#arsonistslullabye*

[balmacedapascal]

TITLE: Arsonist's Lullabye FANDOM: HBO's The Last of Us RATING: Mature (for violence and strong language) SHIP: Perry/OFC TAGGING: canon divergent, enemies to lovers, post apocalypse, canon-typical violence, more to come SUMMARY: Allison never wanted to come through Kansas City. Perry never wanted to have an outsider shooting his men. And neither of them wanted to rely on each other to survive. But you don't tend to get what you want when living twenty years after the collapse of polite society.

CHAPTER ONE

If it had been up to Allison, they never would have set foot in Kansas City. Something about the city had set her on edge even from a distance. She’d seen what happened when a QZ fell. She’d experienced the immediate effects and seen the aftershocks. And none of it had ever been any good. But the group had established early on that this was a democracy, not a dictatorship. And when they’d blown a tire half a mile outside the city and been forced out of the van that had been held together with duct tape and desperation for a hundred miles too long, she had been outvoted. The prospect of reaching some kind of shelter before nightfall was a greater possibility than whatever negatives she threw into the conversation. So she’d bit her tongue and took the lead as they started the trek into the city. 

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reader taglist: @deadbranch @callsign-bee

[ralibo]

"All you have is your fire And the place you need to reach  Don't you ever tame your demons But always keep 'em on a leash" . . . Arsonist's Lullabye by Hozier 🔥🔥🔥 . . . #drawing #drawings #artist #art #artistsoninstagram #sketch #sketches #demon #demons #demonsinside #arsonistslullabye #Hozier https://www.instagram.com/p/B2wd069AjdQ/?igshid=149bppyu63fy1

[ifidontwriteillscream]

This Weeks Tale

This week I had to do Arsonist’s Lullabye. It’s one of my favorite songs, but when I listen to it this story is not what I see or hear, this story just kind of happened on it’s own. I think I know where it’s going, but you never know what will change in seven days.

If you haven't heard the song you need to give it a listen. It’s incredible.

https://youtu.be/XoQvbDROucQ

As always, take all mistakes as love.

Arsonist’s Lullaby 

People say when you die you see your life flash before your eyes. They were wrong. When you die, time stands still, and you get to relive each memory in agonizing detail. For good, or for bad, all that you are, all that you were, comes flooding back, in what to the world is a mere flash.

  As a child I heard voices. Some of them where real; the voices of my father yelling, my mother screaming and myself crying. As I grew there came another voice, one that drowned out the rest. It became my comfort; I remember the first day I heard it. It was my birthday, the first one that I had a cake, my sixth. My mother carried the cake from the kitchen with a ring of lit candles glowing on the top. The candles lit the black eye she had making it look even scarier than it usually did so I looked only at the tiny flames. They were beautiful. They way they seemed to dance in the small breeze of my mother’s breath. She told me to make a wish and blow them out, but I didn’t want to.

When I was looking at them everything else disappeared. For the first time in my life I heard quiet, just the song of the dancing flames. Their song was beautiful. She started getting angry with me so I blew them out. Part of me died when the flames did, when all that remain where the faint tendrils of smoke emanating from the tiny wicks.

My mother pulled he candles from the cake to cut us both slices, leaving them abandoned on the table. Funny part is, I don’t remember what kind of cake it was, or even eating a slice. What I remember is the feeling I got when I put the candles in my pocket. The exhilaration of having a secret, of doing something I knew I shouldn’t have, and of the knowledge that I would be seeing the little flames dance again.

The first time I lit one of my little candles was a night when I was alone in my room pretending to be asleep. My mother was in the living room with my father, I could here her sobs and the occasional thump sound of my father kicking her. I had been asleep but woke when they started yelling at each other. I hated when they fought, when he started hitting her, when she would hit back. I tried covering my ears but their voices were still so loud in my head. That’s when I remembered the flames quit, calming song. Remembered the way it blocked everything out. I crept across the hall to my mothers room as quietly as I could and then rushed back after retrieving what I had been looking for, a cigarette lighter.

