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kettlequills · 3 years ago

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how the dragon chases his tail

Miraak the Dragon Priest was not always a man haunting the halls of Apocrypha. Once, he was a little boy, and he had a terrible choice to make. On A03 here. For TESFest21, prompt: change.

CW: brief self harm, indoctrination, mention of castration, explicit references to violence and character death. Also, the Dragon Cult.

The boy that would be Miraak thrusts out his chest in pride when he sings. (He has another name, then, one that tastes of sweet snow and young summers. But that name is never written in any book and fades even from its bearer under the press of centuries, so the boy he shall be.)

He is only young, but he knows he is the best singer in the cult choir, probably in the whole temple. The priest that directs the children always gives the boy solos and arranges the whole choir to compliment his voice. Not every child born in the village below gains the chance to serve out their due to the temple so quickly, and the boy is very sensible of the good fortune his lovely singing wins him.

He is devastated, therefore, when his voice cracks halfway through a pure high note that should be easy.

“It is natural – quite normal, a maturation process, of sorts,” Frinaar says hurriedly. Frinaar is an absently devoted man, but he lives for his choir pleasing the ear of his dragon master. (In five years, this love will not save him when his master grows bored and rends him chest to groin with one swipe. His organs will fall soft and pink from his belly, and he will be dead before he hits the ground.)

But for now, the priest cranes his head around the corners before he takes them, ushering the boy along with sweeps of his voluminous, incense-stained robes, like he is quite afraid of anyone with less than perfect control over their voice to be found in the temple. “Quite normal – only so unfortunate – right before our master should return – so unfortunate. The display will not be the same without the lead and that understudy…”

Frinaar clucks his tongue, ringing praise for the boy’s young rival, Jyric. (Older, and jealous of the boy’s special treatment by the priests, Jyric is resentful and bitter. He will not mourn the fate he hears the boy earns for himself, when the boy is a man. But he will not long outlive it either, for he will be seized with a terrible wasting disease that will take the strength from his bones, and abandoned by his kin, will succumb to it in shivering fever alone.)

“Master may be displeased – so many of the choristers eaten, at recent, and…” He pauses, sweeps down to look at the boy beneath one bushy brow. “You do not think – you do not think that you could delay it? Your voice breaking?” he asks hopefully.

“Yes,” the boy cries at once, desperate for any chance, and his voice cracks.

Frinaar winces. “Get gone.” He brushes the boy vaguely towards the temple doors, muttering to himself. “I knew that we should fix them when we get them, then this would not happen! Or only permit girlchildren, but it’s ‘ah, Frinaar, how will our village grow, if you prevent our boys from becoming fathers and our girls becoming mothers?’ Well, I should like to see how our village will grow when the choristers are all off and the master is displeased!”

Disappearing in a whirl of mumbling and swishing robes, Frinaar leaves the boy to it. For a moment, the boy stands there, hoping against hope that there is some mistake, and that Frinaar will come back to fetch him.

The iron doors, carved with beautiful depictions of the dragons the temple serves, remain stubbornly closed. And the boy that would be Miraak is brave, and he is strong, but he is only a boy, and he is suffering the bitterest disappointment of his life.

He bursts into tears, and the shame of it is enough to send him to his knees.

Sat on the steps, knobbly knees drawn up to his forehead, he cries silently with the experience of any child who has lived every night of his life since his sixth winter in a crowded dormitory. He is lucky, he knows, because the boy has family in the village. A mother, and siblings; he sees them sometimes when the temple children are allowed to go down to the village to celebrate festivals. They are good people. His mother will be coming to get him.

Not everyone has a mother to fetch them when their temple years are served. Some go to beg for an apprenticeship, a trade, or remain at the temple to join the ranks of warriors destined to guard the temple and barrows beyond. But the boy does not feel like it is luck now.

Anything that takes him further from the temple and all that he has come to know feels like a curse.

Eventually, though, he runs out of tears and instead dips his fingers in the snow, rubbing the cold water under his eyes to reduce the swelling. This too, he has practiced, how to look as if he has not just been crying. He straightens his spine and assumes a bored posture, like he has never been more confident and calm in his life. He is aware, after all, of the slits cut into the walls of the temple, for the guards to see approaching intruders on the temple steps where he sits.

This is how his mother sees him, when she, huffing, reaches the top of the temple steps. She glances around, a little uncertainly, her smile tentative. (Her name is Sinawen, but the boy will not remember it all, when he is a man looking back through muddled memories. So, we will call her Sina, because her story is sad enough without the grief of eroded memory. She will burn in agony for the crimes of her son, having outlived all of her children save one, whose fate is murky to her on her deathbed, but whose suffering is assured.)

“My son?” Sina says, and calls him by that name, that name that the boy would forget.

“Mother,” he says back, determinedly keeping his voice at a low, even tone, and her whole face crinkles into a sunbeam of joy.

“My boy!” she says, and rushes towards him, and quite before the boy can do anything at all he is enfolded into a huge hairy hug. She smells like peppermint and the winter trees she tends in their beds of snow and ice for the village. (It is important work. It is why she has only had to give one child to the temple, her lastborn, who takes most after his long-distant father.)

The boy that would be Miraak hangs there in his mother’s arms and wishes that the ground would swallow him up on the spot. He hopes his rival Jyric has not found a slit to watch through, and laugh at the boy being coddled by his mother like a child. Humiliation makes rosy apples of his cheeks, and he pushes at her.

(He is a child, still. How quickly do they wish for what they do not understand. Does he know that this will be the last time he gets such an embrace, steeped in a mother’s love, uncomplicated and clear as ice? Of course he doesn’t.)

She releases him, used to the pride of the young, but she holds his hand when they go down the temple steps, and he lets her. Her black claws are like his, though the boy’s are clipped short so he will not tear the papers he works with, and when he looks up he sees her cloud of hair swaying in the breeze, salt-flecked cream, and this is the image he will hold of her in his heart, looking off towards the home the boy had been born in with a smile on her lips and tear-tracks on her cheeks.

(Would it change anything, if he did know?)

“I am so glad you are coming home, my son,” she says, “We have all missed you.”

The boy says nothing at all at this, because there is a flicker of shame in his heart. Of all the children in the dormitory, he has been the quickest to scorn the homesick, the swiftest to pledge every thought in his mind to devouring whatever scraps of knowledge the priests have seen fit to grant their charges. He has not thought of coming back, in that vague way of inexperience, thought then that this heady time of learning would last forever.

(He will learn, unfortunately, that there can be too much of such a good thing.)

The village is not far from the temple, and Sina’s home not far from the village, nestled between cold white stands of frosty trees. A small shrine waits off the path, devoted to the owl-god Jhunal and the whale-god Stuhn, warding against demons drawn by the misty woods. It is well tended, but the boy still spots, hidden on the bark of a tree, a watchful carved eye that does not seem like it belongs with the rest of the shrine.

The boy does not think anything of it.

(Do you?)

“Better things than that temple out there,” says the boy’s eldest brother, after they have eaten, and the misery on the boy’s face can no longer be attributed to hunger. He is wild and tangle-haired, spends his whole life to date out in the snows, and still feels constrained.

(His name is Terren, and he will not survive a chance stumble into a bear trap, not far from the hunter’s path he had strayed from. A summer from this day, he will be a frozen corpse, found only the following spring when a lost hound tracks the wrong kill. The boy will remember him unnamed, as only as his shredded blue face, gnawed by animals, exposed bone pointing to the sky, and forget their relation, any sense of why this face hurts more than any other he has seen.)

(It will be the kindest fate those with this boy’s blood meet.)

“Yes!” pipes his second sibling, Minwen, a sister whose quick fingers at the distaff has won her valued approval, whose bright eyes look at the temple on the hill that swallows her brother with as much trepidation as curiosity. (She will die choking, and her quick fingers will not be enough to stem the blood warm and wet that will gush from her cut throat. The boy’s memory of her kindness will be taken from him, and of her all he will recall is blood-soaked snow and deep dragon-laughter.) “You could learn magic, at home with us.”

“That’s stupid,” the boy snaps. His voice cracks and he sinks his head into his arms. “I’m supposed to be there now. I’m the best singer they have. I, ” he adds, venomously, thinking of Jyric, “ never lose the beat.”

It is true. The boy has a sense of timing that is as innate as it is perfect.

(Any skill can be a torment, when cultivated by the right gardener.)

“When you are a man,” his mother offers, quietly, mouth pinched around the edges, “couldn’t you go back?”

“They don’t need any more apprentices,” the boy says glumly. “They have too many. Frinaar always complains. And that’s years, and years away. I’d rather die.”

His siblings exchange glances. A depressing silence has settled over the table. The boy takes this as his due, too young to realise his selfishness.

(I would love to tell you that he learns.)

Sina sighs. “It may not be what you want, my son, but we are very happy to have you home.”

(But you know better, don't you?)

The boy’s brother Terren scoffs, a little, muttering something about ungratefulness. Minwen next to him elbows him sharply in the ribs, hissing “Think of mother!”

(Please do think of her. Sinawen’s suffering will be eaten by her god. Someone could at least remember she existed. Eventually, her son won’t.)

The boy says nothing, grinding his forehead into the wood of the table. He is consumed in his own misery, everything he has worked for in his young life ripped away from him. It isn’t fair, he thinks jealously. He doesn’t want to be a wood-grower like his mother, or a spinner, or a scout, or to join the everlasting battle against the beasts and bandits beyond the bounds of the village that has taken his father from the guards.

(It isn’t about what the boy wants.)

He wants… he wants the feeling he gets, when he is tasked to sweep the courtyard and lingers close to the wall where the master roosts, eyes running over dragon-words scratched with dragon-claws. The feeling that swells, hot and bright, when he sees dragons overhead, chasing each other’s tails and immense in their majesty. The power that he feels, somewhere just out of reach, when he sings out strong and brave and the whole of the choir rises up around him like a voice of thunder. He feels – he feels alone, in the warmth of his mother’s house, the people that are his family all around him.

He feels alone when he squeezes a carefully-rescued scale no one misses in his hand, so hard that it draws blood. And something in him looks at the blood that wells around his skin, warm and red, and is disappointed that it doesn’t burn like acid dragonblood. He feels alone then, too. But it is a different aloneness, something that feels like a secret whispered in a language he doesn’t know. Set apart, instead of left behind.

But, the boy thinks mulishly, he could learn another language. He can’t fill the gap that has grown after years away.

(See how proud and foolish he is! Can you imagine yet how much the boy will regret this?)

Dinner is eaten quickly, and Terren is out the door to roam the stands of ice-trees, trail hard claws over the bark. Minwen braids her mane around her fox-ears with ribbons. And his mother draws the boy outside, and takes him to stand beneath the tree with the watchful eye. Sina goes to her knees in the snow and holds her son’s face. Her eyes are deep and warm, crinkled with laugh lines at the edges.

“You have the look of your father,” she tells him, “And his spirit, apparently.” She clucks her tongue. “He was insistent that we go to a temple village, for the winged ones. I see Kyne in his hawk-eyes like yours.”

(Do you think that Kyne cares?)

The boy is watching the sky, not paying attention. Something in him is itching. “You’re not supposed to say that,” he says. “You’re supposed to call them masters.”

“When the priests can grow wood from ice alone, they can correct how I speak,” Sinawen says firmly. “You are not in the temple, any longer. I can teach you my art. How often did they even let you out? You were not made for stone tombs, my son.”

“I am a priest,” says the boy.

“There are other gods,” Sina says, but his mother’s reply is drowned by the sweep of mighty wings overhead. Sina grabs her son as he lurches towards the temple, eyes tracing the shimmering, bluer-than-blue shape, the joyful roar of frost. It shakes his bones. He knows, without knowing, that the dragon is greeting its roost, crowing its mastery over the mortals that serve it.

Something in the boy that will be Miraak aches to roar back.

His mother’s amulet brushes his cheek, freed from the neckline of her shirt. It is carved of a single emerald, one eye half-hidden between two branching leaves. The eye looks at him steadily. (How soon a seed is planted.)

The boy tugs impatiently against his mother’s arms.

“I need to go,” he says, “I need –”

He is aware of a distant, enormous sensation, somewhere in the place that knows without looking at the sun where the planets are, and how long it has been since he last looked. He is aware that something about this is important, terribly important, as if the world itself is waiting, waiting to see what he will do.

Sina’s shoulders slump. (She has her own choice to make here. How she will pray that she did not.)

“May the Woodland Man reveal the answers you seek,” his mother says, face buried in the loose tumble of the boy’s hair, “and when you are satisfied, She-Wolf guide you home.”

(The boy will not remember this, but the eye of the gods opens on him.)

Her arms loosen, just a little, and the boy tears himself free. He races up the path nimble as a mountain goat without a backward glance. The enormous feeling only grows stronger as the boy runs, until it begins to feel like he is being crushed under the soulful, silent weight of monumental purpose. He gasps for breath, but doesn’t stop, doesn’t stop even as he flies up the vast stone steps and into the thick iron doors. They creak open, only a little, and the boy throws the entire impatient weight of his child body against them again, and again, causing hollow booms to reverberate through the temple.

(This temple will not even survive as a ruin. Its rocks will be torn apart, its iron doors melted down, its servants slaughtered. Nothing lasts forever. Bormahu-that-is-Alduin is always hungry.)

“Who dares – You?” It is Frinaar who pulls the temple doors open, his face furrowing angrily into confusion, but the boy does not stop.

He bowls past Frinaar, following the inexorable drumbeat of his soul, hardly knowing where he is going but not needing to as his feet follow the halls he has lived half his young life traversing. Frinaar is shouting behind him, at first loudly, then with increasing urgency, his robes flapping like dragon wings.

Dragon wings. The boy sees them again, white as snowfall against the curve of the sky, and pivots on his foot, crashing out the door into the open courtyard where the dragon of the temple holds reign.

The singing breaks off as the boy bursts in, and sudden silence drops sharp as a death-knell. Snow swirls about his eyes, but the boy can still see the great icy-blue form of a dragon crouching on the Wall that commemorates its greatness, a vast treasure of gold and gems spread out beneath its shading wings. The tribute of the temple.

(How many fingers bled and bellies cramped for a master’s vanity this year? How little things change.)

The boy has interrupted the ceremony.

The dragon roars. “Why have you stopped?”

Its voice is huge and rumbling, shaking the boy’s bones. (I won’t tell its name. The fate of this dragon is whispered in soft horror even amongst its scaled, cold-hearted brethren. There are some things simply too brutal to record, some fights too desperate to be remembered in the mind. The boy’s body will remember, though, and he will carry the scars of this dragon to his grave.)

The choir looks at each other. (None of them will make it out alive.) The boy can see Jyric, moon-faced and trembling, staring at him like he is a daedra. (Maybe he is.) The dragon swings its great head and catches sight of the boy, a lone figure at the door. It leaps and lands with a crash that shakes the earth.

(Is Bormahu-that-is-Akatosh even looking?)

“Fool!” the dragon cries, “This is my temple! You will find no nest here!”

The boy says nothing, seized in the grip of enormity. A choice is happening, vast and terrible, and he can feel it resounding down into his earbones, blocking out the dragon’s threat.

(Is it his? Was any of it ever his choice at all?)

Its head rears back as it draws in breath, and the choir scatters, diving nimbly out the way. The boy watches numbly, mind screaming to follow their suit as they have all practiced, but his body is still and firm. It knows, with granite certainty, that the boy can withstand the dragon’s Shout.

“IIZ!” The dragon roars, and ice barrels towards him. It strikes with the weight of a warhammer, and the boy staggers. But he remains standing, instinctively protecting his face with his arms. His hair is crusted into crystals, and ice cracks down his arms when he lowers them. They burn, distantly, with horrible pain.

(Did it always have to end this way?)

The dragon looks bewildered that the boy is not dead. The choir rustles as they slowly raise their heads. A shocked murmur runs through the courtyard. Some have frozen solid, unmoving lumps that quickly become dusted with the light snowfall, those that were huddling too close to the boy where he stands, garlanded with frost like a princeling at the epicentre of the blast.

“I have to be here,” the boy says, “I-“ He struggles, wordless, for a way to convey the inexorable exhortations of his soul. “Take me with you. Burn me – claw me – but let me with you!”

(We can’t stop this. It’s already happened.)

He thinks of Sinawen, her hand tugging his, as if nothing is more natural in the world. The strange pull – it has to be like what he has seen in his brother and sister. In the other children, who weep for their families, when the boy pretends he does not. He thinks of the words of his mother, how easily she folds him into her, as if there has been a place for him all this time, as if she has been waiting for him.

The boy cries, helplessly, unable to name what he is feeling, the strange and intense kinship he feels to the dragon, the unbearable sense of loss when he thinks of that scar around that family table where a boy with a name like summer snows had once lived. Claw to claw, ice to ice, eye to sky. Is it love?

(Maybe it even is, then. Is a boy a son because of flesh, or spirit? What about a boy whose heart is kissed by the dreadful Wheel of the Creator-Destroyer of Time? This boy has always had the look of his Bormah. He has the hunger, too.)

The dragon pulls its head back again, but not to Shout, the boy knows, does not know how he knows. For a moment, there is no sound but the snow, soft as sighs on his shoulders. And then the dragon laughs, low and gravelly.

“Geh,” says the dragon. “Would that all took you as a guide for their service.”

(Oh, they will. The boy will learn how little choice matters, will learn how to take it from his masters. He will teach this lesson on a firm Voice, and when they listen, and when they see, they will remember, because the boy is the son of his father, and there is no choice in orderly, eternal grind of the doom-driven.)

