#confusedamphibian

[dreaming-of-the-end]

futures and dreams (and other non-fading scars): Bianuca

A/N: Hi @uni-seahorse-572, I'm your secret santa! Thanks @song-tam for hosting!

Summary: Biana looks at her again, and her eyes are tinted red from exhaustion and pain but still they carry with them the Vacker power. The one she's craved and hated for far too many years.

TW: mentions of blood/violence/wounds

Tags: @steppingonshatteredglass @sunset-telepath @stardustanddaffodils @turquoise-skyyyy @skylilac @wu-marcy @saintashes @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @gay-otlc @confuzzled-fox @almostfullnerd @athenswrites @synonymroll648 @squishmallow36 @xanadaus @honey-the-dinosaur-ate-our-kid

Biana's lips part as she sleeps, in soft contrast to the rest of her twisted face. Maruca wants to trace a finger down her skin, soothe the wrinkle between her brows, let her eyes rest easy instead of pressed tight.

At least she's finally asleep.

The bandages wrapped across most bare skin make the idea of rest impossible: three hours ago, she was pinned down to keep from writhing, with teeth clenched so hard they ground audibly as Elwin and Livvy plucked shards of glass from her skin, then poured a disinfectant elixir over the jagged wounds. The numbing elixir barely eased the pain for her. Elwin said some of the glass had gone too deep.

Maruca wants to hold her hand, but even if she could do that without causing her pain, she isn't sure what it would mean. Years before, there wouldn't have been any sort of hesitation, only relief, comfort, familiarity.

The thing is, she knows the feeling of her hand so well that seeing those fingers twitch in her sleep is a phantom pain, an absence so familiar that feeling it is easier than it would be to feel the real thing.

Biana's mouth purses and her face screws up on itself for a moment before fading back into worried sleep.

(god, that mouth.)

Livvy had taken her aside, an hour ago, when the bandages had just been wrapped and the color had still been gone from her skin. "Elwin will tell them that the scars might fade. He will give her a possibility, maybe a hope."

"And you?" Maruca asked.

Livvy looked at her. "Maybe in a hundred years, there will be nothing remaining from this day on her skin. But the scars will still be there."

Maruca scrubs at her face with her hands.

She can hear Fitz in the next room talking to his parents, swoops of anger filling the area before he remembers to keep his voice down. Della's sobs punctuate the conversation. Alden's voice is lower than usual, pieces of his crisp accent lost in raspy worry.

Sometimes, it's like it only took a day for their family to fall apart. But then Maruca remembers it really took two, even though she wasn't around for either of them.

One: Alden's mind break. Two: Alvar's betrayal.

She wonders if this day will be the third. She knows it would have been if Fitz and Dex had taken any longer, or if Livvy hadn't been in Atlantis, or if they hadn't found her in time.

Still, all she knows is that there was the last day she was there: when Della was smiling, when Alvar was making his stupid jokes, when Alden could tease his children without worrying about the consequences, when Fitz still had that laugh that didn't turn dark halfway through. When Biana's breaths were even and balanced and calm.

And then there was every day after. When she'd see them in public, or in meetings, or in school, and suddenly the memory of the planting scattered its leaves through every long-lasting look, or there was a missing piece from their unified front.

If they hadn't found her in time.

The thought is more than a prickle or a pang. It's an explosion, a road to a future without her. A future she never imagined, never wanted to imagine.

All the future she'd imagined consisted of kisses in the dark and smiles across a bright room and fingers tracing arms and thumbs scraping across cheekbones and dark hair twisted carelessly around a knuckle and limbs slung over stomachs—

Goodbye does not have to go both ways.

It doesn't even have to go one way. Biana never said goodbye, but neither did she. They never made a promise not to grow apart, but Maruca doesn't think it would have mattered.

In the end, it wasn't a clean break.

It was a drawn-out pull, like a strand of yarn from a threadbare sweater. It unraveled so quickly and so suddenly that all of a sudden Maruca was left with threads the size of hairs and no way to weave them back together. It took several months of wondering when it would happen and then all of a sudden she was gone.

Gone.

"I'm scared of losing you," Biana had told her once upon a time. Back before the first time falling apart. Not the Vackers, but them.

Well, great job, Bee. 'Cause now she's fucking terrified.

Biana stirs. 

Fitz is there immediately, thanks to his sixth sense that tells him whenever a sibling is either dying or betraying him. He leans over the bed, hand hovering an inch above her cheek, her hair, the closest he can be.

Maruca was scared for him, of him when she'd arrived. Eyes bloodshot, voice breaking every other word. He'd let go of her hand and then his nails had almost gone through his skin from clenching his fist too hard. He'd tried to smile at her and she caught a glimpse of a wild animal prowling, barely hidden anymore.

Dex had rested a hand on his shoulder, and it calmed and provoked him, sending him pacing and tearing his hands through his hair and eventually, sitting by her bed with his mouth moving, whispering to her what she'd never be able to hear. Dex sat beside him for hours, even if he's gone now, mixing elixirs for the scars that will never truly fade.

Maruca sits on her other side, staring at the bandages and thinking that maybe she should go into healing if only so she'd have some idea of how to be useful.

"Biana," Fitz whispers. Her eyes crack open.

Maruca almost retreats, but she's never hidden before and she refuses to now. She crosses her arms over her knees and twists her fingers together.

"Did we win?" Biana asks, her voice gravelly from sleep and screaming.

Fitz hesitates.

"They saved the city," Maruca says. Biana's eyes widen, flicker over. Then they drink her in like there's no one else she'd rather see and there it is. The reason she fell for her in the first place. That power, that makes her feel like no one else in the world matters, like no one else could make her complete. Maruca clears her throat and refuses to look away. "Linh did. And Sophie, Keefe. They saved Atlantis. Gisela tried to flood it, but they blocked up the barrier, held back the ocean."

Biana tries to sit up, mouth pressing into a fine line as she feels all the bandages over her neck, cheek, arm, and side. Fitz helps her, eyebrows pressed into a worried line. Still, relief eases the tension in his neck, the stiffness in his shoulders.

"So, did we win?" Biana repeats.

"Some will say yes. The Council will say yes." Maruca shrugs. She sees the gray in Biana's skin and can't imagine how it can fit together with victory. "I don't know."

"Sophie's parents," Fitz says. "They're safe. Everyone is safe."

Something eases in Biana's face. "Some losses. Important wins."

"You could say that," Maruca says. Biana looks at her again, and her eyes are tinted red from exhaustion and pain but still they carry with them the Vacker power. The one she's craved and hated for far too many years.

She's absorbed, as everyone ends up some way or another where Biana Vacker is concerned. It's not that she thinks of nothing else, but it is that along with all those other things she's still there, lingering just behind as an echo. Maruca considers a question on her Universe worksheet and finds the stars reflected in teal eyes.

This is the Vacker effect. The pull, the gravity of it enough to harness the moon into orbit. The power leaks from them like tea drips from a teabag once it's turned the boiling water dark. You can sense it when they walk into a room. Any of them, but especially her.

At least, this is what Maruca assumes everyone else sees.

For a moment, the feeling disappears and a weight takes its place in a band around Maruca's throat. The feeling is missing her, and it's not that it abates but that it's overwhelmed by hating her.

In the end, she's the first to look away.

[lets-go-banana-fishing]

LMAO NOOO THIS IS EMBARRASSING THERE ARE SO MANY MUSICAL SONGS IN MY PLAYLIST I NEVER GOT RID OF SJSJS

1. Santa Fe - Jeremy Jordan (Newsies)

2. Ordinary - Joriah Kwamé

3. So Much Better - Laura Bell Bundy (Legally Blonde)

4. I want you - Mitski

5. SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK -Joji

6. Better - Ben Platt

7. Vincent - Sarah Connor

8. New - Ben Platt

9. Teen Idle - Marina and The Diamonds

10. Out Like a Light - The Honeysticks

Tagging you guys but no pressure!!!!!

@anonymous-cupcakea03 @wongwh0re @yikesthesebikes @owoscreams @paige-the-plant @starry-sim @forever-lynx @hoppingcrow @confusedamphibian @midnitedraws

Expose Ur music taste

rules: we’re snooping in your playlist. put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first 10 songs and then choose 10 victims. tagged by @orangemonster33

1. One Call Away - Charlie Puth

2.Talking to the Moon - Bruno Mars

3.Shower - Becky G. (why is this even here?)

4.Crossing Field - LiSA

5. Stereo Hearts - Adam Levine, Gym Class Heroes

6.You & I - One Direction

7.I Know What You Did Last Summer - Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello

8. 22 - Taylor Swift

9. Make You Mine - PUBLIC

10. It’s Time - Imagine Dragons

I’m sorry y’all. But I’m tagging @syngularitysyn @incognito-lezbean @sassymajesty @aphrodites-law @eroticfishmongerfrenzy @clexamazon @butmakeitgay-blog @100hearteyes that’s not ten but it’s close enough

[blancaibe-cult]

this is a hate anon just pretend i'm in anon i am so mad i am in blind rage how dare you /lh

Your anger makes us stronger

[rat-with-coffee]

i hope u like them :) 

commenters: @in-a-fever-dream @an-ungraceful-swan @llamaonesie @bunnyboi420 @confusedamphibian

art tags: @raedas @pencilwritesshiz47 @fire-sapphics @lucifers-golden-bitch-apparently @yeetman-yeet 

[dreaming-of-the-end]

middles, endings, and other things that start at the beginning

A/N: Happy Kotlc Pride Month! thanks to @kotlcpridemonth now we have June 24: Fairytale. Hekster! I tried something new :] if this doesn’t make sense, good! you’re reading it correctly.

[ao3]

Summary: "Go away," Sophie whispers to her hopes and dreams. Perhaps they are of freedom, but no one in this godforsaken town has experienced the fulfillment of a wish in over a century. This is not something to reach for. "You're making this so much worse."

TW: there’s blood mentions, and mentions of violence and such but nothing serious

Taglist: @steppingonshatteredglass @sunset-telepath @melanie-schmelanie  @stardustanddaffodils  @song-tam @turquoise-skyyyy @skylilac @wu-marcy  @saintashes  @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @cadence-talle @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison  @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @gay-otlc  @confuzzled-fox @almostfullnerd @athenswrites @synonymroll648 @squishmallow36 @xanadaus

(the storybooks predicted this. they begin, 'once upon a time,' an end that has already occurred. can you feel it? feel the change coming? feel the end becoming a beginning again? it begins with once upon a time. dream the story. feel it drifting around you and form it into names, lives, loves. what is her name?)

Her name is Sophie.

(what's next?)

Sophie Foster unsheathes her sword.

(and...?)

Sophie Foster unsheathes her sword and hacks into the vines spreading from their thicket into the grassy field. It is a defensive war, one she has been fighting since the beginning. Every year, a new crop of soldiers are handed swords and assigned to vine duty.

Stop them from spreading, read their instructions, and nothing else.

By now, she can probably be called a veteran, which means the days are all the same and she's begun to name the vines just for something to do. Steven, Nancy, and Reynaldo are her current least favorites.

(do you get it? the vines are the stories. the thorns are the words. she must stop the end before it begins. you see it, now?)

The sun attacks the back of her neck like it's bored of today, too. The soldiers don't need armor for this job, so at least it beats guard duty. That's the only positive, though, with this task that is simultaneously mind-numbing and incredibly dangerous.

All they do, day in and day out, is drive their blade into the hungry plants that creep forward, greedily snatching for ankles. Sophie thinks jealously of how Fitz is a teacher instead of a soldier, which means he gets to wrangle children instead of hyperactive flora.

Not that it seems like a more enjoyable option. It's not like he can stab them if they're too annoying.

Sophie stomps on another mischievous vine and beheads it.

(by framing the task in this way, she pretends she is important. she pretends she is beheading a dragon.)

"Aha!" shouts the triumphant hero. In this moment, she is transformed. The sun is no longer a bored foe but cresting her head to light up her golden-streaked hair. Her loose white shirt becomes a silken cape flowing in the breeze, the sheath on her waist holding a sword so polished and intricate it would be a pity to use in battle. A streak of blood slides down her cheek from a close call with the dragon's razor-sharp talons. Her arms do not ache to lift anymore, and standing is not a chore.

Heroes, after all, do not tire, or flag, or want more.

(if she wants to go blind, this is a good idea. she does it, however, not to go blind, but to tell the time. it's not exactly counting down the minutes, but it will do.)

And then she is Sophie again, letting the tip of her blade sink into the soft soil, even though she knows that will dull it. She swipes sweat from her forehead and feels the premature wrinkles formed there from squinting into the sun so many times every day.