I sat in the bottom of my closet and pulled one of my little candles from the inside of my shoe, where I had hidden them knowing my mother would never find them. They were the shiny shoes I used to wear to church before we stopped going. It took a couple of tries to get the candle lit but as soon as I did, I was taken to the quiet place. The place where nothing mattered. The place where all that existed was me and the little life in front of me. He little flames warmth making me feel that everything was alright, that I was alright. I started to get sleepy and dosed for just a second before I felt a sharp pain in my hand and dropped the candle causing it’s flames to die. There was a small pink mark on my finger where it had burned me. I crawled from my hiding place back into bed. My mother was still crying, my father still angry but it didn’t matter anymore. I fell asleep planning what I would use to hold my little candles so that they wouldn’t burn me next time.

I found that a clothes pin worked perfectly to hold the candles and it was something my mother lost so often she never noticed the ones I would take. I had also discovered that when they got covered with the wax, after a couple of candles, they burned too. I took the rest of the box of little candles from the kitchen one morning before my mother woke up and would hide in my closet during their fights, my garbage can between my legs, the candle and it’s little holder burning pleasantly, taking me away from the noise of my life.

I did this for a year or two before my mother discovered what I was doing. My father had moved out of our apartment making their fights less, but more violent when they did happen. On those nights, the nights I needed the quiet the most I started burning tissues and small pieces of paper, things that made more ashes than just my little candles. I had gone to bed after a long night of fighting and left the can in the closet, thinking everything had burned out. I woke to my mother yelling a me to get up and out of my bed. The closet had smoke billowing out of it. The ash from the paper had hidden the smoldering remains of the clothes pin. The hot remains had heated up the can enough to start some of the clothes on the floor of the closet on fire.

My mother was furious with me and I ended up not being able to sit down without pain for over a week. The landlord was also pissed. She lied about how the fire started, she told me she had covered for me because she couldn’t afford rent anywhere else but if she ever caught me playing with fire again, it would be the last time because she would let the police take me away.

The thought of going to prison, not realizing that little kids didn’t go to grown up prison scared me. Scared me so much that I didn’t touch another lighter for years.

I was twelve when I finally did. My parents got divorced so my world was quieter without help from the flames, but no matter what happened in my life I still heard their lullaby. Still heard that voice, talking to me, letting me know it was still there.

I was in middle school when my mom found a new guy. He seemed nice, she seemed happy, then one afternoon I got home from school and she had a fresh black eye. Something she hadn’t had in years, the second I saw her it brought everything back. The nights I spent in my closet alone with the flames trying to close off the outside world. She tried talking to me, but had been drinking and I couldn’t handle it, so I dropped my backpack on the floor and walked out.

I started walking. I didn’t know where I was going to go but I knew I could be near her, see her face. I had a little cash in my pocket and was thirsty, so I stopped by the Kwik Mart down the street to buy a soda. At the register there was a display of cigarette lighters. While the cashier was helping someone else, I palmed one. That old feeling returned. The feeling of having a secret, of doing something I wasn’t supposed to. I paid for the soda and continued my walk to nowhere.

I walked and savored the feelings. I felt better. I didn’t know what I was going to do but I knew I was going to see the flames by the end of the night.

Even now, I get a rush remembering that feeling.

I walked and walked. It got dark in less than an hour. It was trash day and I walked through an alley behind a row of old homes and decided what I was going to do.

There were rows of trash cans running for blocks I walked up and down the row, letting my hand slip along them, deciding which one it was going to be. I found one that was partially empty but had lots of newspapers in it.

I pulled off the lid, wadded up a few of the pages and lit them. As soon as I saw the dancers emerge, I felt a wash of relief come over me. I stood and watched it for a few minutes, but the fire grew. I wanted it to grow, I wanted to see how big it would get. I walked around the side of one of the nearby garages and watched is beauty.

I have no idea how much time had passed but it was beautiful. The can was complete engulfed in flames and the caught the can next to it on fire to. Suddenly I heard voices coming closer. The people who lived in the house who’s garbage cans were now aflame were running though their back yard to the alley. The man got there first. He called back to the woman who had followed him to get the hose. Soon my beautiful dancers were hissing out steam. I walked home feeling better than I had in months.

My mother kept seeing that man. She was used to getting beat. When he started coming over and they would fight, I would climb out my bedroom window.

I learned to love the night more than the day. Learned to love the smell of gasoline. I started using it when I was in high school. It made everything catch fire. Made the flames dance faster, higher, with different colors. I was walking for miles at night, there were too many people talking about the fires in my neighborhood when I didn’t. After I started using gasoline it made the voices of the fire louder. Knowing I could burn anything made me want to try burning everything. So I did.

