically its just that theyre eyes and theyre not real and somehow that makes it way more real

DAVE: like maybe someone somehow snuck a webcam in there just now when i wasnt looking

DAVE: which doesnt actually make sense because first of all why

DAVE: and second of all im always keeping my eye out for that sort of thing anyway so i would definitely notice before we got this far

DAVE: but all this dumb shit just makes it kinda hard to focus on the actual depression bedroom eyes right in front of my face

DAVE: not to mention the rest of this effigy im tryin to get my ganderbulbs and prongs all over

KARKAT: OKAY I GET IT, STOP TRYING TO DISTRACT ME FROM THE FEELINGS JAM BY APPROPRIATING TROLL VERNACULAR.

KARKAT: I'LL PUT HIM IN THE OTHER ROOM.

...

i had more of the scene i could write, but it was getting long and im already late for day 1! maybe one day i'll actually write out a scene and post it on ao3

[stardustedknuckles]

There was a woman sat on the curb with a typewriter when I left taco bell, with a sign taped to her folding table advertising personal poems written for you on the spot. And you know... Sometimes you have to let people surprise you. I stopped, in my Dyke shirt with my caduceus clay book in one hand, and I told her I've never seen a poem about asexuality that wasn't sad.

We chatted for a good fifteen minutes, in which she - self describing as hypersexual - asked me more about my experience. She had friends who were on the ace spectrum, which was a relief on my part to not start from zero, and I just told her what I could. About growing up with friends who would stop talking to me once they got partners and tell me I would understand one day, about how it feels a little like being in a musical but never having heard the words everyone else knows or learned the steps to the dance they're all doing in unison. We laughed together at the way I'm mystified by story plots that revolve around bad decisions made due to being just that horny, a situation she was intimately familiar with and having a 43-year life full of those stories.

At the end she asked if I happened to have a title in mind and at first there was nothing. I hate titles. I tend to default to song lyrics for ao3. But as soon as she asked, I remembered standing in the cafeteria in eighth grade and being annoyed that all the Greek gods of love were of that kind of love. I remember wondering if there was a god/dess of friendship, and I remember the closest I found was Philotes: goddess of friendship, affection, and sex. In eighth grade I took the last one with a kind of "that's close enough I guess" attitude, but at 30 I think it's perfect actually. Lack of attraction has nothing to do with what feels good. There's nothing out of place about it to me these days.

I hadn't thought about that in years, no idea why it came to mind except I was also thinking of eighth grade me when I talked about my friends fucking off one by one to be with their partners. She wrote down the spelling, thanked me warmly for the talk, and returned to her typewriter.

I spent the next half an hour with a delightful Dyke who gave me a business card, on which her title was printed - no joke - "Lesbian Mayor of (neighborhood)." She was my parents' age and when she remarked with the utmost sincerity and approval that "you're kind of a weird big bang theory" I choked down the feeling of being directly assaulted and said hey, my dad watches that.

At some point Lisa finished her work on her typewriter. When I arrived it was fully light out, but by then it was getting dark. She stood in front of the bench where I was, fumbled on the phone light, and read to me what she had typed. And damn if the first two sentences didn't take me right the fuck out immediately. "I thought in middle school that if I was ever going to write a poem it would be an ode to Philotes," I had told her, a memory that comes with the affectionate sort of cringe reserved for your twelve year old self, earnest as they still were. And the same feeling came over me as she read the poem out to me - but it wasn't cringe I felt. It was the feeling that I had started something in 2005 that was only taking real shape nearly 20 years later.

I don't know if it's a "good" poem. That was never my strength. But it was written for me and for me, and the opening line "build me an effigy that transcends flesh" knocked the breath out of me immediately. I have the paper here beside me on the couch, and it feels like the kind of thing that goes in a treasure box, or maybe a frame.

I also had to remind her to give me her zelle so I could pay her - clearly also affected, she had turned to start on the next poem (a raunchy sex limerick as requested by a guy in a backward ball cap and boat shoes) and had forgotten entirely.

It's gonna overdraw my account when an auto payment hits next Wednesday, but honestly... Worth it. I just wish the fee would've gone to her instead of the bank.

Let people surprise you.

[alexsrandomramblings]

Tonight, we rend the beasts of the sea, ritual effigy of the foe!

In other words, Imma make jambalaya. And, for some reason, my favorite jambalaya recipe is in the Lovecraft cookbook. With all its weird little intricacies of writing.

[kingofangst]

A Senpai's Sacrifice

OKAY RIGHT NOW I AM IN MY FEELS OF ANGST AND SADNES. I AM COPING RIGHT NOW.

So here is a bittersweet one-shot I created, where surname-san makes a tough decision and sacrifice! While I incorporated some of the lyrics of Unravel by TK Ling (DIsclaimer: I do not own the rights to this song) to darken the mood. This has nothing to do with my Jujutsu Kaisen fanfic au: A Nexis's Peril, this is a totally different oneshot I wrote myself. Enjoy the derpession!

Characters: Itadori Yuji, Kugisaku Nobara, Mahito, past reader, past Satoru Gojo, reader-senpai, reader is gender-neutral

Warnings: Graphic violence, past bullying, that's about it

P.S: Made some edits when I noticed I saw some typos and I had to change it from "he" to "they" to make it gender-neutral. Sorry about that!

-------------------------------------------------------

There were...there are two Mahitos. That explains why Nobara damaged Mahito's soul, she fought a clone and used her resonance to Mahito's clone as an effigy to damage Mahito's soul-

Their blood freezes when the real Mahito switches places with his clone

"RUUUNNN!!! KUGISAKI!!!"

The pain in Itadori's voice made Surname-san recoil, but pales in comparison as they watch the real Mahito charge at Kugisaki who is in shock at the scene before her. Then everything went in slow-motion…

No...no no no no no no no no NO!

5

This wasn't how things were supposed to end...they didn't expect things to turn out this bad without Gojo-sensei…

Kugisaku...Kugisaki...Kugisaki...Kugisaki...KUGISAKI!!!

4

They can't afford to see their own kouhai, who they watched grow in the past months, this fiery and passionate girl of steel taking out two Special Grade curses with Itadori 5 weeks ago, die in front of them or Itadori who has already lost so much...from Shibuya's destruction...Nanami-sensei's death…

3

There's no place in this world that they would want more than to see their kouhais safe and happy, away from all of this...Okinawa sounds like a happier place to be in than here…

2

"Cursed Technique: Kyomu no Ten'i..." They manifest with their cursed energy, having their hands out, creating a sphere of black energy, getting lighter and lighter as they prepare themselves for their last stand…

1

"...Shin'en no Kokan!"

"You're a weird kid, you know that?"

"Huh?" They question, looking up at a classmate in their 4th grade science classroom, eyeing the other kid.

"I said you're weird...how are you even good at making things explode when you can't even make friends?"

Those were the words that stuck inside of 10 year-old Surname-san's head since the 4th grade. They weren't the most sociable kid, nor the funniest, nor the most popular. But they knew they were different from anyone else in that classroom and in the school. How does one explain to someone who is purely human that they can see curses at a young age?

Oshiete oshiete yo sono shikumi wo

Surname-san saw the green and purple curse swarming around the antagonistic kid's shoulders like a cobra, it's weird seven eyes staring back at their eyes. Of course, Surname-san didn't do much except leave, as the kid continued to shout and bully them as they walked away. School was horrible, life was horrible as a foster kid, they had no will or desire to even fix things. They thought they were cursed since birth.

Boku no naka ni da ga iru no?

A week after their hardships, a tragedy happened, one that happened in their school. The day that they lost their entire class and grade to a horrific curse…the very same one that was on the kid that bullied them…

Kowareta, Kowareta yo kono sekai de

The hideous, cobra-like curse, slithering towards them from corpse to corpse, taking one life after another while they watch the carnage before them, shivering in fear

Kimi ga warau nanimo miezu ni

Running through the bloodied hallways of the school while the curse was hot on their trail wanting to consume them and their soul, shouting eerily “you’re weird!” “you will never make friends!” “why can’t you just die?” the words are all too familiar, from the very voice of the boy that is now dead. Now they stood in a corner and trapped between a wall and the path of where the curse was, hissing with a maniacal grin. The individual felt scared, horrified and was the only one alive against this very strong, hideous being. 

Beings they have seen on a regular basis, the sheer malevolence and disturbance of them from humans. As the curse leaped forward and went in for the kill, the individual shielded their faces as if to not face the gruesome fate that awaited them, unknowingly producing black circles that shot out to the curse. Instead of hearing their flesh and bones crack, they heard thuds and sounds of pain yelps. They open their eyes to see a shocking sight before them. The curse, in pieces, held separately by black swirling voids, crying in pain before starting to vanish into thin air.

Kowareta boku nante sa iki wo tomete

They never knew they could produce such abilities from their hands. How on Earth did they do such a thing? The crashing of windows burst through, shattering on the floor, startling them when a tall figure with white hair, all dressed in black with shades lands on the floor, their feet crunching the glass that shattered. The male, looking between them and the now evaporating curse and the odd, circular black things exorcising the curse, is surprised and impressed. He watches the curse being destroyed, before walking up to the frightened child that began crying silently.