The dragon lowers its head, amused, to regard the boy with one gleaming blue eye. Deep in its chest, it makes a strange clicking sound, ticking like a Dwemer time-piece. Then it snorts, and turns its great scaly body. Making for a tunnel cut into the cliff, its tail sweeps carelessly, nearly bowling over a dumbstruck Frinaar.

“Come along, Miraak mal-sonaaki,” says the dragon, not looking back.

(What is will, fate, if not another prison? This is a farce.)

The boy hesitates for a moment, and then realises all at once that the dragon means him. He blinks, feels a small smile stretch his lips, wreathed in the warm glow of burgeoning confidence.

(The mask this name gives him will become as part of him as his skin. It’s too late now. Fate has decreed that this boy’s hope must die to win his service.)

Miraak runs after his master and feels each step ring with the hollow promise of fate. And though nothing simple has changed, for he is back in the temple and everything is right in his young world, he knows, blood-and-soul deep, that nothing is ever going to be the same again.

(The gods are watching. Do you think they laugh?)

Gloss:

Bormahu - Our father. Dovahzul that when used by dragons means Akatosh, father of dragons. Also the Creator (Akatosh) and Destroyer (Alduin) of Time.

Woodland Man - Hermaeus Mora.

She-Wolf - Mara. God of love, handmaid to Kyne.

Hawk-eyed Kyne - God of storms and sky. Compared to Kynareth.

Whale god Stuhn - Warrior god of ransom, brother of Tsun. Compared to Stendar.

Owl-god Jhunal - God of wisdom, runes and mathematics. Compared to Julianos.

Frinaar - Eager Servant.

Miraak - Allegiance Guide.

Mal - little or small.

Sonaaki - my priest.

Iiz - Ice.

#inkwrites #tesfest21 #prompt:change #miraak #skyrim #ok this is genuinely very terrible #but here you go anyway #enjoy i guess sksks #my fic how the dragon chases his tail

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sebsunset · 4 years ago

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Creation, Both Haunted and Holy - CHAPTER 2!

I’ve been working on this thing for weeks straight, to make it as amazing as possible!

As always, I am dragging @muffinlance‘s AUs into my work

this is the angsty one :) yUP, the year-old au!

and don’t worry, i have another one in progress... also using a muffinlance- inspired au- one of the more obscure ones, i think!

Mother Hama is. Suspiciously nice to write, and very angsty

TRIGGERS: Graphic-ish descriptions of wounds and child abuse! Please beware, my dudes! Things will get better soon, but this is really really bad right now!

LINK: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25578904

OR, READ HERE :)

In the moon’s light, an urutau-vulture screeches out its song, pure and eerie grief ringing out in the wind.

And that’s how Zuko’s mind briefly comes back to reality.

Awareness fading in and out with each breath he wheezes through.

With wakefulness, comes the purest of agonies. A mouth open, voice too hoarse to scream out for help.

The hot pain, all over him, the memories tugging at his head, the memories of-

The burning. A cleanse that felt so dirty, like-

Oh, the sheer smell of it-

Of him.

The smell of cooked meat is his.

He wheezes out a cough, remembers the time Mom had no servants to help her, and had asked Azula to light up the fire for them to cook.

He tries thrashing about, to get a good view.

Mom ought to be around there, around somewhere.

(Even if it’s been so long since she was last around.)

She must be there, somewhere he can’t see, maybe in the blurry shade of the trees. She will bring a bucket and cool water, and she will hold him and-

“W-Where’s mom?” he tries asking, to nothing, to no one.

But only one of his ears hear it, the raspy, damaged sound that he can hardly recognize as his own voice.

He tries to ask again, words broken, tear tracks he can only feel in one cheek.

The burning pain he struggles to breathe over.

He doesn’t know what happened, but he can’t move. Can’t do anything, nothing but begging for it to go away.

“Where?” his voice comes out, finally.

The pain in his throat finally registers with the blabbered words, and suddenly he feels like he’s been screaming for all too long.

I’m sorry, Larva, says the feeling of hands on him. I’m so sorry it came to this.

Ghostly hands that don’t quite hurt when they touch his left side.

There is no shadow to hold him, though.

He can’t remember what happened, but the questions come to his mind nonetheless.

Why does it hurt so much? Why is his arm numb, why can’t-

Go to sleep. I’ll keep you safe, little Vessel.

The voice is soft, warm.

And, as the moon sings her song, his brief moment of awareness fades off.

Only one eye closing, as he breathes out again.

Painful, laboral.

His last thought is that he hates it.

The tone in the voice.

It’s all too-

It’s in the way the moon sings, as the boy’s skin peels off.

It’s in the way he doesn’t let any infection set in.

Scabbing away as the days pass, as Vaatu tries to heal him.

But there’s a reason the two of them were together. Glued, some might say.

Possessed, united fully.

He is part of Zuko, he is his mind and he is confined, locked away from seeking any further help. Not while the boy is that hurt, not while he can’t be awake and alive on his own.

Were it not a tragedy of occasion, his tendency to lock himself in the tiniest confides would be quite entertaining to watch.

Maybe, were it not happening to him, of all creatures.

Truly, he has been reduced to cowering on corners, to being not much more than a shadow.

Was it selfish, to wish for freedom when he had given it up to save his Vessel?

The two of them had done it.

An Avatar State of their own volition.

A sacrilege against the nature of a human body, a way to twist and bend their souls, braided together into a necklace of rope.

He doesn’t want to tell his boy what happened.

What the two of them had done.

He was too young to know what their purpose really was.

What would happen next, once he managed to get Zuko awake for more than a few minutes, enough time for them to scavenge, to do anything?

But keeping him awake, at that moment, would be nothing short of insane.

Yes, he must change. But this is too painful. Vaatu can feel the pulsing, the infection begging to seep in, to eat away at their flesh.

The way the dead limb hangs limply, charred black. The way the damaged leg attracts flies, like a plate of fruit slathered in honey, only kept away by him.

Blisters that look like they could open into eyes, watch the world for them all.

And so, Vaatu brushes off the sickness, scares away the vermin.

Lets his presence seep through, for nothing can keep him from affecting the world, not even being tied so deeply to his vessel.

The woods grow around them, thick foliage, colorful flowers in the vines.

No other spirit to bless or curse them.

Just the lonesome pocket of the world to which Vaatu and his Vessel have gone.

He is the eye of the shadow, the chaos that lurks deep in that tiny, undisturbed piece of the world.

He is a warning to the creatures.

He warns the world to stay away, lest it feel his disruption. His returning strength, his effect on the world around them finally taking place again.

Now that they are united, he can see that they could easily become unstoppable.

Rotting limbs thrown into any position, blackened flesh still smelling like it's been cooked.

The way it all brews in the two of them is nauseating.

The sickness is in the bursts of consciousness, when the one eye that can close opens up, blurry from tears.

When his head faces up and he sobs, lonesome and in pain.

Vaatu tries keeping the pain at bay, even if just by lulling him to bed.

Their vengeance is yet to be completed.

Disaster will strike again, he will make sure of it.

He tries telling, he tries consoling.

We will come back, he says. Rest for now, their fate is incoming.

But he is just a voice in his head, the feeling of a ghost-limb that can't really pull back hair, brush away feverish sweat.

Even if their Vessel is growing more powerful, Vaatu feels as weak as he can be.

But, as consciousness slips away again, he can’t help but notice the way the world is shifting around them.

The way the rabbit-mice has started chasing the otter-fox.

It is a victory, but it feels wrong.

Unsteady feet, weight put all into one as Zuko drags himself up.

The pain is hot and hard, it almost drives away the overwhelming hunger.

He didn’t think it could get that bad.

It could be worse, Vaatu says, but his voice still sounds angry.

Maybe not at him, but angry nonetheless.

(Angry like-)

When coherency slips away from his mind, when the pain is too much, as each of his slow, measured hops grows more and more exhaustive, he feels something in him beg for destruction.

But he won’t.

In the same way that Vaatu won’t bring him food, in the same way he will stay quiet, never saying a word of what happened to him.

Zuko wants to proclaim that he isn’t forgiven, but for the moment, his focus is on the steps.

Barely more than hops, as his one useful hand hangs onto trees.

Bare feet, grass scratching up against the angry, still-bleeding skin.

The question is pressing, rubbing against the back of his mind, as he cries out and whines, intense pain barely dimmed.

How is he alive?

All firebenders are taught about the sheer power of their fire, about the great deeds and prowesses they can achieve.

About how much damage they can inflict upon their enemies, when they chose not to end their suffering.

It should be infected.

I am trying not to let that happen, Vaatu whispers in his head, like it's a secret, like saying it out loud will destroy their chances of it getting any better.

He isn’t moving in the shadow.

“The left side feels green.” he says, barely noticing he’s speaking at all.

Sunlight streams in through the gaps in the foliage. The moon is going to rise up soon, and the world is orange and it all feels green.

Find help, the voice instructs. You need someone to help you.

“First, food.” he argues, hearing the rumbling of his stomach. “I mean- Where there is food, there are people.”

You make a surprisingly decent point, he says, and there ought to be some farmhouses around here.

Zuko shudders.

People watched back there, people saw his shame burned into skin, his last rite of passage.

His whining sounds pitiful to his own head, but he can’t make his mouth shut up.

Involuntary sounds, flinches and shudders, as he drifts through.

Tall grass scraping against his wound, every touch sending new jolts of it.

The gentle breeze, the falling petals of flowers, blown away by the wind.

All so gentle. The kind pulsing of the world’s fiery heart, a piece of peace in the battlefield of its little nations.

And all so, so very painful.

Maybe this tells more than it shows, but pain is hard to show through words, hard to show through barely coherent thoughts, by the mind of a child who had never been through such great agony before.

A bad leg that can’t sustain his weight much longer.

Tiny complaints amidst panting.

He feels like he is the only source of noise. The world is eerily still.

Holding its breath.

Zuko shudders, tree bark scraping at tiny hands.

He looks down on himself.

A foot half-blackened. White and violent red, all blistered and-

Cooked. Broken.

Zuko doesn’t look at his left arm.

He is all too broken, all too destroyed by the time he’s been through.

You aren’t, says the voice.

Scabs that peel away too easily, like they were never meant to form.

Droplets of blood calling for any animal. He is prey, and the world is so, so very much now.

The disorganization of the world doesn’t manage to feel quite right, quite how it should be.

Like someone’s disrupted it before, like they’ve re-organized the world into something it shouldn’t be.

Something hangs in the air, hidden but never overshadowed by the smell of his tracks.

Yes, deliberate.

They’re onto something, he realizes.

A pike of wood, somewhere from which a scarecrow once stood.

“A garden.” he says. “I think we’ve found a garden.”

Purring at the back of his head, his blurry eye half-focusing around him.

A bush at the entrance.

Calling to him.

Food.

It has to be food.

Overtaken by hunger, he can only see them.

The rest of the garden is just carrots, little beets and a cabbage or two.

Nothing that looks that sweet.

And so, Zuko drops down, hisses in pain and twitches about, before grabbing a handful of berries in his one hand.

Vaatu takes a minute too long to realize they’re the kind used to make rat poison.

Her abode is a humble one.

A tiny inn she’s set up, rooms rarely occupied.

Of course, she has other places for travelers to sleep in.

It’s her lair, made of damp wood, of floorboards that creak comfortably under her old feet. Of roofs that leak, of the smell of a harmless old person.

She has a thousand little closets, a million nooks and crannies.

Hidden memorabilia, memories she’s carved back up for herself.

All wheatered by rain and by soot, but kept clean and tidy, far away from the fire.

She didn’t have many clients, but she had more than enough time to tend to the ones she had.

And so she did, for a time.

She kept herself satisfied, working towards her goals day in and out.

Followed through with a routine, day in and day out. Cooked plenty for herself, made sure she had the energy to follow through with her tasks.

That night, she can feel the full moon.

A welcome presence above her, making the world pulse with her divinity.

She has blessed the woman with her presence, and so, that night, she will go…

Watch the moon.

It’s a nice way to talk about the indulgence in her favourite of all things.

When she can make the world malleable around her, when she can dance and sing, pulling at the strings that bind the world together.

She smiles, feels it pull at her eyes.

That night will be formidable, she thinks

With finality, she treks along.

Yet, she doesn’t feel alone.

How can she, when the full moon rises, making the world finally feel alive again?

The leaves crackling under her feet as she strides, the roots and branches snapping under her like she is a mighty beast.

Remainders of the sun’s warmth slowly seeping out, Tui taking her rightful place in the throne of the sky.

Her court of stars, rising slow and steady in its march.

And the world is silent around her. She knows it ought to be gawking at her, the last of her kind.

“Oh?” comes out of her mouth, before she can even stop herself.

An ear strained out.

“What is that…” she tsk-s in amusement, looks around with a half-absent mind.

Just what poor creature dares it, to choke in her garden, to foam over the leaves of her poison, to die in Hama’s territory?

Wakefulness comes slowly.

His brow furrows in confusion, only half his vision able to focus.

But he doesn’t need to.

All Zuko sees is darkness.

He shivers, suddenly hit with the sheer cold of the room.

It's eerie.

He doesn’t know where he is.

He lashes out, trashes about.

His feet burn. Tied together with rope.

There are no windows, the space cramped. The sickeningly sweet smell of mold, the only sound meeting his ears, his own panting.

Like a piece of bread that’s been left hanging around for all too long.

Something is wrong.

It’s in the way his tongue feels garbled when he tries to talk, it’s in the way he can’t quite move.

It’s in the involuntary twitching of a dead limb, that he can’t stop, even when it hurts.

He can’t sit up, wouldn’t even if the dizziness would let him.

Vessel, are you okay? comes to his head.

Why didn’t you stop me, he tries asking. Where are we? Why are we here?

There are no little hands in the shadows, no feeling of a ghost hand touching him.

But the pain is dulled, pushed back.

Cloaked.

“Where am I?” he looks around. “Va-Voice, where are we?”

Someone brought us here, Larva. Get up, I’m curious.

“Then move on your own.” he spits. “I’m tied up. Stupid.”

Regret makes him shake his head, but Vaatu is too old to hold up a grudge.

I can’t. We are united now, Larva. We are one in the same, and wherever you go, I go too.

“Chained?” he remembers. Like he is. Stuck, chained.

Chained. But fret not, my Larva, for stagnation will not come back to us. For now, though, you shall recover your energies.

A groan, as he lifts his hand, swipes a bug from his brow.

You sound like Uncle goes unsaid, but leaves the taste of bile on his mouth nonetheless.

Shudders, head shakes. The feeling of strands of patchy hair brushing against his shoulder.

He may not be alone, but there's no armor, no protection.

Zuko shivers, suddenly cold.

A part of him would give anything for that surge of power, for the feeling of the elements at his will, ready to be summoned up, to be harnessed and used as he deems fit.

For anything that can protect him, even with the collateral damage.

He can’t do anything, but he struggles to turn to his side nonetheless, to crawl out of the pile of rags that was his bed.

He can’t get up, so he drags his body along, pulls it slowly.

A trail of blood from his left side, scraped against the floorboards.

Dragged by his hand, whining and growling.

He can’t untie himself, no matter how much he tries.

Some kind of different knot - intricate, woven tight.

Vaatu guides him slowly, words that barely register to his mind.

Nausea, the feeling of ants crawling at the tips of his fingers as he drags himself to the door.

Get to the door - away from the fabric, it burns too easily - and then you can burn through the rope.

And suddenly, he wants to scream.

“I’m not burning myself. Shut up!” he plops onto his right side, drool pooling at the left corner of his mouth.

Beyond his control.

You know how to control the heat. It wouldn’t hurt. It's like pulling a bandage.

“Shut up.” he tries screaming, but his voice comes off hoarse.

… I apologize. I understand your fear, Vessel.

“I’m not forgiving you.”

I won’t let you stagnate for long, but feel free to stand your ground for a few more days.

“I’ll give you a week.” A bit of snark, that comes off soft.

A dry chuckle that breaks through the darkness.

He rolls his eyes, but can’t bring a smile up. He knows it would hurt. It would sting on his face, it would pull at the burns.

He reaches the door, struggles onto his knees, pulls at the handle.

Rattled, shaken, pulled and pushed with the feeblest of strengths.

Breaths growing quicker, as the weight of what he had done sets onto his shoulders.

Oh, what he did-

You should’ve eaten your vegetables, comes out as a light-hearted attempt, falling so very short.

“Shut up.” he wants to yell, because he’s locked in a strange home and oh Agni-

It’s dawning on him, slowly and steadily, just what he did.

Just what happened.

He hurt them.

(He did much worse.)

Falls to the floor. Looks at his one hand.

Now only one. Covered with little burns, old marks of his failures set onto his wrists. Little reminders of hands that were once there.

His breath, puffing out as smoke in the dark, cold room.

And suddenly, tears are falling down onto his hand.

(Father did that.)

No voice to comfort him. Nothing but the oppressiveness of his lonesome state.

Zuko wants to drown in tears, but his left eye refuses to cry, his bony body refuses to shake with sobs just yet.

So he just shrinks in there, holds himself close through the pain, pretends someone else is there to hold him.

"W-why?" He asks, feeling only half of his mouth move.

Words coming out garbled, blabbered through tears.

No answer comes, and he feels all alone.

He is a big boy, he wants to remind himself.

A big boy indeed, and that's why he cries and cries and cries, ignoring how the hollow place of the moon is soon filled by Agni’s eye.

The walks back home tend to be a less than exciting ordeal.

Oh, of course there's glee. Catharsis, even.

But lately, there’s some more than that. There’s the weight of the years on her shoulders, the soreness on her legs, the ache engraved deep into her bones.

