#but oh my god I do not want to oust myself by a plate

[nickywhoisi]

Oh god, the whiplash that happens from what I previously posted and what I previously reblogged

yikes, that's definitely wrong right there...

So in other news, I made a pizza tonight. Fully homemade, with very bare bones cheapo ingredients but it turned out very tasty

Considering all the creasing of my life into a nightmare worse than hell itself...I was still able to make this for myself. It's small, but so so important. This is a small piece of happiness that I needed. Even the bottom turned out nice and not too dark! Which is a pretty huge achievement since the oven I have in this place is...super old. It looks like anywhere from the 80's or the 50's; only knobs, a metal plate on the side that has "Cooking Time" tips on how to cook meats best, it's small, no lightswitch or window to look inside, and nowhere to input time, so I had to use my laptop clock to watch for time and periodically open just to see how it looked. How lucky I am that I can freeball cooking and make good guesstimates from the few past experiences I got with better equipment. I'm no expert, but apparently I am the master of straight up cheesin' it.

I had some spices saved from before I was homeless that I could finally use again, and the sauce is just tomato soup. But it's a nice thick kind that turned out to really work! Should've added more, in fact I might make another one. The cheese is thin sliced paneer, as the closest grocery store I've been going to carries lots of south asian stuff. I have to look harder to find my own culture's local foods, can you believe? I find it so weird that so much of my country has been "taken over" by these immigrated people, and some of it I reallyhave come to be not okay with (cineplex is NOT your ghetto car show where you get to noise pollute into the night, jerks), but also I have really gotten into paneer cheese. It's light and refreshing. I believe it's basically ricotta cheese condensed into a block. Quite nice, it is. And it tastes really good dipped in tomato soup too.

Yeah, I should make another one. I deserve two, or three even. Treat myself.

[ginwhitlock]

Southbound : Chapter 6

After the Cullens leave her behind, Bella is left to pick up the pieces by herself. A year after her eighteenth birthday, a split second decision lands her in her truck, running far away from everything she has ever known. She decides to go south. What will she find in San Angelo, Texas?

After Peter left, the air between us felt stagnant, cold, like a pond left uncovered in the first freeze of winter. The man in front of me didn’t smile, didn’t even fake a breath for my own comfort. I know he could feel the shard of glass slowly sinking into the pit of my stomach; the fact of its direction changing, resigning, surpassing my throat to lodge itself in my skull as a sharp ache not lost on me. 

And I’m sure, not on him. 

I knew Jasper. I had sat feet from him not even years before. What had changed in those aching months? What kind of lust seeped into his unbreakable bones since? This man was toothier, slumping shoulders spread wide against the settee. Who was this brother of his and why did he have Jasper now? I mean— he had explained just moments ago the short extent of Alice and his separation, but the questions were tar in my brainstem: unmoving, guilty, painful. The faint imprint memory of his hand on my knee softened the creases under my eyes. His eyes were nothing if not full of memories.

He scared the shit out of me. The worst part of me liked it. 

The keys in my hand were jangling as I wrung my hands against the metal. They were ice cold from Peter’s grip and yet I never shied away from them, I rested into their cut, their steel mill scent. It’s all the comfort I had left in this unfamiliar sandy home. 

“You never told me where you meant to end up, Isabella.” 

The look on his face hadn’t changed from its hawk-like gaze, his mouth upturned in what was made to be sincere questioning.

My teeth seemed to buzz in my jaw as they clenched. I was stuck between trying to find the answer that made the most sense— but this far away haunted house was nowhere close to where I was headed. To be honest, I hadn’t even made a plan for my drive, the road had been a black licorice rope pulling me deeper and deeper south, its vines unswervable. 

Those damn carmine irises were still on my face. My hand settled on the silver scar.  “Somewhere without you— your kind.” There's a horrible dread that sinks deep into the pit of my lowest bones, down past the acid lining of my stomach. It wasn’t mine in the first place…

He smiled again. That fangy lip twitch he implemented earlier in his bedroom, his searing white canines glinting in the southern sun. Jasper did some twist of his knuckles as they rested on his denim knee, the bareness of the marble flesh punctuated. 

“Do you truly think your life will not continue to be… supernatural?” He paused something big and let his lashes point away from me, his gaze settling right behind my head, “The world has never been that kind. Especially to you, Miss Swan.” The way his tongue curled around my name made something twist in my gut. Something that felt like finally breaching the top of a rollercoaster after clunking around in the seat for several minutes. 

I took a breath, “No hope for me then, Mr. Cullen?” 

“Whitlock, darlin. Mr. Whitlock.” 

His correction was daring and quick, like a dare. The scared shitlessness was starting to turn. 

“Oh?” I’m sure my eyes were the size of dinner plates served on the damn moon. 

His quirk faltered as he refocused on the skin of my neck. “The Cullens aren’t the biggest fans of the ousted members keeping their name, I’m sure. Whitlock was my human name.”

My lip twitched, “Like Peter?” He did say they were brothers, it would make sense the tanner man kept it while Jasper stayed up north. 

“He adopted it when I changed him in the twenties. He didn’t need to remember his own.” 

The paint covering the living room walls was starting to feel warmer and warmer. There was a sort of mysticism in the air, the kind of feeling Phil said he got standing on the pitcher’s mound. This charge of electricity. And if I felt it— did the man in front of me do too?

“You changed Peter?” 

A hum came from his Adam's apple. I quickly stopped staring at its vibration, focusing on my still hands. “Is that where you got that name? The ‘Major’?” My legs felt like salt blocks sat out for the new fawns. 

Jasper kicked his foot out, inches from my own. “All in time, Isabella.” 

Why the hell was that the question he kept dodging?

I nodded against my own snooping judgement and sat up straight, gripping the cut key again. “Peter said something about seeing my truck?” As if on cue the sound of a backfire sounding across at least an acre of dirt, the laugh of the man in question following in direct response. 

He reminded me of a wilder, leaner, Emmett. 

I didn't know if that was a good thing. 

The blond rolled his eyes, something I would’ve passed out seeing months ago, which now just made him more and more intriguing. His hand raised without fantastical speed and made an ushering motion, inviting me silently to stand and follow him to the front door, not even twenty feet to our backs. I did as I… wasn't… told and raised to my shuffling feet, watching with barely suppressed intensity as he did the same, his shirt unbunching as his long legs swept past me. His strides were unhurried yet strong, quickly reaching the exit without me. Jasper’s slim fingers turned the knob gently and allowed the now open door to rest against his shoulder. 

