#and living for himself too as opposed to just barely staving off death so he can accomplish a goal centered around someone else

[scarletspider2the2ndpower]

“The Pain of Kaine,” Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1/1963), #609.

Writer: Marc Guggenheim; Pencilers: Marco Checchetto and Luke Ross; Inkers: Marco Checchetto and Rick Magyar; Colorist: Fabio D’Auria; Letterer: Joe Caramagna

[mara-xx217]

The Necromancer and the Gravewalker

@space-arsonist had given me such wonderful Zog the Eternal scenarios that I couldn't possibly pass up!

"Canon Divergence: Zog has prevented Talion from taking Isildur's ring (and so from becoming a Nazgul) and now they are allies and are working to overthrow Sauron. They hate each other, but with time they come to recognize their similarities and respect each other.

It had finally happened. Zog knew that, eventually, that wraith would grow tired of the Gravewalker’s bleeding heart and human semimetal nonsense and would jump ship into a more… suitable host. They were barely compatible at the best of times, and completely against one another and at odds at the worst. It was no wonder that the elf lord decided to possess a fellow member of his species, equally as blinded by duty and self-righteousness as the ranger once was, completely unaware of the wraith’s true intentions. Zog would laugh, if it wasn’t so sad and pathetic.

He observed the struggling ranger, resting on his haunches as the Gravewalker struggled to staunch the open wound of his throat with his mutilated hand, the other desperately searching for something, anything that would bring him salvation. There was none to be found, here, in Mordor. Surely he knew that before accepting his post on the Black Gate..? Perhaps not. Humans are as strange as they are ignorant, selfish, and short sighted. Zog frowns. For all the power that Talion had, it couldn’t stave off the lull of death that has been at his heels for, what, years? Decades, now? There was too much work to be done. The elves would fail, and Sauron would remain, no matter how fractured his existence may be. Ork-kind would be in danger still, and Zog knows, no matter how much it pains him to admit, that he can’t face this threat alone. Just as the ranger would need assistance as well. The ranger… Shrak… Talion was still bleeding to death, and at this rate…

Zog stands, grimacing to himself. He had his acolytes make sure that no opposing forces would counter attack the Bright Lord’s army while all this chaos ensued around them. He was alone, but he couldn’t hide the distaste that crossed his features. As much as he despised Talion, he hated Sauron more, and seeing such a valuable asset to Mordor be lost to the Witch King’s hands just didn’t sit right with him. Talion was strong, not just for a human, but for any creature that Zog has ever encountered. He has an iron will and a nearly unbreakable spirit, but even then, all living things have a line that when crossed, there’s no hope of return. Under no circumstances can Talion be lost to the Nazgûl. The power balance in Mordor is already a frail and off-kilter thing, so to allow the Shriekers to have even more power and territory than they already have..? No, Zog will not allow this to happen, no matter how sour of a taste it leaves in his mouth.

Before Tallion could crawl his way over to Isildur’s abandoned ring, Zog promptly steps on it, dragging it away from the fallen ranger’s searching hand. Wheezing, Talion glares up at the necromancer, eyes darkening at the realization that he wouldn’t be getting out of this encounter alive. If only he knew… Zog picks up the ring, inspecting it. He can feel the Witch King’s eyes boring into him, and he can’t help but to hiss and square his shoulders. He’ll have to find a way to dispose of this accursed thing later… It will bring nothing but trouble, and Talion is far too desperate to right the wrongs that have been done to him.

Kneeling down, Zog flips Talion onto his back, examining his wounds. The bleeding hasn’t stopped, but it has slowed. Ignoring any weak protests of the fallen ranger, the necromancer picks him up with relative ease. One thing humans always did was underestimate just how strong uruks are, no matter how lanky they may seem…

Talion couldn’t keep up the fight for very long. He was so tired… All this fighting, all this pain, all this… loss… The strength was sapped from his body along with the warmth in his extremities. Ioreth… Dirhael… Emotions that he hasn’t felt in… in a lifetime came bubbling to the surface. Is he finally going home now..? Talion missed his family so much… What would they think of him now, seeing what he has become? Everything he’s ever done; it has been for his country and his family. Even if he’s already… Talion still wants to protect what is precious to him, even in death. But now? It’s finally over… He did what he could and then some. Ioreth and Dirhael would be proud of him, wouldn’t they? Fighting until the bitter end, no matter how futile the war may be.

The fight will continue, regardless if Talion is the one at the helm. He can rest easy… Talion allowed his weight to fall flush against the uruk’s shoulder, eyes growing heavy and mind thick as mud. Zog felt the ranger giving up, and immediately began to grow annoyed, if not a bit frantic, with Talion’s sudden lax body language.

“By the Dark Fla- Gravewalker! Giving up, are we?! There is far too much work to be done for you to- Talion! Damn it, tark-!”

…

The Gravewalker was turning into more work than he was worth. Talion almost died on Zog. Twice. Bastard had almost given up entirely, but something inside of him kept clinging onto what little life he had left. As much as it irks him, Zog can’t help but to admire Talion’s tenacity, even just a little bit. He certainly knew how to rally and lead troops, and he was half decent with a sword, as well. They had danced with one another more than once, and both had ended the other at least a handful of times. That was more than any Uruk could say, and Zog couldn’t let such talent go to waste, so matter how stubbornly they try to do so themselves.

Talion was unconscious for weeks, slipping in and out of awareness like clockwork. Sometimes, he could swear that he heard Ioreth’s voice, or feel Dirhael’s hand on his shoulder, guiding him along to some great unknown. But before he could truly grasp what he was experiencing, it was gone, just like that. Should he be relieved? Devastated? Something else..? The fact that he could still feel and think anything means that he is still himself, and that Zog hasn’t done something horrible to him. Yet… After nearly two long months, Talion had finally regained enough of his senses to be completely conscious. More or less.

A bitter, acrid smell burnt his nostrils, making him feel violently ill to his stomach. There was an uncomfortable heat in the air, and with some thought, Talion realized that he was still in Gorgoroth. Still in Gorgoroth..? And not dead yet, from the looks of it. He certainly felt like it, though. The ranger felt… odd. Empty, almost. Like something intimate had been ripped out of him and stolen away.

Celebrimbor and Eltariel…

What had happened..? Was it really Zog that had picked him up and cared for him? Surely not, given their history! But then… who? Why stop him from taking Isildur’s ring? Why care if he becomes one with the Nazgûl? That made little to no sense to him, and he was still far too weak to get up, let alone run or try and protect himself if something were to happen. As he sat there, withdrawing into himself as his mind began to wander, someone cut through his thoughts.

“Hmph… it’s about time you woke up, Ranger.”

Talion’s head snapped in the direction of the voice, startled. Cursing himself rife being so oblivious, he prepared for the worst. “Who-?”

“Don’t ask idiotic questions, Talion. You know I can’t stand dimwits.”

Zog the Eternal. So it wasn’t a dream… “So then-?”

“No.” Talion is taken aback and frowns. He takes in an uneasy, raspy breath, but is cut off.

“You aren’t dead. Not yet, anyways. No thanks to those damned elves.” Elves… Eltariel and Celebrimbor..! Talion was… conflicted with how he felt. He’s never felt more betrayed, and yet… a part of him understands why Eltariel did what was done. But, if he’s still alive and Zog is still here, then…?

“They failed, Gravewalker.”

“...what..?” They… failed? How..?! How could they fail?! They had the new Ring and Galadriel’s Light! Sauron was already in a weakened state atop of Baradur! So then why-?!

“That elf lord wasn’t as virtuous as you and that she-elf imagined, it would seem. It’s possible that she survived the battle, but wandering blind around Mordor, however…” Talion gripped the thin, ratty blanket draped over him tightly. They failed to stop Sauron. But… he’s still alive. How- or rather, why?

“...that does not explain why I am still alive and under your care, necromancer.” Talion saw Zog shift in his peripheral. He doesn’t answer immediately, and that is cause for great concern in Talion’s eyes. After a few quiet moments, Zog speaks.

“Sauron must be defeated. He is a danger to all of Middle Earth, not just the desirable areas.” Talion shifts but says nothing. “You may not like it, but we uruks exist, and many of us dream of a life free from underneath the crushing heel of our dark masters. No more Nazgul. No more Witch King. No more Sauron. I would like to see them all burn and shrivel away into ash and nothingness, but I know that I cannot do that alone.” Eyes narrowing, Talion attempts, and fails, to face Zog, hissing in pain as his entire body threatens to revolt against him.

Is this a trick..? Zog- the Zog, the Eternal, the necromancer, needs help..? From a human, no less. This must be a jest. Talion couldn’t believe his ears, yet… He was alive. He was alive and under Zog’s care, no less. He had stopped Talion from wearing Isildur’s ring, and had protected him from both Sauron and the Witch King’s gazes for all the time he was unconscious and recovering. No matter how much Talion scrutinizes his situation, he cannot deny that Zog saved his life. And is asking for repayment, no doubt. Needing to choose his words carefully, Talion thinks for a moment, before-

“And you want my help?” Talion couldn’t help but to laugh. It’s truly ridiculous, but, then again…

“I believe that was exceptionally clear, Gravewalker.” He isn’t even beating around the bush. Zog is serious… Talion gets serious as well. He didn’t want to make it a habit of working with Orks, especially ones as dangerous as Zog, but… what choice did he have? He wouldn’t be able to do anything on his own, much like Zog. But together…

“What exactly do you plan on doing, necromancer? Rising against Sauron is no small feat, especially if that uprising is an Orkish one.” Zog shifts, perhaps shrugging, perhaps leaning backwards in his seat.