That’s the vengeance of her people, of the men and women slain, torn down from the inside, overtaken by insanity.

She was meant to do it. It was why the art had come to her, it was why she had mastered it.

To bring down the rain of vengeance.

Nonetheless, that particular walk was made through with a quicker step, with a less vengeful head.

She had spent so long hurting, and the ones who hurt were the ones who learned how to heal the best.

She knew where to make it ache, and she had studied plenty of how to heal before.

(Kanna and her, studying scrolls that would be burned less than a day later, until late at the night.

Listening to the tribe's men sing and dance around the campfire, laughing and betting. Rolling their eyes, t hey healed eachother with little kisses by the moonlight, as Hama listened to Tui's song, to the calling of the full moon.

And with her friend's mittened hand in hers, she closed her eyes and felt the warm pulse of a world suddenly coming to life.

In the night's light, the cold wind whipping against their warm bodies, they danced together.

A dance that would soon turn into brisk movements, into desperate jabs.

But, at the moment and to that very day, the times before were painted with a rose-tinted glass.)

What mattered was that she had a patient, someone hurt as badly as she once was.

A son of ash and soot, a child with an eye burned open, blinded but still moving.

A child whose mere existence, whose life was astounding to her. How could that little thing keep going, how could he crawl to her and lay by her grassbed?

A little creature that proved her either insane or lucky enough to have a spirit in her hands.

He was going to be useful, she had decided when she found him foaming at the mouth, turning and twisting, rubbing dirt all over the open wound.

She’d cleaned him up, she had left him a nice little room, for an ashmaker that had yet to pay her back.

He would be grateful, that was certain.

And she’d seen first hand, how gratitude could destroy a man. Break down his flesh, make him bow and worship like a dog.

(She'd stood, suspended in her cell, watching an affair below.

The guard with bright yellow eyes, a glint like that of golden daggers, pointed towards her favorite prisoner.

A young woman, barely more than a girl.

She was from a neighboring tribe. Beautiful button nose and plump lips, bowing down low, foreign words slipping off her tongue.

She was meant to sing to the moon and the sea, but she sung their tribe’s songs upon anyone’s request. Danced as well as she could, tied up in chains.

A slap to the back of her head, something in the dirty ashmaker's speech.

A correction, two apologies delivered in a low bow.

Forgiveness in the form of a plump bowl of jook and not much else.)

Her garden blooms around her.

What little use she could make of the soil there. Little plants, poisonous berries. Nothing too beautiful or lavish. She was just a humble old woman, afterall.

She’d been nice, asked around the village. Seeds, some tools. She was sweet and defenseless, and nobody ever dared suspect her to her face.

The village had never been a tribe.

And the house she lived in had always been just that. A house. Some might stretch it and call it a lair.

Not quite a home, as much as she tries to keep it cold, to make it feel like one when she closed her eyes, and look like one when she dared open them up.

That place is still a land of fire. Lava below her, the sun all too hot, not a single break in his wicked reign.

She misses the polar winters. They’d always been so good for weeding out the weak and the fiery alike.

Perhaps her glasses are tinted blue, contrasting all too sharply against the blood-red of that place.

But the point still stands in her mind. That place is no real home.

It doesn't have the foundations to be one.

It doesn't have the people to make it one.

There’s no Kana or Panuk or any of the children running about. There is no tribe to embrace her, no new stories to tell around the campfire. No dealings with the neighbors, and no polar-bear sled dogs to lead to the market every month.

There’s only the oppressive loneliness of a single person lost in the sea of snakes.

But for now, she can rejoice in the luxury of a new toy. One that can be mended, sewn and filled up with the truth. A child of ash, all hers.

(Malleable as the water she’d once sculpted into ice.)

Slow footsteps, steady smile. A bit of excitement, despite the bits of a lazy cat in her demeanor.

The doors of the inn, all open and empty.

Until the locked closet.

It’s their smallest room. It’s perfect for someone that small, that frail.

A plant left in a pot too big will soon spread, grow out of control.

If he grows up well enough, if his leaves twist and bend and his roots stretch out as he tries to reach the sun, she will put him on a leash.

Hama had been wanting something to keep her entertained.

He sobs and heaves and nearly vomits once or twice.

Snot and bile, no comfort, no caress.

Not a word amidst the fit. Nothing that he can hear, nothing that can make itself noted in his mind.

His body hurts, but there is no infection to take him away, to lend him a hand.

He can’t think straight. Repulse fills his throat whenever he thinks of himself, whenever he opens his eye for enough time to truly see himself.

And he can’t do this, he thinks.

Like any child does, he slips into a spiral, falls down and down.

Thoughts swirling in his head, screams that his throat can't force out.

Until something breaks through, snaps him out of it.

The sound of a door creaking open.

A tiny stream of the morning’s light drifts into the room, so gentle yet so bright, revealing dust that doesn’t quite form bunnies and mold growing on the walls of a cramped closet.

The decrepit coldness is suddenly accentuated, with the gentle warmth that hits his back.

He shudders, suddenly, as the light is taken away.

When he turns, a figure stands, back-lit in the doorway.

Old and hunched, his blurry eyes barely able to focus on anything but her kind smile.

He turns to her, ready to question why she left his legs tied up, why she locked him there, how long he'd been alone, what she wants to do now-

“Are- Are you-” he tries stuttering out a question, but suddenly, he realizes he doesn’t know just what he wants to ask.

She comes closer, looks down upon him.

“Bow down and ask, young one.” she says, gently. “Be respectful of this old woman, won’t you?”

Vaatu growls at the back of his head, and, for a second, he forgets that his friend is simply locked inside his mind, with no real effect on the world once they’re not alone.

So, he breathes in deep, pretends there’s nothing wrong inside him.

And drops down in a rigit bow, so the kind woman won’t burn him.

“I am Hama. Who are you?” a cane pokes his burnt side, the arm that’s no longer there.

Deep breath. He knows who he is, and so will she.

“I’m Zuko. Son of-”

“Nobody.” she says. The harsh word startles him, slipped in such a gentle voice. “Not anymore. Not after what happened to you.”

He tries again.

“Zuko, son of P-”

A poke from the cane, right in a blister. He flinches and hisses, unable to stop himself.

“You are a son of nobody.” she says, her voice sweet as the smell of moldy grain. “After all that must’ve happened to you, it’s better as that. Poor thing.”

That silence lasts for a few seconds, before her voice returns, kinder, to his sight of nothing but fetid floorboards.

“Now, young one, tell me, what have they done to you?”

He won’t say. He won’t speak out again.

Not when Vaatu hisses, pure in his anger, taking over his head.

“Don’t you think you owe me that, after all I’ve helped you with?” a cane pokes his head, gently thumping against his skull. No real intention for pain, not on his bad side.

He gulps down something.

A single tear hits his lip, salty against the bitterness in his mouth.

Why does he cry? Why do the tears betray his mind, why does his gut feel so raw?

“I- I was burned.” he says.

“That I can see.” she says, gently. “Now come on, darling. I must know your affliction to heal you.”

“I was burned and banished.” he says. Words spilling out dirty and fetid and spat out like falling teeth.

But he tells no more. Hopefully, she won't see any tales of spirits, any curses or blessings to destroy.

(What if she wants to cleanse him, too?)

“Oh, dear.” she says, voice perfect in compassion.

Be careful, Vessel, Vaatu says in his head. His voice no longer a hiss, just a thought at the back of his mind. Do not trust her. Do not.

“That is very unfortunate.” she says. “Then, you aren’t Zuko, are you? As a banished boy, you have no name.”

“I- I still have my honor.” is the only defense he can give her.

And she laughs.

It would be warm, infectious as any other disease, were it not happening at that moment, when he felt raw and when his vulnerability was so easy to turn into anger.

“I am Hama, and you are Nobody.”

This is the point where the scene should end. Here, it should all fade away to silence, to maybe a sob or two, a twitch or whine at his own discomfort, until he is instructed to get up.

But please, remember just who we are talking about.

Nothing ends when or how it should, down here.

“B-But-” he tries stammering out, his heart thundering in his chest. His voice can’t come out as a scream, but it tries.

Maybe, a part of him thinks, his voice will be heard then.

She pokes him again, straight at the ribs.

“Nobody.” she says. “Nobody, with that attitude.”

If only she knew, he wanted to say.

Be nobody, Vaatu whispers, locked inside his head.

Zuko wants to fight. He wants to bite and gnash and destroy, to bend and twist and fall upon that state again, that state that made him-

“Not nobody,” he says. “I- I’ll prove to you. I’m not nobody. I swear on my honor.”

He can feel her smile.

“Son of nobody, then.” she says. “But make good on that promise, please.”

Hissing in his head, he looks up.

Tap, straight at a hollowed-out cheek.

“Stay down.” she says. “The light might hurt your eyes, so keep down low, son. I’ll get you something to eat.”

#writing #fanfic #atla #atla aang #atla zuko #atla hama #avatar #avatar zuko #vaatu #avatar vaatu #fanwork #fandom #fanfiction #fantasy #angst #muffinlance #mother hama au #hama #avatar hama

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annhellsing · 5 years ago

Text

The Hangman

notes: so hubert is my fe3h bias and i’ve been meaning to write porn for him for a while!!! so have some of that good good smut. rating: explicit af, there’s collars, handjobs and choking! pairing: hubert von vestra / reader word count: 2,332 or read it on ao3!

“Don’t worry, she still likes you,” you say to the shadow kneeling on your bed.

Hubert is only the shape of a man, etched out in black against your quilt and pillows. His hair is long and dark, swept over his eye and hiding half his expression. His face curls into a snarl, morphing from unreadable to malicious. His resemblance to a snake baring its fangs is striking.

“It hardly matters to me if I am liked, even by Lady Edelgard,” he replies, sounding curt and cold. As joyless as a corpse and forced here against his will, though you know that is not the case. You crooked a finger at him and he followed.

“Should I be flattered that you seem incapable of lying to my face?” you ask, hovering at the edge of the bed with something in your hands. He needn’t look very hard to find out what it is. His sneer turns to a smirk.

“I wouldn’t, it only means I care very little for your opinion,” he says that like it’s a reminder and not yet another lie.

Your hand brushes his pale, pointed chin. You hold his face and he only puts up a perfunctory resistance, just enough to discourage without ever truly denying the act. He is a master at that, at dismissing what he wants.

“You’re trying a bit harder, now. Go on, Hubert, the third time might be a charm,” you tease. He doesn’t seem to appreciate it. His heavy brow manages to furrow even more, he looks dangerous.

“Your attempts to annoy me have been lacklustre as of late. Surely you can be more irritating, you have before,” he scowls, trying to make his words poison. They are still not to be believed.

You shrug, turning his head to the side very gently so you might inspect the sharp curve of his cheekbone. You drag a finger over his pale skin, down the side of his face to the plunging line of Hubert’s long neck. His gold collar obscures most of it, you push your nail underneath it to pry it away.

“Hm, maybe not,” you mutter.

“Irritating doesn’t begin to describe you,” he hisses. You seem to grow bored with exposing his neck. Instead, you ask him to expose somewhere else.

“How astute. Open your trousers,” you say. Nevermind, it isn’t a request at all. It’s a command.

“Hmph,” he exhales, but does as he’s told.

His hands are white glove-clad, they fiddle with the buttons at the front of his trousers and waste no time. You crane your neck, watching his white undergarments appear beneath black fabric. They’re shoved aside just as quickly. His skin is even paler, with a trimmed thatch of wiry, black hair in sharp contrast to it below his navel.

You look at him, greedy in the eyes and Hubert does his best not to meet the stare. He doesn’t want to shiver, to show any signs of weakness, but someone hungering for him is a sight not often seen. It is nearly enough to convince him to abandon the charade, to give into whatever you have planned.

Of course, he still has sense enough not to make it easy for you.

“Just as the lady said,” you tut, “or should I say Emperor.”

“Only if you want to lose your tongue,” Hubert hisses, his head snaps up. Your eyes are still greedy, but mentioning his mistress negates their effect. “The revelation of her new title is up to Lady Edelgard’s discretion.”

“Of course, of course,” you mutter, reaching out to brush your fingers through his hair. “My, I wonder how long it will take you to recognize when I’m having a bit of fun.”

“Perhaps when you amuse me,” Hubert grumbles, but he leans his head towards your seeking fingers. It’s foolish for him to hope you won’t notice that measure of desperation. When done correctly, even he enjoys being touched.

“Waste your breath a bit more, Lord. I do so love hearing you gasp,” you smile with teeth and his expression turns again to a fierce snarl. Teasing is one thing, but this borders on mockery.

“Why, you—” his patience seems to give way, even with your gentle attention to soften the harsh words.

Hubert sits up on his knees, leaning forward like he plans to grab you and upset the balance. But his moment to strike is blindsided by yours. He finds out what’s been bunched up in your other fist, and he knows it well.

It’s a collar, a circle of black leather that fastens around his neck. The buckle at the front is like a belt, pulled taught over his throat and secured by your deft hands. You know how to do this almost too well, Hubert finally gives up that shiver. You smile, your teeth look like fangs but he still wants to kiss you.

His eyes find your lips, soft and pretty and so unlike his own.

You watch the way he stares at you, with eyes like green glass. He takes his lip between his teeth momentarily, as if mirroring what he would like to do to you. You buckle the collar, dragging Hubert forward a little. Your other hand pushes between his spread knees, finding his cock and pulling it from his underclothes.

“There, nice and snug. Tight enough?” you ask. He isn’t given time to answer, the twitch between his legs does the talking for him. You give a firm, playful nod. “Seems like it.”

“You are infuriating—” you cut him off.

“Ah, there’s the truth. It looks pretty on you,” you give a short giggle, bending down enough that your lips are level with his. “How about a kiss? Just a little one?”

It’s phrased like a question for his embarrassment alone. But Hubert is the one who leans in, who offers up his thin mouth that yields under yours. You kiss the hangman. You kiss the hangman, with your finger pulling taut his noose.

He is brick red with lust and shame when you pull away. Slightly out of breath, Hubert offers up no further scathing wisdom. Instead, he visibly seethes and his cock gives another twitch. You reach between his legs.

“Let me hear you,” your voice barely rises above a whisper. “You’re talkative today, Hubert. Let me hear you.”

His length is pale as the rest of his skin, but bears a distinct blush around the blunt head. He’s proportionate, you note with a smirk, for one so tall. His cock is long and perhaps thin, but heavy in your palm as you begin to give him what he wants.

He needs no direction from you, not when things have gotten this far. Hubert reaches obediently behind his back, his thin hands gripping his ankles. He shifts, his thighs widening as much as his trousers will allow.

You withdraw your fingers from under the collar, thumbing open a few buttons to expose more of his neck. You dip your head again, claiming a kiss at his collarbone and jugular instead of on his mouth. He relinquishes a sigh that you’re pleased with.

“Such a good boy,” you mutter. He doesn’t have it in him to feign protest, not when he throbs so obviously. There will never be enough praise to satisfy him, but you do try your best.

Your fist gives a squeeze and he makes a sound adjacent to a yelp. Or a whine. It makes your smile more sinister as your wrist begins to move up and down. Every so often, your palm tightens at his base.

Your fingers stroke his hair with a loving fondness, lavishing gentleness he worries he has not earned. He yearns for you to tug, pull, yank until it hurts. It’s the very best way to feel something. But your gentle, seeking hand only moves back to the strip of leather around his neck.

Two fingers are slipped underneath it, it’s drawn tighter until his vision swims. He can see you through the slight hazy, dotted and ink-purple. You look ravishing, it’s too bad that it’s been decided that he does, too.

Hubert hums, his head lolling away from your grip on the collar. You allow it, allow him a moment of blissful indulgence. He urges your fingers to tug harder, he hopes to leave a mark. But before he can get anywhere near it, you interrupt him with words.

“You’re a beauty,” you tell him. He huffs and leans forward again so he can speak. The whole while, your other hand is busy between his legs.

“And you’re not a very skilled liar, either,” he replies.

“I mean it. Just look at you, Hubert. You look like a painting with your flushed cheeks,” you smile at him, your cheeks are as warm as his.

“Leave me be,” he almost begs, for you’ve given him another squeeze.

“Are you asking for mercy?” you lift a brow, the corner of your mouth tugs higher.

“The opposite, in fact. I ask you to be consumed by my undoing,” he sighs. His voice wavers on the edge of desperation, your fist moves up and down more languidly as a result. Can’t have him spoiling the fun too soon.

“So I’ll stop teasing you?” you ask. Not a chance.

“Ideally,” he nods, but seems to realize that.

“But I do so love to dote on you,” you smile, “this is far from a selfish endeavour.”

“Goddess—“ the name of a useless creator on his lips startles you a bit. But you turn your attention to his firm balls instead of voicing said surprise.

You’re gentle with him, rolling them in your palm and leaning in for more kisses. Still, even as you indulge him, you’re still thinking of ways to get reactions. He is so easy to fluster when he feels vulnerable.

“Edelgard says you’ve been giving her much grief and trouble,” you mumble, half against his lips. Hubert draws back, a viper again.

“Lady Edelgard,” he threatens, “and I doubt she said any such thing.”

“Perhaps not in so many words, but she seemed concerned for your wellbeing,” you reply. He cocks his head to the side, incredulous at best.

“In this way, specifically?” he asks, you give a vague shrug.

“Would you be cross if I told you the idea may have been mine alone?” you ask.

He is almost relieved, in an odd way, that Edelgard did not guess his perversions. Hubert hasn’t the faintest idea of his own emotions on a clear day, only what his devotion could summarize of their relationship. And it has summarized it, nicely, for some time. Mistress and servant, he’s the sword in your arm. One would not want to kiss a blade, and the blade would prefer to go unkissed. He doesn't love Edelgard in that way, in the lecherous way he loves you.