“I’m sure my brother will find you the moment you start walkin’. I have to get to some business caused by my early departure earlier.” My shoes scuffed the hardwood as I passed by him, the scent of firewood and malt whiskey light in the air of the threshold. I nodded again as I looked back at the giant southerner. 

“So I’ll be making it back?” Half joking, half fearful the words slipped past my lips. 

He smiled truly that time, his teeth hidden behind his smile. “Of course Isabella. No one plans to kill you… for as long as I can see.” 

The door closed slowly as I turned away from him in only slight ease, the sound of his footsteps behind it unrecognizable. Texas dry wind called to me from the bare porch, wooden planks creaking ever so slightly underneath my weight. The world was quiet— in only a way nature could be quiet. Silence without loneliness. 

Another diesel racket sounded over the slight hill in the property, some of the only patches clustered with shruby, overgrown trees.  

“Bell!” 

There was a smile hiding under the surface of my skin, not the least undetectable. My stride started up again as I half jogged through the crab grass and rusty dirt. It had to be almost two or three o’clock now, the sun high and bright in the cloudless sky. 

Had the day gone by so fast— or so slow?

I couldn’t decide which it was. Not yet. Not now.

The baked exterior of my cab was just in sight over the small hill, somehow further away from the bare dirt trail than it had been this morning. Had the black eyed man… moved it? It didn’t run, at least not by my hand, he would’ve had to have pushed it… or picked it up. 

God, Peter was starting to turn out more and more like the biggest Cullen boy by the second. 

My shoes were caked in dead weeds and clay dust by the time I reached the freckled vampire— an attribute I still hadn’t made sense of. His cowboy hat was a stark black against his darkened porcelain skin. He smelt rough like a redwood forest, something private. Secluded. Peter’s hands were covered in the ink black of motor oil and grease, the solutions clinging to his perfect fingernails. 

He had to be related to Jasper somehow, there's no way he wasn’t. I was sure of it. 

Or maybe I was just hoping.

Silly girl. 

His eyes could’ve mirrored his brother’s and I wouldn’t have noticed anything past the sight just behind him: my truck was pulled at the seams. 

“Sorry bun, I think your baby might need some extra attention before it gets anywhere near a highway.” My breath was loose in my throat, air whistling behind my eyes. The transmission was the only thing complete under the hood. The engine block was propped up by a chain tied to a lone pecan tree, the rest of the assembly laid out on a blanket on the pitted ground. The well of tears hit the back of my eyes before he started to speak. 

“I had to take the engine apart to diagnose the problem— something to do with some coils. It ain’t as bad as it looks, I promise, Bell.” I nodded for the fiftieth time that day, my words fleeting in the paralysing tunnel that had become my voice box. The only thing I had kept when I left was now in pieces at my feet, the soil unforgiving and rough against the cotton blanket they sat on. The downpour of fear came down my sinuses and filtered out through my spine, the tips of my fingers pulsing with thunder. Peter stood, apathetic to the storm raging through my body, his stance curling around my own slightly, as if in defense to the world around us, to the truth in front of me. 

“How long will it take to fix?” My voice was weak and pitiful, stripped of its playful kick Peter initially instilled. 

He twitched his shoulders in a shrug. “Could be a week or more. Maybe two.” His own speech didn’t reflect his burdening appearance. It was almost airy, a light glee hidden subtly behind the consonants. 

My brain stored the small inflection for a much later time. 

“You know,” he started, his massive wiped hand drawing to my shoulder, “me and the Major don’t mind some company around the house. The old thing could use some life in it while your truck gets some beauty work done.” His suggestion wouldn’t have sounded like such a question if anyone else had uttered it, but the draw of the Whitlock boys held a certain power over my otherwise powerless existence, at the moment. I wanted answers, stories, the in and outs of the clan I had called family as a younger girl. 

I wouldn’t admit to anyone else my other wants. 

Hell, I couldn’t even admit them to myself yet. 

I made a sound in the back of my throat that made up for another nod and pursed my lips in false thought, the field stretching before me in an unwavering sea of curiosity. 

“Only until she's fixed. I’ve served my time living with vampires for two lifetimes.” 

There was an explosion of a laugh from Peter’s tan lips and I smiled in turn. The truck was a cesspool of terrifying possibilities, insecurities. But for right now, the horrible itch in my brain led me further into the immortal light. 

The cold digits of the human drinker felt featherlight against my back as he sputtered to an airy stop. “You are truly something Bell.” My teeth poked through my lips as I looked into his face and found simple lineless skin and sandy curls. My eyes rested back on the rusted out birthday present and sighed. “Do you want any help?” It sounded almost like a plea, the time splitting me farther and farther. 

He shook his head with vigor. “Baby doll, I’m not sure you’d make it go any faster.”

I had half a mind to slap him on the chest, no matter the bruising I’d sustain. 

“I’m not that dimwitted.”

He sucked unneeded air through his teeth and let me go, stepping towards the hull. “Just believe me.” 

I shook my head like a dumped dog and looked back towards the house, just barely noticeable at this distance. The question bounced around my stomach before it left my mouth, “What is Jasper up to?” 

Peter raised a brow and picked up an impact wrench.

“I’m not sure you’d want to know.”

[weepylucifer]

Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 5

Interlude: Thomas

(reader beware: mature content)

It was strange to say the least to have David here again after all these years. (All these years and not a bit of change.) Sometimes Thomas felt that he was hallucinating it (losing his mind at last) or dreaming. But then again, that couldn’t be the case. If this were a hallucination or a dream, things would be easier. They would be happier.

They would be happy.

Thomas had never liked to think - or hallucinate or dream - about how things with David had soured, towards the end. It had been easy to remember the good things exclusively, the companionship, the tenderness, the comfort and thrill and love. David had stayed a joyful memory, despite the tragedy of his (supposed) passing, somehow still an oasis in a desert of grief. Perhaps this had been idealization. It is easy to idealize a dead loved one. It is less easy to keep up that pretense in said loved one’s bodily, live presence.

It was strange, yes. How often had he wished in vain that someone, anyone would come back, just one of them, it didn’t even matter who? Just one other occupied room. Just one person to turn to, when things got rough. Just one person who would understand. Now someone had come back. And not just anyone. David, within reach again, to see, to speak to... to touch. But whenever his hands started reaching out, there was that memory again.

“Well, I just almost got myself and half the men shot for mutiny.”

“Shot for...? Thomas, what on earth did you do?”