“There are always things that need to be done. Weakening the Nazgul, weakening Sauron’s hold on Mordor, showing Orks that they have the capacity to be free…” Talion doesn’t immediately respond, thoughtful of what Zog had just proposed. It would be a bold lie to state that he was completely calloused to the suffering of orks and uruks. He has fought beside them, heard them sing and feast and merrymake with one another, he’s seen them share tender moments and forge friendships not unlike the bonds he and his fellow rangers had forged with one another at the Black Gate… Releasing a heavy breath, Talion allows his heavy eyes to slip shut. Damn it…

“The fight is truly never ending…” Talion was well beyond feeling exhausted. He so desperately wished to step back, allow someone else to continue the fight against the Dark Lord and his evil machinations. But… there isn’t anyone else… If Talion doesn’t keep up the fight, then who will? Reopening his eyes, Talion’s decision has already long since been made, ever since that fateful night.

“...what needs to be done?”

[love-toxin]

yandere heart; ashe, wilardo, noel, sirius.

a/n: yandere headcanons for the witch’s heart male cast. 

warnings: spoiler heavy, obsessive love, mild smut elements, blood, character death, criminal coercion, murder, suicide. 

Ashe

He would never have a bad thing to say about you. And, by extension, nobody else would have the chance to speak badly about you either. 

Before he has the courage to tell you about his feelings, he would seek out comfort in books with characters that remind him of you, especially if they are love interests. Even if there’s a time when he can’t bear to dump his heart out in front of you, he can still fantasize about living your lives side-by-side. 

The main motivation for his love to become an obsession is when he starts to regard you not only as a close friend, but as family. By then, he'll want to stick as closely to your side as possible, and make sure that you never leave his sight lest you be hurt or killed. And his fantasies will start to develop into more intense scenarios--most of them being how you’ll be married and start a family of your own. 

This, of course, will extend to even personal trips to the bathroom. He won't intrude if you need to use the toilet, but he'll insist on waiting outside the door and keeping guard if you're doing so, as well as when you need to take your bath.  

Unless you're close enough to let him in--in that case, he'll be sure to turn away or busy himself with washing at the sink while you bathe if you're shy. And if you're more comfortable, he'll be eager to sit you between his legs and take your bath together, so that you can wash each other's hair and lather the spots on your backs that neither of you can reach. He’ll absolutely take the chance to tickle you, too--and you’ll probably have to endure a bit of shouting from Sirius if he hears you “roughousing” together in the baths. 

He won’t kill you if you try to leave him--but he will get close. The tip of his knife might waver against your neck for a few moments before he pulls himself out of his fury, and your tears will bring him back to reality so he can comfort you in his arms, despite being the one to terrify you in the first place. 

However, if he were pushed to the very brink, and he was sure that he could get ahold of the heart, that might be the one time that he’d sacrifice you in order to further his plans. He’d despise himself for it if he used your death to cover his tracks, but surely when he gets the heart he can bring you back along with everyone else. That would be the thought that comforts him right up until he has the heart in his blood-covered hands. 

Perhaps, if he’s bored or he thinks you need some training, he might steal you from your bed in the night and strap you to a chair in his room. Until the wee hours of the morning he’ll pace around you, knife in hand, wondering aloud what he should punish you with for being so difficult. Maybe he'll cut you and blame it on your own clumsiness, maybe he'll leave some burns and say it was an accident...maybe he'll break one of your ankles and convince the others it was a bad fall down the stairs, before scooping you up the next day and keeping you in his room to tend to your wounds. 

It would be a mistake not to realize that he's completely sadistic, and wants nothing more than to keep you under his thumb and manipulate you until he can call it love. You can't die on his watch, but you're not going to live without him either--and you can be sure that you'll be helping him to obtain the Witch's Heart, even when you realize where it is. 

He'll kill everyone if it means he'll keep you safe. But honestly, he'd do it without that prompt too. You're his accomplice in life, death, and love--and even if you say no, he’ll still have time after time after time to try it all again, even if he doesn’t realize it.

Wilardo

If he didn't care about you, he wouldn't push you away so vehemently. He knows he loves you from the start, which is why he refuses to get close to you in the beginning. 

However, he does want to know your business. All of it.

If he doesn’t find you in your room or his, he’ll go looking for you until he does. He’ll rifle through your things, read your diary, and even take possession of your room keys so he has complete control over when you leave, and even where you go and what you do. Any time you wish to return to your room, you’ll have to ask him first--and if you oppose, he’ll just shoot the lock off your door so you won’t have the choice to keep him out. 

If you aren’t already staying in his room, you might even awaken to find him in bed with you, his body nestled into yours from behind as he quietly breathes against the back of your neck. And if you move around enough so that he knows you’re awake, he’ll tease you endlessly with a rare playfulness, and fiddle with the hem of your clothing like he might tug on it before leaving it be. 

Speaking of which, as much as he'd loathe to do so, he'll threaten you with his gun if you start getting especially confrontational with him. He wouldn't kill you for no reason, but that doesn't mean he won't tell you he will--he finds it a bit more effective if he threatens to blow his own brains out, however. You'll always come crawling back with sympathy if he does that, so he tries to keep those particular threats to the bare minimum in case it loses effectiveness. 

His pace will change if you figure out the truth, however. If by some fluke you find the guts to try and kill him while he's sleeping or not paying attention, he'll lose any shred of self-restraint he had once kept around you. Besides, once you watch him rise from his place after you've stabbed him in the neck, or shot him point blank, or poisoned his drink, there's very little chance that you'll have any more courage left. 

He'll find somewhere dark, and quiet, and cramped to keep you for awhile until you learn your lesson. During this time, he'll force you to care for him and dress his wounds even if he has to hold his gun to your head the whole time, and will relish in the way you tremble when he asks you to kiss him better. 

If he ever feels as though he needs to make amends, he’ll offer you some flowers. Specific ones, of course, all plucked and pruned by his hands--he doesn’t really care for the allure of it, but he knows it will touch your heart as it does all foolish, romantic people. He could even turn it into a pavlov effect, and manipulate you so thoroughly that you’ll already feel some dreaded sympathy when he pulls out a rose or leaves a bouquet by your bedside table. 

He'd kill both Sirius and Ashe without hesitation to further his goals, or to protect your life if it came down to it. Though, when he finally realizes where the heart is, he’ll turn his sights towards you and bring about your end himself.

It’s one of very few times that he’ll be comforting, gentle, even sweet--in your last moments he’ll try to keep his plan to himself, and will hold you close and soothe you with kisses and reassurance while you cry. He’ll relish in the lovely sight for a short while before he finally puts a bullet in the back of your skull, and makes his wish as soon as he can afterwards, so you won’t have to spend even a spare few moments apart as he follows your lead. 

Noel

There’s nothing he wants more than to save you. From the monsters, from the truth, from him--from everything. If he could make his wish come true, he would ask that you just be happy and safe. 

He's kept up by thoughts of you all the time, however not all of them are necessarily pure. In fact, it wouldn’t be untrue to say that when he’s alone, he struggles not to consider all the things he could do to you if it were just you and him in the mansion. 

Despite this, he'll never have the courage to kiss you first, or even initiate anything beyond perhaps holding your hand, or cuddling. If you want affection from him then you'll have to ask, or initiate it yourself, to which he'll never refuse. 

He’s not nearly as manipulative as the others, but he won’t necessarily let you off the hook easy either--if he senses other people getting close to you, he’ll spy on them and even gently interrogate them about their intentions, if not urge you to stay in his room during the night so he can keep an eye on you while you rest. Even if he doesn’t suspect any of them will kill you that time, it’s still a valid excuse for him to watch you sleep and fantasize about every little thing he loves about you.

In this realm, too, he won’t stop himself from giving you dreams every so often. They’re always happy ones, and he always manages to insert himself into them, even to chase away your nightmares. Most times, he uses it just to spend some peaceful time with you...but there are times that he takes it a step further, and takes them to a much lewder place if you allow him to go there. And the morning after those ones, he’ll always be locked in his bathroom and insist that you go to breakfast without him. 

It's only because of you that he keeps the cycle going over and over and over again--as much as it pains him to see the others rip each other to bits, and the demons revel in the bloodshed, he just can't let you go. The guilt of keeping you from living your life just can't overwhelm the needy, aching love he has in his heart for you. 

And as he gets weaker, and the monsters become more dangerous, he’ll struggle to keep the routine going day after day. He can’t stave off his fate forever, but he finds comfort in the few moments of peace that he’s always been fighting for, in between the fighting and killing and the times that you’ve gotten caught in the crossfire. 

Speaking of which, Noel’s kills have all occurred solely because of those incidents. Wilardo eliminated you for getting in the way, Ashe silenced you so you wouldn’t warn the others about his crimes, Sirius spilled your guts when you found out too much...every time he witnesses it, it’s even harder than the last. 

But those stories are the ones the demons love the most, when they get to watch him tearing through the mansion to punish your killers, and eviscerating all that stand in his way. He’ll never be proud of it, especially not the rare times when he’s had the chance to prevent it, and enacts his vengeance in front of your pure, soulful eyes. But if it’s necessary, he’ll do it a thousand times more. 

Even if it stands against his own morals, he’ll resort to nearly any means if it involves you and your safety--and to preserve your happiness, even if he knows that he can’t ever make it last forever, no matter how many times he tries. 

Sirius

Pleasing you is not just an option, it's his absolute duty. Even if the residual effect is due to his servitude to Dorothy, he still wishes to fulfill all of your needs with no help--or interference--from anybody else. As far as he’s concerned, the only person in the world that you need is him. 

He will ask you to do some chores as he does the others, but he will push you away to take over himself when you've barely even started. Rarely is it because you're incompetent--it's mostly just an attempt to stroke his ego and show you how skilled he is. 