To know that she had no part in asking this of you is a comfort, this stays between the two of you. Your teasing is harmless and hollow, so he replies, “I would only be pleased to know I was right.”

“You, pleased?” you smirk, still inches from his lips. He takes another kiss, even as you loosen your grip on him so that he might breathe.

Your hand is just south of his most sensitive place, the newfound location pleasant but not as sharp a sensation. He gives a slight nudge of his hips, hoping to draw from you what he wants. He dislikes begging a great deal, but you always manage to incentivize it.

“Isn’t that what you intend to elicit from me, anyway? Pleasure?” he says it like it should be a statement, but his own questioning creeps in around the edges.

“Correct,” you mumble. “The lady advised me to inquire into your recent dour mood and distractedness over a cup of coffee,” you beam, “but I know best what you need.”

Hubert, in spite of himself, whimpers when you tug the leather again. Your palm presses to the inside of his thigh, urging him open ever-further. It’s so you can kneel between his legs, he realizes when you brace a hand on his shoulder for balance.

He takes his hands off his ankles, giving you a place to lean while you try to stay upright. The room fills with the sound of your laugh, high and sweet. Though he could never pretend to like the sound, even when directed somewhere other than himself, it produces a tugging sensation in his chest. He wants to hold you, all of a sudden.

“Are you all right, love?” you ask when his arms fold around your back. You're held tight to his broad chest, the proof of his arousal still present and poking at your mid-thigh. You smile into his shoulder, if something were really wrong he wouldn’t be giving you a hug.

He hums against your ear, just to prove that he heard you. You return the embrace, abandoning any pretence of dislike for each other. You care for him very much, as he does for you, though he tries to stifle it. In times like these, however, the fullness of his affections come bubbling to the surface.

“That isn’t an answer,” you reply, though you accept that the hug is all you’ll receive. “Lady Edelgard is worried for you, she wonders at how you have enough time for--”

“Enough,” Hubert says, “I am fine.”

“Hm,” you sigh, pulling back enough to look at his beautiful eyes and unhappy expression. He expects you to be annoyed, perhaps, at best, but you give him a little smile. And you tuck your fingers once again under the collar. “Would you like me to make you well?”

His eyes widen a fraction. Your searching hands return to their prior occupations with renewed interest that his body is happy to react to. Hubert exhales, sounding reedy and insistent. Though he can’t speak it, the answer is yes.

#hubert von vestra x reader #hubert x reader #hubert #hubert von vestra #fe3h #fire emblem three houses #shrugs #this has no value but it was fun #nsft #anniewrites

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diddlesanddoodles · 4 years ago

Text

DEAD WALLS RISE - BARNABY

PART TWO

His head was killing him and though Farris offered him some broth, Barnaby refused it. He didn’t trust himself not to vomit it all back up and it seemed an utterly rude thing to do. Especially given the circumstances. He sat quietly atop one of the steps, out of the way, and contemplated all that had happened. The others huddled miserably near the hearth with their own blankets and cups of broth. None of them spoke much. They were alive. But in shock...

Their King...their country. It was all gone.

The air seemed heavier to him and it was all he could do to keep himself from crumbling under his own shame. King Haeral. His children and grandchildren. Dead. Slain the day after Barnabas had broke and given the Blood King all that he wanted. Barnabas had helped end one of the most ancient bloodlines in all of the world. Because he had been afraid. Afraid of the pain. The hunger. The thirst. And afraid to die...

Farris fretted over the young solider, forcing the boy to drink some sort of bitter tea and leaving him wrapped up in a blanket near the hearth to warm up. The young soldier’s name was Aimoth and he had inadvertently saved all of their lives. Farris’s reluctance to murder a mere boy had him stalling in his duties long enough for news to reach him that King Nethrin was dead. Assassinated. Found in his apartments with twenty stab wounds to the back.

The so named Blood King was dead. Having choked on his own blood.

His last living son, Prince Warren, declared himself King scarcely an hour after his father’s body had been found. And his first command was for all human prisoners to be released.

As he sat on the step, Barnaby watched the giants who manned the kitchens, most of them young men, as they all seemed to be coming to terms with the new world. And seeming to have as much difficulty as much as the humans were. The dark haired one from before, Yale, had been peeling vegetables quietly in a corner and all at once and seemingly without provocation, burst into tears. Farris called him over and took him into the room beyond the red door and they did not come out for nearly half an hour.

And then one of the humans, a man named Darin, began to sing.

The wind blew hard and the wind blew fast

to draw its claws across our backs

so we pulled the ropes taught

but twas all for naught

when the rocks came out to greet us

Cry for your boys all mothers

for they wont be coming home

they seek the treasures under

the waters so far from home

Our lives and loves are lost now

Thrown away for the sake of gold

We cry for the keep

of the jewels we seek

and the family we have lost now

Cry for your brothers all sisters

just as we all cry for you

the glittering jewels

our treasures

and hilltops we once knew

Beyond the waters so dreary

Are those consumed by greed

Holding tight to the rocks

so weary

Lost to the world and sea...

………………………..

After the former human captives were sufficiently sobered up, they were escorted by guard to the great hall. Upon seeing the leather clad giants, they had been understandably reluctant, but Farris assured them of their safety.

“Each one of these men can be trusted,” he told them. “They’ve all done time in the stockades fer refusin’ orders immoral orders. Rheil’s been there a few times, haven’t ye?”

“Three times,” said one of the guards. “The last one was a flogging.”

“Yer safe with them, boys. On my Mother’s life.”

They were allowed to walk under their power which was a nice change of pace from being bodily hauled from one place to another. But that also meant that it took that much longer. The guards did not seem too perturbed by their slow pace however and did not try and hurry them.

Barnabas had been to Vhasshal once before during a dignitary visit and the memories flooded back as they entered the great hall. Though it was much changed since his visit many years ago, the impossibly tall ceiling was the same as were the large ornate windows that cast gold light down into the room. The benches and tables normally lining each end were pushed far to the side and the great expanse of the floor was left bare. At the end of the room was a raised dais and a large wooden chair, carved from a deep rich wood with inlays of gold. A young Vhasshalan man sat in the chair, watching with haunted eyes as their small company was escorted to him.

Prince Warren, now King Warren, said nothing until the seven humans stood before him. To his eye, the Prince looked tired and world wary. His shoulder length black hair fell about his face and he was dressed rather plainly with a shirt and tunic. The only indication he was a King was the large ring upon his finger. The King’s Ring.

“You would have heard by now I expect,” he said to them. “Of the fate that has befallen your King and his family.”

Not one of the humans spoke, but the King did not seem to take issue with it.

“As of this morning, you are all free. If you wish, I will have a company of trusted men escort you to Vhasshal’s borders and you may go and find whatever remains of your lives. You are welcome to stay and make your decisions later. Gather your wits and your strength. I have sent my messengers out to spread the word of my mandate. The killing of a human for the purpose of consuming their flesh is forbidden in Vhasshal and carries the same punishment as a charge of murder; death by hanging. It seems too many of us have forborne our souls and what we know to be true and just. Killing in war is one matter, but this wretched business of trapping and selling and eating humans will end. The war is over. The blood letting stops now.”

He scanned their faces, taking in their haggard and grief stricken expressions. It did not surprise him to see the six of his fellows all wished to leave. The King dismissed them, asking the gray haired guard, Rheil, to bring them to the others that were all being readied to be escorted out of the country. As the left, King Warren’s eyes drifted down to the lone human still standing before him.

“Do you have questions for me?” he asked.

“I...I think I might impose upon your hospitality for a bit longer, sire. If it would not be an imposition.”

The young King shook his head. “None at all. You may take as much time as you need.” His eyes stared at him with a sharper focus. “Tell me, sir. What is your name?”

Barnaby licked his licks nervously and with great effort said, “Barnabas MacVoy Devonshire. Archivist...former archivist for King Haeral of Silvaara. Your grace.”

The King’s steady and cool eyes widened and then softened into a knowing gaze as he sat a little straighter. “I will have my physician come and see to you, sir. And a room prepared for you as well. Take the time you need to make any decisions. And do not feel rushed into anything. You are my personal guest. No one will bother you.”

“Sire, I am humbled, but...I only need a quiet place to think. Please do not trouble yourself over me...”

“I am not ignorant of what my father did to you. Or what he made you do. Or the consequences thereof.”

“Your majesty, please. I beg you...I don’t deserve it...”

“Feel as you will about it, Master Barnabas, but I will still see that you are kept safe while under my roof.”

“I...thank you. Thank you, sire.”

…………………………………………….

The room was a small corner room near the King’s keep and in all likelihood was once a servant’s storage room, but had been cleared of everything but a large table and a human sized bed placed upon it. There was a basin of warm water left out and towels. He took the offered bath and cleaned himself, though when he emerged from the waters close to an hour later, he still could feel the disgrace clinging to his skin like mud. No matter how hard he scrubbed, it would not come off.

There in the quiet by himself, Barnabas broke down and began to weep.

“Forgive me...oh Gods, please...my King, forgive me...”

Though he did not feel tired, he laid upon the bed to soak in his misery. Where to go from here? What sort of life would await him out there? For any of them? He was old. His trade and discipline was frivolous and lacked any practical application he would need to survive. And should any of his countrymen discover what he had done…

It would be easier to simply never leave this place.

……………………

“Have you made a decision, Master Barnabas?” The King was now dressed in his formal robes, rich silks and brocades and gold embroidery, but the face that regarded him was still that of a young man. Boyish almost, but his eyes...they were hard steel and world worn. The eyes of someone twenty years his senior. The King’s ring glittered from his hand.

“I have...a request,” he began. King Warren nodded; permission to continue. “Vhasshal does not hold the same traditions as Silvaara does...did. It’s been an important role for Silvaaran Kings to have an archivist record history as it happens. With the belief being that to know our future, we must understand our past.”

“A sentiment I agree with,” King Warren said. “What would you ask of me, sir?”

“I ask that you allow me to surrender my art in service to Vhasshal. That I might write your history from the first moments of your reign. Until the end finds me.”

“You wish to be my archivist?” the King asked, surprised. But his eyes were alight with intrigue. “Is this what you ask of me, Master Barnabas?”

“History is worth writing down as it happens,” the old man told the freshly named King. “I have dedicated my life to the art. History is all we leave our children once we’re dust. Best they have a proper grasp of it. Even the secrets we dearly wish to hide. Most importantly those. The ballads and poems that will be written of these times will not tell the truth. And what else is there but the truth?”

King Warren studied him for several long moments and the deep pulling unease in his stomach was beginning to become unbearable. He very much feared he may burst into tears and he would hate to embarrass the King. Especially given all that had happened.

“You surprise me, sir,” he said. “That you would so easily set aside what’s been done to you and offer yourself in the service of the Kingdom that destroyed your own. Killed your people. Your King.”

“Not easily, sire,” he said, voice warbling unsteadily. “But the man who did those things is dead. And though I may not live long enough to see it, I would very much like to put myself in the service of something good. To work towards healing. Building something. To be better that we have been. Better than we are. To build towards a better world.”

King Warren did not speak. Only stared with that strange look of confusion. He almost appeared to be...inspired. Finally, he rose to his feet, eyes meeting those the smaller and older human.

“I would be honored to have you as my archivist, Master Barnabas,” he said. “And I wish to see this world you speak of. So I will build it. And your help would be most valuable.”

#DEAD WALLS RISE #Barnaby #G/t story #War #trauama #g/t #Giant/tiny #g/t fantasy story #dumpling side story

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miaouerie · 4 years ago

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whumptober 2020 ------ day 25. blurred vision/ringing ears

@whumptober2020 Rebelcaptain Hunger Games AU: Cassian is Jyn’s mentor in the 70th Hunger Games. After being crowned victor at fifteen years old, Cassian is all-too-familiar with what it takes to bring a tribute home, and what becoming a victor really means.

content warnings: graphic descriptions of minor character death, references to forced prostitution

previous: day 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24

Candela is the first to get killed; her escape to the tree line was hampered by the uphill climb to get out of the rocky ditch that the 67th Hunger Games’ Cornucopia is in. The male Career tribute from District 1 kills her with a sledgehammer to the throat. Cassian watches her head snap all the way to the right, the neck bent at an unnatural angle, and her body hits the ground, motionless; it was a clean break to the neck.

Garrick made it a while longer on his own, but chose not to heed Cassian’s repeatedly stressed advice to skip over supplies—those could always be sent later—and made his escape route include a wide arc towards a backpack and a sleeping bag. Those extra seconds put him in the scope of a pair of Careers, who run him down easily and then kill him with their knives.

Both of his tributes dead in the first five minutes of the 67th Hunger Games. How could this happen?

He had weighed their odds carefully. District 5 fell squarely in between the Career districts and the poorer districts when it came to anticipating the Games. The district itself was well off enough that tesserae wasn’t necessary for the majority of households, which meant that the extent of the Games in the populace’s mind was a hope and a prayer for their children to not be chosen on Reaping Day. No Games training was offered for the glory of volunteering because no glory was seen in the practice—District 5 had the lowest volunteer rate out of all the districts—and so it wasn’t a surprise that Cassian’s first year of mentoring began with two unremarkable tributes: Candela Invers, a fifteen-year-old girl, and Garrick Thule, a sixteen-year-old boy.

Garrick was the son of a power plant supervisor and had hardly an inkling for survival; he didn’t go to the fire-starting station or the edible plants station, or any of the other stations for basic survival skills that Cassian urged him to. A lot of his time during the three allotted training days was spent away from the other tributes, hiding his fear behind an indifferent look; unsurprisingly, he scored only a 3 in the evaluation. Candela on the other hand had been game enough to ask for Cassian's advice in the training room and went over strategies with him for acing her interview; just last night on Caesar Flickerman’s show she had made a favorable impression on the audience, especially after Caesar brought up the 7 that she scored in the Gamemakers’ evaluations. Cassian could work with that; if she could survive on her own for the first three days, he could hopefully start talking her up to potential sponsors. He wasn’t going to bet on whether or not Garrick could survive that long on his own, but in the end it didn’t even matter because now both of his tributes are dead.

He can’t take his eyes off the carnage of the bloodbath, projected on the main screen of the mentors’ observation deck. It takes several long minutes before he yanks off his headset; the only sounds the mics were picking up is the ambient noise of children killing other children. But it’s too late; the sounds won’t leave his ears; it coalesces into screaming that he knows isn’t real, but it sounds more and more similar to Teak’s—

He pushes himself away from the console and tries to stand up, but has to lean his weight against it when his legs threaten to give out from underneath him. The room is starting to spin in a way that has everything to do with the roar of blood and screams in his ears, how lightheaded he feels, and… shit. He needs to sit back down.

Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, pushing him firmly but gently back down onto his chair. “Both of yours bit the dust? First time’s rough; it doesn’t get any easier.”

The sole victor and mentor of District 12, Haymitch Abernathy, is holding out a bottle of liquor to him. Still breathing heavily, Cassian shakes his head no; they both look back to the broadcast on the main screen. The camera is panning a bird’s-eye view over the action at the Cornucopia, before cutting over to where the two Careers from District 1 who killed Garrick are cutting down another tribute. The tally on the screen reads nine dead, fifteen tributes still in play. The Career pack hasn’t yet started to hunt for tributes who escaped to the trees, which means it’s still likely a death or three will be added to the projected death count at the end of the day. But as far as where Cassian is concerned, his first stint as a mentor in the Hunger Games is over.

Cassian thinks about reaching for the proffered bottle, but decides against it. Haymitch is an alcoholic, foul-smelling and drunk more often than not. Jeron always told his son to stay away from him, but Jeron isn’t here anymore. His heartbeat feels like it stops as it does each time the realization washes over him anew—your father’s dead, while you didn’t kill him you might as well have—but after that split second of grief he’s able to breathe again.

“C’mon. Let’s get some fresh air, you look like you could use it.” The look that Haymitch is giving him is half-pointed, half-pitying; Cassian gets up to go with him.

Cassian has never been to the top floor of the Tower; he didn’t even know that such a place existed. The tinkling of the windchimes drowns out the ringing in his ears, until he can blink up at the noonday sun without his vision doubling over.

“It’s a shame about your old man,” Haymitch says to him. “Power explosion, right?”

The younger victor can’t trust himself to speak, so he nods.

“Took out Irga too? Seems a little convenient to me.”

Cassian wants to say, I know the truth, I read it myself. But he doesn’t; what comes out instead is, “Yeah, that’s why I’m mentoring alone. Apparently I’m not very good at it.”

The look that Haymitch gives him has a flash of disappointment, but then it disappears as the older victor takes a swig of his booze and grunts. “Look, it doesn’t matter if you’re a good mentor or not, whether your tributes die or not. The Capitol gets their twisted entertainment regardless.”

“So we should just let them die?”

The older victor snorts. “I’m surprised you think it’s worth letting them live. You of all people should know being a victor doesn’t mean you won.”

Well, he can’t say anything to that. They look up to see an Avox approaching; apparently, to hand Cassian a powder blue envelope.

Cassian turns the envelope over in his hands but doesn’t break the seal yet. What happened to attractive and desirable victors was an open secret but the confirmation that Haymitch knew still stings; it made him wonder just how many of the other victors had known, if any of them talked to his father about it.

Haymitch juts his chin out at the envelope. “Snow’s had his claws in you for a long time hasn’t he, kid? I’m not surprised if District 5 got taken out because our dear president thinks you shouldn’t be spending your precious time in the Capitol mentoring.”