“I retracted my opposition. Not willingly, mind you. I am to supervise the rearguard. You, Lieutenant, with your expertise, will most likely be part of the task force that’ll retrieve the actual library.”

“They split us up?! Thomas... do you think they know?”

“What is there to know?”

“Songbird, please...”

“You got what you wanted, Davey. You won. Operation Spatchcock is a go.”

And yet, still, despite all that, he could only ever curtail, never stop, the urge to reach and touch.

It was David, after all. David with that beautiful hair so good for tugging, with his eyes as clear as always, with those sweet, sweet lips. Those capable hands. It was David whose body Thomas knew. Touching would feel like coming home. Touching might piece something back together inside him, something that remained by itself, broken and abandoned and forgotten, for decades and decades.

And there was something scary in that thought. That David might break him open and unearth that hidden something. That there would have to be a breaking. Thomas could not afford to break another time.

So he left David to sit at the dinner table and stare holes into his plate by himself, went and fetched Peter’s finished Latin homework and attempted to peruse it in the drawing room. Peter’s Latin was coming along, at a sedate pace but nonetheless, but today it was abysmal. Clearly he’d had other things on his mind. And who could fault him? After puzzling through the first paragraph of it, Thomas crossed the room to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of Scotch. The bottle was almost (but not quite) as old as he was, and had been nearly emptied slowly, over the decades, a glass or two every other year, because Thomas wasn’t a man who drunk to excess.

He found he couldn’t concentrate on the paper before him as well as he would have liked. Scraps of old, old conversations kept reverberating within his mind, loud today, understandable under the circumstances.

“You’re being paranoid, songbird. I understand, but... I am certain Folly command wouldn’t muster every last wizard of serviceable age just to send them off to die. It will be a tough mission, I’ve no doubt of that. But I’m convinced that we’ll come out on top.”

“Bullshit. It’s hundreds of miles behind the front, David. We’ll be cut off from any reinforcements. Nowhere to fall back to. According to intelligence, the place is a death trap.”

“And who do you know in intelligence? How would you have gotten an intelligence officer to relinquish that information, hm?”

“This is hardly the time. I don’t need to blow intelligence officers to see what’s bloody obvious. You think command cares if we make it through this one? It’s high time you got that pretty head out of your stack of books and faced reality. They’re willing to bet all our lives on this bloody suicide run on the off-chance that someone makes it home with that library.”

“There is considerable empirical value to that library.”

“Oh? That’s what it’s about, eh, for you? You honestly believe that I am going to stand here and let them slaughter my men for ‘considerable empirical value’. My men, David! I’ve got them this far! I’m not throwing them into the meat grinder for your fucking research.”

“Would you prefer seeing said research in the hands of the Nazis? God only knows what they’re doing with it!”

“I would see it in the hands of no one. Chuck a few bombs at the place and bury all of it. Damn you and damn your revenge and damn your research.”

Thomas sighed and poured another glass of Scotch.

Just then, the reason for his discomposure entered the room and sat down in a chair by the fireplace, his back straight, his face resolute, determined. Like he was going to make it work. It irked Thomas, and he didn’t know why, that David wanted to get to the fixing of things. There wouldn’t have been anything to fix if David hadn’t been so stupid as to advocate for the Ettersberg mission.

“May I?” David asked, reaching for the bottle.

“Get your own.” Waspish. Juvenile. Why couldn’t he stop acting like this? Why didn’t he feel like even wanting to try? Thomas lifted a hand to his temples. His eyes stung. He’d been getting very little sleep lately; the return of David shook loose memories, and the night terrors had come back.

David’s face looked soft in the firelight. almost like before the war, when it had been a little fuller. If Molly kept making pies at the rate she was going, he’d soon get back to normal. Thomas clenched his hands in his lap, and it was as if they were sending him little impulses: touch him, hold him, have him. But spurn him, sang his blood, don’t let him near.

It was easier when... he didn’t finish that thought. Didn’t say it out loud either, because that would have been the height of cruelty. It was a lie, anyway. It had not been easier when David had, for all intents and purposes, been dead. It had been... differently complicated.

Thomas went to pour a third glass of Scotch, reconsidered and took the last slug directly from the bottle. It got David’s attention, so he flicked his tongue against the rim of it, just for a split-second, just briefly enough to have plausible deniability. Back in the day, he would have winked. He didn’t now. Tease him, ignore him. Reel him back in, push him away. His heart was loud and clamorous and contradictory tonight. It was like being fifteen again, or no, scratch that, it hadn’t been... he hadn’t been nearly as complicated at fifteen. He’d only known that he found the boy who tutored him and sometimes came to watch the rugby exceedingly pretty, so he had brought him wildflowers plucked from the wayside, and cakes nicked from the kitchens, and helped carry his books and quizzed him for tests and took him along for nightly excursions and eventually asked to kiss him behind the shed for the cricket equipment.

For practice, he’d said. An experiment, David had said. It doesn’t have to mean anything, they’d both agreed. But then they’d actually managed, somehow, to bump their lips together, and Thomas had been thinking, oh, and yes and so good and I’m never doing anything else but this. And eventually they’d had to admit to each other that the experiment only ever yielded a need for repetition, and they weren’t practicing for anything. Neither of them actually desired a girlfriend like most of the other boys at Casterbrook. They desired each other, and kissing behind the shed for the cricket equipment, forever.

Oh yes, he had known at fifteen, at eighteen, at twenty that what they were doing could have seen them ruined, jailed, ousted from society. It had been a thrill to his young mind, a scandalous secret, an adventure. The glamour had worn off of it as they grew older, as their schoolmates were settling down with wives and children and summer houses in the country and Thomas and David were still sneaking around like teenagers, and ducking behind tiring pretenses and stupid rumours and Molly’s skirts for their safety. But that had just been what their relationship had naturally been like, a mundane fact of life, like taxes. And then there’d been the men with the pink triangles. The stark and final reminder that nothing about having to exist thus in secret was thrilling or mundane, that the people around them genuinely wanted them dead.

But everything had gone to hell in a handbasket by then anyway.

Thomas set the empty bottle down, and it hit the table a bit harder than intended. His hand-eye-coordination was already slightly off. Besides that, his face was starting to warm, in a way that told him that it was about time to retire from drinking any more before things seriously went south. But he didn’t want to listen to the voice of reason tonight. He wanted to listen to the voice that said, perhaps another glass.

So he traversed the room again and unearthed another bottle from the liquor cabinet. Walking straight wasn’t a problem - yet. Thomas wasn’t, usually, a man who drank to excess. But exceptions must be.