Oh, you’ll also be confined to his bedroom for the entirety of your stay in the mansion. There’s no extra rooms, he insists, at least not any that have the protection symbol to keep the monsters at bay--and besides, as long as you’re his, you won’t be spending much time apart anyways. 

You’ll have no affection from him if you get on his bad side, however, which may be a blessing or a curse. It’s sparing in the first place if you aren’t in the privacy of his room, and if you piss him off or say something he disagrees with, he’ll ignore you completely until you “come to your senses” and apologize. 

This also applies to a lesser extent when you distract him from working. He might raise his voice or snap at you for doing so, though he softens up much quicker, and can be soothed with some sweet words and a kiss or two. 

And if those kisses ever turn into something more, he’ll do his best to convince you that he’s not as filthy-minded as you seem to assume. He swears he won’t stoop to that kind of behavior with other people about--but he’ll say nothing about what will happen when they leave, except that you should get comfortable with sharing his bed for awhile. 

He'll also force you to keep his charms on you at all times, and will paste them in various places in his room just as an added measure. One of the few times he'll use them in combat is if you're with him, too--if he can't get any of the others to dispatch the monsters out of your way, then he'll begrudgingly do it himself. 

He'd kill Ashe more times than not. If there’s anyone he can’t trust, it’s him--and you’ll always be the reason for it. He just can’t afford to allow someone so sinister to roam the mansion freely, and if he has to do it in front of you, then so be it. You can hate him as much as you want, but he’ll want you to do so while you’re still alive. 

But again, there will be so many times that Ashe gets you first, and sometimes Wilardo as well. As much as Sirius curses his own weakness, it never stings quite as badly as when his neck is sliced open, and he dies begging his killer to spare you while knowing that they won’t. Or worse, finding your corpse and cursing out everyone else in a rage, only to be taken to the grave next and have his body thrown carelessly atop your own. Even if he won’t remember it the next time, it doesn’t make him any less obsessed with keeping all other threats away from you. 

But if you have to go to hell, then he’ll follow you even there. There’s no question about granting a wish, or clinging to the past--you belong to him, and wherever you are, he’ll force himself to be so that he can keep hold of the only thing he’s ever truly loved. 

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 29: something of an overdue talk, in a long overdue chapter.

Hey everyone! We’re back at it, hopefully, with a few orders of business.

First things first: I’d like to issue a small warning for a short discussion of past suicidal ideation that pops up during this chapter. Since this series is a retelling, generally most of you do know what’s coming up next and what we’ll run into and to brace ourselves for that. You know about the characters’ past traumas and future choices and know where that pops up, or if it becomes unexpectedly relevant or makes a new parallel, you did at least know in advance that it happened. Phoenix’s occasional oblique allusion to Edgeworth’s “choosing death”, for instance. 

As this is not something quite like that and comes up more out of nowhere than usual, I just wanted to make sure that no one is uncomfortably caught off-guard. It felt like something different to me personally as I was writing - whether it’s going to strike any of you as different than other heavier material we’ve had in the past, I can’t say, but I’m erring on the side of caution today. If you’ve got any questions or concerns or anything you want done for content warnings in the future, please do come talk to me and let me know!

On two lighter notes: thank you all for bearing with me through the “oops all Fire Emblem only Fire Emblem” hiatus. It’s been a weird year, obviously. I’m hoping that I can carry on with room in my brain for both.

And finally: Happy UR-1 day! Today is, yes indeed, the exact day that Simon Blackquill is arrested for murder, and in honor of that, have a chapter where I mention him one (1) entire time.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches of Los Angeles Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

Golden Saturday-morning sunlight streams in through the blinds, lighting up the dust particles swirling through the air. The office is colder than Apollo expects for the end of October - colder than it was last year this time - and Phoenix is even wearing a sweater, the shining locket that Apollo hasn’t seen in a while hanging around the outside of the tall collar. “Morning,” Phoenix says, without raising his eyes from what appears to be a manila folder full of newspaper clippings he is perusing. “What’s up?” 

Straight to business, then. Apollo is fine with that. He grabs the chair from his desk and drags it around, not directly in front of Phoenix’s desk, but near enough that it will be harder for Phoenix to ignore him.

“Is there any way to break a curse?” he asks, shoving his hands deep in the pocket of his hoodie. If it were this cold in a regular office on a Saturday, that would make sense; save money on heating bills when no clients are coming in. This is just - fae bullshit. The beginning of their seasonal tantrums. Winter only properly begins on the solstice, and Apollo really wishes that the fae of Kurain would respect the astronomical seasons. Stave off the snow until the end of December and end it in March. Don’t allow it to span from October to April. 

Phoenix sweeps the scraps of paper all back within the folder and ducks down to set it inside a drawer. “If I knew a way,” he says, rising back up with the magatama in hand and setting it down on his desk with a hard clack, “do you think I would go around looking like I do? You don’t think I would’ve gotten this mess cleaned up a long time ago?”

He doesn’t offer Apollo the magatama for a refresher on what that mess looks like. Maybe he was just making a dramatic point with it. “Oh,” Apollo says, scratching the back of his head, faintly embarrassed by how obvious the answer is if he’d given it a modicum of thought from that perspective. “I guess not.”

“Right,” Phoenix says. “As my understanding goes, you can theoretically maybe mitigate a curse, if you layer another opposing blessing on. I am ‘lucky’” - he makes sarcastic quotation marks to ensure that the bitterness dripping from the word doesn’t go unnoticed, as if Apollo could possibly not notice - “to have known enough fae that I’m saddled with both Fortune and Misfortune, and Life and Death. But I’m also not certain that when you drop those on each other they don’t just each take their own separate niches. I’m not dead, but god knows when I try to go somewhere for a vacation or a day off, I still stumble across crime scenes like nothing else. Stunningly lucky in some aspects, and wildly unfortunate in others. You know me. I don’t need to elaborate too much, do I?”

Apollo nods. 

“So that’s the theory, but I don’t think that helps anyway for your purposes, which - this is about Prosecutor Gavin?”

Apollo nods again. Phoenix sighs and rubs his eyes. “Shit,” he says, folding his hands together in front of his face and leaning his head against them. “I - believe me, Apollo, I wish I had some - I wish I had any way to help him.”

And Apollo does believe him. Apollo has to believe him, and believe that Phoenix means well, because he’d go crazier if he wasn’t reminding himself that Phoenix’s most frustrating decisions are born out of good intent. That Phoenix thinks he knows what’s best, but there’s still that old saying about good intentions. 

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Apollo asks. “You knew before this. You knew before he asked you.”

Phoenix raises his head. “And what does telling him get him? Secure in the knowledge that his brother - who is already in jail by the way, don’t need any more proof of his crimes, he’s already never getting out to be able to hurt anyone ever again - hates him enough to have wished him dead?”

Basically the same reasoning that Klavier had, but Apollo has a counterargument now. “Gives him time to come to terms with it before someone dies!”

“You don’t!” Phoenix slams his palms on the desk. Apollo flinches. Of course everyone is volatile and heated over this topic, but that doesn’t make it easier in the moment that it first gets directed at him from people who are usually frustratingly calm and casual. But Phoenix winces, lifting one of his hands and dragging his fingers through his hair, and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says, and repeats, much quieter, “You - you don’t. Or I never didn’t. I knew from right when it happened that I was cursed; I had three years between then and when Mia died - it - I could’ve had a decade, or two, and it - it wouldn’t have helped. I wouldn’t have felt any differently. Any more come to terms with it. With the thought that I - helped cause—”

His tongue heavy in his mouth, Apollo nods. “But - but wouldn’t it have been worse to find out right after she died?”

“Of course it would have,” Phoenix says blithely. “Of course that - this - is the worst possible alternative. Of course I would’ve said something if I’d known that this was what would happen instead.”

“But you have to have expected that someone would—”

“No, I didn’t,” Phoenix interrupts. “That’s not how this works. You know Klavier. You know how much he doesn’t say, don’t you? How much I don’t - you know what people like us are like. Who’s going to tell him? Sebastian forgets half the time that he even has the Sight. Kay only acts like she knows things. Prosecutor Blackquill spent until two days ago acting like magic isn’t real even when he knew we knew otherwise. Someone who means ill isn going to keep that information to use it, and not to just plainly say something.” He frowns. “Well, usually not. Unless they’re a clumsy interloper stumbling in somewhere they don’t belong and getting themselves fucked over for it too.”

“So other than Means just walking all over everything” - because he wasn’t immersed in this kind of fae etiquette, didn’t grow up in it, learned just enough to spot what he thought were opportunities and ruined himself by it - “you think every other random stranger is just going to respect all these - these weird little rules about what you don’t say?”

“Rules of engagement, basically,” Phoenix says. “Yeah, I do.”

“Prosecutor Gavin told me that you’re cursed,” Apollo says. “Don’t just tell me that’s - that’s the exception that proves the rule, or whatever.”

Phoenix’s expression, smug and trying to dampen that smugness back into something that respects the seriousness of the conversation, tells Apollo that yes, yes that is absolutely what his retort was going to be. Apollo considers screaming. “I’ve been tangled up in this for far too long,” Phoenix says. “I can promise you, I know the patterns. I know the way these things go.”

“And because you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, that makes it okay?” Apollo demands. “To take a gamble and just hope that it won’t go wildly wrong?” 

And he wants to, really wants to add, I guess that’s what you do, just gamble with people’s fates, and he doesn’t, and Phoenix’s face still darkens like he knows, like he can read Apollo’s mind. Because every time Apollo ends up arguing with him, that’s always at the core. This playing card that haunts them both, burnt a bridge barely built, and they keep trying to balance on the ashen skeleton of it. “Just because Prosecutor Gavin is too fucked up about everything else to be mad at you for hiding this—”

“I did,” Phoenix says, voice low, eyes narrowed and dark as an evening’s storm clouds, “what I thought would be best, based on my prior experiences of both how curses don’t get talked about, and knowing exactly what it is like to personally live with knowing that I’m cursed. This is not something I want anyone to have to know how it feels.”