Hodokenai mou hodokenai yo shinjitsu sae freeze

“That was you?”

“H-Hai- I don’t know I- I don’t know what I did b-but everyone d-died and it chased me and I-I…I was running and I d-didn’t want this to eat…eat me-!” Their hiccups and sobs overtook their voice as the taller figure realized what this kid had before pulling him into a hug after a traumatic and grotesque event.

Kowaseru kowasenai kurueru kuruenai anata wo mitsukete

“Kid, what’s your name?”

“Surname first-name…” They sobbed into the male’s chest, finally letting out their pent up emotions of being bullied from school and foster care, not being seen as a person, not being defended by the guardians at foster care, not being able to have a happy life since birth. They felt cursed and just wanted to be erased from this world.

“You’re not a curse…” Is what the male tells them is what makes them realize they said it out loud. “You are a special human being. One that can control your cursed energy and can be able to use a cursed technique. Surname-san, my name is Satoru Gojo, and you are a sorcerer. I see you’ve had a rough life judging by what you said out loud. So let’s forget about that, forget what life throws at you, and let me help train you?”

And so, they took his hand, out of awe and pent up emotions of what this male told them, saying “You’ll be doing amazing things, surname-san.”

“SURNAME-SENPAI!!”

YURETA YUGANDA SEKAI NI DANDAN BOKU WA SUKITOTTE MIENAKU NATTE

One second, Kugisaki found herself in shock, staring at Mahito’s hand inches away from her face, then the next second being pulled in a black void that was endless, before seeing light and same beige tiles of the place she was in, falling beside Itadori whose pained shout she heard echo the hallway. She turns in time to see her senpai, in the exact place she was in, horror taking her features as Mahito’s hand swipes Surname-san’s face. They switched places with her!

"Surname-senpai! What the hell did you do!?"

MITSUKENAIDE BOKU NO KOTO WA MITSUMENAIDE

So this is what it feels like to be touched by Idle Transfiguration, they think as Mahito’s evil cackle erupts in the atmosphere before gripping their head in discomfort. They already felt their soul begin to unravel, their brain starting to become painful.

Kugisaki didn't want to admit the grim truth of their senpai's actions. But no matter how much she tried to think otherwise, she couldn't think of one. Because...Surname-senpai sacrificed their life for her by switching places at the exact moment Mahito was supposed to touch her, and taking her place.

DAREKA GA EGAITA SEKAI NO NAKE DE ANATA WO KIZUTSUKETAKU WA NAI YO

“SENPAI!!!” Both of their voices called them out, fear and horror in their tone. This isn’t how they wanted to die, or go out. But if it means to save someone younger than them, then it’s worth that sacrifice. The memories of them since entering Tokyo Jujutsu Tech pouring in like a movie film, each memory of them with their classmates…

Maki…Toge…Panda…Yuta…gomenasai…looks like I won’t be treating you all to sukiyaki at Ginza…

"Gomen, Kugisaki but I promised Nitta-chan and Maki that I'd help you survive." They chuckle sadly, knowing the pain is only increasing and seeing Kugisaki's angry and horrified expression with Itadori's terrified one.

OBOETEITE BOKU NO KOTO WO

The drops of blood from both of their nasal holes, dripping rapidly, along with their head feeling as if it is going to implode, makes them gaze up to the scared eyes of Itadori and Kugisaki, their eyes widening in horror at how Surname-san is looking. I am so sorry you have to see this…

Oshiete 

Maki…Yuta…Toge…Panda…Hakari…Hoshi…Gojo-sensei…Fushiguro-kun…Yaga-san…Ieiri-san…I…I am so sorry for this…I can’t make my promise…but…arigato

Oshiete

“Itadori-kun, Kugisaki-chan…thank you…for making me believe I was a good person…live a long life…both of you…”

Boku no naka ni

Those were the final words of their senpai, before hearing a gross popping, then witnessing their head explode into flesh, blood and brain matter scattering the floor and their uniform before the headless corpse falls to the floor with a sickening crack to the floor.

Then, the hallways echoed nothing but Itadori’s and Kugisaki’s cries…while Mahito was cackling at the demise of someone important to them

Dare ga iru no?

Itadori's cries echo the hallways the loudest alongside Kugisaki's crestfallen and tear-gazed expression. Itadori couldn't take it anymore...the tears cascacding down his face as his eyes lose the brightness in them completely.

Their senpai's bloody, mutilated and headless corpse was in front of them.

-------------------------------------------------------

Congratulations, you'll have depression now. You're welcome!

[hannagoldworthy]

Looks like Someone stole her mommy’s phone to circumvent my IP block lol. You need some attention, Domina? You getting bored under your bridge? Get used to it, because now this IP is blocked too.

Still, I have to laugh, because once again you are utilizing big words to try and intimidate me, but because you’re about as literate as a rock at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, you’re doing it wrong. Female chauvinism is an entirely different beast from plain chauvinism (also called MALE chauvinism, for reasons that should be clear to you). Next time, just cut out the word ‘female’ and call me a misogynistic sow again - we both know that’s what you wanted to call me in the first place.

Also, it’s amazing how someone who’s trying to accuse ME of misogyny just referred to two prominent female characters as objects that were readily interchangeable, with their only impact on the story being their effects on their male love interests. This is tragicfantasy-girl, folks! Voice of downtrodden women EVERYWHERE!

I love it, you completely disregard Padmé’s and Satine’s feelings on this matter. As much as I may joke about how Obi-Wan is the objectively more attractive man, I sincerely doubt Padmé would be more than passingly interested in dating him - Natalie Portman specifically said that Padmé liked Anakin because he helped her escape from her adult life into a romantic fantasy she hadn’t had the opportunity to indulge during her short childhood. Obi-Wan was not in the business of escapism, so she never really thought of him as more than a friend or a coworker.

And Satine? Satine would have ripped Anakin a new asshole, let’s be honest. She would have started gently, hinting strongly that she still thought of him as a child, wearing the dowdiest clothes in her wardrobe, maintaining a minimum distance between them, setting up a cover story as a brother and sister traveling rather than a married couple. Then, she would have firmly denied his advances, tried to set him up with her younger sister (and her nephew, when that fell through), had him sit and watch her do paperwork all day, and when he broke out the amateur-night Shakespeare monologue, she’d haul out the big guns and say “oh, Obi-Wan used to say the same things to me when we were young.” And, when she heard that he committed the war crime of collective punishment by killing Tusken Children for the crimes of their parents, she’d have reported him to the Council immediately upon seeing them, middle of a battle or no. Anatine as a concept is DOA.

But don’t let that stop you! If you really want to write that fanfic, you go on right ahead, Domina! I know you’re probably blonde in real life because you have this weird fixation on blonde female characters that makes you take any slight against them too personally! Why don’t you turn that energy into writing the Anatine fic nobody except you has ever asked for? Project your rancid personality on Satine and bone Anakin in effigy as much as you want! It’s what fanfic was MADE for!

[anshelsgendercrisis]

hahaha you’re so funny all the same. Fuck i cant stand your takes on israel but its so funny how you twist words were you in debate club?? You are sly you. I hope you can get past this like immature phase. Let’s become superheroes what would your superpower be. Mine would be dissolving the state of israel and letting all peoples live in peace free from foreign interests just the peoples of palestine living freely together 🇵🇸🪬 multilingual freedom land! an effigy of the torturable corpse of bibi netanyahu is available for all to take big hot dumps on

-western leftists who treat what’s happening in palestine like a video game and don’t understand how international politics work and also “accidentally” platform nazis a bunch for some weird reason

[ckret2]

I assume bill has other cults around earth, but I guess death valley girls are going to be more present in the fic since it's the only one he's got some sort of contact with rn. How does he create his cults? Does he always promise the same to all of them?

To Ford, he offered scientific collaboration and information about the particular topic he was researching: why is Gravity Falls so weird?

To Gideon, he offered freedom, power over post apocalyptic Gravity Falls, and access to Mabel.

To the two mentally ill artists in the Bahamas, he offered the lie that they could escape their feelings of guilt by creating endless effigies in his honor.

To Sue, he offered something she couldn't get as a dissatisfied middle-class suburban housewife; the elusive promise of a satisfying romantic/emotional connection, ever-unobtainable and therefore ever-pursuable.

Not everyone on this list worships him; but what's the difference between worship and other ways of following a leader? Only how extreme it is and whether it's religious.

Of course he doesn't promise the same to all of them, because not all humans want the same thing.

If several humans are similar enough that he offers them similar things, he can get them in contact with each other and group them together; that's a cult. Or, if he teaches one human a particular set of ideas/lies and instructs them to find other people, spread the word, and lead them, so he doesn't have to do all the work, then that's a cult.

He reuses ideas when it's useful, there are repeating themes—but that's what happens when you're working with a species with many people with similar desires and when you have to steer them all, eventually, toward "... and all your dreams will come true when this [portal/gate to another world/door to heaven/whatever] is completed!"