He had just poured the third glass when David asked, “What were you reading?”

Thomas gestured vaguely at the papers still spread out on the coffee table. “Tacitus. It’s Peter’s homework.”

“Oh,” David said. “Can I help you revise it? You seem tired, and I always had a hand for--”

“No,” Thomas cut in and poured the contents of his glass down his throat in one quick, decisive movement. “I told you before, and I was very serious: I won’t have you interfere with Peter’s studies.”

David sniffed. “But I am allowed to talk to him, aren’t I.”

“I suppose. I’m thinking about it.” Thomas looked from his glass back to David, meaning to give him a stern glare, but his eyes ended up roving, caught on the lines of David’s face, slightly unfocused. Here he was, back here, to touch. They’d kissed earlier, down in the lab, and maybe Thomas had hoped that after that, things would appear easier, clearer, somehow. But nothing was easier. He’d hoped, in secret, not even going so far as to articulate this to himself, that a kiss would put them back on an even keel, erase the clamour in his heart, restore tranquility to him. But nothing was tranquil. In fact, he hadn’t desired like this in a long time. He’d gotten one kiss, nowhere near enough to slake this suddenly recurring need.

“Come to bed with me,” he suggested.

“What?” David exclaimed with an incredulous little laugh. “You don’t trust me to go over your apprentice’s Latin homework, but you’d take me to bed?”

“Yes.” It really didn’t seem too extraordinary a stance to take. Peter’s studies were meaningful in the greater scheme of things. Sex wasn’t. “Personal is not necessarily the same as important.”

David shook his head. “I never could agree with you on that.”

To keep his hands and mouth occupied, Thomas poured himself another glass of Scotch, and downed it quickly. He was beginning to lose count of how many glasses deep he was. But that hardly mattered, because it made his lips tingle and it burned on the way down and the reasons why he didn’t want to touch David now were swimming out of focus.

“I had hoped it would be different,” David said, “our first time back home.”

Thomas couldn’t help it, he had to laugh. Our first time back home. “Davey,” he said, and it came out rougher than intended, “you’ve hoped for many things.”

“That’s true,” David murmured. “I suppose you were right, back then. It really was high time I faced reality.”

And this... was wrong, that David should suddenly talk like this. He’d much rather have naively optimistic David with his head stuck in a textbook than this broken, humbled version. Reach, touch, Thomas’s heart whispered, and it was easy to forget why it was a bad idea. Thomas reached, put a hand on David’s cheek, ran the pad of his thumb across David’s sweet mouth. David shivered, lips opening in a gentle gasp. It felt familiar in a way Thomas had forgotten things could feel. Like reaching back across the decades, and it was a miracle that his fingers remembered, even ever so slightly, what it was like to touch David’s face.

Suddenly, something dark clawed at his chest, something frenzied, almost like panic, because how could this be, this ghost of a sensation, remembered from all these years back, how could it be that this was real, brought to life again? Suddenly he feared that if he closed his eyes, and opened them again, David might have disappeared.

There was but one thing for it. Closer. More. Now their bodies were flush against each other, their lips crashing together, greedy, desperate, ungentle. Thomas fisted a hand in David’s hair - David whimpered so prettily against his lips - the other hand pulling up his shirt to get at the skin beneath, warm, living skin. The planes of David’s body pressed against his front, so familiar. His head spun, and fear threatened to drown him, choke him, so he sought salvation in David’s mouth, licking inside, kissing him frantically. Oh, he had been starved of this, and one kiss was not enough, so he kissed him another time, and another, and another.

“Mh... Thomas...” David disengaged, shifting back a little in his seat, a hand coming up to cup Thomas’s face. He sucked the index and middle finger into his mouth without hesitation.

“Thomas... shsh... you’re, this is not... you’re shaking, please stop, just a moment.”

David‘s other hand came to rest on Thomas’s shoulder, maintaining an arm’s length of distance between them, and it irritated Thomas, being so pushed away. Was he shaking? Maybe. But what did that matter? He could figure that out later, or never. He put a hand on David’s thigh and leaned forward against the hand gripping his shoulder, trying to chase David’s lips. “Now you’re complaining, Davey?”

“No, but...” David got up. Thomas, attempting to follow him, swayed into him, and steadied himself by in turn holding onto David’s shoulders. Whoops. Hopefully that looked like he’d meant to do that.

“See, you’ve been drinking,” David said. “It’s not right. Let’s just get you to your bed, okay, and I’ll get to mine.”

“Or...” Thomas flicked David’s chest with his index finger to stress his point, “we’ll both go to my bed and stay there and see what develops.”

David shook his head softly. “Another time.”

“What makes you think I’ll offer another time?”

“We love each other.” David’s voice was steady, his gaze clear and firm, and it rubbed something raw within Thomas, something that did not like being so exposed at all. “That is the one thing I am still sure about, even in this new world, even after the war, even after... that place. We will figure things out, but not tonight.”

Thomas laughed, a bitter, mirthless bark of a sound. Because he’d been impossible to David ever since he had returned, he hadn’t been able to contain any of the ugly slurry of his feelings, and he hadn’t been able to afford David even the slightest shred of courtesy, and yet here David was, talking about how they would definitely figure things out. “What if we don’t figure things out?” he asked, breaking contact, disentangling his limbs from David’s. “What if I don’t want to? What if I won’t want to figure things out with the man who led us all to go to Ettersberg?”

David bowed his head, his eyes now hooded, dark. “I’d understand that.” He took a step back, in the direction of the door. “Do you want to break up?”

It was a genuine offer. David was offering.

Do you want to break up?

Had he taken another step back? He was so far away. So, so far away. It was too dark in the reading room and he was slipping away, away into the past again, no longer in reach to touch, and maybe it was really just the darkness of the reading room, maybe it was Thomas’s vision going black around the edges, and he trembled, and he ached,

and he was close again somehow, hands clawed into David’s sweater, his head buried in David’s shoulder, breathing in his scent in horrid, flat, hitching gasps.

“No,” he muttered, when he had the air for it. “No. No, no.”

“Songbird.” David sounded saddened, startled. The nuances of David’s voice, suddenly again familiar. There was a hand down his back, a hand in his hair stroking along the hairline, fingernails lightly scratching his scalp in a way he’d forgotten he found comforting. David hadn’t forgotten. “Oh... Thomas. You’re not okay.”