“So you think ignorance is bliss,” Apollo says. Klavier said that. Apollo wants to know how Phoenix takes that statement.

“I wouldn’t call it ignorance,” Phoenix says. “It’s not like he, or you, didn’t know what Kristoph was like until you found this out. You know the crime, the verdict, the sentencing - and everything else that Kristoph tried but failed to do. That Kristoph also wanted Klavier dead is only another small piece in the grand scheme of it all.” 

Still the same argument that Klavier made; Apollo can’t imagine they discussed it. What brought them to the same conclusion? That they both have lived this strange specific kind of grief? This common ground that they share that is foreign to Apollo.

“Come to terms with - Klavier’s already got to come to terms with the rest of that,” Phoenix continues. “It was obvious during that trial how much Kristoph despised him. He knew that too. He knows that Kristoph ruined more lives than just the people he murdered - that he tried to kill more people than he actually succeeded at - cursed and tried to kill children because he couldn’t have - didn’t want anyone remaining who - who could - could… say…”

If Phoenix hadn’t faltered like that - fumbling and failing to continue, words petering out as he went back over what he just said, his eyes going wide and welling up with horror - then Apollo would have simply assumed that his thoughts were moving too fast for his mouth and he couldn’t keep them straight. It would have been easy to talk right through it, and Apollo wouldn’t think twice. If Phoenix hadn’t showed his own hand, gave the game away. Something too terrible for even seven years of professional poker to hide. 

“Mr Wright?” Apollo asks, and Phoenix turns his head, glancing away away, no longer meeting his eyes when less than a minute ago he was staring him down with a cold confident glare. “What - what are you talking about? Vera, and - not someone else? Who else?”

Phoenix makes a tiny shake of his head, and even that little motion is a bright, distinct liar’s red. It lights up his eyes, too, when they dart down to the floor. “Mr Wright?” Apollo repeats. When would this have been? He casts his mind over everything he learned, just a little over a year ago, Phoenix sitting him down to explain seven years of information collected about Kristoph, what he’d done and how he’d tried to cover it up. He tried to kill Drew Misham to tie up that loose end; he cursed and poisoned Vera, two precautions because he wasn’t confident enough in the former, hoping that if she ever left the house she wouldn’t be able to speak to his identity and the forgery he requested. He killed Zak Gramarye seven years later to hide the same. He wanted to eliminate every link in the chain that connected the diary page to him. Its makers Vera and Drew, and Zak who knew he was the first attorney on the case, and then the page got to Phoenix via—

Via—

“Mr Wright,” Apollo says. His voice shakes. “He didn’t—”

“Promise me something, Apollo,” Phoenix says firmly. His mouth is drawn in a tight line but he doesn’t look stern. He looks more like he’s going to cry and is desperately trying to stop himself. “Promise me.”

“Wh - what? I can’t—”

“Promise me, Apollo.”

Not until you tell me what I’m promising, Apollo thinks, Apollo knows is what he should say. He’s been told this enough times; he’s aware of this on his own. Don’t agree to a deal before all the terms are set. Don’t sign the contract before it’s read thoroughly. Rules for lawyers and fae are the same. Just because Phoenix means well doesn’t mean that Apollo agrees with those decisions he makes; certainly not the one they have been discussing, and likely not whatever Phoenix is asking him to agree to. 

“Please.”

The air in the office is so cold. Even the sunlight seems cold now. Apollo shivers, hunches himself up further. What does Mia think? Is this secret-keeping so natural to her, easy as breathing once was, because she’s fae and that’s what they are, liars by trick and by trade?

“Just promise me you won’t tell her until I do.”

His mouth dry, Apollo nods and croaks out, “All right. I won’t.”

He almost regrets pushing the issue,regrets ever asking Phoenix why he faltered. Phoenix sits slumped, his hands in his hair, and when he glances back up at Apollo, he looks so exhausted that it reminds him of Klavier last night. Burnt-out and broken, when it’s so rare for either of their masks to break. Rarer for Phoenix not to be positioning himself as the one with all the cards in hand; for him to fall apart, for Apollo to actually see him upset. “Yeah,” he whispers, soft enough that Apollo sits forward to make sure he can hear him. “Everyone involved in getting the diary page from him to me, Kristoph wanted dead, or to make sure he could silence them. Everyone who knew, even if she was - eleven years old, or eight. The girl who made it, and the girl who gave it to me. He fucking hated the Gramaryes. You think he didn’t jump at the opportunity to try and get rid of all of them that he could? That he wouldn’t cast a curse on each one who ever entered his sight?”

“And she” - Apollo’s voice cracks - “she doesn’t know? You didn’t tell her?”

“Shit, no,” Phoenix says. He sounds close to cracking, too, and when he drops his hands to his desk he starts shaking his head, his eyes scrunched closed. “Being a Gramarye has been goddamn enough of a curse for her. She lost all her family and then found out that her grandfather buried her mother’s soul in the woods because he was a monstrous son-of-a-bitch who deserved worse than getting to go out on his own terms by shooting himself in the fucking head—”

Apollo shudders. Phoenix had never before directly stated his opinion on Magnifi, but Apollo could definitely tell he held only disdain for the man. This, though, is more than disdain. This is positively venomous, and more than a bit frightening. Did he always feel like this, and hid it, or is this hatred something that has only come about since last year Trucy came back to the office with her mother’s soul in her hands?

“—so yeah, on top of that, I’m definitely going to tell her that the same man who killed her father cursed her just because of the accident of who her family is.”

“B-but—” Apollo doesn’t quite know what he’s arguing. He also doesn’t know where all of his prior conviction went. Of course Klavier should have been told - because he found out in the worst way possible - and Trucy - to take a gamble with her too - that’s got to be just as wrong— “Nine-Tails Vale,” he says suddenly. “We went there, and then there was a murder - that - that’s - is that like—”

“Like what happens to me?” Phoenix asks. “What happens with a curse? Yes. That’s how it goes.”

“And you - you’re not going to - to tell her? Ever? In case - in case something happens to her like with Klavier, or—” Too many thoughts are playing in his head, and the next one grabs hold of him and pivots him away from the point he was going to make about maybe why Trucy should know. “The concert,” he says. “When we went to the concert, Trucy and I, and Klavier was there too of course but that’s - Romaine LeTousse was murdered. They’re both cursed and they - wait, was Klavier cursed then? That was before…” 

Did Klavier know when it happened? Did he tell Apollo? He’d said that Phoenix had seen him twice since the trial last October. Presume then that Kristoph cursed him then. The last time the brothers saw each other, and that doesn’t make one bit of sense. 

“How could Kristoph have cursed him?” Apollo asks, and he doesn’t miss a momentary flash of panic that passes over Phoenix, his eyes popping wide for half a second and a loud, sharp intake of breath. “Klavier always has iron on him. He gave me—” He looks down at his hand, and then back up, to Phoenix’s lifted eyebrows. Apollo sticks his hand back in his pocket. “What’s the point in iron if it doesn’t actually save you from being cursed?”

Phoenix is obviously trying not to move. He knows Apollo is watching him, waiting for a twitch, anything to pounce on and draw an answer out of him. Staring steadily back at Apollo, he barely blinks; he rests his folded arms on his desk and his fingers curl just a little tighter into where he’s gripping his arm. Apollo is right to be asking these questions. He’s getting closer to something that Phoenix is hiding. 

“Or it does,” Apollo says. The veins on the back of Phoenix’s hand flex from his grip. Apollo thinks about someone else with a tense hand and secrets. “And he couldn’t have been cursed then, at Vera’s trial, if it does. So then Mr Gavin hated him that much before then.” Phoenix blinks placidly, but he doesn’t adopt his lazy-eyed gaze. Too serious even for that. “And you lied,” Apollo adds. “You lied about when.”

Phoenix flinches. It’s just a tiny one, pulling his head back, the muscles in his jaw and neck tightening, but Apollo can’t miss the light show. Can’t miss that the lie is bleeding out of him.

He finds himself on his feet, not stepping any closer to Phoenix’s desk, just needing the height, just needing to move a little to stop the shaking in his hands and in his chest, a trembling that goes right down to his heart. “He knew already that he’s cursed! Why did you keep lying to him!” 

“I didn’t lie to him,” Phoenix says evenly, but very quietly, and Apollo wants to go over and slam his fists on the desk and make him stop with these hollow justifications, make him face what he’s done couched in none of his winding words. “I just didn’t correct his assumption.”

“That’s lying!” Apollo shouts. “That’s still lying! That’s what happened in Mayor Tenma’s trial! Do you remember that? Do you care!” 

“Don’t accuse me of not caring.” Phoenix’s voice is low, his eyes dark, staring up at Apollo. “I do care. I—”

“You don’t care about lying! But you do care about - what, about us? Doing this because you care, because you always know what’s best for everyone not to know!” Apollo throws his hands in the air. Phoenix’s brow furrows further, his jaw set tightly. “Never mind that Athena had a breakdown during the trial because Means hit her exactly where you were worried she would be! And you didn’t prepare her! Never mind that Klavier’s having a breakdown now because he found out at the worst possible time! When you could have told him! You know—”

“And if what he knows already hurt him this badly, then what do you think would be happening if he knew Kristoph cursed him years ago?” Phoenix slams his hands on his desk like he’s at the defense’s bench, pushing himself up out of the chair and onto his feet. “That his brother’s wanted him dead for that long? You think that’ll help anything, for him to find that out right now on top of all this? You want him to have that to come to terms with right now, too? I didn’t lie to him! He made an assumption that I didn’t correct because I’m not in the business of salting anyone’s wounds!”