I had started with trash cans, moved to sheds, when I discovered the power of gasoline I burned everything. I liked empty stores the best. There were so many different things inside burning that it made the flames’ dance different, they would even burn different colors. It was so beautiful.

When I was 16 I got my drivers license and gas had a whole different use. I had to use it more than just for fire and it always made me feel odd. My daytime life imposing on my night life………TO Be Continued 

[enduracarrotchips]

YouTuber AU

Hello welcome to Dating Scandal but with Twitter Involved (nightmare)

A little exposition here: 

Link, Zelda, Sidon, Revali, and Riju are the most popular group of youtubers on the internet and have a huge fanbase that likes to theorize, draw fanart, and write fanfiction about them. Disclaimer, I don’t actually interact with real-person fandoms myself lol there’s just too much potential for drama and misunderstandings & they’re always bound to end in a dumpster fire but that is sort of what this au is about so.

Impa, Mipha, Daruk, and Urbosa are family friends that appear in a lot of their videos/streams. 

(This is an art blog I swear)

enter vidcon 20XX

Link: 

blows stuff up/sets stuff on fire with a side of cooking vids and gaming

most are filmed outside, he does those challenges where you try to cook stuff with limited ingredients/materials

has the largest fanbase of all of them, but not the most…intimidating.

does a lot of collab videos, mostly with Impa, Daruk, and Riju because they have similar interests/channels, but Zelda appears in his videos and is seen filming and the stans read too far into it

simps. i’m pointing at you.

Most popular videos are “shield surfing on rock!—how I broke my leg” “can Daruk eat Impa’s motorcycle?” and “how to inhale ranch dressing.”

Twitter handle is @ arsonistslullabye because he’s a hozier fan

45m subs

Zelda:

theories, analyses, conspiracies, and the occasional e x p e r i m e n t

she once got link to eat a frog for 50 bucks.

most people argue that she’s better than more popular YouTubers because she actually has quality content to give to the world and she has a lot of defensive supporters

She used to get a lot of hate before Urbosa spoke up about it and scared the bejeezus out of everyone

has an actual posting schedule

“Happy Sunday everyone, it’s Zelda Hyrule and today we will be talking about cryptozoology and why blupees exist, you cowards.”

Twitter handle is @ zeldaofhyrule and she is pan. just so you know. One of those calm extroverts that mystify me to this day.

18m subs

Sidon:

fashion/life hacks. Like gourmet troom troom but if they were real people.

Has the 2nd largest fanbase

most of them are girls

Sidon has a boyfriend though, which he told everyone at VidCon a few years ago

cue the drama and shipping and the entire fandom trying to figure out who the boyfriend is. A well known reddit thread emerged that presented the common guesses being Link, Sidon, and Zelda.

“But it can’t be Zelda, Sidon’s gay.”

“I’m not in the fandom but I thought Zelda was a boy??”

“Did you just say Sidon? Is that a typo? Are you saying that Sidon’s dating himself?”

Sidon x Sidon became a fandom joke.

Don’t look at me I’m just setting up all the worldbuilding. every fandom has their weird dark sides and Sidon x Sidon is the Linkcest of the Sidon YT fandom.

Mystery BF is actually Bazz, a pretty inconspicuous guy who appeared in a few of his videos. This was confirmed a year ago, but everyone still ships him with other YouTubers because they’re convinced he was lying to throw them off his scent. He really can’t catch a break and this is why you should not ship real people.

Twitter handle is @ officialprincesidon

says “beguiling” a lot

21m subs ᕙ( ͡❛ ▿ ͡❛)ᕗ

Mipha:

Sidon’s sister, hasn’t posted a single video but just has the channel for show because she appears in so many of Sidon’s videos as a model for his makeup tutorials and whatnot

has 328k for that. Everyone loves her, she’s great. @ mimipha

Revali:

Link’s sworn rival

Link thinks they’re friends

He kept popping up in link’s Twitter threads and making snarky comments until zelda called him out for not even following link (so why was he stalking his acc) which kept the Twitter drama to a minimum

Revali was the catalyst of a few popular memes and that’s where most of his subs come from.

drags link into a few challenges that always get a ton of views because of how competitive they get

“ITS JUST ASININE” is a running joke that everyone tries to get him to say. His @ is itsjustasinine as well

Urbosa is the only person who can win an argument with him

5m subs and growing rapidly. newer to youtube than everyone else.

