#eclipse lake spoilers
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the evil british man strikes again
idk what happened but for some reason he's come back into my brain and ive just GOT to draw him also hes become natural for me to draw ever since the animatic i made NJDSIFKNF
and one extra phillip below this lookin extra devious blood cw; under the cut
#philip wittebane#toh spoilers#emperor belos#the owl house fanart#the owl house spoilers#eclipse lake#toh belos#toh phillip#toh phillip wittebane#belos fanart#something abt the mustache and beard combo that saves me from drawing his chin#ALSO THE FLUFFY PONY TAIL#i fucking love drawing his ponytail#as well as the uhhhh poofy shirt thing#idk what its called#but you know what i mean#IVE GOT TO DRAW HIM ANGERY#hes such a fun villain#a real fucking asshole#and i love it#hes spookay#also whenever i watch elsewhere elsewhen#i cant look at phillip the same#everytime hes on screen i just think#he murdered caleb#that man killed his brother AND TOOK HIS COAT TOO#its insane
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I’m obsessed with this scene from eclipse lake
Some might see it as comedy or a visual gag on the word play of the ‘common mold’ or they might see it as foreshadowing to Luz’s death, which is understandable since she turns into a mold-like cluster.
But I think it’s deeper than that. I personally see it as using fungi as symbolism or storytelling tool to Luz’s character and development.
I have 2 points I’d like to make about that, first about Luz herself.
One of, if not, the most distinguishable trait of luz is that she’s human, it’s what sets her apart from all the other boiling isles inhabitants, to the point it became her moniker in a world full of witches and demons to many characters.
And genealogically speaking humans are more related to fungi than any other kingdom, more than even plants. We share nearly 50% of our DNA with fungi, enough for us to contract many of the same viruses a they do.
so putting the scientific perspective on the side let’s take a look at the poetic point of view.
Due to the fact that fungi’s main purpose in our ecosystem is to break down living matter and release other substances into the soil and atmosphere, they have always been a symbol for rebirth and resurrection, reincarnation and rejuvenation and regeneration.
Which yes might eludes to the finale where luz literally died and came back to life but you could also see it as luz being rebirthed into the boiling isles. There she started a new life, with a new family to love, a new house to live in, a new dream to look up to, new relationships to make and maintain, basically a brand new life.
Last thing, like luz, mycology and mycologists have always been overlooked and unappreciated, even in the scientific community. According to an article published in the guardian, fungi weren’t seen as their own kingdom of life until the 60s. Mycologists were put in a corner of the plant sciences department, rather than in their own fungal sciences department. And you could see how neglecting that must feel. But while being overlooked like fungi, mycology thrived in the dark and the damp.
The second point I’d like to make is not the fungi’s relation to luz herself but to her magic or at least how she uses magic i.e. glyphs.
We know glyphs are the first and oldest form of magic, just like how fungi was the first organism to come to life on earth. And as shown in the show, where different characters used glyphs at some point, that it’s very versatile, it’s very flexible they have a lot of uses and advantages even if many looked at glyphs with condescending disdain at first, we can’t ignore it’s potential.
Which it’s very similar to the strides fungi and mycologist are doing in the industry. Fungi’s application can be found in food, medicine, textiles, fibres, packaging materials, and there are some great research being made to use it as biofuel. And it’s not done, it’s no near being done in the field, and just like how we finished the series with luz discovering new glyphs, scientists all around the world are discovering new fungal species on a daily basis. The future is fungal.
#the owl house#toh#luz noceda#toh luz noceda#fungi#mycology#character analysis#the owl house spoilers#toh spoilers#owl house#eclipse lake#luz toh#toh luz#science
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Weird little brother characters protecting Amity in an impromptu fight
And her protecting them back
#toh#toh spoilers#amity blight#king clawthorne#toh mattholomule#matt tholomule#toh hunter#toh boscha#eclipse lake#the owl house for the future#rewatching this scene it reminded me a lot of amity king v hunter in eclipse lake. that said matt carried them in this fight against boscha#i was legit impressed w his skills! he distracted well. he caught & threw back an attack. & he had the illusions going all at the same time#tc posts
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Pov : the goopers are fighting
#the owl house#toh#toh amity#amity blight#hunter#toh hunter#hunter noceda#golden guard#eclipse lake#toh spoilers#toh season two#titans blood
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Jim lake jr, the first boyloser i cared about <3
#bear bitch#tales of arcadia#trollhunters#trollhunters spoilers#jim lake jr#troll jim#eclipse jim#silly guy#tales of arcadia fanart#trollhunters fanart
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Rewatching the owl house and cause this on screen for a second at the beginning of s2e9 “Eclipse Lake” he then is keeping Hunter off missions cause he wants to keep him safe in the castle cause “it would be a hassle to find a replacement” in previous episodes they failed to hunt the selkidomus and a raid on the resting place of the galdorstones just beefed up security. That’s why he pulls Hunter back from the front lines, he suddenly has become a lot less expendable since he can’t be easily replaced with a new grimwalker which he was clearly thinking of cause every time hunter/golden guards start to develop independence and critical thinking they start defying him.