[pr4yerp0sition]

❛  27 .   a  kiss  to  end  the  sexual  tension . ( don't look at me, this is for isamu )

           Quiet,  it  was  an  odd  word  to  describe  his  personal  lodgings.  Aging  photographs  &&  incantations  that  bared  themselves  upon  the  walls,  as  if  someone  was  afraid,  all  that  was  impure  could  follow  the  effigy  of  a  ghostly  man.  The  smell  of  black  tea  &&  liquorice,  cigarette  smoke  tinged  with  vanilla,  he  laughs  &&  smiles  breaking  the  chilling  nature  that  spoke  with  a  stabbing  precision.  “Heroes  get  days  off?  Weird,  thought  the  whole  fighting  villains  thing  never  ends”  it’s  taunting,  teasing,  without  malice  as  dark  eyes  linger  upon  him.  “So,  you  decided  to  spend  it  with  me?  Doubt  you’re  here  for  driving  lessons,  I’m  terrified  of  teaching  the  students,  that’s  my  only  fear”  a  snort  as  porcelain  fills  with  the  strong  brew,  favored  from  the  past,  but  he  can  never  recall  which  figure  spoiled  him  in  such  simple  luxuries.

        How  long  have  they  managed  to  play  innocent?  Glances  that  linger  too  long,  the  sigh  of  relief  whenever  another  mission  was  over  that  left  his  lips,  innocent  flirting  met  with  a  monotone  grin  -  relief  &&  joy  whenever  they  were  in  each  other’s  presence.  He  didn’t  want  to  linger  upon  it,  the  life  of  a  manger  was  plagued  with  difficulties,  even  if  he  long  forgoed  the  thought  of  a  promotion  by  blood  he  was  still  that  of  a  medium.  Death  followed  each  step,  even  when  he  wished  to  turn  away  from  the  echoes  of  the  ancients,  they  knew  him  all  too  well. 

        Close,  too  close,  the  smell  of  rain  &&  cologne  entangled  together,  icy  blonde  locks  that  gently  hang  in  rivulets,  the  desire  to  seal  the  space  between  them  gnawing  at  his  stomach.  “Hey,  I  thought  we  were  just  having  tea”  he’s  devilish  with  a  studded  tongue,  charming  underneath  the  stoic  exterior,  one  singular  kiss  pressed  against  his  cheek  -  a  soft  flame.  Then,  it  moves  closer,  firm,  pulsating,  tempting  as  he  nips  at  Aizawa's  bottom  lip  before  withdrawing.  The  hunger  within  his  gut  is  unsatisfied,  every  memory  that  floods  in  from  the  exasperated  bickering  over  his  antics  to  the  moments  his  slender  shoulders  would  tremble,  the  softness  of  his  voice  eking  out  delicately;  I’m  glad  you  are  safe.  He  tastes  like  intoxication,  easy  to  become  drunk  on,  the  metal  stud  making  a  quick  swipe  as  Isamu pulls  away.  Thumb  caressing  over  his  bottom  lip  as  he  snickers,  “We’re  going  to  ruin  whatever  it  is  we  have”  there  was  no  question  or  hesitation,  just  a  statement.  The  expression  that  was  daring,  head  cocked  innocently  to  the  side.

                                  “Or  it  can  be  just  for  fun,  tell  me  now,  I’m  aching  to  kiss  you  again”  

[bestworstcase]

hello its irregularly scheduled SONGS TIME once again. have you ever thought about how weird ‘all things must die’ is i have i think about it all the time it’s really weird except no it isn’t it’s about summer

(<- sound of me succumbing to the eldritch vapors i am going to try so hard to be coherent wish me luck)

anyway the confounding the maddening thing about ATMD is it very directly calls back to, inexplicably, ‘this will be the day’ and: why. why! what? summer it’s about summer

specifically.

fourteen years ago raven and summer fought in the vault under haven academy and, listen to me because this is the important part, summer did not die. but raven thinks she should have. this is what ATMD is about. raven is fighting cinder but also no she isn’t, it’s fourteen years ago and she’s back here again and she is so angry. because summer rose is not the one who died that night.

ok? ok. ok ok ok

this will be the day: a story will be told. red like roses ii: this bedtime story ends with misery ever after/the pages are torn and there’s no final chapter. all things must die: all tales conclude.

grabs you by the shoulders. shakes you. DO YOU SEE

this will be the day:

beware that the light is fading beware, as the dark returns this world’s unforgiving even brilliant lights will cease to burn legends scatter day and night will sever hope and peace are lost forever

divide (now we’re cooking with gas!):

legends and fairytales scattered in time maidens and kingdoms wrapped up in a lie

all things must die:

this is the end here’s where you’ll die legends should scatter so just say goodbye no one will miss you when you’re fin’lly gone at your conclusion sing your swan song

folds hands. a bird is known by its song, a man by his words. the truth is that ‘truth’ is hard to come by; a story of victory for one person is a story of defeat for someone else. by now, i’m sure your uncle has told ruby and her friends plenty of stories.

(and which “her” is raven referring to?)

summer was the best of us, qrow says.

raven knows the truth. she’s also the one who told the story—or at least, she told a story. or maybe she didn’t, but silence tells its own kind of story. the point is this: summer rose, the person, chose to walk away and left raven branwen to decide how the story ended.

summer rose, the idea, is dead because raven slit her throat in front of that vault fourteen years ago. this is the end: here’s where you’ll die. legends should scatter, so just say goodbye. no one will miss you, when you’re finally gone; at your conclusion, sing your swan song.

does she regret that choice? letting summer rose die a hero so that summer rose could be free? did she do it for spite? for love? was she afraid? did she just want it to be done?

fourteen years later, she’s back here and there’s blood on the floor again.

murder, unkindness, conspiracy embers extinguished in effigy

to burn something in effigy: to destroy a figure, a facsimile, a symbol of someone hated. cinder fall is not summer rose, but summer rose isn’t here and the past is alive and howling all around them; and whatever raven may have felt then the only thing she feels now is it’s happening again.

(an unkindness of ravens—a conspiracy of ravens—but it’s a murder of crows. or, as it might be, just a murder.)

anyways.

sacrifice:

close your eyes now, time for dreams death is never what it seems […] show them gods and deities blind and keep the people on their knees pierce the sky, escape your fate the more you try, the more you’ll just breed hate and lies truth will rise revealed by mirrored eyes

when it falls:

swallowed by the darkness soon the moon is bathed in black the light of hope is taken and discontent is the contagion the blinding eyes that burn a yellow flame the embers that remain will light the fuse of condemnation mirrors will shatter crushed by the weight of the world

all things must die:

just close your eyes don’t fear demise black out the sky all things must die

ok. ok . can you see it?

this will be the day:

we are lightning straying from the thunder miracles of ancient wonder this will be the day we’ve waited for this will be the day we open up the door i don’t wanna hear your absolution hope you’re ready for a revolution welcome to a world of new solutions welcome to a world of bloody evolution

all things must die:

life is just a journey yours is near its end bloody evolution this world transcend

can you—

all things must die:

all tales conclude all bonds dissolve infinite matter will always evolve just pray for mercy at your time of death be glad you existed enjoy your last breath

rising:

the sky is turning black light is fading fast but we don’t surrender radiant and bright shattering the night armored in splendor shining forever we are paragons of virtue and glory death can’t stop our endless story infinite and unbound

—see it?

just pray for mercy.

don’t wanna hear your absolution (hope you’re ready for a revolution!)

welcome to a world of new solutions: the blinding eyes that burn a yellow flame, the embers that remain will light the fuse of condemnation—mirrors will shatter, crushed by the weight of the world. truth will rise, revealed by mirrored eyes. welcome to a world of bloody evolution.

life is just a journey; yours is near its end. bloody evolution: this world transcend.

black out the sky; all things must die. swallowed by the darkness, soon the moon is bathed in black; the light of hope is taken and discontent is the contagion. the sky is turning black, the light is fading fast, but we don’t surrender. radiant and bright, shattering the night, shining forever. we are paragons of virtue and glory; death can’t bind our endless story, infinite and unbound.

for it is in passing we achieve immortality; through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death. i release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee.

all things must die.

our souls transcend death.

it’s—ok. ok! this will be the day? salem. when it falls? salem and cinder. rising? summer and salem. for every life? salem. rising is the only one of these that is remotely ambiguous but trust me. (“farran it seems unlikely that half the opening numbers are secretly—” salem is literally the narrator)

so what is happening here, with ‘all things must die,’ is it’s in dialogue with the whole triumvirate of cinder + summer + salem

(<- maiden mother crone. hi)

—as i said, ATMD fundamentally is about the death of summer rose, the idea, and the not-death of summer rose, the person, and the feelings raven has about both of those things as drawn out by the echo the reflection the effigy that is cinder fall.

banging pots and pans. salem drowns in the fountain of life and reawakens immortal. she drowns in the pool of grimm and creates herself anew. raven kills summer rose, the idea (this is the end, here’s where you’ll die) and summer rose, the person, rips herself free (the pages are torn and there’s no final chapter). cinder gets electrocuted in the face frozen solid dropped hundreds of feet into a subterranean lake and just. Survives That.

like mother, like—

anyway.

grips your shoulders listen to me very carefully. raven branwen turns into a raven. she leads a warlike group of bandits. she is the spring maiden, the maiden of knowledge. her weapon is called omen. her semblance allows her to know when her loved ones are in mortal danger and appear to them to turn the tide of battle. she wears a grimm mask. she “tore her team apart.” thought and memory though she and her brother may be, huginn is only what she was to ozpin.

day by day it’s nearer step by step you go closer to your ruin soon your time to go life is just a journey yours is near its end […] this is the end here’s where you’ll die […] it’s time to accept to abide admit that the hour’s arrived resign, comply it’s time to be one with the sky surrender your pride let death be your guide all things must die

i told you beacon would fall, and it did. i told you ozpin would fail, and he has.

she can’t be stopped, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet.

her weapon is named omen.

her song is spoken in future tense!!! hello!!!