He makes - a point. Apollo sees where he’s coming from. Why he’d do that. An additional piece of truth, yesterday the same as a salting of the wound. “But you don’t think he’s ever wondered if - if Mr Gavin resented him for that long? If he - if you would be setting something to rest, if you told him that. You can’t decide for someone else what they’re capable of handling.”

“Fair point,” Phoenix says. He sinks back down into his chair, and then motions to Apollo’s, suggesting he sit back down. “If he’d asked, I’d have told him. If he ever asks, I’ll tell him. I just wasn’t about to drop that on his head with him unprepared. Or if he asks you - I’m not asking you to swear silence to that. Shit, if you ever think that it’ll help him to know, then tell him - tell him you just found out from me, throw me under the bus and lie to make me look worse, that’s fine.”

Apollo returns to his chair, still not feeling any less like he wants to take a swing and see if he’s gotten any better at punching since last April. “You want me to lie now too?” he asks. 

“I want you to use your best judgment about what he might want to know or be able to handle,” Phoenix says. “To not pile on more if he didn’t ask, if you don’t think he’s prepared. Like I said, when it comes to being cursed, I didn’t ever not know, and I know what the knowing is like. Yeah, I took a gamble that if I didn’t tell them then no one else ever would. That they’d never know, I hoped.” 

He shakes his head and then leans it back against his chair, his eyes closing. “See, it’s not just grief, not at all. The woman who cursed me was someone I thought I knew. Though I’d known for a while. She had actually wanted me dead since we first met.” His eyes pop back open. “Eventually she tried to poison me, and when that didn’t work she tried to frame me for murder, and when that plan fell apart she just tried to kill me with a curse because she was pissed about it. She was a lot stronger than Kristoph, I’ll tell you that much. But Mia stepped in, and now I’m still alive and other people just drop dead all around me instead.”

He sounds almost like he is making a recitation, like he’s rehearsed it, scripted it. Apollo wonders if he’s ever told anyone else all these details, if anyone else lacking the Sight knows that Phoenix is cursed, and if he used this same script then too. He’s speaking about himself, something so personal, in a way so curt and crisp, so much more detached than he’s been speaking about Klavier, or Trucy. 

Apollo nods numbly, unable to force his tongue to ask any of the questions he has.

“I could have come to grips with her hating me that long and that much - I could’ve come to terms with it and moved on. I was - well, I eventually became glad to know what she was. I could’ve been okay with all that. Eventually. If I hadn’t known about the curse. But I did and the - the knowing, the - Mia was murdered. Three years after she saved me. That long, thinking I could accept that I was cursed, and as soon as something really happened - I couldn’t.”

He presses his hands together and rests them against his chin. “And I couldn’t ever even just grieve her, because I had this guilt. That her death was my fault - I know, I know, some other man murdered her. He got to rot in jail for the rest of his life for his crimes, and he would’ve hated her whether or not I was cursed. For the things she did and because of what he was, and I had no part in any of that, but I was still - thinking, if maybe if she hadn’t ever taken me under her wing. If I hadn’t been around, maybe it would’ve been different somehow. Maybe she would have survived.”

The lights flicker gently and return dimmer and softer than they were before. Everything that gets talked about in this office, Mia hears; Apollo wonders if Phoenix doesn’t get sick of it sometimes, just want to say something without her offering input. Even if this is presumably well-meant, some attempt at comfort, the most a dead woman who can’t speak can give. Apollo exhales and can see his breath. He shivers again. “Why are you telling me this?” he finally asks. 

“I want you to understand.” Phoenix rubs his hands together, a vacant look in his eyes, like he hasn’t quite realized why he’s so suddenly cold. “What it felt like, and what I’m worried about. If I’d told Klavier, or I tell Trucy - once I say something, I can’t take it back. That’s it, and they know, forever, just like I do. So I want to be sure that this won’t - I want—” He drops his hands and reaches over and picks up the magatama, idly spinning it around between his fingers. Apollo can’t remember ever seeing him this uneasy, this fidgety. “Klavier, especially, reminds me of myself when I was his age, and of a prosecutor I knew then, too. And that - recognition” - he gestures with the magatama clutched in his hand - “is not good, because we were not - okay.”

Apollo wishes he could remember with clarity all that Phoenix said to him about this time a year ago, about Klavier, about Phoenix being concerned for him. He does remember that Phoenix said something about some other prosecutor then, too, that Klavier reminded him of. Or that he was worried Klavier was going to end up like.

Phoenix inhales slowly, and says, “Six months after Mia was murdered - which was three, three and a half years after I was cursed, mind you - I lost someone else. I didn’t realize how badly he was doing - he did a good job at hiding it, and I didn’t know how to reach out. I was wrapped up in my own loneliness and depression, and then he was gone.” 

He stops turning the magatama between his fingers, staring down at it for a few seconds, and then he resumes fidgeting with it. “I felt like I’d caused both of those. Couldn’t convince myself otherwise. Every other factor I knew there was, every single thing I couldn’t prevent or control, all these other things that other people did - I still thought that if I wasn’t cursed, then it could have been - just different enough that they would still be here.” He reaches up, brushing his fingertips across his temple. “Wouldn’t have been a fatal wound. Or wouldn’t have—”

He falters, staring past Apollo now, over at the window. This is the same thing he said about Mia earlier, about that sense of guilt, even knowing someone else murdered her. That he held some kind of responsibility, for a curse that seems to manifest itself as coincidence. Just coincidence, a little too often. 

“They could’ve been okay, somehow, in the end, I thought,” he continues. “And instead, I was - I was there, I was still around, and they weren’t. And all I could think was that if I didn’t do something, then I would just lose the other few friends I still had - they would be around me, and they would die for it.”

“Didn’t you say that there’s no way you know to break a curse?” Apollo asks. From Phoenix’s solemn expression, he’s not going to suddenly say that there is a method, but Apollo has no idea what he is going to say. What that something he thought to do was. 

“Right,” Phoenix says. “So I thought - only way to take the curse out of the equation is by taking myself out of the equation. I thought - as long as I’m not around - if I go and die, then anyone else who I love won’t. The curse will be gone, right, if death finally takes me. But the curse only seemed to hit other people, not me, so if dying was what I needed to do, then I…”

Klavier lying on the stage, wondering why it had to be Courte who died instead of himself. Phoenix’s dark, pained eyes, as he speaks again, finishes the thought in a voice barely above a murmur. “It made - made far too much sense to me, then. Was far too appealing a prospect.”

The question of what Phoenix won’t quite spell out catches sideways in Apollo’s throat, and when he tries to force it he just makes a soft croaking sound. Phoenix presses his lips together and glances away. “It’s a pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he adds softly. “Klavier’s - he’s what, twenty-whatever? I was twenty-five when I—” 

When Mia died, Apollo thinks, but that Phoenix doesn’t finish the thought, swallows hard and stares at his desk and says something else, makes Apollo think there was something even worse he could have said, with that implication he didn’t say. “And Trucy - she’s my daughter. I’m supposed to protect her. I took her in because I couldn’t live with the thought of anything else happening to her when I could bring her here, hope that Mia could somehow bless and protect her as much as she did me. But I can’t imagine just - I can’t let that happen to her. To suffer the way I did, to - to spend her life wondering if wherever she goes, someone’s going to die - the concert, Nine-Tails Vale, to ever - to think she can blame herself. Or that everyone she loves is better off without her. Or to—”

He blinks, fiercely, his eyes watering, and Apollo hopes he’ll never have to see Phoenix this close to tears again. Phoenix, cursed and trying - and in the case of Klavier, now failing - to shelter others from that same pain. Klavier, and Trucy, and—

“What about Vera?” he asks. “You explained to me, but did you ever tell her that she’s—” Phoenix stares at him, blinks slowly. Apollo squeezes his own eyes shut. “You didn’t tell her.” He’s unable to muster the same indignation he was before. He can’t really even bring himself to feel manipulated. Phoenix told him exactly that he was saying all this to make Apollo understand. Phoenix sought this reaction. But Phoenix’s chessmaster act has never superceded his desire to keep secrets before; there’s no way that Apollo can convince himself that this emotional vulnerability is all entirely a ploy to get Apollo to shut up. How many times has he refused to explain something and just left Apollo to stay angry about being in the dark? He has never been reluctant to do that. To just sit silent and lock Apollo out. To let Apollo hate him for his secrets.

He wanted Apollo to understand, intimately, whatever it took. So that Apollo would agree keep these secrets. So that Apollo would go along with him. And it might be concern that drives him - he cares, of course he does - but it’s still manifesting in the most infuriating ways possible. In well-meant silence.

“Would you want to know?” Phoenix asks, and that question at this time is an answer and confirmation in itself. “I know the truth is important to you, Apollo - I know it is to all of us.” 

For once, Apollo believes he means it. He’d know it’s the truth because he can see when Phoenix is lying, but he’s actually convinced, this time. 

“But,” Phoenix continues, “if you already know that the person who cast the curse hates you and is in jail for committing murder - already got to come to terms with that, or grieve that, or for someone else dead - you already know that truth. Would you really, honestly want to live with also knowing that you’re cursed?”

To possibly want to die because of it, like Phoenix did? Apollo opens his mouth. He wants to say yes, yes he would like to know, because that’s the truth of it and he wants to always know the truth, all of its facets no matter how ugly. 

Doesn’t he? 