#the owl house#grimwalker recipe#spoilers#hunter#season 2 episode 9#eclipse lake#also they took some titan blood off King in the last episode so they already had some titan blood#probably old discourse but new to me!
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in circles (running down) / viktor x gn!reader, character study, yearning, angst, seriously too much angst, hurt/comfort, implied past relationship, season 2 spoilers, s2 act 2 viktor, astral intimacy, (you follow the rumors of a healer to the commune, and viktor allows you to teach him what it means to be human.) word count: 15.7k
read on ao3
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Metamorphosis begins with kaleidoscopes of colors, an ache between your ribs, and your hands tightly gripped around Viktor's wrists.
You have him pressed underneath you, pinned in place, like a butterfly's specimen; unearthly gaze pliant, gazing up at you as though you're something worth observing. A sea of stars. Infinite possibilities. Or perhaps he can see the intricate pattern of every notion you've tried to keep hidden.
There is a distant, fragile outcome somewhere, blissfully free of the strife he's been attempting to cure, where the both of you are guided only by the present. Where stumbling inside the elysium he's made for himself means falling into familiar, waiting arms. It means whispered confessions of, Viktor, I missed you. It sets itself into motion with your arms around his neck, while your mouth remembers the shape of his. Blurring moments upon days upon years into a worshipful, mortal culmination.
Somewhere. It isn't this reality.
Your temple forms a near painful knot, your breathing is weighty in your tired lungs, but your old partner's expression remains blissfully passive; Schrodinger's, some kind of paradox. Not dead, not alive. It should be easy to keep him pinned underneath you, despite the newfound weight to his form. Your arms shouldn't be shaking. Viktor eyes you calmly, as patient as he is unreadable.
His hands twitch slightly — you're binding his wings — less akin to a human's natural irregularity. Instead, more like a complex system, thumbing through and testing its limits. Still, he doesn't attempt to break away from you. He has no need to.
"I am certain you have recognized," Viktor begins, his voice familiar, despite the odd steadiness it carries, like the calmness of a frozen, still lake. Despite the distant rumble of monotonous vibrations that manifest between his words, "I need not delve into your mind, in order to unravel it."
Understanding one another comes naturally, when you've long since held his shape in your soul.
Your grip tightens on his wrists. The soft satin of his makeshift clothing brushes your skin when your knee prods into his stomach.
You've seen what Viktor is capable of. The rumors were everywhere, from the moment you fled into the Undercity. Deciphering thoughts with a mere touch, examining the minds of those he pries into. Sensing emotions and evolving them, eclipsing them. Healing ailments that shouldn't be fixable; accomplishing the future you once dreamed of, one way or another. No matter the consequence, whatever it takes.
He isn't the man you remember. This new boundary of existence is something near-eternal. Something more star-bound, boundlessly fate-defying.
The utopia he's prospered runs cold, when the vessels within it lack heat. Cool air, clean and sharp, nips at your skin, carried on its own phantom breeze. Viktor's chambers are quiet, more ghostly than peaceful. He's lined the floor of his cocoon with flowers. Brilliant blooms of purple hydrangea and blue wolfsbane, petals rustling, whispering prayers to the deep night sky.
Flowers, in the Undercity. Gods.
Viktor's hair fans out around him, messy and unkempt. Longer than you remember, chestnut strands tapering off into hues of vanilla. His gaze swirls, in shades of sunset and petroleum, polychrome like the rainbow of oil on water. His eyes remind you of a summer storm. Clouds covering the sun, before it begins to shine again.
You shouldn't have come here, shouldn't have let his doe-eyed acolytes lead you in. But when one of them murmured in a voice you'd almost forgotten, a voice you were sure you'd never hear again — when Viktor spoke through them, to sweetly promise he'd been expecting you, how were you ever meant to escape?
You could fill an ocean with your doubts and shouldn'ts — it was foolish. Stupidly, terribly irrational, to follow the rumors that Viktor was still alive. Looking at him now fills your veins with nothing and everything. A cataclysm of sensations, compounding all at once.
Grief echoes in the hollow chamber of your chest. Viktor can't be real, he was supposed to stay dead. Your hands shake, fingertips digging firmly into the hard edges of his synthetic wrists.
Viktor, on the opposite spectrum of emotion, barely falters.
"It must be all-consuming. Irrefutable. An… anomaly, burning within you. What epitomizes the worst burden to bear?" He murmurs, resolute. Gaze examining you, submerged in tender oblivion. "Resentment? Regret? Misery?"