She also prophesied the end of the world, foretelling every evil that would occur then, and every disease and every vengeance; and she chanted the following poem: ‘I shall not see a world Which will be dear to me: Summer without blossoms, Cattle will be without milk, Women without modesty, Men without valour. Conquests without a king […] False judgements of old men…’ ( 167 )

the morrígan.

wheeze ok. all things must die is prophetic but all that is already was; raven sees, in cinder fall, the end and the beginning of summer rose, That Is What The Song Is About. nothing new under the sun. fourteen years ago all of this happened before, differently. here’s where you’ll die. she writes the ending of summer rose. she flings cinder to her (SYMBOLIC SYMBOLIC IT IS A METAPHOR) death and resurrection from the roots of the tree.

she’s the spring maiden. she is death’s herald. she’s stared death in the face over and over again and every time she spat back in its face and survived. she knows people who can come back from the dead. without the spring maiden, we’re all going to die.

death and the maiden.

i only know the raven dad told me about; she was troubled and complicated, but she fought for what she believed in—whether it was her family or her tribe. did you kill her too?

no, but summer rose did.

gleefully voicing this eulogy spawn of the tenets of treachery

cinder’s heard so many stories about raven; that she’s a cunning leader, strong, clever. (it’s a shame they’re wrong.) truth is hard to come by; i’m sure your uncle has told ruby and her friends plenty of stories. summer rose telling lies! she was the best of us. she would have pressed on, if she found out the truth.

burning summer rose in effigy, gleefully voicing this eulogy. no one will miss you when you’re finally gone.

…how did salem know the maidens are vulnerable to silver eyes. much to think about

[aki-bara]

Pokemon Trainer - Nico di Angelo

Absol - The Disaster Pokemon

Long ago, superstitions were spread about it, saying it brought disaster. This fed a hatred of it, and it was driven deep into the mountains. Although it’s said to bring disaster, in actuality, this Pokémon possesses a calm disposition and warns people of any crises that loom.

Absol is mistrusted because it is misunderstood. This reminded me a lot of how others view Hades and his children. Bianca's name is derived from the Italian word for "white," just like absol's coat.

I think this absol and Nico may have met when Bianca was still alive. Maybe she died in the disaster absol sensed and tried to help them escape. Absol probably stuck by Nico's side and helped him survive when he didn't have anyone else to rely on. Maybe it's weird to name your pokemon after someone else, but I think that Nico might do it as a way to remember Bianca and honor her.

Hydreigon - The Brutal Pokemon

It’s said that Hydreigon grew ferocious because people in times long past loathed it, considering it to be evil incarnate and attacking it relentlessly. This brutal Pokémon travels the skies on its six wings. Anything that moves seems like a foe to it, triggering its attack.

Hydreigon is known for it's brutality. Despite this, it's previous evolutions aren't known for being wicked. Deino, it's first form is noted as being blind and "constantly covered in cuts." Since it can't see, it explores its surroundings with its mouth instead. Maybe this made people start to think of it as particularly vicious, but I think if Nico found a little Deino he would just want to help it out.

Just like Absol it feels like a very misunderstood pokemon! It's second stage Zweilous is also said to "get stronger without needing to rely on others." This feels like something younger Nico would have strived for. That and the three heads and the reference to hydras in its name made it feel like a good choice.

Dusclops - The Beckon Pokemon

There are rumors that peeking inside its bandage-wrapped body will cause one to get pulled in through the gaps between the bandages, never to return. This Pokémon hypnotizes its foe by waving its hands in a macabre manner and by bringing its single eye to bear. The hypnotized foe is made to do Dusclops’s bidding.

Dusclops... I basically picked it because it's a ghost type and it has a skull motif. XD Obviously there are tons of ghost Pokemon to pick from, but duskull and dusclops felt like the right choice because of the skeleton elements and the cyclops element. It supposedly looks for and consumes lost spirits into a black hole inside it's body. If you look at it, it sucks out your spirit.

Most ghost pokemon have spooky entries like this, but the whole black hole consuming souls thing kind of reminded me of Tartarus and Chaos from Greek lore so it kind of fits for that reason as well. There's actually a third evolutionary stage for this pokemon, Dusknoir, but you have to trade the Pokemon away for it to evolve the third time. I thought Nico wouldn't want to trade his pokemon, so I kept it as a Dusclops.

Claydol - The Clay Doll Pokemon

CLAYDOL is an enigma that appeared from a clay statue made by an ancient civilization dating back 20,000 years. When they find others of their kind, they cry out loudly and gather together. Large numbers of them can be found in old graveyards.

Claydol is the pokemon I picked to represent the Coco Puffs. Its sort of an artificial pokemon since it was made by ancient people, so I thought that, mixed with its unusual body, fit for the demons Nyx created.

Originally I thought that claydol and its previous stage, baltoy, were based on Haniwa, ancient funerary objects found during excavations in Japan. This would have explained their association with graveyards. But apparently they are actually inspired by Dogū, which predate Haniwa by a LOT. No one really knows what they were for, but one theory I read suggests they were used as effigies, which would explain why they are almost always found with limbs broken off etc.

Either way, aside from the look and creation reminding me of the Coco Puffs, the mystery of the pokemon's source and its association with cultures long past feels fitting for Nico and honestly I needed to give him more type coverage. Just dark types is not a strategically sound decision and I think Nico would take that sort of thing into consideration when building his team.

Houndoom - The Dark Pokemon

It cooperates with others skillfully. When it becomes your partner, it’s very loyal to you as its Trainer and will obey your orders. Long ago, people imagined its eerie howls to be the call of the grim reaper. The flames it breathes when angry contain toxins. If they cause a burn, it will hurt forever.

Houndoom is clearly inspired by hellhounds, so this was a no brainer. It also has skeleton elements, so. /Shrug Perfectly fits for Mrs. O'Leary.

Mr. Mime - The Barrier Pokemon

MR. MIME is a master of pantomime. Its gestures and motions convince watchers that something unseeable actually exists. Once it is believed, it will exist as if it were a real thing.

This one is basically a joke reference to McDonald's. I really wanted to give him at least one fairy type, but mimikyu just felt super overused and I couldn't think of any that would work. I thought of a Florges named Pomegranate, or even a bounsweet with the same name. Gloom was considered. Muk too because you know. Dirt I guess?? Maybe even Abomasnow or Ceititan as a reference to Bob/Iapetus???

But none of them felt like a good fit and the idea of a clown on his team made me laugh. I almost named him Minos, but Ronald is more positive maybe? So he got that name instead.

[emabatis]

About a Zombie Working at an Amusement Park

This one's 923 words of drudgery. For the full working-at-a-theme-park experience, reread 60 times with loud annoying ambient noise in the background.

I've never been on this ride. The one I'm operating, that is. I guess I died before it opened. It's one of those spinny ones where guests go around in high, exciting circles in a metal container, instead of going around in boring circles with their feet. The line around the fence is one of those boring circles, which, since I'm kind of the one keeping them there, makes a lot of guests mad at me. I'm not sure how I would feel on either of these rides. Or, "feel," I guess. Guests go on these things to feel something in the speed, the height, the weather and good vertigo that can only happen because of this machine. I don't feel those things anymore, so what would the point be. I can hold this stick with the pointing hand on top, which probably isn't a real hand, and I know that it's slimy from sweat and years of grime on the peel-y paint, because I would see what it's made of if I could see, and I could hear how heavy it is if I could hear, but I can't. But I don't know what it's like to be tall and fast and spinning in the exact pattern I initiate every four to five minutes. It's weird, maybe. It doesn't feel weird, of course, but it is, and maybe if I had time off I could think it's weird, too, but as it is, it just is. I can only think spinny things.

I know, sometimes, but not how, that people who work with computers or in offices with copiers and printers, that those little machines get cute names and pseudo-personalities. Mine doesn't, even with the faces painted on the cars. It works too reliably to have much of a personality. It isn't anybody's, especially not mine. Same thing with the Uniform, The only thing keeping me different from the other yellow-shirts is the company hat that keeps my bald spot appropriate for guests.

There's a huge difference between the ground-rides that I usually operate and the roller coasters. The ground rides, there's only one of us, maybe two if it's big and un-understaffed, which isn't often. Roller coasters need a team. But when I work roller coasters, I'm always working. There's an endless stream of trains coming in and going out every time, and I like it when it rains because I'm allowed to stand still for more than a "second," I don't even talk to anyone or do an activity, there'd be no point, it's not allowed, I just stand. It's the closest thing to euphoria I have. I get to stand when I work ground rides, but I need to stand around guests, and no one else is there to chase them away. I don't know any of the other ride operators, even though we're all the same. I don't know myself, either, though, so it's more like "because."