She doesn't know, exactly, where the vines come from. Sophie was born into a world where the vines were there, and a previous generation of soldiers were the ones keeping them back. She learned and trained to fight as a soldier in whatever wars were necessary, and instead she's here. Because there aren't any other foes, aren't any other wars.

She is a wall in a battle where the enemies are made to find cracks and slip through them. That may, in fact, be their only purpose.

Being a nuisance, that is. That's their purpose. They're like if Keefe Sencen was condensed into a long, green, skinny plant and lost the ability to speak.

"Heel!" Sophie orders the vines. They shoot forward twice as fast, and she's forced to take evasive maneuvers to swipe them away before they wrap around her calves and engulf her completely.

(in this story, the plants are the predators. the plants are the story. get it? she is the prey of the story. she has to fight back, to end the end before it finds itself back at the beginning. don't ask for clarity. she certainly doesn't understand the metaphor, and she's the protagonist.)

"You should be trained, somehow," she says helplessly, and the vines seem to laugh at her. "It's not funny."

She's gotten into this habit, talking to herself. Weaving stories out of nothing to pass the time. It's not counting minutes, but it'll have to do. The plants don't care, and they definitely can't hear her, but they certainly feel sentient. Sometimes they seem more animal than anything else.

Sophie cuts a few more vines away before they can spread further, then wonders for the millionth time why a more permanent solution hasn't been found yet. Like fire. "You guys are flammable, aren't you?" Perhaps they (as in, the leaders of the village) figure they need something to foster a steady fear and paranoia in the villagers, since the outside world sure can't be accessed around the thicket that surrounds them.

The thicket means no access to the outside world. If it were gone, there would be new enemies to fight. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

She's heard that sometimes, soldiers become too impatient, too angry, and cut too far in. But as soon as they take a step too far, they fall asleep. And then the vines devour them. The witnesses spreading those stories didn't dare try to rescue them.

Taking that risk sounds more and more appealing with each hour spent under the baking sun. Sophie's uniform is a billowing white (although it's more gray now) blouse tucked into black pants. Long sleeves, even though it's light material. It's sweltering. Heat stroke inducing. Sometimes the thirst is so bad she has to physically pry her tongue from the roof of her mouth with soiled fingers.

(as we approach a turning point in the story, pay close attention. when is the moment she makes her decision? why does she make it? she does not know, but perhaps you can.)

Sophie feels that tug in her stomach again. The tug of wanting, she's begun calling it.

"Go away," she whispers to her hopes and dreams. Perhaps they are of freedom, but no one in this godforsaken town has experienced the fulfillment of a wish in over a century. This is not something to reach for. "You're making this so much worse."

She squints up at the sun. (does it burn her? this is for you to decide, not her. it is never her decision.) It's hidden behind gray clouds, but the heat prickling up her skin doesn't fade. If she gets a sunburn again, she's quitting her job (as if that's an option).

Maybe she should have become a teacher like Fitz, or a healer like Keefe, or a dancer like Linh—even though that last one would have been impossible with Sophie's two left feet. Even Dex seems to have it figured out, brewing his potions and inventing new miracle devices that never make a dent in the thicket. He has a goal, at least, even if it is entirely unattainable.

The thing is, this wanting has only gotten stronger over the past few years. The closer she gets to the vines, the tighter it pulls. Wherever she goes, she can find her way back to the edge of town with her eyes closed.

At twenty years old, Sophie is running out of time to make a decision.

The decision is this: to have her dreams or to follow them. To find freedom in death or lose herself in boredom.

She's certain she'd like to continue living, but the urge to go into the vines and find what thorns are there to prick her strengthens until, honestly, she doesn't see the point of killing more of them. They will return. She will be engulfed.

(here it is. the turning point. but also the beginning, a return.)

So Sophie Foster hacks into the vines spreading from the thicket into the grassy plain and takes too many steps for safety.

Sleep drags at her eyes, but it's not nearly as bad as night shifts are (and the dark circles under her eyes have been spreading steadily lower in the last few months anyway) so she keeps walking. Hacking away at the vines. They whisper around her. She answers them.

(entering and killing the story at the same time. letting herself be stung by the thorns. letting herself be scraped and battered by the beginning itself. she would not understand this metaphor because she is living in it.)

Soon, her arms ache too much to continue slicing at the vines. She drops her sword on the ground and lets the thicket swallow it. But she keeps walking, and discovers that as soon as she stops fighting them, the vines part to let her pass.

Even so, thorns scrape lines across her face, stinging her palms and ripping through her sleeves and pants.

Crunches sound beneath her feet, and without looking, she knows they're bones. Maybe animals unfortunate enough to brave the thorns, only to be trapped. Maybe they're people like her, who felt the thread of wanting and didn't trust themselves to stay awake.

Maybe that is the difference between them and her. The willingness to never sleep. To traverse time like an ocean.

(a crucial part of the hero's journey is the struggles it takes to reach a destination. what is her destination? the ending, or the beginning? has she found the struggle, the toil, the challenge yet?)

Sophie's breaths come in pants. It feels like she's been walking for days, but when she squints up at the sky, only a few hours have passed.

"Stop laughing at me," she mumbles. "Fucking... wants. Vines. I hate both of you."

(she does not yet know that these two things are the same. The roadblock and the motivation. The cause and the effect. The instigator and the anchor.)

"You want to see me fail. I bet I'm gonna emerge from this oversized bush and be back where I started. Some kind of sick joke is what this is. I can't believe the world hates me. The world hates me so much that it forced me to go into the fucking death plants that also hate me, and now they're just prolonging my misery. Thanks, guys. I guess I still haven't learned my lesson, since I'm still walking. It might be spite driving me. (perhaps.) Doesn't matter. You're still just as annoying..."

Her voice trails off as she quite suddenly plunges out of the thicket and into a clearing, almost stumbling with the sudden change from vines trailing across her shoes and tripping her up to empty air.

"Oh." The small sound is swallowed in the expanse of the image in front of her.

(another turning point. did you see this one coming? the point of a beginning is to not know the end— unless, of course, that's where it starts.)

Sophie wipes at a trickle of blood on her forearm, suddenly aware of similar wounds all over her body. The truce of the plants wasn't true, then. She turns to scowl at them, and finds that there is a clear-cut line of where they begin and end.

It's a border, a wall, formed perfectly. The one back home was in disarray, uneven, messy, half-chopped and half-expanding. She hopes someone has been sent to take her place as a soldier. Maybe one day they'll follow her path. Maybe they will become bones crunching under the feet of the next person to reach this place.

This... castle.

It's a deep blue, spangled with stars. It glimmers in the bright sun, a brilliant gray up on the turrets. Purples glisten near the bottom, wreathed with clouds that are down instead of up. Sophie looks at the sun and doesn't squint. Birds circle one tower in an endless circle—hundreds of them. She can barely make out a window through flashes of lavender stone.

It's a night sky during the day. It's impossibility. It shouldn't exist. It is, perhaps, magic.

(it is a story, and she has escaped it. now this is real. why has it become real as soon as the magic becomes clear? again, there is no answer. if there was, you could not find it.)

Sophie moves forward, and the drawbridge lowers to allow her to cross a moat that rings the castle. When she peers down, the water is crystal clear and run through with bright blue. Brightly colored fish dart from one patch of sunlight to the next, scales flashing in a practiced pattern.

Sophie frowns, feels the wrinkles come from constant stress and constant sun deepen. But she keeps walking.

The gigantic double doors open before her.

(it's about the journey, dear. what's the destination?)

Still, she keeps walking.

She doesn't bother calling out to anyone inside. She knows where she will find them: asleep, slumped over whatever they were doing when whatever magic this is came to be.

She knows where she will find the wanting, too.

(for once, Sophie understands what will happen. she knows the ending but not how she will get there. you know the beginning. she knows the end. all that's left is the rest of the journey: first motivation, inciting incident, then turning point, then struggle, and another turning point. what is left?)

And there she is: a woman wasting the days, the decades, away. She's dancing on the table when Sophie finds her, twisting back and forth with an invisible partner, not caring whether her feet land on polished wood or air.

Around the table are chairs occupied with the sleeping members of the castle. Some snore gently, but most sleep in silence, like the dead.

Sophie watches her miss the table and step directly into open air. But she doesn't fall, instead stepping further into the air and resuming her dance in a hover. She wears a pink dress, and it floats around her legs just as surely as its owner.

The woman doesn't notice her. Sophie clears her throat.

There's a beat, a pause, and the woman's magic stumbles. She tumbles to the floor with an oof, hands cast out wildly to break her fall. "Holy shit," the woman breathes.

The wanting is so strong Sophie thinks her heart will be pulled out of her chest and torn open right in front of her.

(here it is: the culmination. the destination. the purpose. the pull.)

She looks up, and Sophie is there with a hand outstretched, mouth pressed tight together to keep from blurting out something stupid like a marriage proposal.

The woman takes her hand. Her fingers wrap firmly around Sophie's wrist and let her pull her onto her feet. Her eyes are a blue so deep it almost crosses to purple, and freckles trace her cheeks and the top of her pink mouth. Her hair explodes from her scalp in a shower of brown curls, softening the sharp edges of her face.

"Who are you?" the princess (this is what she must be) asks.

"My name is Sophie. Sophie Foster," she adds, as if it matters. Dumbly, "What's yours?"

The princess pulls her hand away (loss) and ignores her question. "Did you wake up?" Desperate hope threads through her eyes, trembles in the veins of her hands. Her fists clench, flex. She casts a glance toward the comatose assembly around the table. Two of the adults seated near the head wear crowns. They are, Sophie assumes, her parents. The king and queen.

"I was never asleep," Sophie answers. Although this, of course, isn't true. She didn't know it before (possibly she had never truly known anything until this moment) but she was sleepwalking through life. Only with this castle of night does she feel alert, like she's in less of a dream and more of a life.

(what has she discovered? does this mean this is the end? is this a story or a dream? if she wakes up, is the story over?)

The princess deflates. The light goes from her eyes. She steals another glance at the table, and then back to Sophie. "I'm Stina, then. Don't bother with any titles. I haven't had to use those in one hundred years."

Sophie blinks. Perhaps this is a dream. She pinches the inside of her arm, but nothing changes. "One hundred years?"

Stina's lips twist to the side. "I look good for my age, don't I." She sighs and slumps to the floor, her dress expanding around her. Sophie is conscious of her torn and bloody uniform as she sits next to her. "That's when the curse was placed. A century ago, almost exactly."

"Curse?" Sophie decides she hates magic. But also loves it. She's never quite been certain of her feelings on anything, and this is no different.

(take note of this indecision. what choices are easier for her to make? which are impossible?)

"Indefinite sleep if I prick my finger on a spinning wheel," Stina explains glumly. "Except she missed. And it got everyone except me, but now I'm stuck at twenty years old forever."

"Can't curses be broken?" Sophie considers age gaps a very inconsequential thing. Perhaps she was traveling through those vines for a century. It certainly seemed that way. That would make them the same age, and therefore if she looks too long at the other woman's lips, it can hardly be a problem if they are both centuries trapped in decades' bodies.

"Sure. Only, the fairy who did it didn't mention how to fix mine." Stina snorts. "Typical. Fairies are always difficult like that."

Sophie nods in agreement, even if her only encounters with magic thus far have been the vines, and now the woman in front of her. Fairies. What assholes.

(Sophie is finding new perspectives on life. namely, homosexuality. is this a new story? or is she still on a journey?)

"But you're awake," Stina remarks, quirking an eyebrow. She picks at the lace on her skirt. "How are you doing that?"

Sophie shrugs. "I don't sleep well. Insomnia."

Stina, to her surprise, laughs. It's a harsh sound, sudden, and it breaks apart the silence. One of the endlessly circling birds caws, and Sophie wonders if it's been trying to escape the tower for a full century, or if it only recently got caught. "Neither do I," the immortal princess says.

(is this something they should be finding in common? did the fairy miss, or was Stina simply too stubborn to fall asleep? she is stubborn, although it may not be clear from this interaction. this is a moment stretching time, holding dreams in its palm.)

"Or..." Sophie considers, tilting her head to the side. "I could be immune to magic." Her hair has fallen out of its tight braid by now. Wisps and locks of wheat-blonde hair fall around her face in a short bob, and she brushes them impatiently from her eyes.

"That's not possible," Stina tells her. "Magic isn't a disease. It's not something you can be immune to. It just... is."

(what is it? what else "just is" and how do we know it can't spread? perhaps more things are diseases than we think. perhaps magic is a sickness. perhaps it is the cure.)

