#careful this gets dark

[raina-at]

Fall

Warning: If suicidal thoughts trigger you, please proceed with caution.

It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing.

Five minutes. From the time he got out of the taxi until he saw Sherlock’s lifeless body lie on the pavement, five minutes passed. At most.

John has lived through these five minutes countless times. Endless times. If you strung up every time he sees these five minutes play before his closed eyes - in dreams, in memory, in penance - you could reach the next century. At least that’s what it feels like. 

How did he do it?

Why?

How did I not see?

These questions haunt him, derail him, consume him.

He walks by Barts at every hour of the day, he studies the police report, he looks at the crime scene photos. 

How could I be so stupid? 

He was devastated when Sherlock jumped. He was traumatised and grieving and barely functional for so long. He pulled himself out of a deep dark black hole by the skin of his teeth and the ridiculous thought that he had to live on to preserve Sherlock’s legacy. That he needed the world to see how brilliant he was, how loveable. How human.

How deeply, bitingly ironic, then, that Sherlock’s return from the not quite as dead as you thought after all has derailed him completely. Sent him into a tailspin he sees no way out of.

He barely eats, he kips on the sofa in his office. He only notices Mary’s thrown him out because one day, all his earthly belongings are dumped in a heap in front of his office door.

He doesn’t care. More time to devote to the one thought he cares about. How? Why?

He replays these five minutes in front of his mental eyes so often. He takes pictures, he tries to find witnesses. He does all the things he should have done after Sherlock jumped, if he hadn’t been so stupid. So paralysed with grief. 

It didn’t even occur to him. That it could be fake. Because Sherlock wouldn’t. He would never.

What a fucking idiot he was. Maybe that’s why Sherlock did it. To get rid of him. To be free of the bumbling fool blogger running after him like a puppy.

Alex, his boss, puts him on medical leave when she finds him at the surgery at three in the morning, pacing his office, muttering to himself. 

He doesn’t tell her he has nowhere to go. He just shows up at Murray’s house, who lets him sleep on the sofa in the basement and doesn’t bother him otherwise.

It’s a grey December day when he stands on a roof, diagonally across the street from Barts. Mycroft told him about the snipers, and he imagines what it must have looked like, from way up here. 

He imagines watching Sherlock jump from this angle. Imagines the crosshairs of the rifle mark the place where the bullet would have entered John’s skull. Spends a visceral moment feeling it, wanting it. Wanting this all to end.

It would be so ironic, he thinks. If he actually did it. If he jumped. Like Sherlock did(n’t). Maybe then he would know. Maybe then he would understand. 

It’s easy to sneak up on the roof at Barts. Easier than it should be, after a suicide. 

It’s freezing up here. The wind cuts through his clothes. He shivers with cold and fear and a ringing sort of despair. What do you do when the only person you truly loved fucked you over this badly? What do you do when you’re not even worth a good lie?

He should have seen it. A thing like this isn’t easy to do. There had to have been cables, or a body switch, or some sort of catching device. He should have seen it. He didn’t, because he’s stupid and worthless and Sherlock never loved him, never wanted him, never cared. 

The windchill freezes the tears on his face. He steps up to the ledge. 

“Please don’t.”

Sherlock’s voice is raw and tired and rough with cold. 

John isn’t surprised. Not really. He knows he’s being watched all the time. 

He hasn’t spoken to anyone in days. He has to clear his throat before he can answer. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not worth it,” Sherlock answers. He sounds as hollowed out as John feels. As tired. As desperate.

John turns around. Sherlock looks like shit. He’s pale and wan and so thin, and John can see the lines the last two years have cut into his face. His nose is red from the wind and there are tears in his eyes.

“How did you do it?” John asks. I should make you watch, he thinks. Like you made me watch. Maybe then you would understand. 

“Does it matter?” Sherlock asks, weary and sad.

“Maybe, just for this once, I can decide what fucking matters,” John yells, his throat raw, the words like barbed wires, ripping him up from inside. “Maybe just this one time, I matter!”

“You always matter!” Sherlock answers, “Please believe me. You always, always matter.”

“Two years,” John whispers, unbelieving. “Two fucking years.”

“I know,” Sherlock answers, his voice as raw as John’s, holding John’s eyes. “I know.”

“What does that even fucking mean?” John yells. He’s shivering with cold and anger as he takes a step towards Sherlock. 

“Two years,” Sherlock says quietly, reaching out to gently touch the tear tracks on John’s face with ice-cold fingertips, his voice shaking with unshed tears. “I’ve missed you so much.”

John tries to bite down on a sob, but he can’t hold on anymore, he’s been biting down on that bullet for over two years, and he can’t do it one more single fucking second.

Sherlock’s there, wrapping him up in warmth and safety and that Baker Street home smell as John sobs out two years of grief and anger and sorrow into Sherlock’s ridiculously expensive coat. John can feel Sherlock lose control as he cries into John’s shoulder, muttering “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again, but John doesn’t need to hear it anymore. 

He can feel it.

He finally, finally understands. 

“Let’s go home,” he whispers into Sherlock’s hair. He’s done with this place. “Let’s finally go home.”

------

I promise happy fluff tomorrow to make up for the pain.

Tags under the cut as usual.

@calaisreno @peanitbear @meetinginsamarra @totallysilvergirl @jolieblack @keirgreeneyes @helloliriels @catlock-holmes @jrow @salmonsown

[wanologic]

and they were roommates

[akanemnon]

What is this tension?