Guests aren't allowed to bring certain things onto rides, that's on the signs, I know, but I can't read them, and neither can the guests but they don't know. In front of a few roller coasters, there's a glass case effigy, like the skeleton in a hanging cage holding a sign that says "pyrates beware," but instead of a skeleton it's scraps of glass and metal that used to be phones. Now they're one big broken phone that's only good at being a broken phone. They bring them on anyway and it's always my fault. Is it possible to be hungry without a working stomach?

The onboarding procedure is the worst part. Parents need to be told they're too tall to ride, even though there's words about that on the sign, too. Kids need to not unbuckle the restraints, I need to make sure. Guests expect to talk to me. They don't like that they talk at me. I lock-gats-turn-the-key-pull-out-the-E-stop-press-down-on-foot-pedal-press-start and guests still want to talk to me. It's part of my job to make sure none of the small guests turn into small hurt people. I'm only allowed to eat people, which is a shame, I never see them. Is that the amusement? That they get to be nothing but spinny wind and noise for a day? Why do they want to bring their backpacks and purses and phones onto rides?

At noon there's a chime that lasts too short, and I don't know where it comes from. I can't see anything, but I can see clocks even less. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of the numbers on a guest's phone, I actually look out for them, keeping a lot of my lack of awareness on the number of guests and the rest on their hands. I don't know why, it never means anything. It's never nine o'clock. I don't know how I get here. I don't know how I get home. I don't even know how I get to other rides. It's not surprising, though, I guess. I also don't know how to do something as simple as smell.

My job isn't to help guests have fun, that's up to the ride manufacturer and the guests themselves. My job isn't to sell tickets, people need to buy them in order to become guests and enter in the first place. I guess I have a million little jobs, but I can't put "doesn't rot too much" on a resume, if I ever get to make one. My job is to make this line shorter. And it spins and spins and spins.

[twh-news]

Loki season two review – by far the best Marvel TV show in years ★★★☆☆ | The Guardian

Tom Hiddleston’s lovably narcissistic Norse god is back with Owen Wilson for a spectacular time-hopping caper that may just save the MCU from certain death

If ever there was a time for a second season of Loki, it’s now. The first outing was a witty romp through time and space, in which Tom Hiddleston’s lovably narcissistic Norse god charmed the pants off viewers. There were wild cameos (Richard E Grant as a weird alternate Loki!). There was sizzling chemistry (the bromance with Owen Wilson’s Agent Mobius!). There was even the tender blossoming of love (with Loki’s metaverse alter ego Sylvie – almost certainly the most poignant romance a TV character has ever conducted with themselves). So, naturally, the Marvel Cinematic Universe chose to follow up this televisual triumph with a disastrous series of flops, culminating in June’s Secret Invasion: a slog of a show that felt like the death knell for the franchise’s entire TV future.

[Possible spoilers ahead]

Luckily, Loki’s action-packed return suggests it is more than prepared to rise to the challenge of shaking off Marvel’s track record of TV tedium. We’re taken to the exact moment the previous season left off: the aftermath of Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killing He Who Remains – the shadowy figure behind temporal police the Time Variance Authority (TVA). There are slow-mo chases, car crashes in flying vehicles and Loki constantly running into effigies of He Who Remains. One thing is instantly clear: you really can’t avoid season one if you expect any of the following to make sense.

A good chunk of the opener consists of Hiddleston vanishing into another timeline. His body briefly turns into something that looks like it belongs in Stranger Things’ Upside Down, while he makes the sound of a man who has eaten some seriously out-of-date scampi. “It’s horrible,” quips Wilson’s Agent Mobius. “It looks like you’re being born, or dying – or both at the same time.” There are temporal loops, baffling causality chains and the establishment of what will be a series-long plot about stabilising a “temporal loom” – whose explanation is so convoluted the characters may as well be repeatedly chanting the word “MacGuffin”. Compared to the first season’s simple thrills, it’s all a bit overcomplicated – a disappointing choice of direction, if predictable.

Less explicable is the decision to do away with the beating heart of season one – the surprisingly lovely romance between Loki and Sylvie. This time, they’re on very separate paths, with Di Martino’s character reinvented as a time-hopping assassin, while Hiddleston moves ever further from his character’s mischievous past to buddy up with Agent Mobius in a bid to fix the McTimeWotsit. This makes for more zingtastic back-and-forth between Hiddleston and Wilson, but it robs the show of emotional heft. And with Loki proving ever less of a bad cop to Mobius’s good cop, there’s less edge to that sparkling comic chemistry too.

Nonetheless, the performances are as excellent as ever. Hiddleston is fantastic in every mode, from debonair to monstrous or ashen after a brutal insult from Sylvie. Di Martino is a bubbling pot of empathy, eyes constantly dewy with sadness, when she’s not spilling over into murderous rage. Wunmi Mosaku’s reprisal of her role as a TVA agent is ineffably intense – from taking down fugitives while wearing a tangerine ballgown to subjecting goofy colleagues to a Paddington-esque hard stare. And Owen Wilson is … Owen Wilson: a twinkle in the eye in human form.

When it spreads its wings, Loki’s second season manages to have plenty of fun. By episode two it feels like a time-travel thriller, with Loki and Mobius being shot into period-specific missions. There’s a retro spy caper in 70s London, our heroes suiting up like extras in Gangs of New York for a hot pursuit through 19th-century Chicago and an attempt to track down Sylvie in a 1980s McDonald’s in which romantic tension simmers over retro cash registers. The design is spectacular throughout, particularly the gloriously stylised TVA building in which every computer monitor looks like a microwave’s great grandparent, corridors are lined with tarnished aquamarine filing cabinets and even their IT guy (played by Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Ke Huy Quan) is dressed in a Ghostbusters-esque boiler suit that drips with vintage cool.

A few episodes in, things are settling into an enjoyable enough – if not tremendously exciting – groove. Then there is a gigantic cliffhanger that upends the narrative, wrongfoots the viewer and blows the show wide open. The final two instalments aren’t available for preview, so it is hard to say whether this will kickstart the show into scaling the heights of its first season. But either way, one thing is certain: this is easily the best Marvel TV series in years – for all that’s worth.

[akumastrife]

your king (of bone); your kingdom (of veils) //TRC (GanseyGlendower)

Rating: Mature (mostly smut, some implied body horror) Fandom: The Raven Cycle Pairing: Gansey/Glendower (we did it babeyyyy!!) Word Count: 4k HERE WE GOOOOO it's been 12 years since this series came out and I haven't found ONE fic of them boning??? hello??? must I do everything around here?? Someone make me a badge or something. This got real weird, sorry not sorry, but it deserved some mild body horror and Gansey crying and some existential angst. Written for the “Undead” square on last year’s Monsterfucktober Bingo. {ALSO ON AO3}

It’s only once Gansey is standing there—in a dark, musty cave staring up at an effigy of nightmarish imagination—that he realizes there was a small part of him that never actually expected to find Glendower.

Glendower was a titan. A figurehead. A deity. All that glittered, and the rest of it.

One moment he is pushing at the coffin’s heavy lid, fused down with lichen, and the next he is standing in the middle of a stone dais, alone. It’s dark but he isn’t blind, an aura of light that seems to be everywhere and come from nothing.

And then not alone, the armored figure before him tilting its helmet as if to regard him closely.

Owain Glyndŵr is just as imposing as Gansey had assumed, but it is all from his presence. Glyndŵr isn’t much taller than himself. Only made more so by his full coat of arms.

Gansey inhales, and stale air passes through cobwebs on pillars and tattered banners. Slowly—as if the room is being rendered and filled in around Glyndŵr despite his inability to look away from him—the dais brightens in shadows and weak sunlight through milky windows.

For once he can find nothing to say.

 What else can Gansey do, but fall to his knees?

‘Peace, little king,’ Glyndŵr says. Or doesn’t say. The words fill the room and the emptiness between Gansey’s breath as a hum—as an echoing language that he’s never heard before, layered over itself many times in different pitches. At the foundation of it is one that is deep and rich.  

Gansey shivers, trapping his hands between his knees as he gazes up. “I’m no king,” he whispers.

‘Nor I, and yet have we not earned it?’

Gansey doesn’t think it would be right to argue with him. It almost makes him laugh—him, arguing semantics with Owain Glyndŵr.

And it is Glyndŵr. Not the anglicized version he’s been saying aloud. Gansey woke him. He’s here, alive. The least he can do is greet him properly.

“I can’t believe I found you.”

Can hardly believe there was someone to find after all.

‘It had to be you. Because I wanted it to be you.’  Glyndŵr shifts into grating movement, a cacophonous orchestra of metal that has been fused together with rust, moss, and ocean salt spray—finally loosening. He steps up before Gansey. ‘It was always you.’