"Have you ever tried to leave the castle?" Sophie asks. Her eyes sting in phantom pain of the sun. There must be a new soldier at her post by now. Maybe they will find her sword in the thicket someday.

Stina hesitates. "Yes. Of course."

"So you've seen the vines. Have they let you through?"

She scuffs her fingernail along the ground. "No."

"They let me through," she says. "And I'm awake. And I'm not in a vortex."

"Vortex?"

"The birds."

"Oh, them." Stina sighs. "It seems we're all caught in cycles these days, doesn't it?"

(just a bit of humor. come back to the beginning, why don't you?)

Her name is Sophie.

(what's next?)

Sophie Foster unsheathes her sword.

(no, that was another joke. she doesn't have her sword. continuity is important in stories that don't have beginnings and ends, because even if no one is supposed to understand them—especially not those living them—there still must be something to fall back on. like empty hands. and magic. tropes and cliches are especially helpful.)

"It does," Sophie says, and remembers how it once felt to sleep. It now occurs to her that she hasn't slept in one hundred years, and she also was born twenty years ago.

Perhaps she isn't immune to magic. This place might be driving her batty.

"Yes. Maybe. Well, I couldn't tell you. But it's worth a try, isn't it?"

"So you're immune," Stina says, and she might be sarcastic (it's never been very easy for Sophie to tell) but there's a hint of something different. Something interested. Something sincere. Something desperate. "To magic."

"What is?"

Sophie's eyes widen. "I thought I already said it. Maybe I can break your curse, is what I'm saying."

(what is she saying? that she has a resolution to the conflict? maybe she still has to decide whether the conflict is the curse, her wanting, or something else entirely. maybe she's one of the ravens in the vortex. maybe this is a daydream, and she's still standing in front of those vines playing make believe. but that's just not realistic— in the village, Sophie was still fighting stories, not making her own.)

Stina's face drops, and she twists to look at the figures around the table. "Don't make jokes. It's been a century. Do you know how many books I've had to read just to be absolutely sure there's no way to break it? I've boiled rat blood and painted it on the highest point of the castle. I've plucked hairs from bats' wings. I collected the bone-dust from the lowermost dungeon and buried it in the garden. There's nothing, not even you."

"I'm incredibly funny," Sophie says, "but I don't think jokes are meant to give you false hope."

"Are you a joke?"

"I'm feeling a lot of hope right now, and I really don't want to." Stina takes her hand anyway. The pressure of her fingers is soothing, but also terrifying. Suddenly, it feels like expectation, and Sophie regrets suggesting anything at all. Softer, resigned: "I'm touching you, and my parents are still sleeping."

"Are you laughing?" Sophie searches Stina's eyes for something that she can't name. "I think the wanting knew I could help you. I think it led. Mr here for a reason."

Stina looks at her like she doesn't have to ask what the wanting is because she feels it too.

"I think, maybe, I'm just guessing, that we have to... I don't know, I've read a few books. Not many lately, haven't had time, but I know that these things work because of... you know, this whole place is magic, so maybe it goes by fairy tale logic anyway, and I never believed in fairy tales before I met you anyway but we're here now and we might as well try, so—"

"What," Stina asks in exasperation, "are you talking about?"

"I think we have to kiss?" Sophie says timidly, lifting her palms in an exaggerated shrug.

Stina stills. Her gaze flicks down to her lips, then back up. Like she hadn't considered it before, but now she can't do anything but consider it. Sophie would know, because now all she can think about is kissing her.

(resolution, perhaps, can only occur when the conflict is clear. here, we have another issue of motivation. why does Sophie suggest this? to save her? to break the curse? or just because, well, she traveled all this way and she'd like a little kiss for her efforts?)

(maybe Stina is just really fucking hot.)

"Okay," Stina says.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

They sit there. Sophie shifts to sit on her knees and discovers that upright, she's still the same height as Stina on her butt. Height, she has learned throughout her life, intimidates her. So she's left rocking back and forth in front of her, hesitating. She's always hesitating.

"Just fucking kiss me, man," Stina says, and grabs Sophie's cheeks to bring her closer. Her thumb traces the underside of her chin and trails down her neck. Sophie gulps.

(think back to that first turning point. why did Sophie consider staying in the village? why did she want to stop walking and let the vines engulf her? maybe because she's scared. maybe because she doesn't want the change goodness would bring. she doesn't want the story to end, and therefore to begin again.)

"Maybe this isn't a good idea," Sophie says, and Stina moves her head back an inch. Is that disappointment? No more reaching for dreams, for wantings, even if this desire sits heavy in her stomach like a stone on fire. Think things through. Don't just go into the vines. "What if you lose all your magic? The... hovering. The immortality. Maybe you'll start aging, or it'll all speed up and you'll be one hundred years old in body, too."

Stina laughs, and her breath is warm on Sophie's lips. "Shit, Foster. I find that after one hundred years, I don't care. I want to see my mom and dad awake. That's what this is for. The magic... it can be a nuisance anyway."

Like the vines. Like Keefe, Sophie thinks wildly.

(see how the story is circling back in on itself? the words twist together into a tangle. into a thicket. we are back in the vines. the vines are the castle. the castle is the story. sophie is the story, but she doesn't know she's telling it, and she doesn't know she's being told. don't think too hard, and you should be fine. that's what Keefe does, and he turned out great!)

"Okay," Sophie says.

"Oh, we're not doing that shit again," Stina says. She kisses her.

(this is where Sophie finds the wanting.)

(she finds the story, in other words.)

Stina's lips find her greedy, coming too close, hands bracing themselves on her jawline, noses bumping, fingers tracing cheeks and necks and shoulders. She hasn't interacted with another conscious person in a century, hasn't been kissed in that time, hasn't wanted to.

Sophie takes the greed, the hunger, and absorbs it. She feels awake for the first time in years. Stina kisses her like Sophie is the curse and she's trying to break it. She probably wouldn't mind being broken by someone like her.

A bell clangs from somewhere deep in the castle. Grunts and delayed snores sound from the table, and a single plate clatters to the floor as the attendees of the dinner jerk to consciousness. There are murmurs, then shouts of confusion.

Stina doesn't pull away.

So this is how her parents see their daughter after a century-long nap: making out with a random girl in torn and bloodied peasant clothes on the floor of their great hall, center of thousands of political battles, marriage ceremonies (decidedly between men and women), and even the occasional war or pissing contest. Perhaps this would be offensive or disrespectful if the king and queen had not had their first kiss in the same room, possibly even more scandalously.

"Stina?" the king asks, his crown askew on his head.

They break apart. Stina's cheeks are flushed, her lips slightly swollen and reddened, hair even messier than before the kiss. Sophie is sure she must be in a similar state. Hastily, she stands and bends into an awkward curtsy, almost tripping as she backs away.

Stina, however, doesn't look embarrassed. Instead, tears spill down her cheeks as she launches herself at her father, landing in an embrace that is sure to last another century.

(This is the end, the culmination. The beginning: a name, a woman, a sword. The ending: a kiss, an awakening, a reunion. And another beginning: more kisses, a rose, maybe a crown. The wanting, the begging, the dreaming, the freedom. Sophie holds it in her hand and swings it like a sword, hacks into the vines spreading from their thicket into the grassy field. It has been a battle since the beginning, no matter where you start the story.)

(Call this a story or call it a dream. It finds the same ending, the same awakening no matter the name, no matter who tells it. Sophie finds herself in a fairytale that she has been a part of since the beginning of the battle, of the war. What was the enemy? Maybe it was herself, or the vines, or the magic. Maybe it was the goddamned birds and the cycles we find impossible to break.)

(Maybe Stina is just really fucking hot, and Sophie needed to kiss her.)

(That's probably truer than any of those other things.)

Once Upon A Time,

the end.

[dreaming-of-the-end]

in which god sweeps across a canvas the same way a heartbeat becomes a song

A/N: Happy Kam Week everyone! they are so bestie but do you know what's better? comments and reblogs! Kam Week 2023 Day 6: Artist/Musician

Find it on ao3

Summary: As someone whose parents have kept more of the appearance of liking God rather than truly caring about it, art has become a religion to Keefe. / Tam places his steps in the footprints of music he's listened to a hundred times. The notes are not a religion, but they are a heartbeat.

TW: religious metaphor, flashback to starvation/malnourishment (no eds)

Tags: @steppingonshatteredglass @sunset-telepath @stardustanddaffodils @song-tam @turquoise-skyyyy @skylilac @wu-marcy @saintashes @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @gay-otlc @confuzzled-fox @almostfullnerd @athenswrites @synonymroll648 @squishmallow36 @xanadaus @honey-the-dinosaur-ate-our-kid @kamweek2023

As someone whose parents have kept more of the appearance of liking God rather than truly caring about it, art has become a religion to Keefe.

He's heard that there are those who live to serve, who dedicate each breath and heartbeat to a deity, pouring their soul into the cupped hands of a higher being and fervently studying the delicate precision with which it pools into human-like wrinkles.

It is not as though art is a physical being, or a way to make decisions, but rather when Keefe paints, it is his soul that coats the canvas, his blood tracing hard lines and tears feathering light details. His senses, his sight and hearing and touch, are the highlights, contouring out a hard jawline with joy and flicking freckles across lips with fury and sacrifice pouring bloodred from torn skin.

Blessings come when he looks outside and sees the colors and thinks of which paints to mix to achieve that shade of perfection, studying how light becomes shapes becomes darkness becomes beauty. The lazy confidence of a gray-lavender shadow as it stretches itself to meet the sun, the elegant curl of a emerald-green leaf, the pink-orange of the sky resting its weary eyes as night rises.

Keefe prays to his deity to find inspiration. He shoves his hands into the grass and grips the blades tightly enough that they snap, his nails digging into his palms deeply enough to sting, soft soil making its way into the lines of his palm like a worshipper's soul flooding their God's weary eyes.

In essence: art is religion because he gives everything he has to worship it. Art is religion because it is where he finds himself. Who he is has never been an easy question for him to answer, but he discovers it in the way his fingers grip the charcoal or paintbrush or pencil or oils.

Keefe's dreams splatter across his canvas and he covers them over with white paint to start again. They peek through in oily streaks when he scratches at the canvas. Color flakes away. The paper shreds. The pencil snaps in his fingers. A dark streak smears the cheek of his mother's depiction as a Hera-like statue in an empty temple. He thought it was symbolic. Now it feels like a very slight overbite— uncomfortable, right and wrong, something that fits perfectly but not quite right at the same time.

Who he is becomes clear when it's all out there on paper.

Who is he?

...

Tam believes in the strength of a body. Of flesh and blood. Of muscles and bones and teeth and the way blinking sometimes scrapes a layer of disguise from your eyes so you have to cry no matter how much you don't want to.

His flesh was the shield between Linh and the cold on the worst of those nights, the ones where they couldn't see their faces in the darkness, the black so thick Tam thought he was swimming in it, drowning in it, a soft sort of death that smothered him in velvet. They shook with cold, with tears, with pain, with hunger, with the knowledge that they weren't alone even though often Tam wished he was so that Linh didn't have to go through this with him.

His blood pumped fear through his body, the fear that honed his hungry body and let him steal when it had been two days since fresh food and Linh reached a dangerously weak hand to his cheek. He would bite his cheek and taste it, taste the adrenaline in the blood that flooded his mouth, and know that they could not go on this way.

He could not go on this way.

It was only a few more months from that day until they met Sophie. One more month where the darkness lasted too long, so long that the shadows he loves so much it hurts began to leach strength from his cold, aching body.

Now, he sits in a warm home and lets music be his shield. Not instead of flesh, but a part of it, the way the dark would melt into his skin if he sat still enough, like a wild beast that was only looking for a little warmth. Melody sinks into his body and becomes him, becomes Tam, putting pink back into his blue fingers and depth back into his eyes.

Tam places his steps in the footprints of music he's listened to a hundred times. The notes are not a religion, but they are a heartbeat. They are a lifeblood. They are a dream of safety and a recognition of luck, fingers pressed into guitar strings too quickly, too often, summoning red irritation to the surface as a reminder that he doesn't have to be numb anymore.

He's allowed to let out a breath that is not for the purpose of letting Linh inhale. They breathe separately now. Sometimes she sits in the room while he plays and lets the music trickle down her arms like she's fresh back from swim practice,  damp silver tips of her hair sticking to her neck. She's a painting, flesh and blood. 

He gives her form with his guitar, with the grand piano in the living room, with the lyrics he doesn't show her but still scribbles down into whatever notebook Tiergan buys him.