But no; Jeron couldn’t have known, Cassian was too good of a liar. But his self-loathing wrestles briefly with the fear that maybe Jeron knew after all, even before his disastrous Decem year.

But no, he couldn’t have. He would have done something about it sooner, he wouldn’t have let Snow turn his son into a whore. Right?

But he knows it wouldn't have changed anything, let alone the fatal outcome. There was no other way to impel Cassian into a mentoring position, not when Snow wanted him to solicit for a more lucrative purpose. Jeron couldn’t have known that Snow would kill his mentoring partner to devastate his son in retaliation; while Lila was allowed to live and he wouldn't have had Cassian killed, there wasn’t a way a victor could act without consequence.

Cassian opens the envelope, looks at the three lines: a name, a place, a time. He thinks about the system that drove his dad to believe that suicide was the only option, that forced him to play into the Capitol’s hand to save his son, then made him realize that in the end he couldn’t protect him at all.

#whumptober2020 #no.25 #blurred vision #ringing ears #rogue one #the hunger games #fic #sacchi writes #cassian andor #haymitch abernathy #word count: 1.4k #also gomen if you saw the version of this that i forgot to edit out a placeholder 🤧

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mariana--diaz · 5 years ago

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ITS MARIANA the vixen BITCH!!!

Full Name: Mariana Díaz

Faceclaim: Ester Expósito

Age: 17

DOB: August 8

Year in school: Junior

Gender: Cisfemale

Pronouns: She/her

Side of Normal: South Side

Worst fears: Being unloveable

Milkshake order: Dark chocolate cherry - with extra chocolate chips

biography {mentions of death, sexual content and violence}

Everyone at Normal Secondary School knows Mariana Díaz. If they don’t know her personally, they’ve seen her strutting through the halls and they’ve heard the whispers of her escapades within the boys’ locker room. She’s the one you should keep your boyfriend away from. The girl who can shatter a relationship with a quick wink or a well-shot snapchat. Of course, Mariana hasn’t always had this reputation. It’s relatively new, and if you ask anyone in school about Mariana’s past before this year, most wouldn’t be able to place her. Had she been a transfer? There’s no possible way she grew up in Normal, not with that body, those eyes. She would’ve been noticed. Right?

The truth is, Mariana was born and raised in Normal. Originally on the Northside, in a cute house with a white picket fence and three bedrooms for the brothers and sisters she never had. Her parents always wanted a bit of an age gap between their kids, if only to make it easier on them. It’s hell, raising toddlers at the same time. And before her parents could even consider having their next child, her father was taken from the world. He was a truck driver and had an accident on the road. Mariana found out at school, in third grade, when she was pulled out of class by a solemn-looking front desk attendant. Her world had been shattered that day, and forever changed

Mariana had never been close to her mother. No she and her father had a much stronger bond. And when he was gone, things between the two Díaz women grew ever more distant. Money became tight, her mother was barely home due to the incredibly long nursing shifts she’d pick up in order to make ends meet. The two ended up having to move out, and into an apartment on the Southside. Mariana became quiet, someone you wouldn’t notice. At least for her formative years. She blended into the background, sat at the end of the lunch table and ate quietly in peace. Teachers chalked it up to grief. But it was more, it was an absolute hatred of her life.

To escape she read. Books of adventure, of love. She dreamed she was those girls who were swept away in an epic love story. And because she didn’t receive that love from home, she searched for it other places. Her promiscuity began in high school, at a party. She had put on a short skirt, straightened her hair, and it was simple, nice. She had gotten the attention of a rather drunk football player, all while standing against a wall watching everyone else in the room. When the two escaped to a room and he called her beautiful while also forcing her hand between his legs, she let it happen. Because at least for that short amount of time, she was all he was thinking about.

It continued that way. Boys called her easy. It wasn’t dates to Marie’s Diner that she was getting, instead, a quick drive to the empty school parking lot for hookups. Maybe if she was lucky, 20 minutes of a movie at The Sunset Drive-In before lips found their way on her neck. Regardless of their destination, she’d never end up outside of the car. She knew they were just using her, but the high she got when they moaned out her name was always the same. It’s why she kept coming back. Of course, she thought the Alberonie boy would be different. He wasn’t, he was a boy after all. But he did give her something none of the other boys had given her before. Power.

The transformation happened overnight. Mariana woke up with beautiful silky hair, a body that was thin and fit and didn’t require her to break a sweat in order to keep. She watched hours of makeup tutorials online in order to learn how to achieve the perfect cat eye, to know exactly where to place her highlight for maximum dewiness. Red lipstick became her armor. When she walked into school, she wasn’t just noticed, she was desired. By every boy, she passed, by some girls as well. Students who never batted an eye at her, now wanted her to sit at their lunch table. So what if this newfound popularity came with some costs. The loss of her oldest friend and the need to suck boys dry? Fucking worth it.

headcanons

headcanon 001: Mariana’s body is physically perfect, aside from the small scar on her abdomen. It’s from the night of her transformation, from the shard that boy pierced her skin with. She’s made up numerous lies about how she got it but Mariana doesn’t hate the scar. If anything, it reminds her of who she was, and who she’s become.

headcanon 002: For Mariana, sex is more than a few minutes of intense passion. Of course, she enjoys that part, but it’s not why she craves it. The girl who was always deprived of attention growing up absolutely needs it now. And sex is that for her. It’s the one moment where she knows she’s the only thing on someone’s mind. She can’t second guess their want or need for her because their body says it all.

headcanon 003: Romance isn’t what you think of when you think of Mariana, but deep down she does crave love. True love. She’s just cynical enough to know it’s probably not something that will happen for her. Lust has always been the emotion she’s most familiar with and after her transformation, she’s pretty sure it’s the only emotion she’ll receive from here on out. But she’s fine with that, it makes things all the more simple.

headcanon 004: At first Mariana felt a sense of regret and shame wash over her when she first fed. Aside from the fact that drinking the blood of another person is just absolutely disgusting to think about, the idea that she almost killed someone was truly horrifying. But as the days progressed, the hunger building, she came to terms with it. Maybe that was just what she needed to do to survive. And it’s not like the world was very kind to her, so why should she be kind to it?

headcanon 005: Mariana has learned to use her body to get what she wants. And material things are always nice. She doesn’t have much, and why work for it when she can just get things handed over to her after a few nudes or simple dates? She never thought she’d be actually considering the life of a sugar baby, but when hot rich men want to take you out and spoil you, why not let them? And if they’re pieces of shit? She’d just kill them.

other information

as previously mentioned - she likes dick

but also ladies are pretty and this bitch doesn’t discriminate as long as you just give her some damn fucking attention

has eye liner so sharp she can cut a man

is the epitome of the ‘kisses your neck while my liquid lipstick is still wet so everyone KNOWS” text

is the queen of thirst traps, literally try her

sells her nudes because she can

has been feeling a lil murderous lately so as long as you stay on her good side you’ll probs get off without being sucked dry, but if you’re on her shit list watch out

probs has just been making her way through men that the world doesn’t really need, cause at least she can use her power for good you know?

#{I just took a dna test turns out I'm 100% that bitch || the vixen}#//just reposting for a reminder of what she's like

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fenweak · 6 years ago

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2018 pat/jon fics!

In keeping with tradition, here are some of my favorite fics that came out in 2018. Technically, it’s easier to sort through ao3 now to see all these for yourselves, but anyway! i love lists, and i love listing wonderful things so. :3 Do check the list out if you missed out on any and give these authors some love. Happy New Year, all! :D

Canon Divergent

when the clock strikes twelve by crystaljules - T | 6,508 | friends to lovers in new year's eves

Pop Your Corn Like A Champ by mending_fences - E | 2,065 | rookie year pwp

Big Spoon, Little Spoon by aseaofwords - G | 765 | gasp, there's only one bed!

Patrick and the Lucky Potato by Bittersweet - G | 794 | hockey superstitions

In The A.M. by SecondCitySavage - E | 613 | established relationship pwp

I Thought It Was A Floating Door by Mullsandmutts - 3,211 | rookie initiation of sorts

No, I Never Told Lies To You by fourfreedoms - E | 3,033 | celly realizations

The Future Is Bulletproof (the Aftermath Is Secondary) by CitrusVanille - T | 2,422 | marriage proposal

Five Times Jonny’s There to Back Patrick up (And One Time It’s the Other Way Around) - T | 3,521 | what the tin says

Throwing Rocks at Your Window by Linsky - M | 2,267 | getting together

Into You by hatrickane - E | 4,531 | friends with benefits

Same Old - 1,900 | friends with benefits with angst

This is awkward by writingintothevoid - M | 2,244 | masturbation getting together

Shitshow by AnythingThrice (WIP) - E | 16,297 and counting | relationship negotiations, porn with feelings

Hockey House by aseaofwords - M | 20,476 | pat helps jonny raise a baby

The Scars That Words Have Carved by Linsky - E | 15,964 | soulmates AU

A How-To Guide for Idiots in Love by lucky1 (WIP)- E | 12,462 and counting | Cosmo-based wooing

Transverse Velocity by fourfreedoms - E | 2,236 | Orbital Resonance h/c timestamp

A Certainty I Envy by hatrickane - E | 15,015 | time travel, friends to lovers

Eyes on the Horizon by heartstrings - E | 35,380 | future fic

Baby One More Time by fourfreedoms, sorrylatenew - E | 7,981 | first time, internalized homophobia

a bulletproof bond by thirteentorafters - T | 1,791 | summer fluff

Beg for it by Clever_grrl - E | 1,524 | pwp

running across the meadow by ishybishy - E | 2,219 | fluff and angst and smut

nobody does it like juliette by thirteentorafters - T | 4,323 | established relationship plus dogs!

Bruises on My Knees for You by Linsky - T | 2,529 | getting together

On This Day (February 27, 2018) by AnythingThrice - T | 2,191 | angsty introspection

Fortune Says by artanis_aman - E | 63,360 | BDSM pwp

Light by Bittersweet - G | 283 | short domestic fluff

I'mma need two hands - E | 1,563 | pwp

The One with the Sex Bet by Linsky - E | 11,621 | friends with benefits to lovers

Don't Forget To Breathe by fourfreedoms - E | 13,513 | friends with benefits

For Science by Linsky - M | 2,600 | first time

Light as a Feather by WolvesoftheBlueMist - T | 1,595 | marriage proposal

finished, yet by thirteentorafters - T | 1,426 | grief over death

Project: Thanksgiving by windsthatwhisper - G | 1535 | established relationship fluff

Streets of Chicago by TheNorthRemembers - E | 79,749 | h/c, friends to lovers

Operation: Christmas Gift by windsthatwhisper - G | 1,166 | future fic

There's a Ghost in My Home (And It Just Won't Go) by crankyrage - T | 11,616 | depression

I'll Be Your Detonator by CitrusVanille - M | 17,645 | marriage of convenience

Shawty With You by allthebros - E | 5,279 | 5 + 1 mistletoe kisses

we live in the memories(of the season of light) - 1,437 | holiday season h/c

On the right side of too much by Sail_On - 4,518 | established relationship pwp

AUs

Fathoms Above by aseaofwords - T | 14,451 | mermaid!jonny

Muscle Stim by sahiya - E | 7,672 | physical therapist!jonny

Make You Crazy Over My Touch by liveinfury - E | 26,757 | porn star!jonny, fluffer!pat

Ignite My Fire, Object Of My Desire by ThalassicThedes - 6,939 | college theater acting au

it's only you and me by crystaljules - T | 2,489 | college au angst

All It Ever Was by hatrickane - E | 8,249 | fraternity AU

Let's Ride The Vibrations by FallingOutOfTouch - T | 10,303 | barista!patrick

a love to burn by peeks - E | 2,916 | college au pwp

Who Knew by themistrollsin - G | 2,434 | college AU

soft hands by Caivallon - E | 10,337 | ballet-dancer-turned student!pat, hotelier!jonny

forever only by gasmsinc - E | 3,621 | 1940s established relationship AU

(Shut Up and) Sing It With Me by CitrusVanille - T | 6,152 | model!jonny, followed by

Let Me See Your Jazz Hands by CitrusVanille - T | 2,669 | established relationship model!jonny

Little Demon Goes To College by fourfreedoms - E | 2,423 | established relationship installment of the Accepted Practice series!

bonnie and clyde by gasmsinc - E | 3,576 | 1920s mob AU

The Future Is Ours To Seize by PensToTheEnd - E | 27,878 | former rentboy pat au, established relationship

the road less traveled by thundersquall - E | 12,374 | farmer!jonny

Between the Pipes by sorrylatenew - E | 4,206 | a/b/o

Eternal Ice by NightfireRed - G | 9,119 | regular office guys AU

broadcast by Pinkmanite - E | 3,250 | cam guy!pat, established relationship

The Full Monty by CoffeeKristin (WIP)- E | 22,849 | professional Dom!jonny

trace your path between the stars by thundersquall - E | 15,859 | space military a/b/o!

One Wedding Too Many by hockeyhawk - M | 5,850 | four weddings and a funeral AU

I'm asleep dreaming that I'm awake wondering if I'm dreaming (and it’s the best dream I ever had) by Caivallon - G | 1,162 | Ladyhawke AU

Ashes, Poison, and Thorns: a fairytale by allthebros - T | 1,950 | Cinderella AU

In Every Corner by hatrickane - E | 7,518 | Miss Congeniality AU

look me in the face (hold my gaze) by Pinkmanite - T | 9,296 | CMBYN AU

we're never done with killing time by liveinfury - T | 6,026 | soulmates au

Handsome, Clever and Rich by CoffeeKristin - T | 12,017 | Edwardian Period obliviousness

Hard liquor with a bit of intellect by huntersandangels - G | 5,745 | drunk texting proposals

Soothing ruffles feathers by candy_belle - M | 2,022 | wingfic!

Drown me sweetly by Caivallon - M | 1,476 | doctor!jon, mer!pat

Greenhouse Effect by allthebros - M | 1,888 | fuckbuddy realizations

Got Your Back by Prialee (WIP)- T | 39,768 | friends to lovers, 50/50 AU

That Feeling When by fourfreedoms - E | 4,612 | military AU

immigrant song by gasmsinc - E | 4,338 | 1988 is thorki

No Capes by sorrylatenew - T | 3,797 | The Incredibles AU!

Summer Changes by CoffeeKristin - G | 1,272 | summer camp love

Expected Result timestamp by hatrickane - E | established relationship

If you like pina coladas by CoffeeKristin - T | 2,621 | meet cute in a Jimmy Buffett concert

Somebody To Love by ThalassicThedes - 7,852 | 1960s AU, first time

efficacy by thirteentorafters - M | 12,014 | rookie year mpreg

God Only Knows by Linsky - E | 26,512 | mormon!jonny

The Care and Keeping of Your Kitten by Celly1995 - T | 5,564 | kitten kaner!

A Little Nip in the Air by Celly1995 - E | 12,030 | kitten!kaner tries catnip

Tell the Stars I'm Coming Home by allthebros (WIP) - E | 15,817 and counting | apocalypse angst

You gave me home and I lost myself by Caivallon - E | 4,823 | coffee shop in Thailand AU

A Healthy Dose of Vitamin Sea by Celly1995 - E | 16,137 | established relationship, part of the kazer dick cake fic of shame and glory series

Bigger on the Inside by Linsky - E | 25,671 | doctor who fusion

take a walk on the wild side by tazernkaner - T | 3,045 | college frat party AU

You Know I Dreamed About You by kayclandestine - M | 31,942 | they meet at a Hawks convention AU

We don't pray for love by runphoebe - E | 2,912 | HOT prequel to an angsty, unhealthy relationship fic Gonna Bite Your Feelings Out

Forever & Always, My Baby You'll Be by windsthatwhisper - G | 1,259 | kidfic

the shape of you by thundersquall - E | 15,962 | college au, always a girl!pat

Just A Spark by heartstrings - E | 19,751 | college au, magical realism

Every Little Thing He Does (is magic) by jezziejay - M | 65,459 | police chief!pat, witch!jonny, bonus little magic girls and a faithful doggo

bulletproof by thirteentorafters - M | 2,456 | Mr. and Mrs. Smith AU

Fearless child, broken boy (Tell me what it’s like to burn) by Caivallon - T | 1,359 | Hunger Games AU

Ricochet by heartstrings (WIP) - E | 40,075 and counting | partners in crime angst

i think of you in colors by toewsin (haroldslouis) - E | 24,893 | figure skating coach!pat, hockey coach!jon, Shattuck AU

Black Sunflowers by windsthatwhisper - E | 23,360 | mob boss!pat

We've Waited for the Calling by allthebros - E | 23,125 | small town horror au. love and magic and monsters!

Irreplaceable - M | 23,631 | first time, tattoo-related shenanigans

Son of a Preacher Man by PensToTheEnd - M | 22,432 | future priest!jon, homeless!pat

Téméraire by Pinkmanite - E | 24,531 | spy AU, angst with a happy ending

sugar, we're going down swinging by thundersquall - E | 59,112 | baker!pat, hotelier!jonny

Something Uniquely Him by hatrickane - E | 13,838 | a/b/o, age difference

No, It's Not A Secret by SimoneClouseau - E | 13,825 | college au, always a girl!jonny, size kink

Keep the fucking lights on by runphoebe - E | 8,661 | not hockey players, daddy kink, established relationship

You Turned My Head by hockeyhawk - E | 11,072 | incubus jonny

More Than Who We Are by amoergosum - E | 14,548 | trainer dietitian!jonny

Le Moose-bouche by AbschaumNo1 - T | 2,717 | established relationship, restaurant au

Can You Lyft Me Up? by Mullsandmutts - G | 27,912 | single dad!pat, meet cute

The Boy who kissed the Moon by Caivallon - M | 71,771 | childhood friends falling in love

Sweet Like Candy Kanes by sasha_annes - T | 21,060 | candy shop AU

your soul cries out (our hands are tied) by thirteentorafters - E | 18,313 | soul bonds

i know you are (but what am i) by booktubelover7 - T | 57,984 | always a girl!pat, high school AU

The Reality of Things by windsthatwhisper (WIP) - E | 8,232 | french teacher!jonny

a song someone sings by gasmsinc - E | 45,751 | anastasia au

#patrick kane #jonathan toews #hockey rpf #fic rec #blackhawks #long post

222 notes · View notes

marianaxdiaz · 5 years ago

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ITS MARIANA the vixen BITCH!!!