He thinks about Nahyuta, about Dhurke, about trying to forget they ever were anyone, because that’s easier than facing the fact that Dhurke abandoned him, and they might both be dead by now. Easier than wondering whether they were human or fae or something else. He doesn’t want to know what they were. He wants to deny the dreams, to convince himself they’re nothing but the weird subconscious mash-up of memory and the fae horrors Clay has spent all these years warning him about. He doesn’t want the truth about his childhood. He doesn’t want to remember his childhood at all.

(Is it well-meant silence when he doesn’t tell Clay, or Trucy, or Klavier, about them? To not worry them about his life and his past? Or is it just cowardice on his part? Blissful ignorance.)

He closes his mouth. Thinks about the smile Trucy forced onto her face as she realized that Apollo was about to reveal to the court that her father Zak Gramarye was murdered six months before then. Thinks about how she couldn’t keep that smile forced when she found out that her dead grandfather took her mother’s soul for his own personal gain. Thinks about Klavier lying on the stage wishing that he had been the corpse there, not Courte. All the pains that truth has caused them. Is that better or worse than that alternative? Does it depend on what truth it is being hidden?

(He thinks about how long it’s been since he’s said Nahyuta’s name out loud. What color were his eyes in real life, and not Apollo’s haunted dreams? He doesn’t remember.)

“I - I don’t really know,” he admits.

The smug, victorious expression he expects never arrives on Phoenix’s face. There’s no satisfaction in winning this argument. “I’m sorry,” he says, closing his hand around the magatama. “I told you about Vera because it mattered directly for that case, but the rest of this - I wanted to shoulder it myself. So the rest of you don’t have to worry about it. I don’t want you to have to keep secrets from anyone. But I don’t know what else to do.” He forces a smile onto his face with visible effort that makes Apollo wince. Nothing masks the exhaustion written into the lines on his face. “Maybe we put our heads and together we figure out some better way to talk about it. If I ever figure that I should tell…”

He trails off, touching a finger to his locket. Tell Trucy. If he ever gains reason to think that he should tell Trucy. Would he actually run it by Apollo first, ask for his advice? The possibility of being in Phoenix’s confidence for something that isn’t a case doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. 

“I still don’t think you should try and keep it secret forever,” Apollo says, “but I - I guess I see what you mean. And why you don’t just…”

Why he doesn’t just tell her. More reason that just because Phoenix doesn’t “just tell” anyone anything. For once, he’s not being a cryptic bastard.

“Believe me, Apollo,” Phoenix says darkly, “I’m always thinking ahead and trying to plan for the worst. I’m not naive enough to just hope that anything will stay one way ‘forever’. But I have to be sure I don’t make it worse, either.”

It isn’t the lack of a visual cue that makes Apollo believe him. It’s knowing him that makes Apollo believe him. Phoenix always has his eye on something down the line, playing out the plan a few steps ahead to find the complications. Even - especially - while he wasn’t a lawyer. A gambler’s steady hand holding the cards, chancing on an outcome, because the cost of doing nothing at all is even more unthinkable. 

Apollo nods, more times than necessary, lacking anything else to say. Phoenix cocks his head. “Apollo, you all right?” he asks. 

What the hell is he supposed to say - how the hell is he supposed to be? Fine? In what world is he possibly fine? At the end of this, he’s learned more than he ever dreamed he would from his sole initial question, but in it all, that first answer has never changed. 

This is all there is. A rabbit hole of pain so unfathomably deep and winding, and in its darkest depths, the same as the answer given to him on the surface: there’s no way to break a curse. Their lives aren’t the kind of fairy tale where true love’s kiss can wake a sleeping beauty or transform a beast back to a prince - it’s grimmer than that, colder than that, crueler than that. Curses not so concretely visible but more like haunting coincidence, a ghost whispering at the shoulder with reminders of guilt. How could a man who wasn’t even there when the crime happened blame himself for his mentor’s murder? And yet, even after the killer’s confession, how could he not? How can even the curse’s caster be blamed when someone else wielded the murder weapon? And yet, how could they not share in it?

Apollo would rather someone have been turned into a frog, honestly. Wouldn’t that be easier to grapple with, a simple chain of cause and effect, and no ambiguity in who to blame. 

“No,” Apollo finally says. “Not really, no.”

“I guess that was a bit of a stupid question, huh.”

Apollo nods. No kidding. What’s a better question at this point, anyway? Not what he says. “How - how can there really not be any way? For a curse to be broken, I mean.”

Phoenix spins his chair around, resting his head back against it, eyes turned up to the ceiling. Once he slows to a stop, facing the windows, he says, “I mean, maybe it’s possible there was, once, but it was forgotten. There’s a lot of magic that’s gone that way.” 

He gives Apollo a moment to digest that, and then continues, “The Court’s heyday was thousands of years ago. They’re living ruins of what they used to be, and a fraction of what they used to know. Maya - you haven’t met her, she’s Pearl’s cousin - Maya’s helping me out with some matters by trying to dig up more about some kinds of magic they’ve forgotten the nuance of. But even that’s something we’ve got a hint that they knew, once. Not like—” He shrugs helplessly. “I’m sorry. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a way to break a curse.”

“Oh,” Apollo says, somewhat surprised, but pleasantly so, that Phoenix said that much. It would be typical of him just to reiterate that no, there just isn’t any way he knows, that’s all, and to skip the explanation for fear of giving Apollo false hope. But thinking about the prospect of false hope is still easier than really, truly considering the meaning of what Phoenix just said - that this, that everything they’ve ever had to deal with in regards to the fae, could have be so much worse. They could do so much worse than all this pain they’ve ever wrought - they were once so much more dangerous than this, and now their Court is only ruins. This is what they are when they are weak.

“If I do find anything out, I’ll—”

Phoenix breaks off, rising up slowly from his chair, staring at something past Apollo, over his shoulder. Apollo twists around to look, not sure what he expects to see, but it certainly isn’t Vongole standing in the doorway, her head held high, her body much more solid than it usually appears, and stiller. The wispy fur at the back of her legs and off of her tail does not stir as though she is made of mist and surrounded by a breeze that affects only her; she could almost, in this moment, be a normal dog, but for her glowing eyes and her ears so bright red as though they were dipped straight in paint.

All the color drains from Phoenix’s face. He snatches up the magatama and springs to his feet, hurrying past Vongole to peer into the other half of the office. Apollo rises to his feet; if Klavier was here - if he heard what Phoenix was hiding - how Apollo promised to keep it a secret—

Vongole stares at Apollo. She doesn’t move. Phoenix reappears in the doorway, curling a hand in his hair, but his face has fallen slack with obvious relief. The claws curled into Apollo’s heart unclenches. “So then what are you doing here?” Phoenix asks the hound, whose ears fold back flat against her head, though her snout does not turn to shift her attention to Phoenix. She stares Apollo down like she will pounce. “Does he send you places or did you just wander here yourself?”

“You don’t know?” Apollo asks.

“You think I’ve ever had the chance to ask either Kristoph or Klavier about the logistics of their spectral hellhound?” Phoenix asks. Apollo tries to remember when he first started seeing Vongole. Whose ownership she would have been under. How soon after Kristoph’s arrest did Klavier come back to Los Angeles?

Despite her weirdly lanky proportions, like a regular dog was put on a rack and stretched out, Vongole always moves with grace, a predator’s prowl and elegance. A monster, but a beautiful one. She circles Apollo like she intends to herd him somewhere, like she is a shark smelling blood waiting for the moment to strike. “What—” Apollo spins too, trying always to keep her in his sight. She moves just slowly enough that he can keep up, but just quickly enough that he becomes slightly dizzy in his efforts. “What do you want?”

She stops. Apollo steps forward, trying to escape her circle, but she swings suddenly to the side, throwing her body up against Apollo’s hip. He expects her to fade through him, as she does walls and doors, but when she hits him he staggers with the force of her weight. And the cold - her body is cold and it reaches straight through his clothes, cold enough to burn, ice on bare skin type of burning, and Apollo doesn’t understand. He’s touched Vongole before, without problem, hasn’t he? Surely he has. What’s wrong with her? Or is something wrong with Klavier?

She trots over to the door, standing on the threshold, staring back at Apollo with her head aloft. He can’t bring himself to move, can’t unfreeze his feet from where they are riveted into the ground. Vongole presses her ears back against her head, lowering it so that her neck is level with her shoulders, prowling again, and she makes another circle of Apollo before again stopping in the doorway.

“I think she wants you to go with her,” Phoenix says.

She wags her tail, much faster than the usual low, wide swishing path that it takes. Apollo wrenches his foot from the floor and takes one step forward. Vongole bounds through the front room of the office, weaving between magic props tossed carelessly on the floor as though she couldn’t pass through them. And she stops and waits at the door, glancing expectantly back at Apollo. He fumbles his phone free from his pocket, finding no messages waiting for him; why would Klavier do something as cryptic as sending his faery dog to collect Apollo, rather than just calling or texting him?

Unless it isn’t Klavier instructing Vongole. Unless she’s acting on her own. Or unless Klavier is in trouble.

“You’d better go,” Phoenix says. “I can lend you the—”

“It’s fine,” Apollo says. He’s pretty sure that Klavier hates the magatama, and he found him fine without it last night. And he didn’t have Vongole guiding him then. 

“Let me know that everything’s all right,” Phoenix says quietly. Apollo opens his mouth to ask what Phoenix knows, why he’s so sure that this means something is wrong - remembers what Phoenix said about himself and how Klavier reminds him of himself, long ago. Closes his mouth. Knows why Phoenix worries.

Phoenix always worries. He means well. His road is paved in well-intended worry.

“Yeah,” Apollo says. “I’ll - I’ll let you know.”