The music lets Tam become himself. It tells him that he is a heartbeat, a held breath. It does not need to be concrete. It's all right there. Who he is.

Who is he?

...

Keefe paints him over and over again.

But it doesn't start that way. It starts as sketches, simple renderings. He rehearses what he'd say if anyone realized who he was looking at: he's a good model. Unique, clear-cut, (and the unmentionable "hot as shit" description that waits at the tip of his tongue) interesting. Silver bangs cut dangerously across the gentle slope of his forehead. Keefe presses the shape of his nose into the paper so hard the tip of his pencil breaks.

It's just sketches, until he breaks out the watercolors at home, and sort of curses his photographic memory for remembering him so well but also knows it was the result of staring at him for too long. He gives the boy a pink flush in his cheeks even though it wasn't there before.

But that was only the first painting. The first day.

The next day, Keefe learns his name.

Tam and Linh Song are new students, the teacher tells them. Treat them with as much respect as you would any other classmate. Sophie twists to glare at him as if to say, That means you, Keefe, don't tease the new kids before they know you're just joking around all the time, and he smirks at her as if to say, What, you want me to change? What happened to loving me for who I am?

And, really, he wasn't planning on teasing them— not even him. He's content with the creepy sneaking-peaks-across-the-classroom-all-period he's got going on, and he isn't a bully.

But Tam is in his next hour, and Sophie isn't there to chide him for anything, so he slides into the desk next to him and says, "Yo, new kid, I hope you know that I'm basically in charge of this school, and there's a penalty for doing anything better than me."

Tam turns to meet his eyes, and Keefe suddenly finds a detail he didn't catch in yesterday's prayer (painting). His eyes are a dangerous sort of gray, nearly black when his eyes narrow and a blue-silver when the light catches them, and he has teeth straight enough to draw a line. "No need to worry about that," he says, his voice rough and unpolished. "I'm sure I couldn't possibly beat your... what? C+ average?"

Keefe's mouth drops open for a moment, and Sophie's words echo in his head as he's forced, for the first time in his class clown history, to wonder whether or not this kid is joking. Then his lips spread into a wide smile as he finds it doesn't matter. "No one in this hellhole of a school ever managed better grades than a C- before I came along, so that's a nice try. But I'm a record-setter here."

Tam regards him in a way that sends his eyebrows twitching up. Keefe wonders what he sees. "Luckily, I'm not a competitive person. Because if I were, I'd point out that there's no way someone hasn't done at least their hair better than you."

Keefe's nostrils flare. He ruffles his hair and says, snippily, "Lucky you aren't competitive, then, because I'd have to point out that bangs haven't been in since my grandmother was born."

His lips press together into a tight line, eyes narrowing. Tam turns back to face the front of the classroom, his back ramrod straight despite the way Keefe's arm is draped over the back of his chair, foot propped up on the desk. "I must have a four-leaf fucking clover, then."

Keefe is kind of obsessed with him. He hopes it doesn't show.

...

Tam was aware that being the new kid would invite a few questions, but he expected more of "Where did you go before?" or "Is it true you're adopted?" instead of an instant pissing contest with a boy who has ink splattered messily on his hands and scribbled all over the thighs of his jeans.

Not that he thinks Keefe is uninteresting. Definitely, certainly full of himself, and absolutely hiding something under that mop of bleached blond hair, but perhaps someone Tam would have liked to know, if only to see what motivated him to strike up a conversation.

Neither of them have spoken in the last few minutes, but Keefe's still moving, still shifting his weight back and forth, running his fingertips across the desk, scuffing his expensive shoes along the ground, and worst of all, messing with his pen. click. click. click.

Tam doesn't bother twisting to look at him as he says, "Could you... stop that? Please?"

He hears a snort. The clicking stops, and then Keefe's breath is on his cheeks as he leans over so far his chair tips to the side. He has the grin of an understimulated panther, and he lounges across Tam's desk like he's method acting as one for the school play.

"What are you trying to pay so much attention to, anyway? Can't be the lesson. No one listens to those."

If Tam were a liar, he'd say that Keefe has an annoying fucking voice. Unfortunately, he is not, and his voice is smooth and soft and has a practiced sort of velvet that makes him think this is a boy who is consistently excused for his mistakes. Maybe he can sing. He seems like he'd either be terrible or completely perfect at it.

"I'm listening to it. It's better than the alternative." Tam cuts his gaze to catch Keefe's reaction, finding the other's mouth falling open. All four chair legs land back on the ground as he retreats to a socially acceptable distance.

"I have never before been called worse than school."

"Must be both of our lucky days, then," Tam snipes. The notes spill out in his head, and he finds himself tapping a beat out onto the desk. "You don't seem all that interesting to me." Maybe he is a liar. New schools are meant for reinventing yourself, right?

"Oh, I've been called a lot of things," Keefe begins.

"Full of yourself? Dangerously overconfident? Terribly irritating?" Tam supplies.

Keefe glares at him. "I've been called a lot of things. But believe me..." He leans closer, a mischievous spark leaping from his icy eyes. His voice lowers like he's sharing a secret, even though speaking at normal volume hasn't prompted any reaction from the teacher so far. "Uninteresting has never been one of them."

...

Weeks pass, then months.

Keefe learns that Tam and Linh are adopted, that they were homeless for over a year before Tiergan took them in. In return, they learn that his parents don't particularly like him, that he acts out for attention, and the full depth of his hatred for his father. He views it as equal exchange, a secret for a secret.

As they spend more time with the group, they learn about what Fitz and Biana's brother did to their family. They learn about Sophie's adoption, about Dex's years of being bullied, about Marella's mom and Jensi's school struggles and the various other aches and pains that come from being alive. Secrets for secrets, piled up in snowdrifts until it's not an exchange anymore.

He shows all of them the smaller paintings, the landscapes, group portraits. He captures Linh's rosy cheeks after the snowball fight they had at the Dizznee's that winter, pressing a pink tint over her nose. He masters Dex's freckles, then the contrast of Fitz's hand in his, then Biana's grin that wrinkles her nose and squints her eyes and makes her jawline disappear. He draws the curls at the end of Sophie's hair and then adds gold highlights and gives it to her for her birthday.

And he draws him. Over and over again.

Pressing his likeness between the pages of his sketchbook, the faint dimples that form whenever he smiles (more and more often, he's been able to squeeze some amusement out of him), the way the silver in his hair catches light, the thick knuckles working delicately with fingertips to pluck the strings of his guitar. 

It's with reverence that he paints him, sculpting the softness of his jaw like some ancient artists designed their gods. It's not enough.

He wants him to see them, but also, he would rather die.

Keefe asks Tam to model with a nonchalance that could almost be called a lie if you cared about that sort of thing, which Keefe decidedly does not. He says, "I've been looking for a muse." He says, "It must be your dream to have me staring at you for a few hours." He says, "Please?"

Tam looks at him like he's considering an art piece himself. Then he looks at him like he's rolling an insult, a refusal, a mockery around on his tongue. Then he looks away like he started imagining how Keefe's lips would taste on his (or possibly that was just wishful thinking). Then, slowly, carefully, he says: "Okay."

...

Tam stretches out on the couch and thinks, draw me like one of your french girls but doesn't say it because it's far too easy and his humor is supposed to be elevated, the kind of jokes that he can watch Keefe flail and jump at from far below.

Instead he says, "You want me to pose?"

"Only if it's a cute one." Keefe is distracted, setting up his paints, adjusting the curtains so the light falls correctly, twisting the canvas stand back and forth as he tries to get a good angle. Also, he's dropping things more than he usually does.

He snorts and turns onto his stomach, resting the side of his face on his clasped hands as he waits for Keefe to finish. The couch is a worn forest green, parts of it peeling, and he wonders if it will be included in the portrait. He closes his eyes and lets the sound of the room swallow him and thinks about a song made from only Keefe's curses as he drops another paintbrush.

"That's good, actually," Keefe says suddenly, and Tam's eyes pop open to find his face barely a foot away, studying his face. Instinctively, he starts to rise on his hands, but a hand presses onto his head and forces him back down with an oomph— hey! "Sorry. I want you to stay there, though."

"What, like I'm sleeping?"

"Yeah." Keefe has freckles so light that it's impossible to catch unless he's this close. While Tam is noticing this, he also notices that he has the longest eyelashes he's ever seen, and also that pink is blooming across his cheeks as if he's noticing very similar things about him. Keefe lurches back onto his heels, then stands, the pink fading as if it was only in his imagination.

Tam smirks. Then he sets his cheek back down on his laced fingers and lets out a deep breath.

"Perfect," Keefe says. He hovers above him like there's something more to say, even though there really isn't, before saying it anyway: "I mean, for the shot. For the painting. The angle, I mean." Then his face closes into what Tam would call "determined embarrassment" and he retreats to the safety of his canvas and paints.

The process takes hours. 

Tam barely blinks, content to watch the way Keefe lives in his element. In school, there's always a sort of uncomfortable tension in the way he moves, like a caged animal. Here, his eyes go squinty as he checks details, paint splattering on his already stained jeans, scratching his cheek with a paintbrush and smudging his skin with pinks as he tries to rub it off.

It's endearing. Tam is so surprised that it's endearing. He hates it a little bit (he isn't often surprised, but he supposes that rule has never applied to Keefe anyway).

A song weaves around the back of his mind. He hums a few lines, the melody sinking into the ratty couch cushions until they become the forest floor, a peaceful night where it was just the wind and the sky and the two of them, his eyes fluttering between the waking and dreaming world.

It's an in-between. A fresh start, one that's less fear and hunger and more... peace. Breakfast in the mornings and pictures pinned up to the walls until no one can tell where he came from or who he was.

Who he is.

...

Keefe knows that many of the ancient artists were trying to preserve what they perceived as divine in their work.

A call and answer, maybe. When religion and creation are the same thing, he supposes inspiration can be a shout from whatever form of god they worshipped, hoarse and torn with the desire to be immortalized.

Painters would paint their lovers, parents, children, friends, and call it divinity. They'd paint a field of sunflowers, a bowl of fruit, messy bedsheets, castles with countless towers, and summon a piece of their god to live on the canvas. Keefe supposes that's as close to the definition as anyone could ever find.

He finds it here: studying the way light dapples Tam's side, the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders, the creases of his shirt as it rides up his side.

He finds it here: the way shadows deepen his cheekbones into something sharp and dangerous and alluring, the way his eyes cut over quickly like they're sharing some private joke, the way his lips quirk up when he smiles like he needs to get it over with and return to his usual scowl.

God, he finds his divinity. He finds his religion.

[dreaming-of-the-end]

echoes, saltwater, lemon juice (or: a lesson in pressing bitterness into wounds): Kam

A/N: In which i give them the unhealthy relationship they deserve <3 Love these babies. Hi @pissy-victorian-vampire, I’m your secret santa! you said angst of any sort soooo...

Summary:

Keefe leans forward, places his hands on either side of Tam's legs and presses their lips together, quick, warm. "I'm sorry about that." He's not.

"You're not," Tam says.

TW: kissing? there’s a brief mention of physical violence. also, death mention. and mental illness.

Taglist: @steppingonshatteredglass @real-smooth @sunset-telepath @melanie-schmelanie  @stardustanddaffodils @jaxtheoraliestanner  @song-tam @turquoise-skyyyy @completekeefitztrash @wu-marcy  @saintashes  @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @chasteliac @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @cadence-talle @kai-i-guess @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison  @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @gay-otlc @confuzzled-fox @almostfullnerd @athenswrites @synonymroll648 @squishmallow36 @xanadaus

"It burns you sometimes, doesn't it?" Keefe twists his paper napkin so tightly it rips, shreds of the stained white scattering over his black pants. "The memory, I mean."

He doesn't have to ask what he means. "Like lemon juice. Like saltwater."

Keefe's fingers trace the grainy wood of the restaurant table with difficulty, the surface probably still sticky from the syrup-soaked pancakes he'd finished less than five minutes previously. "Like echoes?"

Tam stays silent. His hands are at his sides: he's never liked the cheap fast food places, preferring the clean-cut elegance of his own kitchen over screaming children and food he can't trust. More than that, it's the effect of it all: the bright lights in his eyes, the under-flavored over-sugared food, the lack of privacy, the smack of chewing gum coupled with the constant thrumming of the kitchen fridge, the tacky orange booth seats that stick to his skin.

And this conversation is too rich for the mediocrity of his surroundings. There's must still be something to be said about nights under the stars in a clearing in the woods, or perhaps a dock in the middle of the ocean, or floating in space, filled with the possibility of nothing and everything all at once. These words don't belong here. But Keefe does—not in a way to call him cheap or tacky, but in a bright, everything-everywhere-all-at-once kind of way. He's everything loud, everything bright, everything overwhelming.