Are those words an attempt to unequivocally define love, or an admission, an echo of what he is sure you are experiencing, because he once felt it in turn?
You resent the reverberation of his voice as it throbs through your mind. You've come to regret every wasted moment, each swallowed confession. Finding him again feels like a curse — and he knows. There's a gaping, empty maw in the pit of your stomach, and you can't keep it from destroying you. You've sacrificed yourself on his altar, without realization. Twin flames are destined to find one another. They were born from the same wildfire.
"It doesn't matter, not to you," You're gritting out. They're the first words you've spoken in ages, and they're all-too sharp when they spit from the edges of your teeth. "You don't feel anything."
Viktor's chest heaves gently, faint breaths that contrast the mechanical thrum of his shell.
"Your accusations are turning bold," He hums, not denying, not quite acknowledging. His voice isn't what you remember, but it's close enough, accented. Warm, when directed towards you. Enough to kill. "There is a persistent numbness, that emanates from a lack of humanity. But it is not infallible."
Your brows pinch. "So that's- that's it? I was some kind of afterthought, I meant so little and you were so numb you couldn't think to tell me you were still-"
"No," Viktor interrupts. Tone gentle, dream-like. Eyes softening, as his words become perfectly and paradoxically earnest. "You were the reason I felt alive."
He watches you, observes the conflict in your shifting expression. Flexes his fingers, clenches his hands. Idly thinking. The mere sight of you is an anchor within him. Returned pieces, notches clicking into place. Radiancy, bursting with light within him like a sacred heart — a final brush of his fingertips, to the fading edges of mortality.
Figments of sensations, the qualities he'd assumed were lost on him, are made to surge through him with the strength of a dull current; this is your doing. He can sense the faint warmth of your hands, nearly chokes on your name in his throat when he swallows. There's pain in your expression, a desire to falter, and it feels — reminds him of a gaping hole to the chest.
Viktor opens his mouth to speak, and your free hand opts to harshly wrap around his neck.
"The hurt, you are experiencing- when it is able to be sensed, examined," Viktor takes a harsh breath, as you tilt his chin up with a firm, bruising grip. "It begins to resound." His jaw grinds. Strands of his soft hair tickle your knuckles. His pretty, familiar mole follows his mouth when his lips briefly press into a hard line. "It is innate. Engrained memories, amidst fleeting desires for connection. Knowing how deeply you are broken vexes me."
He waits for your eyes to meet his own. Your gaze is practically piercing.
"And nothing is stronger than this ache."
The ache he can sense, because you are caught in it. Shared, entwined pain; two complements, sewn together.
Viktor believes part of you exists within him. It's inescapable: one's ties to another.
Simplicity was a circumstance he took for granted. Days in the Undercity, before it became this. Evenings spent researching or collaborating or re-learning how to breathe, when your dreams hovered just out of reach. Now, you're masquerading as a God and an apostate.
His mind hasn't quieted, since he felt your presence in his sanctuary. How could so much hurt stem from a once endless abundance of fondness? Tossing aside all past restraints seemed to be the most sensible option, the arcane's chosen option, but you are such an oddity.
Your very existence defies and redefines reason. You are… unforgettable. A sweet, exceedingly tempting obstacle. An inevitable destiny, worthy of any sacrifice. Irregardless of if the threads of fate decide they should will it. You were the missing piece to this theorem. And yet, my ignorance aspired to push you away.
I have you, now. I can reach you, I could begin to quiet the pestilence within you.
So why do you refuse?
Viktor's jaw clenches ever-so slightly. His gaze flashes with a hint of resolve, or tenderness, or something in between.
"I understand you have… missed me," He murmurs, his tone fraying around the words when he reaches their sore spot. To have each other as something to miss is so very human, so very quaint. "There is so much tension, hidden behind your eyes. Volatile. Yet still so… gentle. I remember the times when I would call out to you, simply to watch the way they softened."
They're softening now; your gaze can't help but melt, every single time you look at him. Despite the pain, despite the anger. The memory digs at you, it pries into your chest with sharp, thorned roots. Irreplaceable murmurs of your name in his voice. With his accent, with life in his tone, before the world sought to take it from him. With the cadence he clings to each time he goes through the syllables, your syllables, that screams, you are something I covet.
For a brief moment, you swear Viktor shifts from his ever-endless calm expression, chapped lips tilting to form the slightest, melancholy ghost of a smile.
"I fear I have long since owed you many apologies, little spark. There isn't much to offer, in the way of consolation. But, I-" Viktor's gaze weakens, flickers over you with dying sparks like a candle-lit flame; his hands clench, his sharp breathing echoes.
"I would have never forgotten you. You were irreplaceable. As was the life we once shared together. For every moment spent in my solitude, I lost myself, in the certainty that we might meet again."
Your throat tightens. An ache forms in your chest, threatening to spill over, like an overflowing chalice.