A hundred nonsensical things run through Gansey’s mind. He is not special. His friends are the extraordinary ones with fantastic magics. The only interesting things about him are his money and his weird ability to die and not have it stick. That’s not him. That’s a thing that has happened to him. An unwilling participant.

But Glyndŵr looks down at him, alive and found, and he feels like the most special boy in existence.

And then feels stupid for thinking it at all.

‘What do you wish, little king?’

A wish. He still has a wish. It’s real. It’s all real. He found Glyndŵr and he gets whatever he can divine, like every fairytale ever promised him.

He thinks immediately of Noah.

Thinks of Adam.

Thinks of Ronan.

Thinks, breathlessly, of Blue.

A gauntlet hand rises to touch him under the chin, lifting just slightly. The metal smells of decay and damp earth.

Twin points of smoldering gold light peer out of the helmet.

The scene before him flashes and shifts. Like a projector with two many reels crammed inside.

Glyndŵr and the stone room—a warm and colorful bedroom with a roaring fireplace—the glade shadowy with an oncoming storm and the grass dewy as it rushes up to meet him—Monmouth stuffy and bloated with summer—a man he feels like he should know watching him as sharp as a general—the hum of a hundred bees.

Light and color and backdrop flickers like a candle caught in a draft, throwing confusion and shadows along the walls.

Faster and faster, superimposing over one another until he’s stuck fast and rocking from it in the warm room, the fireplace crackling, and the man touching his face tenderly.

It sends a flush rippling through him, embarrassed, his knees near about to give out. Momentum maybe, or surprise. Or—

Owain. Looking a little like lightning boy aged well. Smiling at him, his eyes somehow pitying.

Gansey’s chest tightens, feeling that expression more than he’d like to admit.

Another touch to his chin, wondering and considering. Gansey tilts into it without thought, without hesitation, eyes sliding shut to savor it.

Is it real? Is it just a dream? Is it magic?

Dry lips touch his as gently as a turning page, and he decides immediately it doesn’t matter. It is something—it is what it is—and it is for him.

He falls into the kiss, falls into hands ready to catch him.

He feels embarrassingly young in Owain’s hold. Feels small and uncertain; untested.

Wide, calloused hands slide gently beneath his clothes, gliding along his much softer skin. He shivers, cannot help it, and inhales softly at the opening of the kiss; at the soft, wet catch of careful lips easing him as if he has brought himself a virgin to a marital bed.

He doesn’t know how he’s gotten here, where here even is, where his friends are.

Liminal, maybe.

His desire, his desperation, so powerful it’s done something impossible.

“You’re impossible,” Gansey murmurs against Owain’s mouth. He’s kissed many people but it’s never been like this.

Hands grip a little tighter, soothing or a tease, maybe. Familiar and not.

“And you are not?” Owain offers back. Low and kind, a rumble of warmth rather than pitch. Gansey’s surprised that his voice isn’t deeper—doesn’t rattle through his chest like when he was hearing him only inside his own mind.

It’s not what he’d expected, and it knocks him out of the sensations for a moment. Finds himself drowning, gasping in the clear light of day.

Owain pulls back to look at him, eyes curious as they take him in, and then he’s picking Gansey up bodily and Gansey slips under the surface again.

“I can walk—what would you like—”

“I’m dead, not incapable,” Owain argues gamely, laying Gansey out across the velvet bedspread. “And courteous, despite… well, everything else.”

“Not dead anymore,” Gansey points out. His head spins, dizzy with the heat of the fireplace and being carried and the whole situation. Reaches out for Owain as an anchor and pulls him down on top of him, melting under the weight of him and into the soft bed.

Owain only hums, neither agreeing nor arguing. Hums directly into Gansey’s mouth and then further along his throat.

Gansey sighs, shuddering, tugging blindly at Owain’s tunic, his trousers. Flushes at the laugh it gets him, even if Owain complies easily—copies it even.

Their flushed skin sticks and catches against each other; Owain’s teeth catching over Gansey’s nipple, pulling until Gansey’s head stretches back, overwhelmed already.

He can see part of the fireplace from this angle. It flickers between roaring and  empty. He squeezes his eyes shut, blinking them back open. The fire crackles steadily.

“I’ve seen your desires, little king,” Owain whispers, licking it down his sternum and stomach. His lips pull Gansey’s attention back down to him. “For life and this and me and your companions and the world. But all those things are one in the same, are they not?”

Gansey swallows, nearly chokes on it, vision hazy as he tries to focus on the rich crimson canopy overhead. His cock, embarrassingly, twitches needy against a muscled thigh.

“That is the problem with conquest—the hunger.”

Gansey feels like he’s been hungry his whole life, dragged around and controlled by it, always stumbling to keep up.

A tongue drags over his bellybutton, over to press teeth into the softness of his hip. Chained desire shakes so hard to break free that his hands shake as they wind through Owain’s hair.

“How did you—”

“I know,” Owain says, kissing it into his thigh, the warm crease. “You were given a second chance, and being undead,” he hums considering for a long moment, “the act of being brought back means there will always be a hole, an emptiness, within you. That hunger might yet consume you. Are you prepared for that? Is it worth it?” 

Gansey swallows again, clicking, drawing his feet against blankets to pull his knees back, giving Owain more room. Maybe it’s the magic that has brought them both back that demands payment, in blood or otherwise. Maybe magic and hunger are one and the same.

He makes himself look down, meeting deep and hungry eyes. “You tell me. Are you grateful to be woken?”

Owain’s mouth pulls into an indulgent grin, pleased and proud of something. Dips his head to take Gansey into his mouth and suck.

Gansey shouts, head falling back and bouncing, trying to still his hips. Owain laughs, softly, sending vibrations along his length. It’s embarrassing in its own way, and so good. 

“S-supposed to be the other way around, I think,” Gansey offers, thready. Whines and shifts, stretching one leg over a broad shoulder.

Owain draws up, so slowly. “You’ve thought of this. Not just the act.”

“Yes,” soft as a sigh. Flushes. “This doesn’t seem right. G-gracious,” at another drag of hot tongue. Tightens his fist and tugs—

“Oh,” unbalanced at the sudden give like hair’s been ripped free.

When he looks down his hands are exactly where he left them, buried in thick waves.

Tugs again, lighter, testing.

Owain hums, arching into the pull, and does something with his mouth that has Gansey’s vision darkening around the edges. Whimpers and continues, “Supposed to be me, doing this for you.”

“Here we are equals, little king,” Owain says. “I enjoy it both ways. Most ways. You do not have to prostrate yourself before me.”

“What if I wanted to?”

They are both quiet, the only sounds heavy breathing and the crackling fire.

“Then your wish is my command.”

Panic claws at Gansey’s throat, closing around a dozen desperate wailing questions. He tries to push himself up—can’t when tangled with Owain, all he’s ever wanted and yet—

“Shh, shh,” Owain soothes him, wide hand firm and warm across his hips, pinning him down, pushing himself up Gansey’s body to kiss into his mouth, tongue curling. Something herbal and stale on his breath. “Settle, you haven’t wasted it.”

“What—”

“I could’ve. Could’ve made you beg for it. But. No. There is still yet something I can grant you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gansey says, still breathing too shallow, heartbeat still fast as a bird learning its been caged. Although, given the moment to think about it, he could’ve always argued he hadn’t asked for this, so technically it didn’t count as the wish. The favor. Do undead Welsh Kings have to abide by the same rules as djinn?

Owain shrugs one shoulder, fingering Gansey’s damp hair off his forehead. “Is it so much to assume I might want something from you? I’ve been asleep for a very long time.”

Gansey feels his blush down his chest. “Then… then my previous statement stands. Ah, about,” and gestures vague and circularly in the air between them.

Owain doesn’t break eye contact as he easily captures that hand and kisses his fingertips.

The blush deepens. Realizing it does only makes the embarrassment worsen somehow. Knowing he is. Knowing he’s acting like some sweet conquest. Finds himself blurting, “I am not naive.”

“Would you like to pretend?”

Gansey thinks, in a rush, of the historical erotica he’d found in Mallory’s library. Thin, warped pamphlets slipped between biographies, filled with ripped corsets, various throbbings, and all sorts of metaphors that had gotten lost on their way back to dripping fluids.

Owain chuckles, taking his silence for whatever he wants.

Breathing too fast and too wanting, Gansey is fine with that. Doesn’t know what he wants, just that he does, desperately.  Arousal burns at his core, shifting up for another kiss.

Owain opens it immediately, firm and gentle in his demanding, as his hands find Gansey’s hips and yank, tugging him lower, closer, and up. Swallows down Gansey’s muffled gasp of surprise. His hands are tacky with sweat against Gansey. Or maybe it is his own feverish skin that make them slide unnaturally.

Gansey drags him in closer, tongue turning greedy, legs wrapping around the cut of his thick waist, as he nearly folds himself in half, desperate for friction and kissing both.

Owain’s fingers are slick when they appear between them, pressing at his rim, humming warm until Gansey gives way on a thin hiss between his teeth—between their tongues. He wriggles his hips, hiccuping in the abrupt shift, the too-knowing reach.

“Please,” he gasps, dropping his head back. He doesn’t think where Owain got the oil, doesn’t think about protection, doesn’t worry about a single damn thing for once in his life as his head’s filled with cottony afternoon sunlit pleasure.