It ought to have been ridiculous, you’re not okay. As much was evident. But he couldn’t recall ever hearing it said, and it did something to him, and he held on to David’s shoulder like it was the only anchor in a sea of chaos, and he didn’t know how to ride this out, so he clung and waited and the tide tossed him about and did not recede.

“I forgot what you smelled like,” he heard himself say, detachedly. “The sheets in your room lost your scent eventually, and then all your clothes did because I wore them, and it almost broke me a second time, because I was losing more and more of you with each passing day and you weren’t coming back to renew anything. I forgot what it was like to touch you. The sound of your voice. The feel of your signare. The feel of your hand.”

“Eighty years,” David whispered. “I’m so sorry... I didn’t understand.”

No, Thomas wanted to say, no you damn well didn’t, but he couldn’t. All he could do was cling to David’s shoulder and be battered by this, wrenched open by his care. Walking wounded.

“But I’m here now,” David continued. “I will take care of things.”

Somehow, Thomas found his voice again. It sounded strange to his own ears. “What things? What will you take care of?”

David looked at him, so earnestly it hurt to observe. “Anything needs must,” he said. “You.”

“But I am not for taking care of,” Thomas said. He didn’t know why he said it. Except... here is my duty, mine, alone. Do not suggest you will relieve me. There was never any relief. There will never be any relief.

“Oh, songbird, but aren’t you?” David asked. “The others, they all went into the country and attempted to heal, or they are at rest forever. When did you rest?”

“I...” Thomas tried to gather his resolve, put the walls back into place that David was wearing down with all these questions, and he found he couldn’t. He felt... once, as a child, he had watched Mother dispel slugs from her rose garden by pouring salt on the creatures. He, then five years old, had burst into tears at the sight of the slugs squirming impotently to get away as they succumbed to the fatal substance, and he’d tried to wrestle the jar of salt from his mother’s hand when tears wouldn’t stop her, and received a thorough scolding for it. He felt like one of those slugs now: soft and unwitting and utterly defenseless before an almighty fate. Tomorrow, the walls would be back in place. Tomorrow he would be The Nightingale again, unapproachable and aloof. But not tonight. Tonight he was soft and lonesome and powerless and there was nothing but the dark of the reading room, the alcohol making swirls in his head, and his boyfriend, sweetly returned from the dead.

“I... don’t,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“That’s not right,” David said. His hand was still in Thomas’s hair, stroking in a way that was infinitely soothing, blunt fingernails against his scalp. “That shouldn’t have been asked of you.”

Well, life doesn’t care about shouldn’t, Thomas wanted to say, it simply was asked of me, even when I was in so deep I could barely lift my head they were asking it of me, and not least because you weren’t there, because you ran away, but what he ended up saying, murmuring into David’s jumper rather, was “They needed me.”

David snorted. “Command? You never--”

Thomas shook his head. “The lads did.”

“Ah, yes. Your ducklings.” The smile was audible in David’s voice.

It had been a joke between them, Nightingale’s Ducklings. The younger and younger recruits they had kept sending down from London in the latter years of the war. Fresh-faced youths, barely of age, looking like they’d been playing dress-up in their uniforms. Some of them scared, some of them vigorous and over-eager to prove themselves to the more seasoned veterans, most of them now dead. Thomas had tried, whenever possible, to do his utmost to protect the boys, but tossed up against a place like Ettersberg, there had been no protecting anybody.

“And how are the chaps anyway? I’m assuming you’re still in contact with them all?” David chuckled. “Oh goodness, they must be old men by now!”

“I’d like to go to bed now,” Thomas said.

“Hm? Oh of course, of course.” Getting what he wanted, David was quickly distracted from his previous line of inquiry. I do know him so very well, Thomas thought disjointedly as David wrapped an arm around his waist. On autopilot - even still! - Thomas slung his arm across David’s shoulders in return. They’d done this on unnumbered pub crawls, then later on similarly unnumbered battlefields. “There we go, ay-up, Captain.”

“I can walk,” Thomas protested, even as his head dropped back onto David’s shoulder. Really, he wasn’t that inebriated. Slightly tipsy, that was all.

“In a straight line?” David questioned.

“That won’t be a problem.”

David sighed airily and nosed into his hair. “Let me have this, Thomas.”

----

Thomas tried again, when he had David in his bedroom kneeling before him (between his legs) at the foot of the bed, as David took his hand and unbuttoned his cuff and pressed one chaste kiss to his wrist. It made Thomas shudder, being so kissed, and seconds later he was reaching almost blindly for David’s face again, tugging him up, crashing their mouths together, wanting David’s lips on his, wanting David’s lips all sorts of places. But David broke the kiss and smiled at him, a smile full of such love as he didn’t deserve, and didn’t budge, even when Thomas slipped his right shoe off and ran his foot along David’s inseam.

David gasped, and twitched a little, but he said, “No, songbird. Another time.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Thomas said, which he hadn’t meant to, in a strange, rough voice that sounded much more 1940s than 2010s. Why on earth had he said that? Tomorrow he would remember all the very good reasons for not recommitting to anything where David was concerned. But tonight he was wanting, nothing else.

“I hope so,” David replied as he got up and smiled sadly, because oh, he knew those reasons too. He bent down one last time and ran his thumb across Thomas’s cheekbone, and kissed him again, a soft, small peck, a kiss goodnight. “Sleep well.”

And he went back to his own room.

So bereft of company and the warmth of David’s body, Thomas groaned and pressed the heel of his hand into his crotch. Somewhere along the way wanting had become needing, and now he was alone with it. As always, alone with it.

For a split-second he considered going and getting his entertainment elsewhere. Peter was in tonight, some few rooms over, perhaps this would be the night he finally tried to... but no, that thought was, as always, firmly tamped down, because Peter’s pregnant girlfriend was a woman of formidable power, and besides, there was never any use to any attempts upon the tragically heterosexual. He hadn’t considered Peter in such a manner at all lately, what with David around again, so perhaps this was one of these rare problems that solved themselves.

His pool of potential applicants already depleted, Thomas took himself in hand. He hadn’t felt the need to do this in a while, and didn’t expect to last any time at all. As if a tightly locked floodgate had been opened, his mind conjured up images of David, things he hadn’t let himself think about in decades and decades lest the grief make him lose his mind for good. But the memories were no longer tinged with grief now, because David was back, and his mind delighted in recalling again the lines and dips and curves of David’s body and being able to do so freely, without the crushing sadness of permanent loss.