There's a distinct weight to his wrists, as you continue to hold them in place. A heavy, but still hollow chassis, his hands are criss-crossed with various mechanical patterns. The Hexcore's corruption is beginning to envelop more of him. It isn't like carving runes into delicate skin. That, at least, was a choice. A desperate, self-destructive, self-saving choice.
Bright, purple veins surge across what remains of his skin. They knot into his forehead, they curve underneath his tired eyes. Energy thrums from inside his hands, reminiscent of sparks rippling through electrical wire. The glow is faint, perhaps weakened. Ornaments trail down his neck, beneath his robes. Outlines of steel and amber carved into his figure.
Unconsciously, you long to reach out and touch. To trace your fingers along his intricacies: golden, godlike. To decide if his skin, if the smallest shred of what remains of him, is still as soft and lovely as you remember.
Your palm slips from his neck first.
It trails across his chest, in between the silhouette of collarbones. He isn't cold, nor warm. Empty, more like. Pulses of distant magic meet your fingertips, like pressing your hand to a static-filled television screen. He weakens underneath your touch, body going limp as a silent acknowledgment. There is no heartbeat. But you can feel the repeated ricochet of his breathing, however fake, however practiced.
Viktor's body feels powerful, reflecting the extent of his talents. It is a strong, complex, restrained prison. It must be freeing, in some ways; to breathe without the choke of rot in your lungs. To run, with the wind at your back as the ground meets your feet. You should be happy. Grateful. Viktor is alive — but he isn't able to be saved.
The objective you arrived with is already starting to crumble. Oh, you knew this wouldn't be a quick affair.
You didn't follow him for information, or for evidence. You weren't led by the wishes of the council's remains, or by the ambitions of your once-shared lab partner — or by anything else, besides your own heart. Nothing else matters. Just your own wavering strength, and the echoes in your mind to do something. Just each shaky step you took, traveling further into Zaun despite the smog that filled your chest. Just the plea in your mind, and the rumors at your feet that Viktor hadn't fully left.
Finally, when you stumbled into the commune with tired legs and weary lungs, you could breathe. And you couldn't decide if it was because of the plants, the trees, the fresh air, or if it's because of him.
You failed. You weren't meant to stay, weren't meant to trust him. But the moment your eyes locked with his, it was over. (Viktor smiled, you swore you saw amber, and he beckoned you close, without hesitation.)
It's crushing, to feel so much. You're suffocating in the wake of your own pounding heartbeat. Throbbing in your chest, echoing in your eardrums. Pulsing in your throat.
There's no use reconciling with your partner's shadow. And yet, in spite of it all, your partner, your reflection, rests underneath you. Gazing up at you with eyes that whirl in endless, lifeless shades. The silence stretches, and he doesn't fight the enveloping sting.
Yes, he was right, you are burning. As bright as the sun, with a fierce fire in your chest; caught between your ribs, as the flames attempt to escape through the gaps. It's reminiscent of the sticky-warm suffocation of bleeding out. Blood made to pour onto his chest and his clothes and his hands, as Viktor would press his palms to your side to stop your wound from spilling.
Love is a promise to pursue. To covet a name underneath your tongue. To swear to be doomed from the start. Like tying a string around two fingers — the path was set, you only needed to follow.
Your shoulders become tense, before they start to shake. The grip you've been holding on his wrists loosens. Viktor allows his hands to flex, now freed, but you're stumbling, collapsing in on yourself.
Uselessly, clumsily, you hide your face in your hands. It hardly helps. Your chest stings, your cheeks are wet. Your tears fall onto him like rain, droplets gently hitting his cheek.
"Oh," Viktor's lips quiver, as he tries to find words, but there's only one solution: "Come here."
And as though every reality led to this moment, as though embracing you is less of a conscious choice, and simply what he was made for, Viktor reaches for you, without hesitation.
The simple movement of his palm warps reality around it. His hand hums, buzzes mechanically, thrums with an otherworldly glow. His fingers are shaky; they haven't trembled this much in ages.
Careful fingertips brush up your arm. Your shoulders slump, and he grabs onto your wrist with little force. He feels your pulse. Each dull thud reverberates in his own chest, twisting up his spine as a surge of fire. His eyes can't help but flutter closed.
That's when natural intuition takes over, a pulse resounds throughout the entirety of Viktor's system, and all at once, he is touching your soul.
Your pent up emotions are an aurora in his mind. A vast array, everything complex, knit together so tightly, he doubts it's unwindable. He attempts to search through each individual spark, between every luminous flicker of starlight. Your very essence is rich with a sense of longing; it tastes like sugar on his tongue.
Slowly, carefully, you unfurl, as if your petals were exposed to the sun. Your heart hears him, you recognize it is Viktor's touch. Soul to soul, hands threading over you, within you. And like running into a waiting embrace, you vividly let the layers of your mind open.