Full Name: Mariana Díaz

Faceclaim: Ester Expósito

Age: 17

DOB: August 8

Year in school: Junior

Gender: Cisfemale

Pronouns: She/her

Side of Normal: South Side

Worst fears: Being unloveable

Milkshake order: Dark chocolate cherry - with extra chocolate chips

biography {mentions of death, sexual content and violence}

headcanons

headcanon 001: Mariana’s body is physically perfect, aside from the small silver scar on her abdomen. It’s from the night of her transformation, from the shard that boy pierced her skin with. She’s made up numerous lies about how she got it but Mariana doesn’t hate the scar. If anything, it reminds her of who she was, and who she’s become.

other information

as previously mentioned - she likes dick

but also ladies are pretty and this bitch doesn’t discriminate as long as you just give her some damn fucking attention

has eye liner so sharp she can cut a man

is the epitome of the ‘kisses your neck while my liquid lipstick is still wet so everyone KNOWS” text

is the queen of thirst traps, literally try her

sells her nudes because she can

has been feeling a lil murderous lately so as long as you stay on her good side you’ll probs get off without being sucked dry, but if you’re on her shit list watch out

probs has just been making her way through men that the world doesn’t really need, cause at least she can use her power for good you know?

#{I just took a DNA test turns out I'm 100% that bitch || the vixen}

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evansrussianlitblog · 5 years ago

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Ten Interesting Russian Novels

1. City of Thieves

“During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible. By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.” (goodreads.com)

2. The Brothers Karamazov

“The Brothers Karamasov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons―the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture. This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.” (Amazon.com)

3. Notes from Underground

“Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.” (Amazon.com)

4. Zuleikha

“Soviet Russia, 1930. Zuleikha, the “pitiful hen,” lives with her brutal husband Murtaza and her mother-in-law in a small Tartar village. When Murtaza is executed by communist soldiers, she is sent into exile to a remote region on the Angara River in Siberia. Hundreds die of hunger and exhaustion on the journey and over the first difficult winter, yet exile is the making of Zuleikha. As she gets to know her fellow survivors ― among them an eccentric German doctor, a painter, and the conscience-stricken Commander Ignatov, her husband’s killer ―Zuleikha begins to build a new life far removed from the one she left behind. Guzel Yakhina’s outstanding debut ― inspired by her grandmother's childhood memories of being exiled to the Gulag ―has been translated into twenty-one languages, capturing the hearts of readers all over the world.” (Amazon.com)

5. One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

“In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength. First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man’s will to prevail over relentless dehumanization.” (Amazon.com)

6. Night Watch

“Set in contemporary Moscow, where shape shifters, vampires, and street-sorcerers linger in the shadows, Night Watch is the first book of the hyper-imaginative fantasy pentalogy from best-selling Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko. This epic saga chronicles the eternal war of the “Others,” an ancient race of humans with supernatural powers who must swear allegiance to either the Dark or the Light. The agents of the Dark – the Night Watch – oversee nocturnal activity, while the agents of the Light keep watch over the day. For a thousand years both sides have maintained a precarious balance of power, but an ancient prophecy has decreed that a supreme Other will one day emerge, threatening to tip the scales. Now, that day has arrived. When a mid-level Night Watch agent named Anton stumbles upon a cursed young woman – an uninitiated Other with magnificent potential – both sides prepare for a battle that could lay waste to the entire city, possible the world. With language that throbs like darkly humorous hard-rock lyrics about blood and power, freedom and responsibility, Night Watch is a chilling, cutting-edge thriller, a pulse-pounding ride of fusion fiction that will leave you breathless for the next instalment.” (goodreads.com)

7. The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

“Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra Romanov as seen through the eyes of their young kitchen boy, Leonka. Now an ancient Russian immigrant, Leonka claims to be the last living witness to the Romanovs’ brutal murders and sets down the dark secrets of his past with the imperial family. Does he hold the key to the many questions surrounding the family’s murder? Historically vivid and compelling, The Kitchen Boy is also a touching portrait of a loving family that was in many ways similar, yet so different, from any other.” (Amazon.com)

8. The Russian Concubine

“In a city full of thieves and Communists, danger and death, spirited young Lydia Ivanova has lived a hard life. Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband. As exiles, Lydia and Valentina have learned to survive in a foreign land. Often, Lydia steals away to meet with the handsome young freedom fighter Chang An Lo. But they face danger: Chiang Kai Shek's troops are headed toward Junchow to kill Reds like Chang, who has in his possession the jewels of a tsarina, meant as a gift for the despot's wife. The young pair's all-consuming love can only bring shame and peril upon them, from both sides. Those in power will do anything to quell it. But Lydia and Chang are powerless to end it.” (Amazon.com)

9. A Dead Man’s Memoir: A Theatrical Novel

“Best known for The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov is one of twentieth-century Russia's most prominent novelists. A Dead Man's Memoir is a semi- autobiographical story about a writer who fails to sell his novel, then fails to commit suicide. When the writer's play is taken up for production in a theater, literary success beckons, but he is not prepared to reckon with the grotesquely inflated egos of the actors, directors, and theater managers.” (Amazon.com)

10. The Master of Petersburg

“In the fall of 1869 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, lately a resident of Germany, is summoned back to St. Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, Pavel. Half crazed with grief, stricken by epileptic seizures, and erotically obsessed with his stepson's landlady, Dostoevsky is nevertheless intent on unraveling the enigma of Pavel's life. Was the boy a suicide or a murder victim? Did he love his stepfather or despise him? Was he a disciple of the revolutionary Nechaev, who even now is somewhere in St. Petersburg pursuing a dream of apocalyptic violence? As he follows his stepson's ghost—and becomes enmeshed in the same demonic conspiracies that claimed the boy—Dostoevsky emerges as a figure of unfathomable contradictions: naive and calculating, compassionate and cruel, pious and unspeakably perverse.” (Amazon.com)

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jackdawyt · 6 years ago

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The Unsolved Mysteries Of Dragon Age!

{Video} https://youtu.be/tg_02ef9hKE Hey guys, Jackdaw here!

Today I'm immersing ourselves into the unsolved mysteries of Dragon Age so far, I'll be leaving no stone unturned plunging into some of Thedas' enraptured enigma's that've still remained unanswered since the end of Inquisition.

First up, let's talk about mysteries concerning the Religions of Thedas:

The Maker

Who or what is the Maker, this creator of all things, a question up for debate, some yearn for the answers of this enigmatic entity, others in Thedas care-less. As a seeker of the truth, I don't believe it's a case of who or what, but how, if Solas created the veil, then how does this Maker exist? What's their place in this world? What does this mean for the chant of light? How is there a Maker if elements of this holy book don't prove to be true? What is true? The existence of the Maker is one of the first, original mysteries in Dragon Age, it's not the idea of a God, it's these elements in the plot that the Maker seemingly influences, like the creation of the veil and the foreshadowing of a second coming. The Maker's influence is ripe throughout Thedas, yet still one of the largest unknown myths in this world, will we ever know the truth?

Andraste and her descendants?

Who was Andraste, more appro-pro what was she, such folly around her existence, her ashes had the power to heal a man back from the brink of death, she merely must be more powerful than an average woman if her ashes have this capability. Did she really ascend to Godhood after she died? Or could she have instead entered Uthenera, the elves endless resting practice, translated as immortal? Concerning her descendants, what's the case with her bloodline, could such a powerful bloodline still wander amongst us and unbenounced to us in Thedas today?

The return of the Elven Pantheon

The Elven Gods once ruled over Thedas as their supreme home, a place which flourished with all types of magic, such curiosities like the gift of immortality were considered the norm in ancient elvhen. But that time has since gone, the Dread Wolf locked away each of the Elven Gods, these powerful elven mages with such unique and magical qualities, each designated with a given task over the elven kingdom. Seemingly the Pantheon betrayed their queen as their hunger for power rivalled Mythal, whatever you believe happened, it's the truth is unknown, each Elven God was banished, the Dread Wolf's grief for his queen had destroyed him, he locked his kinsman away behind the creation of the veil, a barrier that stopped the flow of raw magic, this crushed the elven kingdom into a respite, the pillars of this primal empire crumbled, and little remains to this day. Rumours of the lingering Elven God's live on today, could they be living in the Fade, are they hiding from the Dread Wolf, could they be hiding in Thedas as we know today? All that is known is, each of these God's was banished away, not complete bloodshed, could they still be hiding out there, if the veil were to be destroyed, would that unleash these Elven Gods? Such a mystery remain unknown.

The Old Gods of Tevinter

Concerning Tevinter's religion of the ancient, the seven dragons of the Imperium, two of these Old Gods remain shackled, still in a slumber, locked in the Fade until touched by the taint. Both Razikel and Lusican, not only does this mean that two blights are still in store for Thedas, but we don't rightly know the story behind these Old Gods, did the Maker really lock them away, if not the Maker then who? Do they relate to something else, and if so, what? In any event, Tevinter would be the place to uncover the mysteries concerning the truth of the Old God religion.

Next up, antagonistic mysteries:

The Executors

The mysterious representatives who speak "on behalf of powers across the sea", presumably entities from beyond the Amaranthine and Boeric Oceans. They're believed to be organized and maintain a number of agents and resources across Thedas, their motivations are unknown. A potential one world order? Entities once created by an Elven God? An army manipulated by a submerged Titan? One can only fathom concepts of what these Executors are, Maker knows what they do on behalf of a higher up. There's only one thing we can guarantee about this order, they've made their presence known to the people of Thedas, and believe-you-me, they expect to return one day in grand scale.

The Seven Magisters

The Magister Sidereal, sickened, prideful, righteous and now blighted, these Magisters of old Tevinter worshipped the Archdemons as idols. It's common knowledge that each of the seven mages was turned into the vilest of creatures known as darkspawn, forever tied to the blight, they have the capacity to control darkspawn and live as immortal's through the very taint that binds them. The Conductor of Silence schemed to enter the Fade and become a God, to some element he got what he wished for when the Inquisitor sent him into the Fade, whether he's dead for good, that remains to be seen, however, the other six still yet lurk across the shadiest parts of Thedas, scattered throughout the world. One day hoping to seek out and speak to their chosen Gods, they'll be greeted with nothing but shame when they hear absolute silence. They're out there somewhere, Maker only knows if they're as twisted and redundant as Corypheus.

Solas & Mythal

The Dread Wolf & The Mother of Vengeance are the two remaining sentient Elven Gods in the Dragon Age as of 9:44, questions linger on the mysteries of Mythal's betrayal during the ancient elven times, when they ruled all of Thedas as supreme mages, with the capabilities of immortality. With the all unknowns surrounding Mythal's death, it's hard to believe that this woman was merely killed by her kinsman for her now to be scheming against Thedas with the only other member of the Pantheon who was sympathetic to Mythal, such coincidence that the remaining Pantheon are now locked away and Solas and this Elven queen are once more planning something revolutionary for Thedas. One must wonder if these two have always shared such antagonist aligences, now that the other Elven Gods are out of the picture? In any case, they intend of splitting the veil, bringing the old magicks back and tearing Thedas asunder, for what gains you ask? Speculation aside, their motivations are rather unknown. To bring a lost world back, to restore an ancient kingdom, to re-establish such a powerful foundation of magic, to kill the remaining pantheon? whatever the aim may be, it'd truly destroy the Thedas we know today.

The Titans

These 'Pilar's of the Earth' are sworn to be the very shapers of this world, with their trembles, they moulded Thedas into existence. The only true thing we know about these Titans is that they produce a raw material that the people of Thedas have harnessed for the ebb and flow of magic, this lyrium is said to be the skin and bones of these shapers, mining this lyrium has caused countless wars in the elvhen times, until one day, just before the veil's creation, the Titan's completely vanished, like a candle in the wind, they were snubbed out. Whether the elves were to blame or not, like most things that remains unknown, however rumor what have us believe that the Titans yet remain, the raw material that once strengthened and helped the flow of magic has become corrupt, tainted red, tormenting the users of this red lyrium, the trembles that accordingly forged Thedas into existence have reawakened since the Dragon Age, reshaping Thedas for the Titans once more, to say that these Titans were the shapers of the world is a stretch, however to claim their existence to be futile is ridicule, they're out there and there waking up, either deep underground, or Thedas itself, the Titan's seek a reckoning and they may just have it.

Mysteries concerning the characters of Dragon Age:

Leliana

Concerning our most resourceful spymaster, the once sister of the Chantry has an acclaimed bound to the Titans, one instance reveals that Leliana once was killed in her sisterhood life, during her time as a spymaster, she left Skyhold after the Exalted Council to disappear into thin air, never again to be seen or heard. Such mysteries cultivate of our lady being a lyrium ghost, could such an apparition exist? Does lyrium have the potential to raise people from the dead, or are the Titan's the true shapers of Thedas? What does this mean for our spymaster now, was she created with a purpose and now that elements of that've been completed, has she since been reduced to an eternal slumber? Or is she at peace by the Maker's side like she used to dream of, in any case, can lyrium be used to raise the dead from their sleep?

Sandal Feddic

Shah-brytol, bastard, elven-blooded noble or even Titan born, Sandal Feddic is a dwarf of a few words, however it's clear when he speaks with more than one word, he has the gift of prophecy, the words he's spoken have proved to shape the tide of Solas and his scheme to destroy the veil, how can one, young, folly dwarf know the future of such a time to come. Not only does he have the gift of prophecy, but his immersive skills with lyriun have proved Sandel to be quite the competent killer, does his half-elven blood grant him the power of terrifying magics, or could this boy really be born of a Titan, whatever the truth is, we should keep an eye out on Feddic, he could be more dangerous than we expect.

Morrigan & Kieran

The so-called 'inheritor of the next age' and her most powerful son, a boy fathered by one of the Grey Warden's who helped end the fifth blight. Either born with the soul of an old god or just estranged from this land, Kieran speaks prophecy too, his mother is the so-called inheritor. Perhaps he simply means she'll help with the coming battles, or he could be foreshadowing a darker side to Morrigan's story, Flemeth has intended on passing her Godhood onto her daughter, could this be the case for Morrigan, could she be destined to be the next vessel of Mythal? Is this prophecy, whether she likes it or not? Will Morrigan's eagerness to fleet from her mother come to an abrupt end?

Valta

Concerning the Titan's once more, when the first trembling occurred in the Dragon Age, a small team guided by the Inquisition checked out the source of these quakes. A nimble dwarf by the name of Valta joined that journey and by the end of it, she was struck by a Titan's heart with pure, raw lyrium that should've killed her, but instead gave her unbenounced powers. Whatever she's capable of, she's culpable to the Titans, and will aid them. The questions that linger are, what sort of power does she know posses and what does this mean for the Titan's and dwarves connection, can dwarves possess magic with the aid of Titans? It's all quite intriguing.

And finally, pure curiosity & foreshadowing:

Qunari

Is it really true when they say that Elves and Qunari are related by ancestors, that the breeders of the Qunari people decided to mix with dragons, creating the race of Kossith that we know on Thedas today? Are the Qunari bound by blood to both the Elven people and dragons? By mixing blood of the two, is the Kossith race some sort of experiment, have the Elven people created their own warriors, that over time have overruled the elves, are the Kossith even aware of their origin? More abruptly, questions linger on ties to the blight, moreover the idea of Kossith being immune to it, the idea that no Kossith could be a Grey Warden, perhaps dragon blood is the cure to the blight which would mean that the Kossith could help save the blight by sheer blood participation with the other races of Thedas. Who can say if they'd even decide to help the people, with ongoing wars against Tevinter and the spread of the Qun.

The Blight

The origin of the blight is rather unknown, folk talk about the Maker descending it onto his creations as a plague, for punishment of their excessive pride. Others speak on red lyrim and the blight being created as a defence mechanism by the Titans to stop the elves from mining their bodies for the resource. And there are even those who simply relate it to the Old Gods just wrecking havoc on Thedas, the truth on this plaque lurks, even if one were to kill the two remaining Old Gods, the blight would still continue. So who can say where this taint started?

Dreamers

Rumours linger from the upper echelons of Tevinter society that mages, high up in the magisterium have the capability to solely enter the Fade physically, these dreamers are said to be hiding within the ranks of the Imperium, never revealing the power from which lurks within themselves, for fear of what it could mean. This hubris once destroyed the very heavens, to even speak or have the capacity of repeating those actions means death in Tevinter, and so they hide, never to be discovered with this power.

Griffons

Such a mystery are these beasts of legend, Grey Warden's once perished their enemies in battle mounted on a fabled Griffon, these beautiful, voluptuous birds choose their rides, and even mourned when such a rider would die in battle, Griffons are sensitive, phenomenal creatures and rumour has it, that they're not so extinct as one might think. In 9:42, thirteen Griffion eggs were found in the Anderfels, just across from the Grey Warden's HQ, Fort Weisshaupt. Nothing but hushed whispers comes from the fort as it's gone silent ever since the Warden's of Orlais were bound to the calling. If the Warden's are keeping these Griffons a secret, they could prove to be to of significant value the right person. Changing the tide of battle ever so greatly, however, these are only whispers of what's going on with the Grey Wardens, just know that Griffons are not so extinct after all.