Vongole waits for him only to reach the door, diving through it as his hand reaches for the doorknob. He next finds her waiting beside the bike rack, her smoky fur drifting independently of the chill breeze, and as soon as he mounts his bicycle she lopes off down the sidewalk. She never looks back at him but is obviously monitoring him in some way, her pace changing depending on obstacles and traffic so that she always remains in his sight. He follows her through the quieter (relatively, anyway) city of weekend mornings, through his usual stomping grounds, to end up on the stoop of an apartment building that is - quite frankly, not as grandiose as Apollo would expect. He presumes this is where Klavier lives.

(If it’s not, then he’s far too deep into something that it’s also far too late to back out of.)

Vongole noses one of the buttons on the buzzer at the entryway and disappears through the door. Only seconds later, too quickly for her to have physically covered the necessary amount of ground, the door clicks to unlock. Apollo enters the lobby and before he has time to take in his surroundings, she appears in front of him. Literally appears - not bounding up to him out of a wall, but materializing out of the air, white fog swirling in circles around her ankles. She directs him to the elevator, pressing her nose into the button for the fourth floor and then several times in quick succession slamming her nose into the close doors button. “So were you always like that, or did you pick up your impatience from him?” Apollo asks.

She sits down and fixes her eyes on him. He doesn’t know what that means. He’s not sure why he bothered talking to her. She can’t respond - can she understand? Does she have some way to communicate information she hears to Klavier? Surely not - hopefully not, depending how long she was in the office.

She does not move until the elevator halts at their destination, and she springs to her feet and slips through the doors before they have opened wide enough for a fully-corporeal dog of her size to pass through. But when he makes it through, she meets him right at the other side, her impatience not taking her any further down the hall until Apollo can follow right at her tail. The walls are not cracked and peeling as in Apollo’s building, but they are certainly plain - again, very much not the kind of place he would imagine Klavier to live.

Vongole throws herself through the door of Apartment 404, and Apollo waits in front of it. A moment passes, and then another. Right. Even a faery dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs to grip a doorknob. He fails to swallow his apprehension but knocks anyway. There has to be a reason Vongole brought him here. He can’t just run away from it. 

The seconds crawl past. Apollo reaches up to knock again, but the door swings suddenly open, and he flinches back.

Klavier’s hair is barely held together in a ponytail, strands falling loose around his face, and he looks even more like he hasn’t slept, going by the shadows under his eyes. And Apollo never thought there would come the day that he sees Klavier in sweatpants, but - he’s still alive. He’s still intact in one mobile piece, and he’s lucid enough to look annoyed. Apollo fumbles for words, any at all, but none arrive on his tongue. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He starts to raise his arm to point at Vongole, to blame her, and before he can, Klavier sighs, shaking his head, his apparent annoyance sliding into exhaustion, and he steps out of the doorway, pulling the door open wider, and gesturing for Apollo to come in.

-

[notes on the chapter]

[agentdagonet]

Echoes, Ch. 31

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Fic Summary: Feet dangling off the edge of the bed, hands still resting on the earpieces of his glasses, Eggsy opened his eyes.

And promptly shut them again, screwing them shut like a child who had the distinct misfortune of biting into a raw lemon. Breathing harshly in his nose and out his mouth, trying to stave off whatever delusional panic had befallen him, Eggsy reopened his eyes.

‘Harry?’

Or: The Hologram Story Nobody Asked For

          At precisely six there was a knock on Harry’s door, and Harry looked up from where he was tying his tie to the reflection of the door as it opened. Eggsy came through softly, stepped carefully over the haphazard piles of discarded clothing because of course the great gentleman Harry Hart was secretly a mess of a human being. It was one of the many things he loved about the man- another of which being how secretly sentimental he was. And, going by the way he was dressed, the two of them were of the same mind when it came to this evening.

           ‘Y’ready to go, Professor?’ Harry finished arranging tie and began to button up the waistcoat, his getup a familiar shade of brown, and smiled at Eggsy in the mirror.

           ‘Just about, Mister Doolittle.’ Eggsy flushed at being caught out, despite already having caught Harry at the same thing, but simply shrugged in reply. His dark green coat and red scarf were left loose and open, he’d left his hair a bit more messy than organised, and he’d worn an older pair of khakis. Eggsy thought the look was complete as it was, but Harry had other ideas- he ventured into his closet and emerged with a pair of hats. Harry placed the brown fedora upon his own head before lightly tossing the flat black hat toward Eggsy like a frisbee, who caught it easily before putting it on. Catching a look at himself in the mirror, Eggsy frowned and shook his head.

           ‘You look brilliant, Harry, but this hat just… it don’t work for me.’ Eggsy flipped it between his hands before throwing it back to Harry, who smiled softly before putting it away and tossing something else from the closet in Eggsy’s direction. He caught it, and grinned to himself as he pulled it onto his head. ‘Much better.’ The black snapback (why did Harry have such a thing hidden in his closet? He couldn't picture the man wearing one himself) could have taken away from the outfit, but the ease with which Eggsy carried himself made it work.

           Confidence, after all, is half of fashion. But, their amusement and mutually intentionally themed clothing aside, the pair were ready for their excursion. Harry offered his arm, and together they walked from the house to the restaurant- heads ducked intimately toward one another as they conversed along the way. They were greeted with familiarity by the woman at the counter and took their usual table against the wall, Eggsy refusing to sit before Harry had as some sort of bid to even their playing field. Neither of them were allowed to be the gentleman who held out the chair for the other- all or nothing. 

           They ate dinner in comfortable almost-silence, feet knocking lightly beneath the table, small smiles gracing both their lips. Eggsy inwardly blamed the flush of his ears on the chill, despite having been inside long enough for the warmth of the room to soak through; and Harry blamed the size of their table for their ankles ending up entangled, despite having sat at the same spot in the same fashion numerous times without it becoming an issue.

           ‘Oh, look, they’ve dressed up and everything!’ The librarian cooed over them as they entered the room, intending to take seats in the back for the convenience of the exit (just in case, mind) before being corralled by various staff to the event display. It was a table with various books and films derived from Pygmalion, which Eggsy impressed Harry by knowing the source material so well, with a small poster of the film they were going to be screening. The group demanded pictures of the two, and though Eggsy scuffed his feet and refused to meet anyone’s gaze, Harry could tell that he was right pleased by their attention- but absolutely not expecting Harry to go along with it.

           And if there was one great joy in Harry Hart’s life, it was doing the unexpected and damning the consequences.

           So with one hand he reeled Eggsy in, and while he had the younger man off-kilter he pulled one hand to his waist and the other held within his own at about shoulder height. He smiled gently at Eggsy, mirth at the corners of his eyes, before beginning a waltz about the table. 

           ‘Come now, Mr. Doolittle, I’m certain that dance is a skill necessary for all gentleman.’ Harry smiled, and Eggsy mentally thanked his gymnast background for helping him not trip over his own two feet. 

           ‘Somehow, Professor Higgins, I don’ think the library’s a proper place for this lesson.’ Eggsy didn’t bother to hide his grin as he successfully managed to match each of Harry’s steps, and neither of them paid mind to the library staff idly filming them. At least, they paid no mind until a polite cough threw off their rhythm, the man letting them know that they were due to actually start the film in about five minutes, and perhaps they’d like a refreshment before settling in? 

           Harry flushed up the back of his neck at having become so wrapped up in the moment, ducked his head and tried to angle the fedora so as to better hide his face, but Eggsy would have none of it and instead pushed the hat back until it sat far back on his head. They intended to sit in the back, no one to worry about ruining the view for, so what point was there in removing their hats? 

           Somehow the scarring on Harry’s eye seemed less tense, and Eggsy was glad for their reprieve. Neither of them knew what to do with proper downtime besides fill it with other tasks- but perhaps this was a good compromise on both their parts. As they took their seats, Eggsy made no move to remove his hand from Harry’s, and set the entwined pair on his lap as he leant into Harry’s side when the opening credits began.

           Both men would swear that they had paid very close attention to the film, but each spent the evening sneaking glances at the other. Midway through the film, Harry tensed as he was struck by the worry that he’d made Eggsy Other to his roots, changed him in such a way that he could no longer relate to his people outside of Kingsman- but as quickly as he had tensed, Eggsy had squeezed his hand. Had turned an inquiring eye to Harry before chuckling to himself and leaning up to Harry’s ear.

           ‘Don’ be an idiot, Harry, you ain’t done nothin’ I didn’t want to do. I could go back to the estates if I wanted- it ain’t like I’ve forgotten how to live like that- but I don’t want to cos you’ve shown me how much more there is. Not cos I don’t know how.’ How he had known where Harry’s mind had gone was anyone’s guess, but somehow the thought was comforting as opposed to terrifying to the secret agent.

           ‘If you say so, dear.’ It was not lost on Eggsy how domestic the statement was, as he settled back into Harry’s side, and he took comfort that the moment had not caused Harry any discomfort. There was no hitch to his breathing or tightening around his eyes or lips, the entire exchange had remained comfortable. The rest of the film passed in silence; though Eggsy caught Harry mouthing along more than once, which brought no small amount of joy to him. Here was a super spy who had seen to the toppling of dark underbellies and the deaths of who knew how many unsavoury sorts singing along to My Fair Lady under his breath. Maybe he was more amused than he ought to have been, but it was something Eggsy was sure no one else had seen (except, maybe, Merlin) and wasn’t that a privilege?

           When the lights came up, and the other people began filing out one of the librarians approached them a bit sheepishly, apologising for filming them earlier without having asked.

           ‘It’s fine- didn’ expect to be recognised, or to end up low dancin’ around a table, but who really knows, y’know?’

           ‘Actually,’ Harry interrupted, ‘I would appreciate being sent a copy, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’

           ‘Harry, what d’you need a copy of that for?’ Eggsy was as pleased by his request as he was confused; he wouldn’t admit to having slipped a note to one of them asking for a copy before they’d even sat down.