There are beautiful rays of loving light, warmth that feels like the sun on his face, and subsequently feels like you. Affection burns into him with the heat of fierce, dripping candle wax. Then, there's fragile echoes that pierce through him, like pulling your lover in by the wrists, while they plunge a knife into your heart.
And there are deep, dark depths of drowning water. An endless, barren abyss to be swallowed into; you sit at the very bottom, curled in on yourself, untouchable. He reaches out to you, extends a palm for you to take, but you won't come. From here, you won't even look at him.
When he dives further, he sees himself.
Feels himself, sensing and tasting and experiencing his own image through your perception. He is the warmth underneath your skin, you are the celestial glow in his ribcage. It's a rebound, a ripple, a pulse of sonar. Touches and affections that he can feel on his skin, within his own body, and then through you, with your palms.
A touch to the small of one's back, or to a tensed shoulder, to a protruding spine. A palm between the butterfly-wing shape of his rigid shoulder blades, soft caresses to calloused knuckles and fresh wounds. His hands to the weakest parts of you, and your fingertips, tracing the still-human parts of him, before they were lost to his reunion with fatality.
Hands finding one another, fingers brushing, fingers interlacing — and Viktor remembers how it felt to wish your hand could be in his forever. He memorizes the shape of your heartbeat, as if it were his own.
Drowned in vivid color, painting-like and hazy, he reaches stretches of your imagination. It's easy to become lost in your dreams, within the places you wanted those touches to lead. Where you wanted him to touch. Your reveries are so bright they're blinding.
In your dreamscape, caresses travel. Your hands become bolder than they should, when they're massaging and soothing the ache in his shoulders. The press of skin to skin is a gentle connection, between soft, hesitant, dangerous pleas for more. There are confessions in a thousand different ways, countless almosts and bitten tongues.
Every instance is simple. Blissfully mundane. You replay and reimagine a sudden profession, while your head is resting on his shoulder, and it feels good instead of terrifying to let everything change. And when your hand finds his own, his thin fingers lace with yours naturally. And the academy is quiet, but your voice as you mumble his name is infinitely quieter.
You imagine mutual desperations to pull each other closer.
(Gentle brushes led by quickened breaths, exploring pallid skin, skimming the details you've mapped out in your mind. There's faint freckles on his arms, when he rolls up his sleeves. He has a mole on the back of his neck, only noticeable when his collar gets loose. A palm traces his spine, and you're picturing pressing your mouth to the scattered trail of moles on his back. Your breath is hot enough to burn, to leave behind marks of your own.)
Oh, and you wanted him so close. Closer than he knew. Closer than you could ever be, not now, not anymore.
Viktor sees his own image more clearly than ever; vibrant, when filtered through your eyes. Every moment shared between you plays on repeat. Looping, convening together.
Everything he achieved — the complexities of his discoveries and innovations amazed you, but they begin to blur in your vision, when you can't help but be drawn to the thrilled, pretty look on his face. All of his details — down to the most minute. The routine fidgeting of his fingers when he's lost in thought. The specific swirl he adds to a select few letters when he writes.
Your heart cradles each of his subtleties. Gods, how you adore him. You have all of him memorized.
Heavy and encapsulating, the warmth left by you is so much worse, when he is pressed in between all of your pieces. He remembers himself in a much kinder way. In the way you remembered him: intelligent, remarkable, enthralling. Edges blur together and clutter the horizon where he ends and you begin. He's lost in soft greetings, and gentle farewells, reverberating in his own voice. I missed you, I was thinking of you, I'll see you.
He walks through cathedrals of everything you admired. Your shared dreams, and his budding ambitions. Promises to make his home a better place. Hallways of framed stolen glances. Quiet utterances of the smallest assurances, and swears to achieve great things together. Embraces that molded you into one another's muse. (Something fulfilled, and something lost.)
And deeply, strongly, he aches. His chest burns, explodes with light. To you, he represents a spark, the sun, the moon, the stars. He radiates in echoes of everything at once. And he is —
Alive, he is irrefutably, relentlessly alive.
Your fondness forms around him as palpable rays of radiance; glimmers surround his stratosphere, small suns and brilliant meteor showers. You are a thousand beautiful colors, smashing and blending together. You are as exceptional as he always knew you to be, you are the definition of devotion. As if your hand is at his arm, guiding him to touch the edges of the sky and the sea. Together, you are one in the same.
It transcends corporality. Viktor reaches into the spiral of your mind. He finds you, he drags you from the depths you've tried to hide yourself in, and he pulls you into the cosmos. He embraces you. Palms pressed to your back, arms around you, as the phantom edges of his figure merge into yours, like paint blending together on a palette.