The Veil

The final enigma surrounds the veil, the Dread Wolf has made it his scheme to split the veil, crumbling Thedas and restoring his kingdom, however, how could such a megalomaniac fulfil such a deed? His original intention was using the orb of destruction, with that destroyed, a question lingers on how would the God destroy the veil? Even so, what would happen when he did, would the world simply be brought to ashes, or with the Fade and Thedas together once more, with magic restored, could aspects of Thedas still be saved? What mysteries and secrets we'd uncover if Thedas and the Fade were made whole, such would be uncovered relating to these fabled myths like the Maker, Titans, Old Gods, Elven Pantheon, etc. It'd mean answers, but complete desolation for Thedas, only time will tell if prophecy remains to be true and if this Dreadful God will actually destroy the world. https://youtu.be/tg_02ef9hKE

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akaaka04 · 6 years ago

Text

To Unknowingly Get to You

Did y’all know today’s a national holiday? It’s someone’s birthday. owob

HAPPY BIRTHDAY @hidewari!!!! AS OF TODAY, YOU ARE NO LONGER A CURSED BOY! You are... an omen man™. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

In the bustling center of downtown Tokyo, a young man in a hand-me-down, yellow hoodie dashes across a parked car to evade the police officer chasing after him. The police officer's shouts of “Stop, thief!” fall on deaf ears as the more agile, much faster, man zooms past gasping citizens with a victorious smile on his face. The police officer trips on a crack in the sidewalk and loses his balance, his arms flailing every which way as he desperately reaches for something to grab onto to prevent from smacking face first onto hard concrete. A nasty THUD sounds behind the criminal’s earshot and he uses this gained opportunity to pick up the pace and turn into an alleyway.

He yelps in surprise when he almost collides into someone coming out of the alleyway and quickly spins on his heel to maneuver around them, but not gracefully enough to not stumble. The criminal lands on his butt, and several bread rolls fall from his pockets. Some aren’t salvageable, having landed in puddles of either rain water from the day before or mystery liquids that seep out from dirty dumpster bins along the walls. The man curses and snaps his head around to glare at the person who ruined his clean get-away only to be met with piercingly blue eyes.

He’s taken aback by the intensity of those eyes, wondering if the person attached to them is staring into his soul or seeing right through him. He blinks and realizes after several seconds that he's locked eyes with a tall, tan skinned woman— a rather pretty one at that. She clutches onto a brown, paper bag full of groceries, having almost dropped it from their near collision. She glances from him to the soggy bread rolls crumbling away at her feet, then back to him. His stomach grumbles loud enough for her to hear, and a frown crosses her features. The police officer that had been chasing him blows a whistle, alerting the criminal that he’s wasted too much time staring at a pretty girl— his one of two weaknesses.

The woman puts two and two together, and to the thief’s surprise, the woman nods her head to the back of a dumpster. Was she… suggesting for him to hide…? He listens for the sound of the police officer’s approaching footsteps to gauge whether or not he should book it or take the woman’s advice, but unfortunately, she makes the decision for him. She drags him by the collar and plops him behind some black garbage bags, raising a finger to her lips to silence him as she stages the crime scene.

She quickly drops some carrots and a leek on the ground just as the police officer rounds the corner in a huff. His nose is heavily bruised and slightly twisted from his fall. He eyes the woman suspiciously when he notices the same bread rolls the thief was carrying by her feet.

“Did you see a man in a yellow sweater come running through here, ma’am? He’s well known around these parts for stealing from food markets and convenience stores.”

The woman’s eyes widen in feigned disbelief. She shakes her head to answer the officer’s question. “What does he steal, if I may ask?” The woman’s voice is calm and collected and… warm, the thief notes. It leaves him feeling… strange, and he’s not sure what to make of that.

“Food of all kinds," the officer replies. "He has an affinity for baked goods from a pastry shop a few blocks away. Much like the ones you see here.”

The woman shifts her weight from one foot to the other and shakes her head again. “Must’ve been after I got here, then. Because if I’d seen him, he’d have stolen my groceries after dropping all of his goodies. Don’t you think?”

The officer considers her hypothetical and nods in agreement. He warns her to stay vigilant and to report the repeat offender should she cross paths with him in the future. She agrees with a friendly smile, and the officer calls for his buddies to keep a lookout for the thief as he turns to leave. She breathes a sigh of relief and whispers that it’s safe to come out now, but when she looks behind the dumpster, the thief is gone. She hopes he didn’t drop all of his dinner and wonders if she’ll see him again. She walks home thinking about him and how she can’t shake the feeling she’s met him somewhere before. She finds that odd.

*****

It’s raining the next time he sees her again. He’s chosen to sleep in a slide at a park unknowingly near where she works, looking for unwanted scraps tossed aside precariously when he finds a half-eaten sandwich in a trash can. He snatches it up and rushes for cover under a gazebo just as it starts to pour, and who does he bump into? Her, having clocked out of work and also running for cover from the rain. The newspaper she used to shield her head from the rain is thinning and ripping apart, so they're stranded together until the rain lets up again. She thinks it’s a small world to have found him again; he thinks it’s shameful to have her see him at two of his lowest points.

He stands as far away from her as possible, only now remembering how badly he must smell to her. His hair is greasy, his hoodie and long-sleeved undershirt are both drenched with sweat and rain water, and his pants are baggy and ripped in several places. And yet, she shows not the slightest sign of discomfort. Either she's not repulsed by the sight of him, or she's a convincing actress. She’s wearing a long, black coat today that shows off her petite figure and if he were in better spirits, he’d be charming her to the moon and back. He fidgets anxiously and considers making a run for the nearest tree to avoid her, but she quickly digs into her purse and fishes out a granola bar and an uneaten banana she couldn’t finish from her lunch.

She places both on a wooden bench at the center of the gazebo and smiles apologetically for not having much else. As if she owed him something more. He wonders if she's being generous to him out of pity or actual kindness. He's never been one to deny free food, however, and doesn't hesitate to snatch her offerings and bolt back to the slide he's made home for the night without another word. She whispers a "you're welcome" under her breath and sits under the gazebo to listen to the heavy fall of the rain on the wooden roof above her head. She's always loved it when it rains, but tonight's shower storm feels bittersweet. She wonders why.

*****

He's starting to get uncomfortable with how many times she pops into his head, whether by his own doing or not. He's dreamt of her twice since their last encounter, making it four times total that he's dreamt of her since first meeting her. The first time she appeared in his dreams, she had manifested as... a black dog or wolf with those same, blue, piercing eyes of hers and he had no idea how or why he knew it was her. He'd wracked his brain over and over again with what little memories he had left and couldn't come up with anything logical.

The second time she appeared in his dreams, she was still in her dog/wolf form but was accompanied by an old man. The old man kept her tied to a leash with a studded collar, and god was that infuriating to see. She was so loyal and kind to the geezer that it felt... wrong. She didn't deserve to be kept as a pet. She deserved to be free to live a life she wanted. The thief remembered trying to convince her to ditch her "owner" in his dream, but she stubbornly refused, claiming he was all she'd ever known and that he was family. The thief woke up from this dream feeling determined he'd try and change her mind another night.

The third dream started off well, with him and her standing on a bridge together overlooking the sun set. The air was warm, and they were mostly silent and enjoying each other's company. He turned to look at her, to tell her she was a wild animal and that all animals belonged in nature, but he got distracted by the way she longingly smiled into the distance. A mix of sadness and possible homesickness was etched into her features, and he was captivated by her to the point that he forgot about what he'd wanted to say. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. The thief only realized a second later that it wasn't her who was the problem-- it was him.

He couldn't hear suddenly, and panic bubbled up in his chest as he watched the image of her fade and warp away from him. His surroundings turned to black and disintegrated into ash before him; incomprehensible images of people he didn't know flashed before him far too quickly for him to understand what was going on, and when he tried to scream, he couldn't. He could feel his throat burn as if he was screaming, which only helped in making him freak out even more. When he woke up, it was almost dawn and he was either sweating buckets from fear or had been sobbing. Or both.

He couldn't remember what the last dream of her had been about-- only that he'd been startled from sleep feeling hollow inside and heartbroken...

*****

He makes it a habit to duck his face while out searching for another meal or a place to rest his head for the night just in case he bumps into her again. Things would be awkward now that she's infiltrated his head space. He'd seen her in passing on one too many occasions and was ravaged by the onslaught of emotions he'd been given from what he now called nightmares. Every time he was-- for lack of a better word-- triggered, he was overcome with grief and an aching head so much so that he'd stagger and feel like the wind was knocked out of him.

On one occasion, he'd fainted from how overwhelmed he'd gotten over her and only came to when a stray dog came over to challenge him for his bed. It would take him several moments to regain his composure and even longer for his head to stop throbbing, so he gave in to the dog's demands and scampered away without complaint.

On particularly rough days, he'd completely ignore his hunger pains and couldn't even bring himself to sit up. It was on one particularly rough day after weeks of having successfully avoided her that she ended up finding him. She'd stumbled upon him per chance while out on a run around a small park. She looked so relieved to see him again until she noticed he was scrunched up into a ball, panting heavily and red-faced. His mousey-brown hair stuck to his face as sweat visibly poured down his forehead and neck.

Her relieved mood changed in an instant as she sprinted across the street-- almost getting hit by a car in the process-- and immediately knelt beside him to press her hand to his forehead. He was burning up with a high fever, his eyes half-lidded and unfocused as she gently cradled his head in her arms. She called for an ambulance to take him to the hospital and rode along with him, her worried gaze never leaving his face. She wasn't allowed to go with him into the ER once the paramedics had wheeled him inside, but she'd be damned if her help for him would only go this far.

She frequently asked the nurses on call what his status was until one of them got fed up with her and shooed her away. She came back an hour later, having called off from work and gone to a flower shop to pick up balloons and flowers in retaliation. One of the nurses, after much convincing, took pity on the blue-eyed woman and let her through to the thief's room. He had accidentally eaten a poisoned snack meant to kill the rats in desperation to have something, anything, to eat and had almost died.

The blue-eyed woman almost burst into tears once the nurse finally left them alone together, taking in the scene of him being hooked up to machines somewhat poorly. The blue-eyed woman tip-toed to his bedside and reached out to tuck him snuggly under the covers after setting his gifts aside, needing a distraction to prevent herself from sobbing on the spot. Perhaps it had been a while, but she didn't remember him being this handsome up close. She was about to sit in the chair provided for her when he weakly began to mumble "Blue... Blue..."

She froze, her body stopping an inch above her seat as she held her breath in anticipation. When he went silent again, she pondered why, of all things, he'd subconsciously chosen to say that.

*****

She went to visit him every day for as long as she could for weeks after that, putting up a great fight with the nurses to let her through each and every time. He'd been starving himself for days before ingesting the rat poison, she'd found out, and couldn't begin to imagine what he'd gone through to do that to himself. She chose to talk to him about her day while he slept, to help him forget about his hardships even if only for a little while. She figured she could've read a book to him instead or let him listen to some calming music, but sharing bits of her life with him felt... right. Like she was talking with a friend. She knew how dangerous this must’ve sounded to anyone rational, and she’d agree with them.

She wasn’t sure how she knew he could be trusted-- she just did.

*****

The one time she’s late to go see him, he’s not in his assigned place. She asks a nurse if he’s been discharged, and when the nurse says “no,” her fear rises. Had he left the hospital still feeling sick? Was he just well enough to survive on the streets again? She immediately regretted taking him here, thinking he’d probably run away for fear of being unable to pay the medical costs. She curses in frustration and hops from nurse to nurse, begging them to help her find him. The nurses do the best they can, but with no name registered on his records, the search proves unsuccessful. The blue-eyed woman is just about to lose hope when a doctor comes down the hallway and recognizes her.

“You’re here for that homeless kid, right? Brown hair, brown eyes? Yellow hoodie?”

“Yes! Yes, I am! Where is he? No one seemed to know where he’d been transferred to.” She replies, a sigh of relief escaping her lips.

“He’s over in the B wing, down this hall and to your right. He seems to call for you in his sleep.” The doctor smirks playfully when she stutters out a “me?”

“It’s good that he’s finally made a friend. Poor kid’s been wandering the streets for years and doesn’t even know who he is.”

She feels her heart sink to the soles of her feet and bites her lip in an effort not to cry. The doctor waves for her to follow him towards the receptionist’s desk.

“You come here so often that I’m gonna certify you as his official visitor. Does that sound ok?”

She nods and thanks him graciously, writing ANA where she’s instructed on the sign-in sheet and on a name tag. Ana follows the doctor’s instructions to his room and hesitates at the door when she hears a flush from the toilet inside.

He’s awake. She hadn’t prepared herself for this part. She inhales deeply and listens for the sound of the bathroom door opening and closing and the sound of his bare feet padding against the linoleum floor as he gets back into bed. Ana counts to three and knocks quietly on the door twice, jumping slightly when she hears him say, “Come in.” His voice still sounds a little tired, but it also sounds... calm. Ana slides his door open and shut behind her, waiting to see how he’ll react now that he knows it’s her. She hears him gasp before she picks up her head to see him, and the room suddenly grows silent.

He’s sitting upright in bed with his hands folded in his lap, staring at her owlishly. She can tell from here that he’s regained some color to his cheeks. He’s showered for probably the first time in months, his hair combed and spiked up instead of its usual flat state. He pushes an empty tray of hospital food to the side and pats the bed, gesturing for her to approach him. Ana doesn’t dare breathe as she hesitantly walks over to him, which makes him smile softly at her. Ana blushes under his warm gaze and lowers herself onto a chair by his side, never once tearing her eyes away from him.

They remain quiet for a few more minutes as they take in each other before them.He’s the first to break the silence for once when he thanks her for all that she’s done. Ana waves a hand to let him know it’s no problem.

“I...” Her voice comes out in a squeak, and she coughs to clear her throat of her nerves. He chuckles at that, and she blushes harder.

“What I wanted to say was... that you don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll pay for it. Your hospital bills, I mean...” She says as she plays with the strap of her purse. He hums and leans back into his pillow.

“You know I’ll never be able to repay you for that.” He comments, frowning. Ana shakes her head and carefully takes one of his hands into hers. She feels a rush of familiarity in doing so and looks up to see he’s wide eyed as well. Ana licks her lips and squeezes his hand.

“You don’t owe me anything. I want to help you. You deserve it.”

He feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes and tries to blink them away rapidly. He’s at a loss for words, but squeezes her hand back reassuringly. Ana saddens at the forlorn smile tugging at his lips.

“...You don’t even know me.” He whispers, voice breaking the slightest bit. “I don’t even know me...”

“I know.” Ana answers. She shifts in her seat and thinks carefully about what she’s about to say next. “I know we’ve never met before, and this... might sound crazy, but I... I feel like I have to do this.” He shifts his gaze from their hands to her face just as Ana leans in closer. “I don’t know why... but I feel like I’m drawn to you.” She admits, a look of honesty in her eyes.

He perks up at that, his nose wrinkling. “Do you mean that?” Ana nods, and he exhales shakily. He scoots closer to her and bites his lip in thought. “Would you... believe me if I said I knew you once?” Ana’s eyebrows raise in confusion. She shakes her head and shrugs, but waits for him to continue on the matter.

“Ever since I first met you,” he clarifies, “I’ve dreamt about you, in another life. Sorry if that sounds creepy...” He smiles apologetically. “I know that doesn’t make any sense, and they could just be weird dreams, but they feel too real.”

Ana nods and takes what he says all in. It doesn’t sound too far-fetched of an idea, all things considered. She’s never been one to scoff at fate or coincidences, and it would explain why she feels the need to be with him despite knowing absolutely nothing about him. But she also can’t prove what he’s said is true because she’s had none of the experiences he’s described to her for herself; it’s almost heartbreaking to her. Ana remembers something important and feels her heart begin to race as the clogs in her brain begin to click into place.

“Hey... Can I ask you something?” She starts, hoping her hunch is on the right track. “Your doctor told me you were talking in your sleep. Did he ever mention that to you?”

The thief nodded, eyes lowered in confusion. Ana felt herself shake in anticipation for her next question.

“Did you know that, back in high school, my friends used to call me ‘Blue?’”

*****

Ana is there for him once he’s finally released from the hospital with a stuffed dog and a home-cooked meal. Ana had bought him a change of clothes after the ones he was brought in were discarded. She thought he looked good in yellow and had gotten him another sweater in the same color as his old one; he was sporting it proudly today.

He’s over joyed to see her once he steps outside and comes bounding over to scoop her up into a bear hug and spins her around, the two of them giggling like children. He sets her down and eagerly waits for her to hand him his presents. She does so with a smile as he brings the boxed lunch up to his nose to sniff it, and his mouth begins salivating.

“You ready to go?” Ana points her thumb over her shoulder.

He nods and then cocks an eyebrow, searching behind her to see what she’s talking about. She laughs and shakes her head.

“I hope you know I’m not letting you go back to fend for yourself.”

“Where else am I supposed to go?”

“With me! Duh.” She boops his nose and is pleased to see the tips of his ears turn red.

“Is... that allowed?”

Ana’s face is smug as she loops her arm around his and begins walking towards the parking lot without answering his question. "So,” she bumps her hip against his as they wait for the light to turn green. “You picked out a name for yourself yet?”