Lips at his neck again, nudging his chin to the side to kiss up to the sensitive lobe of his ear and down to his shoulder. Gansey can only breathe heavy until he’s dizzy, drifting in the muddied warmth of fingers stretching him open easily, thumb tracing the rim and pressing up his perineum until he’s shaking, all his muscles liquid.

“You are a dream,” Owain says, almost to himself. Expands his fingers tortuously as he drags them out slow.

“I’m not sure this isn’t all a dream,” Gansey murmurs, losing some of it to a cracking moan as Owain shifts hold on his thighs and presses into him, inexorable.

“S-sweet saints,” Gansey manages, screwing his eyes up tight and toes curling. Owain is thick and weighty inside him; rocking easy and unhurried until their hips are nestled flush, and Gansey’s choking on every expletive he’s ever heard Ronan use.

Owain chuckles, hands rubbing warm circles to soothe him, even as all of him shakes in mirth and jostles Gansey into squirming movement.

It’s either that, or silently despairing at the stretch like an empty highway headed nowhere.

Heat builds in his gut, simmering into his hips, as he works himself in small circles on Owain’s cock; spiraling at the sharp pleasure cut through with the reality of what they’re doing.

“Fuck,” he spits, inelegantly.

Owain swears similarly, rough and foreign, pressed into Gansey’s shoulder. He’s too dumb, too dazed, to parse it—too fixated on the scratch of stubble he hadn’t focused on before.

Been there before?

Teeth nip at his throat; a hand presses at one sensitive thigh, easing him a little wider.

Gansey tips his head back on a shuddering gasp, opening all of himself  desperately as his mind goes blissfully empty. Nothing to think about, nothing to worry about; just the suffusing heat of arousal like a fever.

He’s died once, already. Maybe twice?

How fitting to feel it here, again—la petite mort indeed.

He found him.

He found his king.

And Owain has found his pleasure, his fantasies, and draws it out of him easier than if he was in his thoughts with him.

Maybe he is.

Or maybe he’s the one in Owain’s eternal dreams.

“You are lovely when you’re thinking,” Owain said, a little rough, wrestling out a grin for him. He pushes himself up enough to snap his hips harder, and to pet the wrinkle between Gansey’s brows with a thumb.

 “Good,” Gansey says breathlessly, nudging up into the touch. “I hear I do it rather a lot. Just thinking about you, though.”

“I am not the jealous sort.”

Gansey laughs at that, has it croaking down into a moan as Owain takes his cock in his hand. “It—it really is about you. And impossibilities. And… no matter what happens, I hope I don’t ever forget this.” 

“The necessities of life,” Owain says, making sense and not.

Everything makes more and less sense when that thumb that had been on his face rubs hard over the head of his cock, fond and demanding at once.

Gansey whimpers, hips kicking up. Shudders at the extra friction, at the all-consuming desire thumping through his body. Whines as he squirms, one foot losing purchase and the angle he’d briefly grasped.

Cold air passes over them, between them.

He jerks, feeling like he’s falling—a sharp swoop in his chest—like he’s losing more than just his grip on Owain.

“Please.” His face burns with it, the sudden cloying desire, the fear of loss, when he was so close, lungs fluttering with the almost-catch.

“Anything.” Owain’s hands grip tighter, bruise.

The warm light from the hearth, from the candles scattered around, flare impossibly brighter.

Owain shifts back, out, to flip Gansey over and push back inside him as he holds him down into the bed. His lips seal against the back of Gansey’s neck, knees planted solid between Gansey’s own weak and bent ones. Steadies him with one strong hand, as unyielding as stone, on his hip, and the other pressing one of Gansey’s hands into the bed so hard he feels his knuckles shift.

“Yes, yes, yes,” he chants, eyelashes damp and lungs squeezing tight. Maybe tightens with the pressure of being pinned to the bed. The velvet of the bedspread is rough against his leaking cock, each slide of pleasure outlined with a spine-tingling zing of discomfort. He rubs his cheek against it for more. Anything to sink deeper into this, to lose himself to it.

Owain is heavy and hard on top of him, body tensed for metering even and unrelenting pleasure alongside his own; his mouth soft and biting in equal turns against the sensitive stretch of his throat. Murmurs in Welsh to him, crooning and goading, the words unknown to him but the meaning clear enough.

Gansey nods, gulping each breath when he can, tightening around Owain’s each thrust. The sharp spear of pleasure chokes him and he can’t stop.

Something nearly intangible brushes over his thumb, and he blinks until he can focus on…on…

Stares at the beetle crawling unhurried across his hand, traversing the peaks and valleys of his fingers tangled with Owain’s. Another crawler a few inches off. The buzz of some insect just behind his ear.

Owain moans, hands tightening with the creak of bare bones grinding against each other. The hand locked with Gansey’s is taut in something more final than tension, skin stretching and flaking against the coverlet, graying in the flickers of candlelight.

Gansey inhales, stiffens in alarm—his hard cock confused with the low sound of arousal above him—and can’t think to shout; the impending syrupy flush of orgasm held off and muddled with revulsion.

He blinks. Warm, healthy skin. Warm breath ruffling his hair. Warm muscle flexing languid against his in their movements.

Gansey presses his face into the bedspread, squeezing his eyes so tight there are star bursts behind his eyelids, and the rush of his pulse loud in his ears. There is an ache behind his skin, building in his sinuses he’s ignored until now. A tight and swollen pressure that matches the rest of him.

He whispers, desperate and shaking,“Please, I—I can’t—” unsure how long he can last in this heady space between what he knows and what he wants. How much more he can take.

Owain’s hand on his hip digs in, bruising deeper than muscle, and tugs Gansey back into him forcefully several times. Fingers slip down to one straining thigh and roughly hook around it, wrist dragging along the sensitive inside and tugging him more open. Lifts and spreads and holds Gansey exactly where Owain wants to drive into him over and over, hitting so deep Gansey’s unsure he’ll ever be able to feel full like this again.

Another hollow of wanting, carved out of him.

He gasps around it, unable to speak, to think, to move. The change of his partner from one of saccharine indulgence to brutal, selfish efficiency is suitably distracting. Somehow it feels like reparations.

Gansey shakes and keens, mindless with it all and lost control of the passing of time. He can’t stop the tight winding of his muscles, his limbs, his grip on Owain, his ramping pulse. Can’t stop the little choked sobs escaping his mouth; can’t stop his thighs shaking as he tries to hold on.

He can’t.

He fails.

Light and shadows pulse behind closed eyelids, the air around them cycling too hot and icy cold. The softness displaced around his arms and knees slams up into stone and then back again in a rush of vertigo.

The tension snaps and Gansey coughs out a moan he wasn’t ready for, losing his sense of self as he hurtles into pleasure and relief and pure sensation. Heat fans fast over his skin, hot tears slip down his cheeks, the erratic pounding of his heart beats blood against the inside of his skull, clogging his nose.

His joints buckle, clenching down on Owain’s cock as he jerks forward, losing purchase.

Owain’s arm is quick around him, holding him up, holding him back, holding him where he needs to grind into the now-sharp tightness of him. He groans loud and guttural in his release.

Gansey hazily wishes he could be so commanding and confident in his physical presence; that he could be so unrestrained in his climax.

For the moment he’s only capable of gasping, and a few straggling whines at the feverish sting inside him as movements get too slick and loose, everything falling out of sync. Falls halfway outside his own body it feels like, when it’s so heavy.

They collapse together in the damp coverlet, half-deaf and self-consumed.

Gansey shifts his thighs, grimacing at the sticky slide. The sweat now-felt over the rest of him. He isn’t sure he can feel his hands.

A drowsy path is drawn down his hip, and he doesn’t know if it’s a drip of sweat or a crawling insect. He doesn’t look.

The fire crackles.

A draft blows through a gap somewhere.

Owain relaxes in the long exhale, visible in a puff of winter air and smelling like damp wool blankets.

“Settle, little king,” he murmurs, rumbling through Gansey’s back.

Gansey turns over in Owain’s arms—

Blinks—

Is kneeling on dark stone in front of a cracked and empty coffin.

Is in a cave, lit by lantern and flashlight and phone screen.

Is clothed.

His knees sting and his hands are stiff with cold.

He wets his lips, carefully, finding his mouth dry.

“Yo, Dick,” someone says, grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking him. His nerves buzz angrily, overtaxed and now misfiring. “You still in there?”

“Is he?” Gansey croaks, eyes pinned on the coffin.

“What? Yeah, yeah, Gans, he’s there. Bones and all.”

Is there more than just bones?

Gansey exhales, shaking, and slumps back against Ronan’s knees. Because of course it’s Ronan. He’d know him anywhere.

“Where did you go,” Adam asks, his soft and lovely voice suspicious. “You just… went down, and wouldn’t respond to anyone.”

“I don’t know,” Gansey allows. Swallows. Shifts, hissing at the discomfort of kneeling for so long (on stone? On antiquated bedding?) “Did I? Go somewhere?”

“You were here,” Ronan says.

The worst part is he doesn’t know that he was.