Viktor clings onto your starlit particles at his fingertips, he savors every flickering memory and vivid emotion. You're unraveled in his palms completely, deciphered down to your faintest atoms. Your limbs entwine with his; without strife, utterly weightless.
Time fades, combines itself into a single thread — until, for a brief moment, it's impossible to tell if minutes have passed, or hours, or centuries.
Until he feels your touch, and realizes it isn't within the confines of your shared mind. It's real.
All at once, he returns to reality.
Viktor's eyes flutter open abruptly. His own soul careens back into him with the force of a freight train. His breath comes in hard pants that half-fill his makeshift lungs, and shake the entirety of his chest. The back of his throat is rough and raw. He blinks, to refocus his misty vision.
Oh. He's cupping your face in his hand.
Your palm has decided to press itself to the back of his knuckles, determined to keep him there. Absently, your fingertips brush the sharp angles of his metallic joints, his gold accents. The flowers surrounding his chambers rustle. Their soft petals tickle his cheek.
Dull energy thrums from his touch — sparks of the arcane, briefly buzzing on your skin like static. Touching the scars within your deepest layers. Your presence has pulled him back onto your plane. His magic tapers off, slowly and steadily.
Now it's just him, just his hand at your cheek. Blissfully simple.
Your tears have stopped. Your breathing shakes. With merciful, trembling touches, Viktor caresses your face, as though it's the first time. His thumb gently brushes away a stray droplet.
The intricate texture of his hand is irregular, almost metallic. Far from what you remember, far from the familiar softness of skin. It isn't anything you could consider human — and yet, you still lean into him, your cheek practically nuzzling into the hard edges of his palm. Brazen and affectionate, desperate and cat-like.
Viktor's jaw clenches. His harsh gasps echo throughout the vastness of his hollow chambers.
No, this isn't- it's not possible, he thinks, in his own stupidly weak voice, barely able to form the words. It can't be. The arcane would not allow it.
He feels like his head might pound out of his own skull. The warmth of your cheek is the only thing he can focus on, radiating against his palm like your skin is made from stardust.
All at once, he has been carved down to his most basic components, until what remains is pure, raw emotion. His emotion, not the residuals of yours.
He is himself, no longer on the outside looking in. Not the shell of what remained after the fire, the hunger, the waves of corruption. A soul returning to the body feels nothing like how he'd imagined — it's sudden, unexpected. It's a swell of fire, like kindling familiar flames in the depths of your chest.
And his complex theories should prove that this shouldn't be happening. This body feels in tessellations, with precise, predetermined, machine-like processes. Everything within him must work in harmony. The arcane possesses, as much as it aspires to synchronize.
His own quickened breathing resounds in his eardrums mockingly. He's grown used to what became of his body and the Hexcore, and the fusion between them: the thrumming in his veins, sparking impulse, potential.
Yet, within him now, there's nothing but silence. Endless, persistent silence.
It scares him.
Countless cycles of inner contemplations led him to this. His thoughts and functions are supposed to click into place, to be understandable. Distance is meant to be placed between the inner self and the surface. Separating the body from the mind is how he was able to foster this community in the first place, how he's managed to help so many — his own sense of self needed to be secondary. His own desires, his emotions. Like a covetous God, the greater good demands sacrifice.
But there was an outlier. A contingency. A chance, a small stir amongst his faded, longing ashes, that promised it could metamorphose him. Viktor considered every possible option. In every prediction, within the web of this reality, it doesn't work.
His reunion with you was inevitable, but in his predictions, when you arrive to see what the arcane has made of him, everything begins crumbling down. The soft embrace he'd share with you is limited only to his imagination. Your fingertips press to numb metal, and Viktor can't feel your touch when it finds him.
He foresaw your arrival. It wasn't part of his plan; it meant little to the overarching design, to his hopes for the Undercity. It was — you were — a fated tie. He'd hoped for this. Lost himself, in the inevitably of finding you, just to have you torn from him once more.
Every intricacy in the array before him gave the same response. He knew this was written to be a tragedy, but Gods, none of it would matter once he saw your face, one last time.
But this? This, he could not predict.
The intense radiance in his veins, the fire in his ribs, the warmth of you underneath his own palm; you've flipped everything on its head. Somehow, someway, you've proved him wrong. You have proven fate wrong. You are the cause of his newfound light, and you are the lighter to his innermost match.
You've made him return to humanity.
Viktor pulls his palm away from your cheek. His chest heaves. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, and runs his purple-hued fingers through his hair, over his forehead, somewhat surprised by the lack of sweat.
Then, he examines his hand. Turns it over, flexes his shaky fingers. Vividly ascertains that yes, these are his own eyes that he's looking through. He attempts to steady his breathing, he tries to send power thrumming through his system. Nothing answers. Magic fails to reach his palm, aside from a few faint buzzes, like the sparks that would linger after cutting a power line.