David before the war, softer then, solid, (he still was too thin now) no shell-shock dulling the light in his eyes. The sensation of tracing the dip of David’s hips through the soft fabric of one of his jumpers, the hard line of him in his slacks, backing him up against a bookshelf in the mundane library (so risqué but oh, so thrilling) and listening to his breath deepen, sticking a hand down his pants, being greeted with the velvet heat of David’s cock, watching David’s face pinch and, eventually, release, going from biting his lips raw and red in an effort to not be overheard to slack-mouthed pleasure. David’s mouth just now, so pink and slick from their kissing, David kneeling between his legs and where that might have gone, in another, ideal world. While Thomas very much loved giving oral, he knew with David the receiving was just as sweet. He imagined them taking a night and just alternating sucking each other off until they collapsed in bone-deep, delicious exhaustion into dreamless sleep, and he felt his hips cant upwards into his fist with renewed need, and gripped himself just this side of too tight. Yes, god, he thought, my David.

At about this point Thomas noticed himself crying, a clear stream of tears down his cheeks, but they felt cathartic, so he left them. His heart was light. He had done this once or twice just after the war, brought memories of David to the forefront of his mind for this express purpose, simply exhausting any possibility of chasing a few seconds of relief from it all. The resulting crash and burn and slew of self-disgust when he’d inevitably remembered his boyfriend (supposedly) blowing his brains out in this very building had never been pretty. (He’d considered turning to drinking to excess then for a bit, until Molly had put her foot down regarding that.) Tonight he knew there would be no crashing and burning, because David was just down the hall, hale and whole and sleeping the sleep of the less-than-innocent.

He had flagged a bit, with the crying, so Thomas sped up his hand and remembered that week they’d spent at David’s father’s hunting lodge, the two of them alone in the empty countryside, free to share the bed in the master bedroom, free to wake next to each other and make early-morning love unhurriedly, free to prepare breakfast in the nude and take it back to bed. They’d been younger then, and made love almost unflaggingly, pausing intermittently to eat and generally observe life’s basic needs, only for this moment or that to start another round, and before they’d known it they’d come together again, fevered with need for each other, drunk on all this unobserved alone time.

My Folly now, Thomas thought disjointedly, we can do it in every room we never used to dare to, and he released another moan as he felt himself cresting, and the back of his head hit the headboard with a thunk as he came, came and came with the force of his lonely years, eking the moment out and stroking himself to overstimulation, until his hips twitched and his whole body shook with the pleasure-pain of it. And if he fell asleep in the wet patch before he could gather the resolve to get up and fully undress, half in déshabillé with himself still in hand, it certainly was undignified, but there was no one there to witness it.

[draconivn]

C.005 | Daughter of the Takeda

Disclaimer: I don’t own Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY or its characters. Hints of spoilers to one of the routes.

Summary: You wanted to do more than just be in the kitchen like any woman would’ve known how to do. You want to explore. You want to become so much more. But when you live in a world of war, what you decide to do in your past ends up following you to your future, even though the battlefield is no place for a woman. Will you find love or will you only find blood? Saizo x OC MC

Masterpost: LINK

CHAPTER 5: Warring Hearts

Finding Saizo to give his dango wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, no matter how much I tried to predict his movements. I know I had bargained a compromise, yet I still gave him the ten he wanted. I couldn’t find him in his usual spots, having resorted to his room as being the last spot. Nowhere in sight. Maybe I should just leave it on his desk…? I was about to do so when I heard a voice from behind me, making me jump.

"Is that guilt I see on my plate?"

I turned around to see him standing at the doorway of his room. "You asked for ten skewers of dango, right?" I didn’t have much ingredients to begin with, so I ended up having to go into town to buy a little more while tending to my other groceries. It was convenient, and not really because I had to. I wanted to, either way I looked at it.

He reached over to grab a skewer and plopped down on the floor by the desk, casually lounging on his side with an arm propping his head up. "You shouldn't give more than what you ask for. You might not get much in return."

There was a weight to his words, like he was trying to tell me that whatever I was trying to achieve was next to impossible. 

My feelings would only be met with heartache.

Yet I chose to play innocent to his words, knowing I’m possibly just overthinking them. "I'm giving because I know I shouldn't expect much. But if you're complaining..." I reached for the plate, only for him to let the skewer sit in his mouth while he held the plate away from me. I gave a huff.

"Close your eyes."

"Huh?"

"Do we need to clean those ears, Little Lady?"

I sighed and did what he told me to do.

"Now open your mouth."

I could hear nothing but the trees, but I felt his presence near me. Right in front of me.

Something was placed between my lips, soft yet with a slightly gooey edge meeting my lower lip and the brush of another thing against my lips. I opened my eyes to see Saizo close to me, half a dango between our lips as he fed me with his own lips. It wasn’t like Saizo to share his dango at all, so the act alone had caught me off-guard before our lips sealed against one another's. My lashes fluttered shut in the kiss, accepting the dango before I started to kiss him back.

He took my breath away.

I inhaled his scent, and he took in mine as his tongue pushed its way into my mouth, exploring me. I shivered against him, my hands resting on his front and a muffled noise arose in my throat, prompting him to pull back. My cheeks were flushed.

"Saizo!" came Lord Yukimura's voice calling in the distance, his footsteps sounding as he made his way through the corridors. 

I decided to get up right there and then to leave, knowing I had a blush sitting on my cheeks.

“Hey Zaria, have you seen Saizo– hey, are you okay?”

It was the same situation every time I bumped into Lord Yukimura, always searching for Saizo or somehow I had found Saizo for him. But I nodded, and I could hear Saizo’s voice coming up behind me as he spoke coolly,

“No need to shout across Kai, little lord.”

“War council’s going to start soon. Lord Shingen will wonder where the heck we are. Zaria, I hope you’re feeling okay. If you’re coming down with a fever, you should get see a doctor for that.”

“I-I’m fine, Lord Yukimura, I swear,” I said, offering a weak smile. “If it gets bad, I’ll go see him. But don’t worry about me. You go on ahead before you’re late.” After the two had walked away, I absent-mindedly touched my lips. Saizo kissed me… But… was there any meaning to it? Did he really mean to kiss me or just because I had thought to steal his dango…? It’s not like him to share any with anyone either, my cheeks flushing deeply at the thought.

No, I can’t keep thinking about this. Shaking my head, I went back to the kitchen so I could help get some snacks prepared for the war council.

Today felt more bothersome as a result of that one moment. I tried to go about it as I usually would, but I'm certain it showed on my face when I went to bring the snacks. All of the Twenty-Four Generals and some retainers were there, even little Sasuke. 