"You need the reminder," Keefe says, resolute, as stuck in his self-righteousness as Tam's fork is to the syrupy table. "It's not over, Tam."

"Can't it be done? Can't it have died with her?" Tam feels the warm scent of unwashed bodies brush his skin. He wasn't made for this.

"You know that you did this to yourself."

And he hates Keefe for saying it. He hates him more than anyone, with an overwhelming catastrophic desperation that makes the entire world fade away, because it's always been that way with him. Keefe is simple and complicated in a terrifying, tell-me-who-i-am-and-i-won't-like-the-answer kind of way.

You know you did this to yourself.

Add that to his list of mistakes. Along with falling in love.

...

Tam might have physical echoes, but Keefe's are just as tangible.

The thing is, it's impossible to measure who has it worse (not that it stops him) when Tam's power is the thing attacking him night after night, while Keefe's mind is the only thing holding him hostage.

He's been there during attacks, of course. The times Tam loses himself in nightmares and his shadows come to life on the walls, shadowflux taking physical form to rake scratches into the mellow blue wallpaper Keefe handpicked for their bedroom, foggy condensation dripping from the ceiling onto the sunny yellow sheets of their bed. Their room is falling apart around them, and Keefe can't lie. He doesn't lie anymore.

It's his fault. Tam's.

His fault for choosing to learn shadowflux at all. Umber's journals taught him to weave shadow arrows and knives, rend apart concrete as if it's paper, bring objects crashing down when they're trying to sleep.

It's his fault. But he knows the way it burns. Lemon juice, saltwater, the sting of a frown and the twinge of hate. He knows burning like his own name.

So he knows regret. It calms him somewhat, to know that it was his own fault that he has these nightmares. At least he doesn't have to deal with blaming Tam.

Every day, he sees her: light auburn hair pulled into a bun tight enough to stretch the scars on her face that he'd given her. Right before he ended that light in her cold eyes, the ones that live on in his own face.

Gisela is trapped in his mirror. He has to live with the knowledge that every day, she might escape.

Every time he stares into it, meets his own eyes (her eyes) he feels her a little more. The burning of hate, of the fight with Dimitar and the salt of the ring in his wound. Sophie's desperate eyes, tear filled with prepared grief, because she knew then who he is now, and it destroyed both of them. And so he lost her.

Keefe plays that moment in his mind over and over, but he can’t come up with a version where she doesn’t learn who he is, what he is. He can’t come up with a version where she doesn’t leave him.

Sophie was right to mourn him then. Didn't that make it better when he died? When his mother killed him every way but physically?

...

Tam does not know who they want him to be.

It's a game of fear and choices, both of which he has learned from a schoolbook, studying the art of it.

This is fear: when your nightmares come to life, when your partner clutches at your arm because his mother formed from shadows made real, when the ghosts take physical form and you are powerless to stop them because you learned too well how to make them and not enough of how to send them away.

This is choice: to leave or to stay, to live or to die, how to run and how to love, how to unpack his clothes into drawers or how to make promises and keep them, how to leave one for another, to trust in his safety and let those he loves leave his sight to go with another.

And it's an art, along the lines of painting or singing or the poems he scribbles in his private journal. A love letter to terror, asking it to please stop calling because I'm happy now, I promise I'm happy, I don't need you anymore. All these lies.

He knows lying better than fear. Better than choices.

Tam knows lies, like the ones he tells himself. Like it was my fault (trying to convince himself) when it's not. It wasn't.

It was his fault. Keefe's.

Because he picked up Umber's journals for him, memorized every word to make the shadows leak into Keefe's head correctly, twisted his own insides around to keep him safe.

He would do it all again, of course. Every time, he's the one to lose himself in the glory of being a shield: Linh's protection, Sophie's rock, Keefe's last shred of common sense. It's him who makes the sacrifice, him who chooses to be exiled, to join the Neverseen, to give bits and pieces of himself away in a bargain that cancels out the danger instead of fixing it. He’s a bandaid on a gaping wound.

So perhaps this is fear: when you've given enough of yourself away to not recognize your shadowed eyes when you see them in the mirror.

Perhaps this is choice: whether to go on as half a person, or steal yourself back and take some of them with you.

...

"It drowns you sometimes, doesn't it?" Keefe watches Tam's legs swing back and forth on the countertop, and presses his hands against the cool marble. The chill is a tether and a knife cutting him free from his body. "The anger, I mean."

Tam considers this. Or, he puts on his Thinking Face, the one where his head tilts to the side and his eyes get all wide and his mouth comes open just a little bit, waiting for the spark to come through the space and light an idea in his head. It takes him a little while to form an answer, and when it does, it comes slow, tight with guilt. "Of course."

Keefe leans forward, places his hands on the counter on either side of Tam's legs and presses their lips together, quick, warm. "I'm sorry about that." He's not.

"You're not," Tam says.

He likes the anger, and Tam knows it. The day the two of them stop being angry about what happened to them is the day they turn into their parents and start being angry about what other people are doing and thinking and saying. It has to go somewhere. They have to go somewhere.

Keefe shrugs. He's less furious and more simmering these days. He paints it, his anger, the coolness of ice and piercing eyes. They stare at him always, worse at night, worse with Tam's shades bringing his mother back to life like she hasn't been dead for nearly three years. "You're not, either."

"No," Tam agrees, and this time it's him who moves forward to kiss him. His breath is warm against Keefe's cheeks, and he uses that warmth to center himself. Cold at his palms, heat on his lips.

See, he wishes he can tell his mother, I can still feel. Killing you didn't break me.

Tam did, though. Broke him apart and remolded him. For the better, maybe, or for the worse, probably. With a fire in the pit of his stomach like the throwing star he'd landed in hers. He hates him a little for that: for making him a new version of himself that he doesn't entirely like.

It's an attack, Tam's hands on his cheeks, caressing his cheekbone with his thumb, pulling him closer, threading through the tangles of his hair like he's not a boy made of lemon juice, of saltwater, of echoes. An attack because of how much it hurts, in his lungs and blood and bones, as Tam's palms warm his icy skin and Tam's lips part his own and Tam's eyelashes brush against his cheek with their closeness.

Keefe writes his own name in the fog in the mirror after he showers so he doesn't forget it.

He lets himself forget it now.

[dreaming-of-the-end]

of temptation and devils (and time, the deadliest of all)

A/N: Using this link as my ref! I present... The kotlc goncharov au we've all been waiting for! Idea from @abubble125 (psst: my ao3 has a version that has the goncharov characters instead of kotlc)

TW: smoking, alcohol mention, knives, blood, injury/past injury mention, fire... That should be all! Keep in mind that goncharov does not actually exist!

Summary: in which she and her share an apple, and he and him share a cigarette. (Or, the way time breaks)

Taglist: @steppingonshatteredglass @real-smooth @sunset-telepath @melanie-schmelanie  @stardustanddaffodils @jaxtheoraliestanner  @song-tam @turquoise-skyyyy @skycourthouse @completekeefitztrash @wu-marcy  @saintashes  @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @chasteliac @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @cadence-talle @kai-i-guess @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @gay-otlc @confuzzled-fox @almostfullnerd @athenswrites @synonymroll648 @squishmallow36

Biana's steps are silent on the cobblestone of the main square, swallowed in the bustle and chatter surrounding her.

But she picks her footsteps from the noise instantly, the familiar click click snap of her tall heels close enough to gunshots that Biana knows not to flinch.

Sophie's arm threads through hers easily, naturally, puzzle pieces fitting together. A wristwatch brushes cold against Biana's skin, even though it should be warm against her skin. The seconds ticking past match precisely with Sophie's footsteps.

Biana glances up, finding Sophie's dark eyes already fixed on her. Cold, knowing, trimmed perfectly with amusement and a hint of irregular relief, unnatural in her put-together attire. The red scarf she wears slips elegantly on the ground behind her, a trail of blood following her like a promise.

"A hello would be friendly," Biana says, brisk. "Expected, even, between friends."

Sophie laughs, shakes her head, polishing a perfectly red apple on the sleeve of Biana's simple blue dress. She stiffens with the contact, conscious of the stares around them.

"Sophie..." she hisses under her breath, but the other does not bother to acknowledge her. She is well versed in the art of danger, Biana knows, has learned it in schools of guns and smiles sharper than most daggers. Sophie knows danger well enough to avoid it, but she also hates boredom enough to invite it to her.

Instead of stepping away, Sophie tightens her grip on her arm and takes a bite of the apple. Bright red lips part, a crunch like bones underfoot as white teeth sink into the yellow flesh. Biana can't stop watching. This is another thing about danger that Sophie loves: how addicting it is. How much Biana can't leave it behind.

Sophie holds it out to her, red lips spread in a gentle smile. An invitation.

Biana can never quit her vices. She takes a hold of the apple and takes a bite.

It's sweet. Sophie wipes the juice dribbling down her chin with the corner of her bloodred scarf.

"We," she says, soft as a bullet, "are not friends."

The clock tower strikes noon.

...

A low rumble surrounds Fitz as he flicks a card around his fingers, too quickly for anyone to see what he holds. It seems they're occupied, anyway, sight obscured by Sophie smoking his cigar.

Biana shares an armchair with his wife. An armchair, and his cigar, passing it back and forth. Sophie meets his gaze from across the room and grins, smoke rippling out from between deep red lips. Biana whispers something in her ear, and Fitz frowns.

"Not happy, are we?" Keefe asks silkily, his breath warm against Fitz's neck as he feigns leaning over him to check his cards. Fitz's hand shoots back, and the rest of Keefe's breath heats his cheeks as his fingers latch around his throat. They wait, nose to nose, for Fitz to speak.

It takes ten ticks of the clock in the pot in the middle of the table for Fitz to answer the silent challenge by his longtime business partner and rival. "Never with you in the room."

Keefe laughs, piercing eyes crinkling into suspicion. He's planning everything all at once. He should know why the plans fail. Fitz has never tried to hide it. He checks his watch.

Keefe pushes the last of his money into the pot in the center. There isn't much of it. Another failure. Sophie meets his eyes again, inclining her head. Biana laughs beside her.

Fitz puts the last of his money in with Keefe's and throws his cards down on the table.

"Four aces," Keefe says thoughtfully. "Lucky."

"I am always lucky," Fitz says.

Sophie and Biana exhale a plume of smoke at the same time, pursed lips an identical shade of red. He watches it spread across the ceiling.

The cuckoo clock explodes into sound. He counts the desperate squawks of the wooden bird trapped inside.

Midnight.

...

Sophie's knife glides up and down the sharpener with ease, with practice.

"Have you been stabbed before?" Biana asks, arm draped over the side of the red armchair she sprawls on, any thoughts of being ladylike discarded. Her dress rides up past mid-thigh to expose light brown skin, glistening with sweat from the heat of the fire. It crackles in the fireplace, in time.

"Of course." Sophie pauses her sharpening for a moment to drop the sleeve of her red dress, exposing a pale shoulder. Biana sucks in a breath as she catches sight of the raised scar in the middle of it. "Took a month to heal."

"How did it feel?" Biana asks, a little breathless, and Sophie leaves her sleeve down as she returns to her knife.

"It hurt, of course," Sophie says thoughtfully. "It was exhilarating. I didn't feel it for a few seconds, and then I did. And it burned. The kind of fire that wakes you up."

Biana's finger traces the skin on her dark calf, gliding up and down. Sophie is terrifyingly, acutely aware of it.

"If I were to be stabbed, I'd want to feel every second of it," Biana says.

Sophie turns to meet her eyes, knife still gliding up and down, dangerously fast. It's a game of chance, playing with a blade like this, not bothering to watch her fingers. As exhilarating as a flesh wound.

"Is that an invitation?" she says.

Biana laughs. She does, too, and the knife slips from her hand and clatters to the wooden floorboards, adding another slice to the already scarred floor of her room. A droplet of blood lands on the blade.

Sophie and Biana watch it slide down the sharpened length of it together, until she glances up.

"Sophie, you're bleeding." Matter of fact.

She looks at the small cut on her palm with bemusement, a disappointed spark lighting her eyes. "I didn't even feel it."

...

Fitz leans on the railing, farther out than he should be. He feels lit on fire with alcohol, with the force of his thoughts.

Power moves through him in the form of fear. He doesn't know where he's going.

He shouldn't have had so much to drink. He wishes it more as a pair of paler hands rest on the railing next to him, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles go white.