"Impossible," Viktor grits out, half in wonderment, half in panicked disbelief. His own hand continues to shake in front of him. He can't think, now that he has you, and he has no idea what to do with his own soul; "How could this- how could you-"
With a dull, echoing sob, you're tipping into him.
Viktor feels your arms clumsily wrap around his shoulders. Your weight rests comfortably against his fake body. He sees in hues of amber and gold, basking in the honey-rich glow of the sun as it fills his iris, before the sky darkens, and the colors around him go wild once more.
You embrace him. So, so tight. As though he might disappear, slipping through the gaps in your arms and the cracks between your fingertips, if you ever were to let go.
A hand grabs a fistful of his rumpled clothing, a palm staggers down and finds where it's loose, to let your fingers feel the back of his neck. They trace down, unsteady. You brush your fingertips over the first bolt embedded into his makeshift spine. Grazing it repeatedly, feeling the defined notch. Caressing the smooth, metal surface underneath your thumb.
It's an anxious, idle motion. Viktor listens to the shake in your breathing. He remains still, half-limp in your weak arms.
This is unnatural — the press of soft human limbs, to an ever-present mechanical body. Yet, Viktor can feel all of you. Every gentle fan of your breath on his neck. He senses your fingertips when they move, and with another sad little sob that has his heart splintering, your hands are getting lost in his long hair. Grasping, trembling. Viktor feels electricity race from his scalp, down to his back.
A thousand connecting sensations come to life within him: constellations of memories, once-dormant hopes that bud like wildflowers. And he realizes, fiercely, abruptly, within what has become of him, he still remembers the shape of your name in his chest.
Holding you is an action he wasn't meant for, it embodies everything he isn't. But Viktor expels a soft sigh. He allows himself to pretend. His arm slowly wraps around you, and his palm gently finds your back, when your head buries itself into the perfect crook of his neck.
This body has been re-made, sculpted in the image of the arcane, and yet it cannot rid itself of the most basic human subtleties. The curve between his neck and his shoulder was made for you to rest there. He caresses your back with smooth, slow motions, and your frames fit together like two pieces of the same inseparable, destiny-drawn puzzle.
Faint thrums of power emanate from the entirety of his shape. Weak, constant. An enveloping throb, to substitute a quickly beating heart. You sniffle against his nape, and Viktor holds you just a little bit tighter.
Deep down, with the desperation of a man too entwined in the eternal threads of fate, he wishes he'd have the strength to bring about change. Not for this, not for him. For you.
If the auroras he's touched and the light he encompasses could press into you, he would eclipse your darkness in radiance. If his hands could be capable of more than healing — of adoring, of remembering, he would let his palms memorize the statue of your frame, so he might carve it into himself. He'd take your strife and make it his.
When you finally pull back from him, it's only slight; you stifle another weak noise, and your forehead falls against his own. The moment your head meets his, he collapses into your soul. He feels your pain ricochet through him, sharp and unpredictable.
Anguish shakes your entire system like stormy waves. Guilt and devotion and lovely past lifetimes paint the surface of his skin, the center of his chest bleeds itself raw — and then, he's gone. Pushed out of your mind, unable to fight as the hold of his weakened magic slips.
Swallowing thickly, eyes fluttering open again, Viktor wills his breath to stop faltering. It was so brief, his second brush with your emotions. But the ache you've been struck by is utterly palpable. It stings the corners of his eyes, sinks sharp teeth into his insides.
He places his palm on your cheek, and he carefully guides the both of you apart, so he can finally look at you.
"All of this pain. This emotion," Viktor murmurs; his voice shudders, resounding like the distant rumble of thunder. His gaze on yours floods with soft colors, reminds you of the surrounding sea of pastel florals. His index tilts your chin, to keep you looking at him. "My poor, resplendent beloved."
You've essentially fallen into his lap; Viktor shifts, props himself up further. Gods, is he captivating. Stupidly, terribly captivating. The gnawing ache within you pleads for you to turn away, to run, but the pained pinch to his thick brows is more familiar than ever. So is the way he looks at you. Reminiscent of the one you once loved, despite the swirling shades that shine beneath.
As you admire him through misty vision, you can almost trick yourself into believing nothing has changed. Almost. The distance in between you and Viktor begs to be closed, it mumbles promises in your ears like the way the edge whispers before a long fall. It won't hurt, as long as you close your eyes.
Compromising, your palms shift to weakly hold his face. They push his messy hair from his eyes, and caress the edges of his jaw, where his skin tapers off into the Hexcore's corruption. Your thumb strokes lazy circles over the mole above his mouth. His skin is soft, his jaw is rigid, silky with a labyrinth of smooth, swirling patterns.
To see his face is one thing, to be able to touch him and hold him, and know he's still here — they're privileges you never thought yourself worthy of earning. You hold him warmly, tenderly. The way you wanted to before he was gone. Like he is yours, or a deity worth worshipping.