           ‘Well, perhaps I want to prove to Merlin and Roxanne that you’re perfectly able to not trip over your own feet when swept up into a dance.’ The others giggled at them as Eggsy playfully slapped at his chest with one hand before thanking them for their trouble and the screening.

           ‘It was our pleasure, you and your husband are just darling. Wonderful to see people so in love.’ Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Eggsy squeezed the harm still wrapped in his own briefly to cut him off before thanking them again and heading for the exit. They’d barely made it to the corner when Harry stopped suddenly beneath a lamppost, forcing Eggsy to stop beside him.

           ‘Why didn’t you allow me to correct them?’ He looked far more confused than upset, and Eggsy took that as a positive.

           ‘If you told them we wasn’t married, after that show we put on as nothin’ but ourselves, it woulda been awkward. I ain’t ashamed of us an’ how we are with each other, an’ they can think what they like. We know who and what we are to each other, yeah? So who cares ‘bout the rest?’ Eggsy talked his way around the obvious answer with that little white lie snuck between- they’d never actually defined what they were. Which was to Eggsy’s benefit, as he was trying to change the parameters somewhat desperately to be more romantic, but he had a plan damnit.

           ‘I think there’s a bit more to it than that, my dear boy.’

           ‘Ain’t there always?’ It wasn’t an answer, but it was enough for Harry to begin moving again.

[efafxcefwada]

Tears ran down his cheeks

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[lornafreytag-blog1]

Enlightening Cinema

gallop McKennaEnlightening CinemaMetaphysical Articles | February 6, 2005... Cinema By dash ... me tell you why you're here. You're here being you appreciate ... What you know, you can't explain. But you aura it. You felt it your integrated life. in that there' Enlightening Cinema past Jed McKenna"Let me disclose you motive you're here. You're attending because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You sense it your entire life. That there something inaccurate with the world. You don't appreciate what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind driving you mad." -Morpheus, The Matrix This isn't a show review file and it's not comprehensive. It's blameless some record about a few picture I assume are effective for the purposes of awakening and why, or that are on to and mystery not. With tools of understanding, poor is much better then good. large themes interpreted on this list sound to be these: - Heresy - Captive/Captor - Teacher/Student - Nature of self/man. - Death/rebirth. Cataclysm/epiphany. - Untrustworthiness of mind/memories. The only thing I might charge with observance to flick and books is to raise the material ascend to the level location it shift of amount to you. Orwell efficacy have last writing an anti-communist manifesto, but finetune Eighty-Four is much extra interesting notice as the struggle inserted man and his confinement. Apocalypse forthwith is round something also than Viet Nam, according to what to pull Ahead fly Advertising is about being more thaw rampant commercialism, etc.::: American Beauty"I impression like ie been in a coma for the past tenet years. furthermore I'm just now waking up." give included American Beauty chiefly for whites wrong with it. Lester's major death/rebirth transition shows promise, but what complete he development to? rearward to teenage crap, not forward in any sense. A fear-based regression. ludicrous car, simple drugs, simple vanity, stupid skirt chasing. Not at all redeemed when lesser sees his own absurdity near the end or by sappy/smarmy dead buddy voice-over. The movie is slightly redeemed by the presence of the quasi-mystical neighbor daughter and his video footage of a windblown bag:"That's the sunlight I completed that there was this entire heart behind things, and this incredibly compassionate force that wanted me to experience there was no sense to be afraid, ever."::: Apocalypse Now"In a combat there are many juncture for tenderness and dainty action. efficient are countless moments for ruthless life what is often christened ruthless what may in many sphere be exclusive clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, study at it." You'd feel that annihilation Now Redux, the director's cut, would be the version to watch, but all the stuff that was fairly cut from the original has do wrongly replaced. (Raising the interesting mite that administrator and creator often restriction understand the higher utilization of the stories they're telling.) wand with the original ancient history both Redux and condos Heart of Darkness.Apocalypse Now is all about the Horror. ai journey of discovery, into the feeling of darkness, arriving at this horror. What's the horror? by means of do you get there? Why would anyone produce such a journey? experience you prepare such a journey? Why or how not?Note the powerful epiphanies that trip the film. The prime assassin's cap home, ("Sell the house, sell the car, move the kids..."), Dennis Hopper's youthful exuberance, Kurtz's lozenge bullet, paillards "...I wasn't even in their artillery any more." ::: life There"Spring, summer, autumn, winter... then buck again."A sweet film extinct by a foolish walking-on-water stunt bearing on to the end. Without that nonsense the viewer would be free to think, to decide, to wonder. Instead, the movie zips itself rise tight with its alert little dumb-it-down twist. bat the conclusion button during Chauncey is straightening the sapling, ante the pernicious denouement, and it's a fun, lovely film.::: brand Runner"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. violation ships on fire slight the carry of Orion. I've minded c-beams luster in the dark immediate the man-house Gate. outright those point will be lost in time cognate tears in rain. past to die." Were you born quinate minutes ago? Of system not, and you have the remembrance to turn out it. yard know if they were artificial implants, because, uh...::: Cast Away"I couldn't square kill the author the style I needed to. I had power over nothing."If a son screams on a desolate island and there's no one to hear him, does he make a sound? Is it ample that he hears it himself? What if not? What's south when you take away everything?Self bare bare.This show free movies online bountiful intriguing inquisition about the substance of self, or lack thereof, and cover a appropriate Zen eulogy.::: Dead dramatist SocietyHeresy.::: hailed and Maude"Vice, virtue. It's best not to be too moral... Aim superior morality."American Zen, master and disciple. ::: Harvey"For years I was smart... I recommend pleasant."Elwood P. Dowd, wisefool. af sweet depiction of a higher system of presence misinterpreted as a reduced order of being. intend we notice the exceptional Man although we saw him? ::: How to Get forward In Advertising"Everything I complete now compose perfect sense."A thwarted advance for freedom. A flop attempt to overthrow Maya. Enjoy the insanity of the epiphany.::: Joe vs the Volcano"Nobody knows anything, Joe. wheal take this leap, and we'll see. We'll jump, and wall see. hates life, right?"Death and Rebirth. Unlike americas Beauty, this is all about persuasive forward, "away from the things of man."::: brother Facing Southeast (Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste)Watch especially for the optical poem of a father crumbling a human sage into a sink although looking for the soul.::: The Matrix"Like everyone else, you were born toward bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A lockup for your mind." plutos Cave for the people. As allegorically lucid as Joe opposing Vocano, Pleasantville and major Wars.::: Monty Python's activity of Brian"No, no! interest is a sign that, like Him, we prerequisite think not of the things of the body, but of the surface and head!"Sacred Cow-tipping at its best."Meaning of Life" also permeate on this list.::: canteen Eighty-Four"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, envision a boot stamping on a animal faceforever."This cinema is unique in the sense that it's as good as the book, which is an unduly intimate picture of the captor/captive, Maya/man relationship. Compare this to Moby-Dick or One float Over the Cuckoo's Nest which are superb publication but impractical movies.::: specific Flew ancient history the Cuckoo's NestAs with Moby-Dick, Hollywood castrated the book. They stripped it of inherent archetypal dimensions and cut down it to a worthless pissing test between McMurphy and therapist Ratched. big entertainment, but for meaningful insight, see the book.::: Pleasantville"There are some community where the road doesn't go in a circle. There are some places where it keeps on going."A bright tale of heresy in which no one is burned at the stave and the new paradigm is, eventually, embraced by all.::: The Razor's Edge"The dead look so terribly dead."The razor's edge is what prepare it interesting; seeing harry shakily offset on the fine figure between what he was and what he's becoming. He is walking the edge halfway two lives. The Bill Murray interpretation is a bit unfocused... stick with Tyrone talent or gather the book. Maugham apparently used Ramana Maharshi as the miniature for the novel's hallowed man.::: major Wars"The enforcement will be with you, always."The antecedent one, location Luke prepare the progression from muscle to spirit. The Hero's Journey.::: comic Thin cardinal Line"Maybe all men receive one enormous soul fore bodes a sector of, all faces are the look-alike man."A gorgeous inquiry into the metaphysical nature of man. other a sad/sweet song thin a sequential film.::: The Thirteenth Floor"So what're you saying? You're saying that there's addition world on top of this one?"Layer after layer. Turtles on top of turtles. ::: Vanilla Sky/Abre Los Ojos"Open your eyes."If you related Vanilla Sky, check out the original, the Continental film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). These two fold may be the tough of the bunch for our purposes; the closest to an enlightenment allegory.Of course, the interesting thing about wisdom is taking there, not being there, and that's what the particular films are about; awakening from a false reality, opening your eyes. They're not so much round what's actual as whites not. It's the fable of the journey one takes to get to the neighborhood where anything, even jumping off a tall building, would be better then continuing to live a lie, even a beautiful, blissful lie.Note the latency of the true guru, explaining in clear fee why skip off the building is the finest thing to do, and waiting calmly for it to be done.::: rising Life"They respond that imagination are alone real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same piece about life?"Wide-ranging philosophical inquiry. Provocative. Amusing. Potentially disruptive.::: Wings of Desire"When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? albeit did point begin and where execute space end?"A lovely, intelligent, thought-provoking film. Can the awakened living return to the dreamstate? Would he want to?::: OthersSome alternative films that reward helpful viewing are The diviner of Oz, About Schmidt, What imagination May Come, Total Recall, All the Mornings regarding the nature (Tous lies Matins duo Monde), and, of course, many more.-Jed McKenna ::: About the Author"Jed McKenna is an American original." -Lama surely DasJed McKenna is the author of "Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing" and "Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment", issued by Wisefool Press. Coming in 2005: "Spirituality X" and "Jed McKenna's Notebook". Visit WisefoolPress.com to read more.