Impa:

Doesn’t have a channel she’s just a mutual friend of Mipha, Zelda, and Link

Rides a motorcycle, so she is used in a few of Link’s videos.

@ ihaveamotorcycle because she thinks having a motorcycle is a personality trait. the most unruly on Twitter when it comes to replying to fan’s stuff, leaking upcoming videos and generally causing chaos.

Mipha’s girlfriend. That’s how she met Zelda and Link.

Urbosa:

Is actually a model, but she has a ton of YouTuber friends because she’s known Zelda since birth.

when she entered the youtube community she didn’t realize she would be adopting like 15 children

5m subs. her videos are professional & related to her modelling career. @ urbosasfury

I feel like she would do unboxing vids. I’m not sure what she’s unboxing.

Daruk

Just a friend of Link’s, fun guy. yells a lot. once ate a rock and had no reaction.

people are scared of him for that reason

Riju:

yoga & gymnastics & “ha look at how flexible I am its eAsY” videos

you know the type

she also does reactions and is sponsored by save the sand seals charities which she is very enthusiastic about. She’s also Urbosa’s niece and the only minor in the gang (15). I like to think that the champions YT community is actually not creepy so everyone respects her a ton

doesn’t post frequently, she mostly appears in Link’s videos to jump out of airplanes or whatever. And sometimes Zelda’s if she’s interested in the topic. 500k subs, but she’s always really popular when she appears in Link’s videos.

VidCon:

In the months leading up to VidCon, some fans on the internet made a few discoveries: first of all, that the inside of Link’s house is painted green. This is a big deal because all of his videos are filmed outside either in his backyard or on trips that he and the brosquad go on to do…whatever bros do. explosions. idk. The point is he had some announcement about VidCon and filmed it inside. Only the wall and a potted plant were shown.

However, the colour was similar to the the shade of Zelda’s living room. Fans dug through years and years of old videos and found a clip of Zelda walking through a hallway, where there was an open door and a glimpse of a houseplant.

There were 2 types of responses to the theory:

“They could just be roommates guys calm down”

“and they were ROOMMATES?”

others pointed out that Link could just not have a house and had to crash in Zelda’s

Some guy on reddit claimed he had a botany degree and declared that the houseplants in the clips were not of the same genus. Normal people pointed out that the plant would have grown 4 years between the clips and would look considerably different.

#Zelink trended on twitter for a while and people posted other old clips from both of their channels and the frog video blew up again

Impa retweeted a post tagged as #zelink with “rofl” and later publicly apologized for causing confusion.

Fans noticed that in the “can a motorcycle drive over my arm” (it was clickbait he’s fine) episode 2 years ago, Link was eating out of a paper lunch bag with his name written on it in handwriting that a few people claimed to look like Zelda’s, leading people to believe that she had packed him a lunch.

However, this theory was shot down with the counterargument that Zelda can’t cook. although. i mean how much skill do you need to make a sandwich.

No one knows what tumblr is doing at this time

Zelda wore a scarf in her “Save the Sand Seals” video that matched identically to the scarf Link wore when he travelled to Hebra to film a shield surfing video, but it’s been debated wether it’s actually the same scarf or not.

Neither Zelda nor Link has spoken up about the theories, and besides Impa’s one slip on twitter, neither has any of their friends. Zelda received a lot of backlash for the assumption that she was dating Link because he has a lot of delusional fans that didn’t want her to “steal their man” or whatever the hell that type of fan would get mad about

Oh yea and bolson & karson run a zelink fanpage on twitter sorry I forgot about that

after that whole mess, everyone was even more anticipant of VidCon in the hopes that some of their questions would be answered.

The whole batch went to VidCon this year: Link, Impa, Daruk, and Riju are a gang while Sidon and Mipha go together and Zelda & Revali each go separately. Urbosa is there for supervision moral support

Zelda has always been much better at dodging questions that she doesn’t want to answer than anyone else, so her Q&A went without a hitch. When asked to confirm the rumours she said “which one?” and then moved on to the next question (without actually confirming any rumours).