The worst part is he might never know if it really happened.

The worst part is he knows it’ll never happen again.

[yeyinde]

Hi! Hope you're doing well. I just have to say that you're my favorite writer and a huge inspiration to me. Everything you write, even the small little snippets, just make me so happy.

Are you by chance still doing the WIP snippets? Cause I go feral for Jacob Seed, and when I saw you had a WIP for him I can honestly say I almost fell out of my chair.

Hiya! This is so sweet!! Thank you so much 🖤😭

Jacob Seed is one of those characters who I'd very much like to chisel open. He's so intriguing. His ideologies are so unfounded but his conviction and his reasons for them are what I find really appealing.

This is quite a deviation from what I normally do—third person, technically no reader-insert (I kindaaaaa made an OC? Oops) a bit darker (dragging me back to my slasher roots), and pulls a lot from a pseudo-religious upbringing. It is really fun to write, in theory, but is one of those fics that is mentally taxing in the sense that every piece is part of a bigger picture. Despite that, though, I could probably talk about this fic more than any others because of all the weird influences it draws from—Siken (it was originally gonna be titled war of the foxes but I felt that was a little too on the nose so I changed it to wishbone which is even more on the nose), bible mythology (in particular, the warring interpretations of Abaddon, iyjyk but also??? Abaddon and Michael, though???? 👀), and um. Cult shenanigans.

Here is a little bit about it!

He's in her head now, a sickness polluting her grey matter until it's shaded the same colour as the burning auburn around his wicked mouth. The one that splits wide, and croons about her failures, her destiny, until the rasping slur of his words are skeined tight around her gyri. Festering like a cancer she can't clove. One that sounds more like a truism each time she hears it.

Jacob has his finger on the trigger of a loaded gun with the barrel pressed tight to her cerebellum. A tool, he said. One without a master. Until now. Until him.

She can't fight him. Can't get rid of him. 

She wonders if she ever even tried.

And for some Rook x Jacob (kinda sorta but in a weird and twisted way):

Jacob doesn't give an inch even with the barrel of her Whitetailer pointed at his heart. A beat, then, where the world around her seems to shiver at the smirk he sends her way, his own hand fixed, deadly and calm, on the butt of his garish rifle. Red. 

(Of course. Of course.)

He stands on his tower, a castle of rock in the middle of the Whitetail Mountains, surrounded by unfathomable wilderness, and the broken remnants of his wolf beacons, his fallen men. His Judges. 

They lay by her feet, discarded offerings to the man who vultured her sense of self, her agency, until the person she was before all of this was lost, collateral to a war she never agreed to. She feels it sometimes, the putrefying remains of idealism and hope clawing at her skull until the tissue shreds and bleeds. Feels it like a second degree burn, a scab she can't stop picking at, and then pushes it back into its sarcophagus. It's an effigial prison in which she's both a warden and cellmate. 

It rears, now, as her patent yellow boots sink into the ribcage of a man torn to shreds by her bullets, her fists, mourning the loss of who it once was—a person of empathy and compassion. Someone who would have recoiled at the sight of viscera staining her laces, bone crunching under the soles of her feet. 

But it's gone. All she feels is annoyance. Disgust. 

They rendered it out of her. All of them pulling and tugging until bits of herself ripped apart, left behind in their regions, in their hands. Faith holds her belief. John, her compassion. Joseph, her fear. And Jacob—

Well. 

She tries not to think about what she lost in his cages. The gaping hole where her humanity once sat is heavier now that it's empty. 

It doesn't matter. Not anymore. 

Everything has been culminating to this point. To this moment. She feels the weight of it, the truth, in her bones. Unlike John, unlike Faith, only one of them will walk away from this still breathing. Her fingers tense. A proxysm. 

She finds, as the sky fades back to an endless blue and the mournful call of a loon breaks through the coppice, that she isn't entirely sure she wants it to be her. 

"Everything, all of it, has been leading up to this moment," he calls down to her, answering the unspoken assertions that bounce around the bruised fibres of her head. Hunt. Kill. Sacrifice. She gets it. She hates that she does. Hates him, she thinks, even more for making her see, for turning her into his executioner so easily. "So, Deputy, what will you do?"

If it were Faith, there'd be something about the path. About choices. About submission and surrender. Giving up agency and self in the single-minded pursuit of devotion to the Father. John, maybe a taunt. A sotto voce about atonement and true self. Of life admit the torture. A baptism in pain. 

But Jacob is neither of them. 

"Are you gonna kill me, angel?" 

She thinks about it. Really does. Lets it grind down into her synapses as she imagines a world without him. A place in Hope County where they celebrate his death and burn his body on an altar, unwilling to let the cult take him back until he's charred bones and ashes. Sure, then, that he's gone. Forever. Always. No more. 

Jacob will burn. 

She thinks about it, and she shudders. 

It feels anticlimactic despite the effort he put into setting it all up. Moving beacons and men and cages and wolves. Tracking her down through the forest until she led them to the Wolf's Den, and put a bullet in the head of the only man who made her feel some sense of footing amid a crumbling world. A place that wasn't quite home but it was something. Purpose, maybe. 

It stands in sharp contrast to the dogfight between them. Jacob and his soldiers. A commander playing a game of war from the comfort of his sanctuary. They're gone, now, and she hates that she isn't, too. That no matter what she does, how open she leaves herself, he still lets her sneak up the side of his perch until she's crouched behind a log, until she can hear the weight of his footfalls as he searches for her across the blood smeared landscape. 

It's a fallacy. He knows where she is despite the engineered confusion in his tone. What was that? He asks. Come out and fight me, Deputy. You know I'll find you—

The red dot follows her, always just a few inches from where she's hiding. A farce. She hates it. Hates that he isn't really fighting her. A marksman, he said (hoorah), but the only bruises he gave her are in her mind. Mental scars. Stupid. She hates him. Despises him. 

(Hates herself even more.)

It feels like muscle memory when she peers over the ledge, her bloodied knuckles leaving smears of her fingerprints behind. He's there. Waiting. 

Killing Eli, killing phantoms. Killing men. Killing him. It all congeals in her marrow. Effortless. Easy. She's killed him so many times already that she's sure, now, she could close her eyes and find her mark. 

Over and over again, he turned to a nebula of dust when she jumped on his back, wrapping nimble fingers around his neck. Mocking words haunting her as he dissolved into the aether. The Father will protect me. You need me. Don't fight it. Just let go. You've served your purpose. Let's say you get out of this. What's next? You go back to running errands for a teenager and a housewife? You are nothin' without Eli. 

"Come out, come out wherever you are, honey," his crooning taunt makes her hackles raise. A part of her hindbrain prickles with unease. Jacob brings a certain terror out of those dormant depths—an atavistic fear coils around her jugular. "Let's finish this." 

She wants to end him. To kill and maim and bend and break until nothing is left but bones and tissue. She wants to ruin him. Wants him to ruin her. To end this conflict at the top of a precipice she never wanted to climb. 

She says nothing—not to him, to them—but scuffs her feet against the gravel for no reason other than to make him look. He whips around, hand steady on his rifle. 

"Finally done hiding, Deputy?" 

The red dot hasn't left her vicinity since she prowled after him, unleashing hell and gunfire on the men—his Chosen, his best—that tried to keep her away from him. Hiding, she thinks, and wonders if those words are a projection. 

The Whitetailer—the only anchor she's had since she found it laying behind in an abandoned cabin—hums under her fingers. Pulses with the blood rushing through her veins. It's always been heavy. An SA50 isn't easy to carry across a landscape she mostly ventured on foot (as the near constant ache between her shoulders can attest to), but it feels both heavier and lighter than before. Another contradiction of many since she walked out of the Den and into a world on fire. Since she slit his throat and watched him turn into cosmic dust. 

It's steady, though. Unwavering. There's a gash on her arm from one of his Chosen. A bullet in her thigh. The unhealed wounds—bliss bullets and arrows—twinge with pain when she tenses her muscles, breathes in deep. Her broken ribs scream. She feels like more like a throbbing contusion than she does an actual person, still caught in the tendrils of her conditioning where his voice echoes in her head, the last notes of a song that turned her world into ashes. Only youuu… he'd crooned.

Only you. 

Only ever you. 

She gets it now. 

Or, she wishes that were true. It isn't. It isn't because maybe she's known all along. Since the bunker. Since Pratt. One, two, three. One, two, three. And then he's got you. Since she blinked into cognisance surrounded by the fallen bodies of the militia who didn't survive the training, who had bullet wounds that matched the shots she took in Jacob's trial. 

Since she went back to the Grand View and walked through the rows of cages in the parking lot. 

She gets it. 

She knows what she has to do. 

Her grip doesn't falter when she aims up. Up. His stomach. His lungs. His heart. 

"You can't. You're done. You've served your purpose, and now it's time to accept your place, Deputy. Where you belong." 

She thinks of Tammy. Of Wheaty. There's nothing left for her. Not anymore. 

Nothing except—

She wonders if there's a flash of panic in his cerulean eyes. A brief flicker of fear. But all she sees is contempt. 

"If I die, you'll be lost forever—"

She pulls the trigger.