They were talking about an upcoming battle, and it seemed like an all too familiar place with a familiar enemy.

Not to mention that they were talking about the last battle that happened there, the one where I lost my father to a stealthy rifleman. The thought made my mouth dry. I nearly blanked with a cup in my hand, only for Master Sasuke to take what was offered and pulled me out of my thoughts before I went to serve Lord Shingen.

"Making sure there are no riflemen hiding is also a must in this. We're not risking what happened there again," Lord Shingen said.

"Milord," Lord Yukimura started. "Is it true that there was a forest maiden that aided in the Takeda's victory that day?"

"Whether forest maidens are true or not, I can assure you she wasn't one," Lord Shingen responded. "Just a young girl who wanted to protect her father. We can't expect her to show up again, so we have to make sure that Oda doesn't pull a fast one on us again."

Some of the other generals who had been there during that battle seemed to think a little more. "It would be interesting to have her in the Takeda army once more, though as a permanent retainer. Considering her ability to communicate with wolves, I can imagine her as the Tiger's Fangs."

Hells, the names.

"Does that make sense when she communicates with wolves?"

“You mean the wolves that have been sitting outside the castle for the past week?”

Oh gods, Sen, what are you doing there.

“Lord Shingen, what would you do if she decides to fight with us?”

“I bet Lord Shingen would take her as his daughter!”

“And let her get married to another samurai? No way would he let any man want to take her!”

Lord Shingen was chuckling into his cup at the bombardment of questions, glancing at me while I went to Master Sasuke before Lord Yukimura's voice filled the Main Hall with his chivalrous announcement.

"Lord Shingen, though we do not have the same circumstances as we did then, we the men of the Takeda, must protect the women from the war that meets us on the battlefield while they protect our families!"

I kept my head down, not wanting to distract the conversation but it seemed that I got roped into it without saying a word–

"Speaking of families, Lord Yukimura, when are you going to have a family of your own? Are you waiting to take Lady Zaria as your wife one day?"

Lord Yukimura was blushing at the mention of it, as he tried not to look at me. 

I turned my gaze elsewhere, though it didn’t help in knowing I was serving Saizo right then and there and he was watching me as I gave him his cup. The kiss from earlier still lingered upon my lips, and made it that much harder to protest. It was a forbidden act that weighed more heavily than I hoped it would. At that moment, I don’t know what would’ve hurt more: knowing that I kissed Saizo with Lord Yukimura as my prospect, or the fact that my ousting myself would shatter the last bit of trust they had for me.

Lord Shingen’s favour could only cover me for so long.

[iatheia]

A shameless repost, from a long-deleted livejournal, originally by dybji. Based on 2005 Tsukigumi version of Elisabeth.

SCORE: *begins* LUCHENI: *stagger-sways onstage* VOICEOVER: Lucheni! Elisabeth! Hapsburgs! Murder! Anarchists! Trial! LUCHENI: No, no, no. It goes, "Trial! Delayed! Angry! Anarchist! Explanation! Death!" DEATH: *appears* AUDIENCE: *various jokes about how, indeed, he must be Death, for they have all been slain on sight* DEATH: I am here as a witness. Luigi Lucheni killed the Empress on my orders, because she loved me. VOICEOVER: I do not feel you are correct on this front, Mr. Tod. DEATH: Of course I am correct. She was too coy to say it, but I know deep down inside she wanted it. VOICEOVER: ... I think the multifaceted irony of that observation has stunned me into silence for the rest of the musical.