Link is generally a more awkward person but eventually said that he had filmed the video in Zelda’s house because it was nicer and didn’t realize it would cause such an uproar. Fans were disappointed, but Bolson claimed he saw Link and Zelda exiting the hotel elevator on the same floor after Link’s Q&A session. No one believed him.

Fans went back to theorizing over who Link, Zelda, and Sidon were all dating, because apparently they can’t just be dating unknown people and have to be with other YouTubers

Sidon and Bazz got engaged about a week after VidCon, making at least 4 preteen girls cry

actually try 4 million

Sidon x Sidon made a brief comeback but Sidon spoke up about his fandom for the first time ever on twitter and told everyone that no, he was not dating himself. eventually, everyone settled down and accepted that none of them were in a relationship save for a few loud fans.

Link and Zelda still got the occasional “when will you tell us who you’re dating?” comment but most of them were joking and the people who still hardcore shipped them were generally frowned upon. Zelda’s popularity went up after VidCon and she regained the 200k subscribers she’d lost after the first theory dropped.

Two months after VidCon, Link posted a video titled “Zelda and I’s House Tour!” and gave around 45 million people a heart attack

as revealed in the video, they had actually been dating since they were 16 and everyone’s just a fool.

the potted plant is named Hestu.

[morethanlyrical]

Hozier - Arsonist's Lullabye #music #sing #songs #song #sound #beautiful #lyric #lyrics #darkandbeautiful #darklyrics #dark #demon #demons #hozier #arsonist #arsonistslullabye #quotes #quote #darkquote #songlyrics #songlyric #band #love #epic #alternative #poetry #play

[caligirloct-blog]

I see a flame burning up inside of me, sometimes I feel I can’t contain it. It may be a short post, but let this music guide you through the flames. Fury.

[balmacedapascal]

the second in command | arsonist's lullabye

[balmacedapascal]

am i supposed to be grateful to have survived this? || brenna twohy

[balmacedapascal]

"We gotta - Mason - Mace! We gotta go NOW!"

The door shakes on its hinges, wood creaking as bodies push against it. Glass breaks in the back room, screeching starting to come from down the hall. She scrambles, trying to shove anything she can into the pack and wondering which way to go. He's just standing there, shaking in his spot as he stares at the door. She grabs his arm, trying to pull, trying to get him to snap out of it, to realize that they can't stay.

"Mason, please, I need you to move."

"Allison."

She pulls, pulls hard and almost falls when his weight hits her, still catatonic and unmoving otherwise.

"Mason!"

"Allison, you gotta-"

"MASON!"

"Wake up!"

Her knuckles were almost white, the grip on the knife almost painful as Allison jerked up. The movement was instinctual, a reflex from too many night's spent with one eye open. If it was anyone else, they probably would've wound up with the blade deep in whatever piece of flesh was closest. Perry's reflexes were faster than most, thank god. He caught her arm before she could make contact, his face a mask of calm as if this were just par for the course for him. And if there was a hint of concern in his eyes it was gone before she could be certain. The lantern flickered in the corner, providing just enough light in the dusty room for them to see each other, enough light for her to see her own shadow as it shook with adrenaline.

"You were having a nightmare," was all he said, his voice low and almost drowned out by the sound of her labored breathing. He kept hold of her arm, the grip almost bruising until she let the knife fall to the floor between them. "Started making too much noise. Didn't want it attracting any attention if there's infected outside."

"Sorry," she mumbled, scooting back once she was free from his grasp and running a hand roughly through her hair. She could feel the back of her shirt sticking to her skin, cold sweat clinging to her along with the remnants of her nightmare. He just nodded, not asking any questions or wanting any explanations. For that she was grateful. "Go ahead and sleep. I'll - I'll take over watch."

He watched her for a moment, those wheels in his mind turning so obviously that for a moment she thought he might argue. But the moment passed and he gave another nod, standing up and moving back to the sleeping bag he had laid out across the room. By the time he was laying down, his own gun next to him on the floor, her breathing had started to even out. She knew exhaustion would hit her soon but for now her heart was still racing and sleep wouldn't be her friend any time soon.

[balmacedapascal]

"whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same." emily bronte, wuthering heights

allison harlow + nathaniel perry | arsonist's lullabye | the last of us

[balmacedapascal]

"You are damaged and broken and unhinged. But so are shooting stars and comets." - Nikita Gill

[balmacedapascal]

the voice on the radio | arsonist's lullabye