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

(Chara's dialoge being a different shade of red is NOT a plot thing. It's just supposed to make it easier to read)

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[lastoneout]

Pacific Rim is the best movie ever made for the same reason Sif is the best boss in Dark Souls. It's not bcs of quality or craftmanship or whatever it's bcs when I hear "giant robots fighting giant monsters with the power of love" and "huge wolf with a big fucking sword" I am overcome with the urge to scream "HELL FUCKING YEAH" at the top of my lungs before headbutting a wall so hard I leave a dent in the plaster.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 345

Let it be known that none of them actually expected the idiots’ of the week’s ritual to work. The summoning hadn’t worked for literal centuries- everyone knew it had been sealed away, presumably forever!

(Of course they had no way to know that in the Infinite Realms actually used the term forever as a measurement of time, what with how time itself wasn’t particularly linear within. And to beings that could hypothetically live for eternity? Forever was a nice vacation time really) 

So maybe they hadn’t been exactly focused on stopping the ritual as much as they could of been, and by the time they realized it was working, well, it’d been a bit too late then. So yes, mistakes had perhaps in fact, been made. 

First had come the chill, the cold of the ground as your body was lowered down, the cold of your blood dripping from your living corpse. Then came the shadows, the darkness creeping along their vision as their soul slipped from their body. Followed by boiling heat, flames scorching through their flesh and tearing from their chests like a blade piercing their hearts. 

The form that emerged was massive, a cloak dripping crimson fluttering in the wind of an unseen battlefield, verdant flames licking at the air and causing the surrounding shadows to writhe. A dark growl echoed through the building, the stone below them shaking while deathly green eyes glowered down at the living with utter contempt. 

“Do any of you imbeciles know how long it takes to get ghostlings to sleep-” 

[starry-bi-sky]

i think i'm hilarious -- aka i made blood blossom danny au memes

all of these come from my DpxDC prompt "i am pushing the batdad agenda--" and it's corresponding additions in the reblogs ksdjlf.

i am. rotating them in my head. forever and always. personally i think there should be more batdad aus in dpxdc, their dynamic could be neat. :)

[nullroid]

Bring your son to work day 💀

Insta | Redbubble

[recny]

I'll be happy. For you, for her

[devotionfm]

The son (moomin) the father (snoopy) and the Holy Spirit (miffy)

[rileylastname]

maybe it’s because it’s “too obvious” but im surprised how few readings I’ve seen of the Substance (2024) that discuss the themes of addiction and substance (ha) use & abuse.

in moderation you can use the substance to become a better, more fun, easier, happier version of yourself. then you realize you no longer want to be who you are when you’re not on the substance. then taking the same dose that used to be enough before isn’t enough anymore, so you want to take more, and just a little bit more couldn’t hurt, right? so you start to take even more. but this is only taking away from sober you, which is painful and difficult and even scarier than what compelled you to take it in the first place, so of course you can’t stop now. now you want to take even more, you NEED to take even more. sober life becomes harder and harder to bear, especially compared to how much easier everything is on the substance. now you’re not only using it to enjoy that feeling anymore, you’re using it to hide from what you’re turning into without it, from what you’ve already turned into.

every minute that you’re sober is spent counting down the days until you can use again, and the ends of being high are spent dreading going back. the sober self is upset and jealous at how irresponsible the high self is. the high self is upset at how much of a buzzkill the sober self is, and wishes they could exist on their own, without requiring their sober tether to existence. but the sober and high selves are the same person, you are one, and you become jealous and angry at yourself for ruining your own life in a vain attempt to become an impossible version of yourself that you most desire to be.

you want so badly to have all—and only all—of the best parts that you milk yourself dry, until you end up with all—and nothing but all—of the bad parts. by the time you truly feel that you have indeed lost everything and know you need to stop, the damage is already done, and there is no going back. you wish you had stopped at the first chance, you wish you had never started to begin with. and even then for many people the only way to deal with this terrifying, painful reality is to use even more, because you have made this terrifying, painful life without your substance feel unliveable, even scarier yet than what had made you use in the first place. there is nothing left to do but to hide from your own life, and the only ways to do this are to stop, to love yourself and take care of the person that you are now… or to keep taking more and more, using until there is truly nothing left, not even yourself.

[steelsartcorner]

BG3 Comic: The Last Unicorn

Be Forewarned: Dark Urge Spoilers

This comic was inspired by the excellent idea of using The Last Unicorn dialogue for Astarion’s story from @fangsandfeels and the lovely comic made by @solmesia depicting it. You can see the original post here and the comic here.

When I read the original idea I thought that this also potentially works in reverse for a redemption Dark Urge who is horrified by their monstrousness. I did edit and add to the original dialogue for my own purposes.

(Also I really think it would have been cool if slayer form worked more like an uncontrollable werewolf-like curse rather than a gift you have to seek out.)

[helenofblackthorns]

I'm constantly thinking about this passage & I need other people to talk about

like "here is someone you already know"????????

[winningismyjob]

Late night study sessions might feel exhausting, but they're also some of the most rewarding moments in your academic journey. When the world is quiet, and it's just you and your books, you have the opportunity to dive deep into your studies, to understand, and to grow. Remember, every hour you put in, every note you take, and every concept you master is a step closer to your goals.

It's okay to feel tired. It's okay to take breaks. But never forget the power of persistence. Each time you push through, you're building not just your knowledge, but also your resilience. This is your journey, and while it might not always be easy, it's worth it.

So, surround yourself with what inspires you whether it's a cup of coffee, your favorite study playlist, or motivational quotes that keep you going. You’ve got this. Keep your head up, your mind sharp, and your heart determined. Every challenge you overcome is a victory, every question you answer is progress.

Stay focused, stay motivated, and remember why you started. You’re capable of more than you know, and this is just one step on your path to success. Keep going. The effort you put in today will pay off tomorrow.

[weatherbane]

area Durge willing to experience potentially unrequited love as long as they get to try brand new things such as TouchTM

[aroaceleovaldez]

we should make Nico more fucked up, actually. enough woobifying him. that boy should be covered in blood and viscera