Neither of them acknowledge the other. Fitz lights a cigarette, shielding his lighter from the brisk wind. It musses his hair from its careful style, like fingers running through it until he can't breathe or speak or think.

He turns to meet Keefe's eyes, bright blue with judgment. There are no questions, only a cigarette held up between two fingers, raised eyebrows rising until they touch heavy blond hair.

Fitz doesn't bother taking the cigarette out of his mouth, but leans forward until Keefe's breath is hot against his cheeks, until he is close enough to see the fractals of ice held in his eyes, the freckles scattered carelessly over his cheeks. His face glows in the light of the moon, lit up in the red spark leaping from Fitz's cigarette.

He leans back, smoke held deep in his lungs burning him from the inside out. He doesn't need its help.

Keefe holds his watch up teasingly, the gold flashing in his bloody poet hands.

Fitz removes the cigarette from his mouth and blows the smoke into Keefe's face. He stands still as it billows away with the wind. "Never took you for a thief. A pickpocket, now?"

His own fault for allowing the man so close. Weakness, this wanting. Keefe drops the watch back into his hands. Fitz taps the glass carefully before fastening it back on his wrist.

"Careful carrying that around," Keefe says, smoke forming in the air with each word. His suit crinkles as he rests his elbow on the railing of the bridge. "It's a dangerous thing."

"A watch?"

"Time, Fitz. Time is the deadliest killer of them all. Even more than you." His eyebrows draw together in his forehead, evidence of a rare thought spinning past the cobwebs in his brain.

"You care for my safety?" Another new occurrence. Fitz twists his watch around his wrist until it pinches.

"Not your safety," Keefe corrects him. "Your death."

Fitz taps his watch again. The minute hand is broken.

He stamps his cigarette out on the bridge before he leaves Keefe behind.

[lets-go-banana-fishing]

Smooches u Max ily

WAAAA THERE ARE SO MANY SHOWS I LOVE I COULD ADD SO MANY WAAA

- Banana Fish

- Good Omens

- Gravity Falls

- Naruto

- Komi can't communicate

- Steven Universe (first few seasons)

- Buddy Daddies

- Miraculous Ladybug (ashamed 😔)

Everyone is free to join :3

@confusedamphibian @anonymous-cupcakea03 @deimosatellite

@spef (bestie i know you're out there)

No pressure !!!

(Starting a new post bc the other was getting a bit long)

8 shows to get to know me!

Tagged by: @tokuvivor and @writebackatya (thanks!!)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

X Files

Walking Dead (early)

DT17

Firefly

Welcome to Night Vale

Doctor Who

Thrilling Adventure Hour

Go for it @theindistructablemushu @hueberryshortcake @delladucked

[dreaming-of-the-end]

lessons in fire, lessons in hate: Marella

A/N: this has been sitting in my drafts for too long. Comments/reblogs are better than the satisfaction that comes with being right!

Summary: Marella was fourteen when she began to hate fire.

What happened was this: she woke up engulfed in it.

TW: self hate, fire, swearing, tell me if I should add more!

Taglist: @steppingonshatteredglass @real-smooth @sunset-telepath   @stardustanddaffodils @jaxtheoraliestanner  @song-tam @turquoise-skyyyy @skycourthouse @silveredviolets @wu-marcy  @b-blurryyfacee  @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @chasteliac @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @cadence-talle @kai-i-guess @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @keeper-of-the-jew-jew @gay-otlc  @confuzzled-fox @almostfullnerd  @athenswrites @synonymroll648

Marella was nine when she learned to fear fire.

The lesson was this: fire burns, and so do you.

Simple enough when everything in her life was so complicated. Complicated like when you take a step too far and feel your body start falling; complicated like how lemon juice squirts in your eye when you try to make lemonade; complicated like watching your mom cry from the staircase when she doesn't know you're looking.

So this was a simple rule.

Fire burns, and you will with it.

(unless...)

She learned to fear it, scribbling down the lesson in her mind, taking notes on what not to do and what to do. She learned so well that it was written into her very being. DNA is unchangeable? Well, she changed it to be afraid of fire, like everyone told her to, because every else didn't really have to learn to hate it.

Lack of self-preservation was a shitty side effect of being unique.

Yes, she memorized, watching her father's lips move as he taught his lessons and rules. Yes, fire is bad.

(...unless you're smart enough to avoid it. unless you're quick enough to run. unless you know not to love it, not to like it, not to look at it like that, Marella stop looking at it like that—)

...

Marella was eleven when she decided to fear fire.

She'd learned her lesson two years ago (about how things are complicated, and fire is simple), but never once had she believed it.

Rules were hard, and not following them was easy. Rules were hard, like when you shake out your clothes after a night on the floor because your mother isn't there to tell you to pick them up, like when you give up on lemonade and sprinkle sugar directly on the lemons wedges and eat them like that to savor the puckering sweetness, like when the girls at school make fun of you for having messy hair and messy braids and a messy life.

Rules were hard, especially the ones about fire and how she had to stay away.

She'd learned to follow the easy rules: show up to class, don't talk to the Vackers (especially the youngest), help your mother on her hard days (even if she couldn't quite adjust to letting her mother help her), and don't complain.

The last one was the hardest. But she learned well.

But this was worse than that. This wasn't a rule, this was a fact: fire is bad, and so is anyone who can use it, anyone who loves it, (anyone who looks at it like that Marella please stop looking at it like that—)

So, she decided, it was time to fear it.

First, she lit a match. Then, she set her favorite shirt on fire.

It burned faster than she'd expected. There was more smoke than she'd planned for, fanned into her face and making her eyes water, swallowed with the gulp of air she tried to take, sending her into a coughing fit. By the time she remembered to pour water on it, it had already spread to her carpet, growing until she drowned it with her ready bucket.

More smoke went up. She coughed. The fire went out. The smoke drifted out the window lazily, turning the pure sky briefly gray.

Her shirt (pink, with sparkles around the edges) was crumbled to ashes. A portion of her carpet (blue, fluffy, with a pattern of scattered purple petals) was blackened with fire.

Marella sat down in the middle of her ruined carpet and let her tears clear the smoke from her eyes. She waited for the smell in her room to go back to normal. Then she shoved the ruined remains of her favorite shirt into a bag and threw it away, cleaned her floor as well as she could with the water and towels from her bathroom, cut away the burned part of her carpet, and went downstairs like nothing happened.

Another thing she learned that day was that fire was hungry. It spread faster than water could reach it.

That was the day she decided to fear fire.

...

Marella was fourteen when she began to hate fire.

What happened was this: she woke up engulfed in it.

That was the simple answer, the easy answer. The complicated, the hard, the dangerous answer took longer to say. It's the danger of not looking before you leap, the danger of tilting your face to the sky and staring straight at the sun as long as you dare, the danger of taking a breath and another and another and smelling smoke instead of air. The danger of fire.

So the answer was dangerous, and it was that Marella imagined herself crumbling into dust like the shirt she'd burned. She imagined the carpet catching (she had a new one now, one that didn't have a big section at the ends cut away) and spreading to her parents and the rest of her house without her bucket of water there to stop it. She would be ash. She would be burned. She would be—

Warm.

She was so warm.

The only thing she could do was roll around her room to put out her fire, and scream. Scream from the pain that didn't exist, scream at the top of her lungs, the ones that weren't giving out from the smoke.

Something thudded, and then she was choking, losing her air, clutching at her throat, burning and dying and she couldn't breathe—

Air flooded her lungs and tears flooded her eyes as she gulped down air, knees stinging on her ruined carpet.

Her clothes were steaming.

"Marella—" Arms encircled her, flinched back. "Marella, you're burning hot. Boiling. Are you all right?"

"Does it look like I'm all right?" she forced out, a tear dripping down her cheek. She tried to wipe it away, but it had already evaporated. Her skin didn't feel hot to her. Her throat was the only part of her still on fire.

Her dad's face appeared in front of her, creased. "Look around you."

She did.

Her room was ruined. Blackened, charred, smoky. Her bedsheets, her closet, her carpet. The door to her bathroom had blackened, but was far enough away to be fine. Everything on her desk was in ashes. She would have to think of new excuses for her half-finished homework.

Heat swirled around her.

She could feel it in the air, in her very blood. It wanted her to touch it, wanted her to let it spill from her hands, to dance and twirl around her destroyed room with her. Hungry, hungry, hungry.

"Where did the fire come from?" Marella asked dully, staring at her hands.

Durand brushed a finger down her cheek, wiping away a tear. He winced like she'd burned him. Maybe she did. "I don't know."

But he did.

He did know.

And so did she.

"Your mother called a Regent when we realized there was a fire, Mare. They're coming now." Durand placed a hand on her knee, protected by a layer of still-hot pajama pants. They were an old pair, sparkly and pink from when she liked that sort of thing. His eyes searched hers, matching blue finding each other in the remnants of smoke. "They're coming here."

She sucked in a quick breath, choked, coughed. "Can you get rid of the smoke?"

"I took away your fire's air to put it out. I could blow away the smoke, but they're still coming here. It wouldn't dissipate in time."

Your fire, he said. Yours.

The doorbell rang from the end of a tunnel. "Where's Mom?"

"Waiting," he answered softly. Waiting for you to be safe. Waiting for the Regents to arrive. Waiting, waiting, waiting for it to be okay.

Marella stood on shaky legs. Durand stood with her.

The Regent had dark, deep eyes, like staring into an ocean. Dark skin, curls flopping around her head. Her ears were curved, but angled ever so slightly in a way that showed her age.

"What was the issue?" she was saying as Marella got close enough to hear.

"A fire," Caprise said, her voice strong. So this was a good day. Not a dangerous one. Not a hard one. Not a complicated one.

"Was it an accident?" This one knew who Caprise was. Knew what she was.

Was it an accident?

Marella started forward, but Durand placed a hand on her shoulder. "Yes."

"Of course. Where did it occur?"

Caprise looked at Durand, at Marella, her windblown hair, her unmarked skin. Her mouth tightened. "I set it. It was an accident, but it's out now."

Marella's eyes widened.

"How did you set it?" The woman wasn't surprised. Marella decided then and there that she hated her.

"During one of my moods." Caprise emphasized the last word too much, widening her eyes, making her bottom lip move when it shouldn't have.

Crazy Caprise. Where's your mom? Why isn't she here, Marella? Big talk from someone with a crazy mother, Redek. Why don't you let us come over to your house anymore? My dad says your mom is dangerous to be around. He says I can't sleep over unless she's not there. She might hurt me because she doesn't know what she's doing.

The woman nodded.

That was when Marella began to hate fire.

...

Marella is sixteen, and she doesn't know how she ended up here.

Here: hating herself like this.

Of course, she can trace every step that got her to this point.

She knows that Caprise falling off that balcony wasn't at fault any more than the person who pushed her. She knows that Sophie Foster didn't make Stina bully her after their friendship tore apart, and she didn't make Marella ostracize herself and hate every girl for being who she couldn't. She knows that Forkle didn't make her a pyrokinetic and Fintan isn't the reason she's dangerous and it isn't Biana's fault that she's too fucking beautiful.

Making everyone else at fault was an accident, and accidents happen all the time.

Accidents that she can count. Accidents like her mother's tumble, like Stina tripping her in the hall, like forgetting to flatten her uncombed hair before class or setting another fire or Gisela getting away for the millionth time or Keefe getting taken because Marella convinced Linh to take him underground.

If she burns the world down, it won't be an accident. It'll be the kind of burn that comes when lemon juice gets into a cut, when the sugar you tried to add turns out to be salt, when you aren't trying to catch yourself anymore because you fall down the stairs and land running, when you hear your mom crying and leave the house so you don't have to remember that you can't help anymore.

(she's crying because of you. because she found your plans to burn the world down. why'd you leave them out like that?)

She counts everything in her life, so why not mistakes? Why not dreams that never came true? Why not faults and blames, fires and flames, burned plans and lemons squeezed dry and flamed to charred bits of fragrant peel?

Fintan tells her that she shouldn't hate the fire erupting from her skin, that he doesn't hate his power even after everyone he's killed.

She can see it in him. How unafraid he is of himself, how proud he is of her power. Sometimes, she doesn't know if his satisfaction is in her or in the power constantly simmering in her veins.

"Don't be afraid of it, Marella!" he shouts constantly at her whenever they train. "Don't be angry! Fear and anger, this is how you lose control, of the fire and of yourself."

But fear and anger are all she has ever known. Fire burns, and she has to be ready to burn with it—

"It's everywhere!" she screams back, something in her voice breaking. The smoke is making her eyes tear up, and she's too afraid of crying to keep going. She puts out the flame with a twist of her wrists and falls to her knees on the ground, clothes steaming. She wishes Linh were here. "It's everywhere. All the fucking time. It's all over me."