He hums in thought, tapping his chin.

“Yeah. I’ve narrowed it down to two choices.”

“Oh good! Let’s hear them.”

“Satoshi.”

“You don’t... look like a Satoshi. No offense.”

“Really? Aw, man...” He huffs and walks step by step alongside her when she starts moving again. She makes them turn a corner to catch a bus back to her apartment.

“What’s the other name you liked?” She stops them under the shade of a tree right by the bus stop.

“Higemaru.”

Ana’s ears perk up at that, and she whips her head around to cup his face in her hands. “Hige. Please let me call you Hige, and I’ll let you call me Blue.”

Her eyes are sparkling as she says this, and he feels his chest swell with affection. He tries to control the blush threatening to color the bridge of his nose and fails.

“Deal.” He responds with a small grin. Ana squeals in delight and kisses his cheek. Hige almost faints.

#i hope you like your present bb #wolf's rain #hige #blue #hige x blue #red's art #i love one (1) man #and that smol man is Ribbon 💖#special thanks to Alyee for being my beta!

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hieromonkcharbel · 7 years ago

Photo

Ascetic: Reflections on the Way of Self-Sacrifice

Written by Anonymous

A boy once approached his father,

Old man , why do you fast? The father stood silent, bringing heart and mind together, and then:

‘Beloved boy, I fast to know what it is I lack.

For day by day I sit in abundance, and

all is well before me;

I want not, I suffer not, and I

lack but that for which I invent a need.

But my heart is empty of true joy,

filled, yet overflowing with dry waters.

There is no room left for love.

I have no needs, and so my needs are never met,

no longings, and so my desires are never fulfilled.

Where all the fruits of the earth could dwell, I have

filled the house with dust and clouds;

It is full, so I am content—

But it is empty, and so I weep.

‘Thus I fast, beloved, to know the

dust in which I dwell.

I take not from that which I might take,

for in its absence I am left empty,

and what is empty stands ready to be

filled.

I turn from what I love, for my love is barren,

and by it I curse the earth.

I turn from what I love, that I may purify my loving,

and move from curse to blessing.

‘From my abundance I turn to want,

as the soldier leaves the comfort of home,

of family and love,

to know the barrenness of war.

For it is only amongst the fight, in the

torture of loss, in the fire of battle,

that lies are lost and the blind man

clearly sees.

In hunger of body and mind, I see

the vanity of food,

for I have loved food as food,

and have never been fed.

In weary, waking vigil I see

the vanity of sleep,

for I have embraced sleep as desire,

and have never found rest.

In sorrow, with eyes of tears I see

the vanity of pleasure,

for I have treasured happiness above all,

and have never known joy.

‘I fast, beloved child, to crush the wall

that is my self;

For I am not who I am, just as these passions

are not treasures of gold but of clay.

I fast to die, for it is not the living who are

raised, but the dead.

I fast to crucify my desires, for He who was

crucified was He who lived,

and He who conquered,

and He who lives forever.’

The ascetic mind is not one of stone, cold and darkened to the outside world. Too often, those who stand apart from the heavenly struggle see it thus, and thereby see it askew. To climb is not to descend, and to grow is not to die. Those who reject the world do so not out of hatred, not out of scorn for the creation into which they have been born, but out of most profound love. It takes a true love deeper than most will ever know, to consider the world with such fondness and thanksgiving that one is willing to let it go. Hope and faith must be of the profoundest sort, if ever they are to give birth to a heart willing to break away from creation, that it might one day be united more fully to it.

The ascetic heart knows the world, and knows that it is good. It can see the tranquil pond, the azure sky, the frail leaf, and catch in every glimpse the radiant shimmer of the Divine. In all things there is God.

The ascetic heart knows creation, and rejoices in its bounty. It sees the breath drawn in and out by all creatures, watches as they mingle together in the Creator’s hands. There is fawn, there is bird, there is beast, but all are life, and all life is in Christ.

The ascetic heart knows humanity. In its gentle sight there is no man, no woman—only brother and sister, father and mother, daughter and son. The family of human life is united together with a bond only this heart can truly see, and once it is seen, it is all that can be seen in man. That bond of communion, reflection of the Divine, is the nature of human being.

The ascetic heart knows itself, and knows that it is good. For all that may darken and stain its surface, the handiwork of a Craftsman is still beloved, and what was once made divine can only be sullied and perverted, but never wholly destroyed. The ascetic heart looks within, and knows of a great Beauty to be found inside its own walls.

Yet this same ascetic heart also knows of darkness. As much as it has rejoiced over its light and fullness, so much has it bewailed its void and emptiness. A brilliant light which cannot be seen suffers not always from its source, but rather from its surroundings—the ascetic heart is pure, but its purity is covered in shame. It is the unique gift of the ascetic to know this, and her divine blessing that such knowledge wells up tears of grief like none the world can call forth. To gaze deep within and see the Sun darkened with stains is to be pained in soul, to see nature perfected and destroyed at once and in the same breath. Unbridled joy and soul wrenching agony collide; and if their collision be perfect, the ascetic heart is born.

The boy approached his father, gently, ‘Old man, why do you sorrow?’ The old man softened his tears:

‘Beloved, my sorrow is my joy.

Where there is no weeping, there is

no rejoicing,

And he who has not sorrowed

has never known delight.

‘I sorrow for the darkness that

I see within,

for the depth of the divide I have

cast between my mind and my heart.

I sorrow, for I have become

a source of sorrow,

and if I do not weep

I shall never be healed.

‘What God has blessed, I have squandered,

and therefore all the mountains weep.

Shall I yet rejoice?

See me, an aged man of squandered days,

a vessel of life confined to death—

yet merry, at peace, rejoicing!

‘No, beloved, let us weep.

Let us know sorrow, for then

we know ourselves, then we see.

No more in ignorance, but in truth

let us walk,

acknowledging our woe,

weeping with the earth.

When its sorrow is our sorrow,

then the weight shall crush my bones

—and crushed, I shall be reborn.

‘Sorrow is the door, dear boy,

the door of joy pure and true.

With every tear we shed,

we rejoice more fully,

exist more wholly,

love more purely.’

And with this, the old man’s words ceased, his mouth was still. And as the tears brimmed within his eyes, his joy radiated as the sun.

How captive are we, we fallen children, to the pleasures and passions that rule our lives. How we treasure the chains which imprison us, bestowing upon them garlands and wreathes, adorning them as friends. We sit bound by our desires, a lamentable state, yet we rejoice, for our eyes are shut fast; and as in a dream we see our confinement as freedom, our chains as wings.

The ascetic heart knows the darkness of this cell that is our fallen state, the chill of the stone walls that barricade us as if in tombs while yet we walk alive. And this heart knows, too, the cunning poison that is our joy, when founded in these walls—a poison sweet as honey, that dries the blood even as it tickles the tongue. The ascetic heart knows the deep reality of bondage, of the lament of all creation when a human person is bound to death, and recognizes the truth of the chains that bind him. Yet for the ascetic, the chains lose their appeal, their draw—for he knows that only the yoke offered by Christ can lead upward, inward, forward to Life.

One might feel pity, when seeing the ascetic, for he whose heart is borne aloft to God is the very man whose tears flow more freely than most, who weeps in time of rejoicing and sorrows at the festivals of the day. Yet how absent from the need for pity is the man who knows the sorrow of the world, for it is only he who knows its joy! Only when the illusion of ‘life’ is seen for all its empty reality, can the space within one’s vision that so long it occupied be filled—at long last—with the vision of Truth.

The sorrow of the ascetic is not a hopeless sadness, but a hope-filled lament for all that is distant from God. It is the heart weeping for its loss, even in the same breath that it receives its gain, just as the father wept for his prodigal son even as the latter rushed with longing into his father’s arms. The tears wept in this divine sorrow are tears of purification, the divine waters of baptismal grace welling up anew from the depths of the heart, purifying flesh and soul as they ascend upward and outward, finally to fall to the waiting earth.

It is in sorrow that the ascetic heart finds the doorway to joy. A heart petrified so long by the dry passions and fleeting winds of worldly desires becomes hardened, parched, incapable of change or growth. It is this parched earth that the ascetic waters with her tears, pained at her heart’s barrenness, but stirred with profoundest joy at the knowledge that each drop of water transforms the very earth itself.

As sorrow gives rise to tears, so is the hardened heart softened. As the heart is softened, holiness is born. As holiness is born, so divine transformation occurs. And where God transforms life, there all joy and hope, love and peace are found. Thus does the ascetic sorrow, for in sorrow is the door to life.

The boy approached his father, sat and questioned, ‘Old man, why are you alone? Why your solitude?’ The elder sighed, his breath light as the sky:

‘All the world is one, beloved,

kept entire in the hand of God.

Solitude is an illusion,

a fleeting vision;

for when one is still

he is never alone.

‘And yet the world turns,

turns with haste toward its ends—

fleeting, fallen, manmade all.

And we, too, turn,

glancing here and there, with

vision rushed, blurred;

never one, but divided.

‘I am alone, beloved, for the sake

of our communion.

Only in solitude is stillness born,

only there is it nurtured—

that great gift by which we live.

Divine silence can be found but

when the heart is still:

alone in its quest,

alone with God.

Thus solitude brings quiet,

and quiet the stillness where

whispers cease,

and here, the voice of God.

‘Hear me well, dear boy:

my solitude is my communion;

alone, we are together.

In solitude I see Christ whole,

for I am wholly His.

By this vision I am transformed,

my eyes at last beholding Life,

and Life reviving the blood of my veins.

I am Adam, wailing alone before the gates.

I quiet my tears to hear God beside me

—and am healed.

‘Thus my solitude, thus am I alone:

to know the depth of Christ within

and heal all that is without.

For when in solitude I come to know God,

I am united to Him in love,

united to Him who fills all,

And my solitude becomes my communion,

as alone I embrace the world.’

The call to retreat is mystical. There is divine grace even in the pin-prick voice of the inspired conscience, which through its love for the way of the Cross takes note of the desert, there sees a palace, and calls with longing for its transformation into home. It is the voice which called Christ into the sands of Judea, Anthony into the dunes of Egypt, Saba into the valleys of Palestine, and every human person into the desert of his own life. With echoes of the voice of God, this chord within the human soul seeks retreat, departure from the ways of extravagance and ease, and builds within the heart the desire for battle in the solitude of the sand.

Who has lived and not at some time heard—however faintly—this call? In the busiest moments, in the most absorbed, who has not felt the inexplicable desire for solitude, for a place of silence and peace in which to make sense of the world’s stage? Perhaps but for a fleeting instant, yet this desire is truly felt, and that instant can change the soul. There is crisis, for in the infinite smallness of that single moment, the great magnitude of life is felt, and a sense of distance formed.

It is the gift of the ascetic heart to live in this moment, to cultivate the seed of so precious an instant into the fruit of a whole life changed, woven to the garment of Christ. In this heart the moment of the call is extended to the span of life, for the call is sweet, and the heart knows that such an invitation cannot but be heeded. Love answers Love, for it is the One who is the essence of love whose voice has pierced the soul.

Thus is born the desire for retreat. Yes, to retreat is to flee, but the ascetic flees the world not to abandon it, rather to embrace it. It is not that she hates the world that the ascetic runs, but because she loves it too dearly to be captive to it falsely. To love the world in sin is to shame both the lover and the loved, to deny the holiness of both. Retreat becomes the means for purification, for sanctification, that holy may meet holy, and in purity embrace at last.

Solitude becomes communion, true communion, for our unity as brother and sister is naught but for our union with Christ, and this is in us all most fallen. Fragmented, torn from Christ and ourselves, we can never be whole. The family of humanity is a great and marvelous image formed after the nature of a puzzle with pieces intertwined, embracing. But if each piece will not itself be one, then the puzzle may never be fit. Thus the ascetic plunges into solitude, departure, for here the broken self is healed. Here distractions falls before the gates of contemplation, and fallen being finds reality in communion with the Maker of all. Here, alone, the thread is re-spun, strengthened, purified, brightened, that it may be woven as never before into the fabric of humanity.

Christ will be all in all, and all in Him must be one. But community without self is illusory, finite. The ascetic sees this, and in the vision sees response in flight. Alone, alone in the solitude of prayer, does he join the world at last.

The boy knelt at his father’s knees, ‘Dear man, how do you pray?’ The old man sighed a gentle sigh, smiling in his eyes. All questions came to this. Here the great meeting place of life, and of its nature the elder spoke:

‘Beloved, prayer is life,

and apart from it is only darkness.

It is the breath of the soul which yearns for God,

joining with His breath,

becoming one.

Prayer is the only light by which men can see,

the only vision they are called to adore,

for it is union with God

and in this union—everything.

‘Prayer is the quiet of a storm-tossed will,

an intellect guarded from the seas,

a mind centered upon God Most High.

It is stillness wrought in the midst of motion,

in which all that moves is God,

and with Him, all the world.

Prayer knows no words, if it is true,

for words belittle the presence of the Divine,

confound the conversation of Him who is all in all.

True prayer is beyond words,

transcending speech and thought,

communing with One who is greater than these,

Who works beyond them,

and in Whose presence they are no longer required.

Prayer is the stillness of the tongue,

of the mind, of the heart,

that God and these may come together

apart from words—one.

‘To pray, beloved, is to gather with Christ

at the shores of eternity;

To realize that these shores are within,

manifested in each human heart—

the infinite contained in the finite.

The One who came as Man and dwelt in a womb,

now dwells in the very heart of man.

Prayer is His energy, His activity,

vibrant in the human soul,

alive through His very Spirit,

stirring life to new heights

in the soul that has become quiet,

still enough to feel His breath.

‘We pray in our weakness, beloved,

for it makes us strong;

We pray in our strength,

for it makes us humble;

We pray in height and depth,

for prayer is our center—

It is the heart and nature of being,

the very root of spiritual life.

We pray when we know not how to pray,

for then it is not we,

but Christ who prays in us;

and the groanings of His Spirit

show the way.

‘To pray, dear child, simply sit.

Ask for the blessing of Him

with Whom you wish to commune.

Call Him near to you,

for without Him you have already lost.

Then close your eyes, child,

and banish every thought—

the good as well as the bad.

Whisper out only for His mercy,

and you shall receive it.

Let your heart be still,

Let your thoughts descend within,

for in the heart is Christ,

and only His wings will give you flight.

Then rest there, beloved,

in that place of still silence:

It is time for the Lord to act.

‘Prayer shall move you,

if only you will let it.

It will bear you to new heights,

transform your life and being;

But it will cost you your life,

your mind, your heart—

everything.

It will take of your time and energy,

it will consume your life;

But there is no reward greater than prayer.

So work, child.

Open your heart—and pray.’

The ascetic heart is ultimately a heart of prayer. It is this heart that yearns for communion with God Most High, and will sacrifice all the world for such union. It is the heart willing to cast aside every hindrance and sinful chain that weighs down the soul from its proper dwelling place in the bosom of Christ God, that the race to obtain the prize may be fought more fully, more readily.

In prayer, the ascetic finds his home; for prayer is the union of man with God, and this the state for which humanity was created at the dawn of time. Such union, wrought by the grace of God in concert with the faithful work of man, is the only true life of the human race. Apart from it, life is but a shadow; within it, the smallest man or woman radiates more brightly than the very sun.

True prayer is not speech, nor is it discussion. These are steps along the path to true, inner prayer, but they are not the goal. Speech is forged of words, and words of finite minds, and finite minds are ultimately incapable of grasping the fullness of divine Truth. Thus words begin the ascent, provide the path which leads to the mountaintop, but cannot reach its peak.

At the height of prayer all speech must cease. The God who transcends speech energizes the human soul and body to the attainment of intimate, personal union with Himself, whence knowledge and communion are of experience and not of words. The heart of prayer communes with God not through any mediating speech or conversation, but through direct connection and communion. God lifts the ascetic to Himself in prayer, and there she comes to know God.

What a mystery is this union of prayer! How can it be that God and man, Creator and created, come together as one? Yet God is not blasphemed in such a notion; all the saints and the whole witness of the holy Church testify to this most personal of unities that is the heart of prayer. Shall we sinful men know greater truths than they? The wish of the Saviour was, and remains, that He and man might be one; in prayer, when prayer be inner and true, His wish is born a reality.

The ascetic prays, and strives to pray. Her prayer is weak, yet it leads to perfection. And this the most profound of mysteries, that prayer, the fruit and goal of all ascetic labor, stands also as that labor’s greatest tool. The perfect is attained by the imperfect, and outer, base prayer shall eventually lead to glory. Though prayer be the target, it is also the bow by which the arrow is launched to hit the mark; and so the ascetic heart prays, that it might learn to pray. His cry remains, ‘Teach us to pray. Pray within us.’

The ascetic life is summed up in prayer, and prayer is attained by the ascetic life. There can be no true prayer in a soul untrained and unprepared, thus for the call of prayer the whole world is charged to take up the ascetic walk. This walk and this heart are not reserved for a select few, for only the monastics or the clergy, or the greatest of saints; they are the charge of every human person, the call of every human life. In the midst of any station, there can the ascetic heart be fostered—there can it flourish.

It is the gift of the ascetic heart to know, truly know the world, and it is the gift of the unworthy world to possess the call to this heavenward life. It is the very source of life, for life is in God and God is in prayer; it is the upward call of Christ Jesus in a world of fallen passions; it is the charge of heaven, the life of the angels, offered to frail humanity by a loving and benevolent God. Let there then be no delay: arise, take up this yoke so deft and yet so light to bear, and find in its ultimate struggle the only true peace and rest for the human soul.

22 notes · View notes