LUCHENI: When in doubt, rock'n'roll. Eliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisabeth! ELISABETH: *appears* PAPASABETH: In spite of the fact that I am a landed gentleman with manors, a title, and pondsful of money, I find my obligations to take part in polite society and talk to my own relatives stifling. It is unspeakably unjust, my daughter. AUDIENCE: Tell that to your serfs. ELISABETH: When I grow up, I want to be just like you, Papa! AUDIENCE: This explains so much. SOPHIE: My cough of evil clearly establishes me as a heartless political machine. INTEREST GROUPS: May we please ply our power over the Emperor, shamelessly and nearly-irrevocably tearing power away from the throne? SOPHIE: Oh yes. Please do. FRANZ-JOSEPH: ... Mother, you do realize you are not actually a heartless political machine so much as a heartless idiot, right? DEATH: Christine, I lo-o-ove you … Er, I mean, Elisabeth. Elisabeth, I love you. ELISABETH: I feel strangely fond of you, as well. And, for the benefit of all the Freudians out there, I’ll express these thoughts by reprising the song I just sang for my father! FREUDIANS: Aww, fanservice. We feel so flattered. REST OF AUDIENCE: We feel a little horrified, actually. SOPHIE: We have set up an engagement date for you, son! MAMASABETH: We have set up an engagement date for you, daughter! Elisabeth, you can come along too. FRANZ-JOSEPH: Elisabeth, your artless beauty has completely stolen my heart! ELISABETH: And that diamond necklace has stolen mine. PAPASABETH: This will not end well. SOPHIE: No, it won't. PAPASABETH: Let's sit back and watch, shall we? SOPHIE: I'll get the popcorn. DEATH: Your final dance shall be with me! I am your destiny! ELISABETH: I admit the smoldering eyes do make a good case. SOPHIE: I am a bully. FRANZ-JOSEPH: I am spineless. ELISABETH: I am in despair! DAGGER: *appears* ELISABETH: O happy dagger! Here is thy sheath! FREUDIANS: (nodding excitedly) And thereby the dagger becomes a phallic impersonation of Death! ELISABETH: What? Phal ... oh my god! *flings dagger away* DEATH: Curses. ELMER: Hungary, independence, imperialist pigs. HUNGARIANS: History! Death to Elisabeth! ELISABETH: *reveals Hungarian flag dress* I am the Scarlett O'Hara of Austro-Hungarian history. HUNGARIANS: History! Long live Elisabeth! ELMER: Curses. ELMER: I plan a retaliation. It involves a gun! DEATH: Oh, no, Elmer. Guns represent manhood, and nobody in this story gets to have a manhood except me and Lucheni. And that’s only because he’s in my employ. ELMER: That’s logical. Here, take this. I don’t need a manhood anyway, my only love is Hungary. FREUDIANS: *wipe tears of affection* DEATH: I incite the people to revolt. LUCHENI: This will have no effect on Elisabeth's future life, nor on her eventual death. You really shouldn't look so smug. DEATH: Of course I should look smug! These scenes are the ones that make the historically-inclined middle schoolers drool! Who cares if it has no bearing on the rest of the musical? LUCHENI: Good point. SOPHIE: Your kids are mine! I must raise them instead of you, as is customary in royal court! ELISABETH: I. Hate. You. FRANZ-JOSEPH: Elisabeth ... I am spineless and heart-broken ... please open the door. DEATH: Elisabeth ... I am lonely and heart-broken ... come and make out with me. ELISABETH: Both of you, please shut up. DEATH: Revolt, peasants! PEASANTS: We never actually do revolt, but damn do we look good singing about it. FRANZ-JOSEPH: I defy my mother, and prove it by stealing her trademark cough. ELISABETH: Oh, baby, that's sweet. Let’s reconcile. DEATH: ... You owe me your life, woman. ELISABETH: Don't you realize my trademark power ballad depends upon my ignoring that fact? ACT TWO LUCHENI: History, history, history. Kitsch! DEATH: History, history, history. Pope hat! ELISABETH: Shameless power ballad about when I—er, “dance.” DEATH: Sexual tension about wanting to—uh, “dance.” FREUDIANS: *look bored* REST OF AUDIENCE: *nod appreciatively* SOPHIE: I must oust this young female with her influence over Franz-Joseph. PRIEST: Because it is lessening your power at court? SOPHIE: No, because it is tearing down the Hapsburg dynasty! SOLDIER: … And you weren’t? SOPHIE: (coldly) She is tearing down the Hapsburgs in a different way than I was. SOLDIER: We hire Madame Wolf and her posse of ladies of the evening. We must explain to Franz-Joseph that there are other fish in the sea! PRIEST: Or chickens on a plate, as it were. MADAME WOLF: Ha, I like that. I shall use that metaphor as the basis of my pimp song. FRANZ-JOSEPH: I am moved by the clever metaphors of your pimp song and the mermadian looks of Shirosaki Ai. LUCHENI: I can hardly blame you, sir. Say cheese! ELISABETH: I do not have anorexia! ELISABETH: *collapses* Fine, I do have anorexia, but it’s totally under control! DR. ZABLE: This is in an effort to keep the Emperor interested, isn’t it? You should probably know, he’s cheating on you. ELISABETH: He is most certainly not! PHOTOGRAPH: *appears* ELISABETH: Curses. ELISABETH: … I … I don’t know what to do. DR. ZABLE, shockingly revealing himself to be DEATH: Shineba ii! ELISABETH: No. DEATH: I don’t understand how you consistently fail to follow the impeccably logical solutions I am always presenting to you. DEATH: *taunts Elisabeth with dagger* ELISABETH: *reaches out hopelessly, yearning for dagger* DEATH: *fondles dagger himself* FREUDIANS: *inhale* REST OF AUDIENCE: Say one word and we will cut you. Ayana Oto as YOUNG RUDOLF: Angst! DEATH: Inappropriate touching! AUDIENCE: And so was the infamous red dress foretold. RUDOLF: Visions of greatness, including the overthrow of his father while rushing to Elisabeth’s embrace— FREUDIANS: *inhale* REST OF AUDIENCE: Yeah, no, we got that one. Don’t bother. WINDISCH: I’m in a madhouse, I wear white, I have delusions of being someone I’m not! ELISABETH: Oh, young lady, I would change places with you. THE GHOST OF WILKIE COLLINS’ WOMAN IN WHITE: … You could, you know. ELISABETH: My life has nothing, nothing! LUCHENI: Except paparazzic opportunities for me. ELISABETH: Curses. RUDOLF: Contemplates suicide. DEATH: Contributes ideas for this contemplation. RUDOLF: Revolts! REVOLT: Fails! ELISABETH: Returns! RUDOLF: We’re so alike, Mama. You shun all responsibilities and want to belong only to yourself, I am lonely and want to stop belonging only to myself. Also I try to fix this country’s problems in an effort ostensibly to help the country, rather than to prove to Death I don’t need him. We are perfect mirror images! ELISABETH: … Rudolf, my boy, I think you’re a couple NTs short of a synapse on that one. RUDOLF: What? My logic is impeccable! DEATH: Hey, honey, why don’t you ditch the old lady and come with me? RUDOLF: No, that sounds like a really bad ide—wow, you’ve got smolderingly gorgeous eyes, sir. DEATH: And lustrous hair. And pouty lips. And a mighty gun— RUDOLF: Well, that’s that! I can’t possibly be expected to resist you with your pouty lips and mighty gun! ELISABETH: … Rudolf? Rudolf? CRICKETS: Chirp. ELISABETH: … You made out with my son? You crazy freak, why would you— DEATH: (eagerly) Are you jealous? You’re jealous, aren’t you! Come on, admit it, I’ll still take you, you and Rudolf can be in my harem— ELISABETH: I can be with Rudolf if I die? Oh, do take me now! DEATH: … You are one incestuously-inclined family, you know that? FRANZ-JOSEPH: I reappear. Oh, Elisabeth— ELISABETH: No, stay away, please. I’ve had just about enough of having people sing that name out to me. FRANZ-JOSEPH: I can change, baby, I promise— ELISABETH: We are as two ships in the night GOOD DAY, SIR. FRANZ-JOSEPH: *dies* DEATH: Lucheni, I am entrusting you with my mighty dagger. You know what this means. LUCHENI: … Actually, I think I’m completely overloading on the innuendos at this point. FREUDIANS: *have been gagged by rest of audience* LUCHENI: Come on, this one’s really ambiguous. Couldn’t you just let them explain— REST OF AUDIENCE: No. DEATH: Don’t worry, Lucheni, it doesn’t mean you’ll have to do anything questionable with imperialist pig-dogs. You just need to kill Elisabeth. FRANZ-JOSEPH: She doesn’t love you, you great poof! DEATH: That’s it, you’re getting buried in anthropomorphized sheet-people now. Furthermore, I am Death, obviously I’m bisexual. And heterosexually lesbian at the same time. ... It’s pretty complicated, actually. DEATH: (afterthought) And also, she totally loves me. Imperialist pig-dog. LUCHENI: *Fails to stab Elisabeth.* DEATH: *appears* ELISABETH: O happy dagger! Here is thy sheath! No, for real this time. LUCHENI: Grande amore! DEATH: Crossing the deep waters of Styx together, la la la. ELISABETH: No more tears and suffering, la la la. TRIAL FOR LUCHENI: *apparently, remains in limbo* LUCHENI: Curses.