"That's your burden. And your gift." Fintan's anger is clear in his voice. She's failed again. No fake pride today. "Start feeling the sun instead of wishing it was night."

"The sun shouldn't feel like fire ants when I use it." Her nails dig into the skin on her arms. "I can't forget it. I can't ignore it. I can't use it. Fintan, it hurts so bad. It hurts so bad."

"If you can't ignore it, then stop trying to. You are not afraid of your gift, you are not afraid of me." He's stone-cold like she's not on fire. "What are you afraid of?"

Her tears steam up as they fall. "Everything."

[dreaming-of-the-end]

This Is What Burns: Brant x Jolie

A/N: comments/reblogs are better than birthday cake! In which I kill people as always. @gay-otlc​‘s fault for enabling me!

Summary: Everything he loves about her is everything that makes her dangerous. Her fire can't be put out by closing his fist. His fire can't be extinguished with a smile and a wave.

TW: death, fire/burning/ash/smoke/etc, injury/burns, tell me if I should add more!

Taglist: @steppingonshatteredglass @real-smooth @sunset-telepath @dreaminq-out-loud  @stardustanddaffodils @jaxtheoraliestanner  @spellbound-fire @turquoise-skyyyy @swearing-parrot @silveredviolets @wu-marcy  @b-blurryyfacee  @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @chasteliac @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @cadence-talle @kai-i-guess @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison @professionalwhalewatcher @theogony @keeper-of-the-jew-jew @gay-otlc @countingthestarsaboveourheads @everblaeze-and-balefire @confuzzled-fox 

(after)

Everything is cold. And something in that strikes Brant as vaguely (ever so vaguely, like the thought is wrapped in silky smoke, smooth and welcome and mysterious and nothing that he can catch in his hands) off.

Not dangerous, necessarily. Something he isn't used to, more like.

He can't quite remember the moment before the chill set into his bones.

(see, it all blends together, those moments before. they were all the same, all burning)

There, a flash. Something he can piece together.

Fear.

No, not fear. Something worse, something like panic-filled terror, like when you're falling and it's too late to catch yourself before you hit the ground.

He cracks open his eyes, and it's never been this hard to come out of one of his fiery trances before but now it is. It's like his balance has been thrown off. It's like he's missing something— no, like something has been carved from him.

Or burned away.

Suddenly, he can't breathe. The air is thick with ash.

Brant isn't cold anymore.

He's burning.

...

(before)

"Hello," Jolie smiles. It's one of the things he loves about her, the way she can make a word smile. The way she can wrap the word up in a little bow and sparkly wrapping paper and give it to him, a little gift every time she speaks.

"Hello," he says back, because Jolie is infectious. You can't help but catch the fever of her, let yourself be corrupted and lose yourself in who she is. She's the kind of disease that makes you want to drink from a poisoned well just to let yourself be desecrated by her. That's what they are, the two of them. The drinker and the poison. "Are the violets blooming?"

"Bright as can be," she laughs, like she always does.

Violets: her. Everything is her. Everything is blooming.

Even Brant, when he's with her. He lets a spark dance on his fingertips, and she leans a little closer to follow it with her eyes. His fire fascinates her the way her smile fascinates him, like she's drinking it in and it tastes new every time.

She makes him want to look in the mirror and like what he sees.

He makes fire flowers grow for her. He makes the sun shine a little brighter for her. He can do anything and everything for her. Burn down the world, if he wants. Start over with just the two of them, no one else to whisper whenever they go out hand in hand.

(which isn't often. even with Fintan's guiding hand, the fires are harder to control when he's angry. he's angry all the time when he's with people other than her. he didn't used to be)

Jolie reaches out a hand, and he closes his fist before he burns her, extinguishing his fire.

"Don't touch, violet," he reminds her, but he knows that she won't, not really. Fire isn't real to her after all this time she's spent playing with it, marrying it as thoroughly as she's going to marry him, but even an illusion can shatter and tear your skin with its glass.

Still, she pouts exaggeratedly, then smiles again. It's strange, how she has this unending supply of happiness, like there's light shining out of her skin and unlike his, it doesn't burn. You can't catch the rays of sun in your hand, can't capture them in your palm and draw them close to your heart.

"I love you, violet," he says to this sunbeam of his, her cheeks flushed with lively pink.

...

(after)

He shudders, a quick movement. Or maybe the world is rocking around him.

Brant blinks slowly, to get the ash out of his eyes. There's a pain in his chest every time he inhales, like he broke a rib, maybe more. He won't know until he moves, but moving means facing the truth of what he did. And if he doesn't move, then it doesn't have to be true.

He coughs. Waits until he can breathe.

He can't breathe.

...

(before)

"Brant," Jolie says slowly, and the smile is still frozen on his face when he looks at her. Frozen, like he can bring back the sparkle in her eye. It was there just a moment ago. What did he say?

"Jolie," he says, very seriously, like this is a game that he knows the rules to even though he's never heard this kind of voice from her before.

"I need to ask you something." These words aren't little gifts, little smiles. They're stones, plunking into a river, sinking to the bottom. "Something important."

"Yes?" The smile is gone from his face, like there was an external energy source for it, powering his mood until it shut off with the twinkle in Jolie's eye. His sunbeam. "What's wrong?"

"I want you to join the Black Swan," she says, and the stone hits him in the throat, choking off his response.

He can't breathe.

"Jolie—"

"Listen, I know that you're part of the Neverseen. I know that you train with Fintan, and I know that you care about this. But if you keep burning and burning and burning, you're gonna run out of fuel. The Black Swan can help—"

"Can they?" Brant opens his fist, snaps his fingers. Fire sparks there in his hand, licking at his skin hungrily, greedy for more than he can give it. It's alive, like a sunbeam, like a violet, but it's too unstable to survive for long. He lets it leap up in his hand, just for a moment; a pillar of flame reaching to the sky, to the sun, to the clouds before it shrinks and becomes a flower in the base of his palm again. "Can they help with this?"

Jolie follows the fire with her eyes. It's terrifying, sometimes, how much she loves the heat and danger of it. It's wild like she is, but she has anchors to keep her grounded. The only thing keeping this fire from turning the world to ash is Brant's will, and it's a rare day he has complete control.

Really, he should put out the heat. His anger is rising. This isn't safe for either of them.

"Can you try?" Jolie asks in the way she always does, in her stubbornness, her roots digging deep. He can see the path ahead of them, then; this argument stretching into the distance. He doesn't think there's another road to follow. He won't budge on this, and neither will she.

"No."

She knows it, too. "Don't be stubborn."

This is who the two of them are. Stubborn and planted in their battlegrounds. Opposite sides of a war against a common enemy. Everything he loves about her is everything that makes her dangerous. Her fire can't be put out by closing his fist. His fire can't be extinguished with a smile and a wave.

He can't stand the look in her eyes. Like she thinks he can still be swayed to her side.

The flame leaps before he realizes he asked it to.

...

(after)

The world is too cold around him, like there's nothing left to burn. But if Fintan has taught him one thing, it's that there is always something left to burn.

And if it has to be him, so be it.

He moves his leg. Then his hand. Then his arm.

He can move. He can face this.

Brant lifts his head.

...

Even when it escapes his grasp, explodes out of control, she doesn't scream.

Instead, she takes a step forward. Towards him. Her steps are unsure as the fire grows larger. One of the rosebushes that Jolie took so much time to grow and nurture bursts into flame. She doesn't flinch.

"Brant?" Her voice is cautious. She has never been cautious for a single moment, not when she stepped out of the matchmaker's office with one-hundred meaningless names clenched tightly, crumpling in her fist, not when she left for the Elite Levels (and left him behind), not when he gave her his ring and she threw her arms around his neck. But now, she's cautious.

This isn't the fire she knows. This isn't the Brant she knows.

He clenches his fist to put the fire out. It shouldn't have gone this far. The fire grows instead of extinguishing.

He's lost control.

Her face tightens. She knows everything about him, every expression he can't keep tamped down. "Brant."

"I'm trying," he grist out, clenching his fist again and again. It does nothing. The fire is feeding on his panic, and the temperature is growing, and the worst part is he likes this, the feeling when your hunger is quenched. He's spent so long trying to repress this but it feels so good to let go.

He doesn't remember making the decision to let go. But it happens anyway.

...

(after)

The world is made out of smoke and fire.

He can't feel the heat, but he can feel pain in his lungs every time he inhales, from smoke and heat. If he looks like this, even when he was protected by his ability, even when he was flung far away from the fire, then Jolie must

she

no

no

no

...

Jolie grabs his hand like her touch can possibly calm him down. And then she screams, tugs away from him, holds her blistered hand up to her mouth. "Brant, you're burning. You're burning yourself out."

"I'm trying—" There are tears running down his face with the effort, straining, but all he's doing is raising his body temperature. He's a candle, and he's dripping to the ground, losing himself, disappearing.

You are not the fire's slave. You are not its master. You are its friend. Welcome it in, Brant, Fintan tells him in memory, in thought, in prayer. Welcome your friend inside. Fire is a dinner guest, and you serve it more than ashes.

"Violet, violet, I'm so sorry." She's crying, too. It's the smoke in her eyes, the force of her coughing as the smoke reaches her lungs. His sunbeam. His smile. His gift. "I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry."

She reaches for him again, but he brandishes his hands out to keep her away from his burning burning burning body.

And a firestorm explodes from his hands, so powerful that he's tossed backward, away from it.

Away from her.

Away from her light.

Away from his fire.

Jolie screams. Unending.

Smoke chokes him. Infects him like she did, like the poison well he's been drinking from since the day they met. He's a Roman emperor who drinks a little poison each day and hopes it's enough for when a big dose comes. Jolie's a shooting star, a bright flash and gone, screaming and screaming and screaming.

His sunbeam withers into ash. His violet dies. He's fracturing.

It's too hot for tears to form.

He can't hear her screams anymore.

Maybe she's gone.

...

(after)

"Jolie," Brant whispers through a cracked throat. She's not dead because fire is your friend, your companion, your dinner guest, Brant and if you let it master you, then the friendship is over and be careful. never work with fire when you're angry. it responds to emotions.

He wasn't angry. He can never be angry at her.

Why didn't he listen when Fintan warned him?

His gift. His Jolie. His sun.

She lies on the ground; he can see her. Her hair is not laid out in a halo around her head. Her eyes are not closed. Her lips are not parted slightly, as if waiting for her chance to speak. This is not like death he has read about.

She is covered in burns.

He is nearly unscathed.

Collapsing to the ground next to her is too small of a movement. Pressing his cheek to her ruined chest is too complicated. He does both anyway, searching for a heartbeat when he knows there is none. Her skin is hot as the sun, like there's a fire burning in her from the inside out even though the fire is gone and burned out.

This is what burns him.

When he brings his lips to her ravaged cheek. When he skates his fingers along her face, lets his tears water her body. It's agonizing.

This is what burns.

Him, and his violet. Ash.

...

there is no happy ending

...

...

...

[miraland-to-midian]

For @confusedamphibian @cupids-lovable-child and anyone else not on the LN subreddit who’s wondering what’s going on:

So basically, the CN server (Miracle Nikki) is currently boycotting primarily bc of the $100 recharge that was announced for the current Chinese New Year hell event. The $100 suit has a dark theme which is inauspicious for the new year, as well as being similar to past suits and considered lackluster in comparison to past $100 recharge suits overall. After this, numerous art mistakes from the rest of the event (lucky bag suits mostly) were highlighted & compiled into a list, along with details from the suits that appear to be recycled art from past suits; the CN players went on social media en masse complaining about the event and calling for the artist responsible to be fired, and within like. 1-2 days after the suit was announced they had the resolution that for the duration of this recharge event players will have the option to choose any past $100 suit over the current one. Ofc this won’t satisfy whale/completionists who don’t like the new suit but already have the rest, but on such short notice before the event dropped it’s what was done.

Now, the LN Global server subreddit watched this all happen in real time. Meanwhile, whenever players on Global (LN from now on) complain, the devs are very slow to get back to us, don’t give direct answers, and continue to not bring updates. A main complaint is that CN has had the HD screen update with a new homescreen and game screen size adjusted to account for phone size, eliminating the beige bars/ads that run across the top/bottom borders of the game on iOS devices—they’ve had this update for over a year now, and it has yet to come to LN. Other complaints include the lack of Housing Pavs, Around the World updates (it’s been updated once in LN since its debut, so we’re WAY behind CN on available free backgrounds), how far behind we are on small recharge or event suits returning for crafting, the Star Sea suit update, Co-op association suits not updating regularly (one was announced right during this boycott planning stage, but it was still way behind schedule if we’re following CN), an updated account binding method, Dreamweavers, etc.

Here’s a post from the subbreddit that’s compiling everything we’re missing in our server, and then the simplified graphic/poster summary of the main complaints that was made by u/Sporshicus:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LoveNikki/comments/s9o8qy/comprehensive_list_of_everything_were_missing/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Keeping a close eye on what's happening on the Love Nikki subreddit and, even if I'm surprised by the sudden turn of events, you go, girls!

[dreaming-of-the-end]

8 Reasons Why: Biana

Kotlc Hanukkah Day 7: Angst

A/N: In which I project onto Biana for 1716 words and am a little itty bit mean to christmas. Comments/reblogs = one anti-semite punched in the face!

Summary: Taking out a blank sheet of paper, Biana titles the top of the paper in neat print, adding some fancy flourishes: Reasons Why I Hate Christmas.

TW: hmmm anti-semitism, religion... also parents (you can skip Reason Three if parents/fights trigger you!), and a little swearing too

Taglist (tell me if you want to be added or removed!):  @steppingonshatteredglass @real-smooth @sunset-telepath @dreaminq-out-loud  @stardustanddaffodils @jaxtheoraliestanner  @spellbound-fire @turquoise-skyyyy @allystobin @silveredviolets @wu-marcy  @b-blurryyfacee  @rune-and-rising @lavender-and-rainy-days @chasteliac @confusedamphibian @hellomyfriends @cadence-talle @kai-i-guess @callas-starkflower-stew @a-harmless-poison @thesandsofdawn @raedas @gay-otlc @if-ten-million-fireflies ​ @everblaeze-and-balefire ​

"Merry Christmas, everyone!" Biana sings to nothing, an ironic smile gracing her lips as she twirls around her room. "Except for everyone else, of course. Happy holidays to you, for whenever your holidays fall. It must be around now, because everything revolves around me and my very special holiday. Don't you know? Haven't you heard? It's November! Christmas is right around the corner!"

She stops, arms falling against her sides, and frowns. "Yes, your holidays must be around now, all the important ones, right? I will not bother to learn what they are, because why should I take my head out of my own ass for once? You should learn ours, though. We matter more."

There is anger rising in her throat. It’s always there this time of year, when the snow begins falling and the decorations start appearing. This burning anger that won’t go away no matter how much she tries to convince herself this is just how the world is.

Of course it doesn’t help. She hates settling almost as much as she hates the Santa hats that clash horribly with her eyes when her choir forces her to wear them.

Biana sighs as she plops down at her desk and pulls out two pens.

One is green, and one is red.

She hopes people will notice the irony if she ever shows this to anyone.

Taking out a blank sheet of paper, Biana titles the top of the paper in neat print, adding some fancy flourishes: Reasons Why I Hate Christmas.

...

Reason One:

The lights are blinding when they're on every house but mine.

...

Her menorah is pitifully minuscule next to Sophie's tree, but her friend grins widely and places it carefully on the table next to the gigantic behemoth of a pine tree.

"It's so pretty!" Sophie says, and Biana wants to grin. But the large cross on top of Sophie's Christmas tree casts a shadow that just happens to land over her menorah.

This is her favorite one, too. She painted it herself in shades of sparkly pink and gray stripes, and she's used it every year since the fourth grade. This year, though, Sophie had the idea to make a holiday display; Biana and Fitz bring Chanukkiot, Sophie brings the tree, and everyone else brings ornaments to hang on it.

Something about the way it turned out—with the tree towering next to her skinny little candles—makes Biana feel... small.

Insignificant.

Maybe a little alone.

She shakes off the feeling, attempting a smile as Sophie clicks the switch that activates the lights wrapped around the tree.

No one will look at her sparkly, lovingly painted menorah when the candlelight flickers weakly next to red and green bulbs.

No one will even notice it's there.

...

Reason Two:

Winter is just a season, until it does not just mean snow and sweaters.

...

"Winter is my favorite season," Dex grins, and his dimples flash onto his cheeks.

"Why?" Biana asks before she is forcibly reminded that her experiences are not universal, and she immediately regrets the question.

"Christmas," he answers. "My favorite holiday!"

Not hard to have a favorite holiday when you have so few, she almost says, but she bites the words back before they leave her mouth. "Wow," she says instead, the words falling flatter than she intended.

Because of course he's allowed to love Christmas. Of course he's allowed to love winter because of it.

But she isn't allowed to have winter anymore, not when everything in it has been painted with jolly fat men with long white beards.

She's heard the same thing so many times.

The, Why are you so frustrated? It’s just winter! Everyone has winter!

The, Winter concert winter break winter songs winter sweaters winter bells winter holidays winter winter winter.

But it's never just a season. It's the holiday season, when she only has one holiday happening and at least four during the fall (not that they’re acknowledged), and that's certainly not a holiday season.

So, she knows the game.

Winter. When Christmas is? When we have our...

Christmas concert christmas break christmas songs christmas sweaters christmas bells christmas holiday christmas christmas christmas.

You know.

Winter.

...

Reason Three:

I am not the one making everything about me.

...

The first time Biana heard it, she managed to get into a screaming match that left her red in the face.

Unfortunately, that screaming match happened to be with her father, and it made living with him frigid for the next months. Even now, she's not sure that the ice has melted.

It began with the usual.

"This song is about riding through the snow on a sleigh, Biana! It has nothing to do with Christmas, why does it matter if you're doing it for your winter concert?"

"Christmas concert, dad. And it is a Christmas song. Sleighs mean Santa and snow means winter means holidays means Christmas." She's right. She's right.

And he is always wrong.

"Stop making everything about you! About your oppression or whatever you want to call it!" Alden shouts, and Biana clenches her fists. "Does everything have to be invalidating you somehow?"

It only escalates from there, and soon Fitz has to step between them and lead her to her room, arm around her shoulders.

Later, as Biana sits in her room and rips the card he gave her for her birthday to pieces, she knows she won't regret what she said. She only wishes she said more.

Because sleighs had nothing to do with christmas until they decided santa rides one. Because reindeer were just animals until she colored them in with big red noses when she were too young to think about who she was. Because bells were just bells until they rang in the background of every song she heard when she walked into stores the day after Halloween.

And now they are all she can hear.

Red and green are colors until they are put together. Lights are beautiful until they are blinding.

...

Reason Four:

I can list off Christmas traditions, values, and which ornaments my friend puts on her tree. Most of you have never even heard of Yom Kippur.

...

Biana tells herself she will wear her star of david to the christmas—the winter concert, they say— this year. But it doesn’t matter, because the hats they always have her wear will fit her into the same box as the rest of them.

You know.

Them.

Because she feels like there is a glaring beacon on her chest when she wears her star of david necklace, and she feels like everyone sees the stars pinned to her ears like they are mini spotlights.

But, of course, they don't. No one even notices her little protest, the only form of rebellion she is allowed to do.

There is an invisible wall between them. And she’s the only one who can sense it there, because she’s the one who’s left behind it, pounding at it, waiting to be let through.

She’s not naïve enough to think it could be shattered completely.

Biana tells herself she will request something different this year, something new. A single Hanukkah song to counter the three Christmas songs they have.

So she does. Even though she shouldn't be the only reason there are songs that she can sing with her whole heart instead of the little part of it she can offer for Jingle Bells.

Her teacher looks for Christmas songs to sing. He does not even try for anything else.

Why should she have to put the effort in to feel represented when every single one of her classmates see themselves so often that even she can quote bits of their bible that is a mockery of hers?

...

Reason Five:

The shocked faces you have when I tell you I don't celebrate have been getting old since the first time I saw them.

...

"Do you get gifts, at least?"

She's heard this one before. And she knows how to respond, even if she doesn't like it.

So Biana forces a smile. "Some do, but my family doesn't have that tradition."

She doesn't say, "It's actually the Christian mindset that's the reason some families give gifts, even though Hanukkah traditions never were about gifts. Check your westernization."

She doesn't say, "Is it a true terror to not have gifts? Is that really all you care about during Christmas? Can't I enjoy something without receiving what I don't need?"

She doesn't say, "Do you really think we are so horrible that the only tolerable thing about our holiday would be what we get to keep besides memories?"

She doesn't say these things.

But she wishes she could.

...

Reason Six:

Because of you, I am alone.

...

Do they know how they sound?

Do they know what she hears?

They say, "Why wouldn't you?

They say, "No, it has nothing to do with Christianity! There's no harm in trying!"

They say, "You are missing out on so much."

She hears, “Yes, I celebrate this. No, I will not let you celebrate that without a fight.”

She hears, “What is that? Why not? What is wrong with you, that you are not the same as me?”

She hears, “I am the best, and you are not me, so you must be the worst.”

She hears, “You are alone. You are alone. You are alone.”

...

Reason Seven:

The world orbits around the sun, not you. The sun does not have a religion. The sun does not care about a dead martyr, and it most certainly does not give a single fuck about a wreath on a door. And neither do I, hard as it is to believe for you who live in your own universe.

...

Hi, I am in 10th grade, from a high school in Michigan, and we have been learning about judaism in class. Can you answer my questions? First, is it true that you don’t celebrate Christmas?

Biana stares down at the letter blankly.

There is a sick feeling in her stomach, but there is anger burning in her throat.

Reading letters sent by a teenager who is a year older than she is, who knows so little that she wants to scream.

Is it true?

Is it true that you are not like me? Is it true that you are different? Is it true that you will never be like me, and I can never accept you being so different?

She wonders if they know how small they have made her feel.

So insignificant.

...

Reason Eight:

We came first. So why is Hanukkah called Jewish Christmas when they are nothing alike? Why do you say that our Chanukkiot are mimicking christmas trees, that we give gifts like you do, that our traditions belong to you, are copies of you?

Why does our history need to be erased to make room for yours?

[dragonwinnie-kotlc]

Tag list aka the lovely people that I annoy frequently (let me know if you want to be added or removed or if there’s content or ships that you’re uncomfortable with or dislike 💕): @loverofallthingssmart @scythepringles61 @greysonstollivers @i-love-all-books @cowboypossume @bluemallowmelt @queersofthelostcities @bulletproof-vampire @chicken-roll @letmefangirlinpeace @hopefullybiana @kamikothe1and0lny @wolfiedasimp @sophie-foster-is-bi @confusedamphibian @fintan-pyren @constellations-and-kotlc @an-ungraceful-swan @dexteralvindizzneeneedsmorelove @pyrokinetic-loser @bookwyrminspiration @tiergan-andrin-alenefar @bluedoodles0 @snowflakewolves @cloudiivity @cadence-talle @if-ten-million-fireflies @sunset-telepath @stars-and-sunbursts

Self reminder to practice non chibi art too ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ

Here’s Regent Lady Sophie Foster with her Direwolf mascot (*´▽`*)

I just want an excuse to paint wolves :3 And thank you for those who sent in chibi art requests, I’m working on them now <3

[dreaming-of-the-end]

Realized I should make a post about this, so these are my current taglists: (ask to be added/removed, and please tell me if there are any url changes I should know about)

kotlc:

@/steppingonshatteredglass @/real-smooth @/sunset-telepath @/dreaminq-out-loud  @/stardustanddaffodils @/jaxtheoraliestanner  @/spellbound-fire @/turquoise-skyyyy @/fivesecondsflat @/silveredviolets @/wu-marcy  @/b-blurryyfacee  @/rune-and-rising @/lavender-and-rainy-days @/chasteliac @/confusedamphibian @/hellomyfriends @/cadence-talle @/kai-i-guess @/callas-starkflower-stew @/a-harmless-poison @/professionalwhalewatcher @/theogony @/keeper-of-the-jew-jew @/gay-otlc @/countingthestarsaboveourheads @/confuzzled-fox @/almostfullnerd

Riordanverse:

@/real-smooth @/silveredviolets  @/fivesecondsflat @/rune-and-rising @/wu-marcy @/lavender-and-rainy-days @/chasteliac @/in-a-fever-dream @/stardustanddaffodils @/a-harmless-poison @/ranger-august @/countingthestarsaboveourheads @/confuzzled-fox

[iceywrites]

asdfghjkl OH MY GOD 🤣😂 WHY DID YOU LEAVE THIS IN THE TAGS?!

tags by @confusedamphibian

No but if Ash was alive and if Eiji would still choose to grow his hair, Yue would most definitely "call him out" on copying his hairstyle