"Viktor-"
You can't help it. You're starting to sob. Every heave of your chest is dry, your eyes sting with tears that won't come. You take your bottom lip between your teeth and bite hard, but the temporary pain does little to quell your all-consuming heartache.
Trembling thumbs brush his skin, and you shake your head, you sputter, "I'm sorry, Vik, I'm so- s-so sorry…"
Viktor is a servant to the sickening shudder that laces through him. His brows form a knot, his gaze drowns in clear sadness. Refracting in shades of autumn and azure.
"But you have no reason to be. I have you," Viktor murmurs gently, the edges of his tone deliciously smooth. Your arms weakly drop down to his shoulders, and he gives your still-wet cheek a slow caress. "Shh, shh. You do not have to apologize. I know. I know. Your emotions are still so grievously tender."
His tone is warm, like how you remember. Ages ago, you would've done anything to hear it again, filling the silence left by his absence. When you're able to see through the otherworldly rumble, the distant reverberation, you're able to hear just him. As though no time has passed at all, like he never left.
"Viktor-" You hiccup, "Please- I'm sorry- Viktor."
His name was designed to meet your voice. You make it sound maddeningly tender, as though it's something to covet, even when your heart is aching and you wish that it wasn't.
As though you've flipped the meaning. To conquer can be something soft, it can be a gentle checkmate, a hopeful spark between ribs and an ambitious fire at the edges of fingertips. A promise to prevail, with hands intertwined.
He feels like he's going to be sick.
"I'm here. Breathe," Viktor answers, "Talk to me, zlato. Tell me how you are feeling."
"I thought you- thought you were gone," You're sniffling, slurring your words together. Viktor's expression weakens. You are falling apart in his hands, and he feels so unbelievably useless. "When I- when they told me you ran off to Zaun, I was… angry. But I can't- I can't stay mad at you, I just can't."
Viktor softens. His gaze flickers over you, as he fruitlessly attempts to find the right words to fix this. But you're already continuing.
"I grieved you, Vik. So much." You take a slow, shuddering breath. Your words come out one at a time. "Part of me thinks I still should."
The choice to use his familiar nickname, usually spoken so joyfully, so exuberant in his memories — I'm here, I missed you, you're so sweet, Vik. To hear it sputtered, instead, his own name chewed up and spat out short-hand; it's like a kiss to the cheek, in between a punch to the face.
Viktor recalls what it felt like to be lost inside your mind. So much fondness, a dense galaxy of longing, was crammed inside a small, beating heart. Endless implosions of love and loss, with nowhere to go, had no option but to dig themselves deeper. He felt the weight on your shoulders, like the heaviness of rain. The icy pain in your ribs: bleak coldness, where all you can see is your own breath. Once pleasant dreamscapes were twisted and tugged into knots, because this is the end — and Viktor knows he wasn't meant to be granted an epilogue.
"No one could have blamed you," He says, words soft enough to cushion your fall. You clumsily lean back into him, resting on his shoulder, and Viktor calmly pets the back of your head.
Your hands quiver. "I did- I blamed myself."
"And what choice did you have?" Viktor counters, speaking through an almost-sigh. "You were frightened. Alone. You were inconsolable, deprived of respite." And he left you. He wandered astray when you needed him most. "Affection and pain are-" He tenses, quiets. "An antithesis, forming an equilibrium. Fond memories begin to die, as fractured stars do, when such dreams encompass all you have left."
A pause. You savor a few more moments in his arms, debating. Waiting for your resolve to return to you, before you're drawing back, and sitting up. Hastily, you wipe your eyes with the back of your hand. When Viktor tries reaching for you, you're swiftly pushing his palm away.
"I- I should leave," You're choking out, "I can't be here."
Viktor's brows furrow.
"Why not?" He questions, and there's a broken edge to his voice, a weakness that nearly sounds hurt. He hurriedly grasps your wrist — faint energy pulses from his touch, weighty enough to make you shiver — but you stay still, not moving, not yet. "You, out of everyone, have always been welcome."
"They were talking about setting up a barricade, back in Piltover," You're mumbling weakly, although it's clear to him you're dancing around the true reason.
"You can stay here," Viktor interrupts.
"No, I can't."
"Yes, you could. There is another reason for your avoidance." His tone softens, lays itself before you like a lamb to be slaughtered. "Let me in. Please."
"There isn't anything, Vik. It'd be better if I wasn't here. That's all. I'm sorry, I just-"
You sniffle, your heart breaks, and Viktor brushes a tear from your eye before it has the chance to fall. His knuckles caress down the length of your jaw, he softly coos a few words of reassurance. Shh, shh. Don't cry.
Bleeding into him distantly, melting against his hand and within his veins; easily this time, as though reaching into the depths of your existence is purely natural — he feels you.
Your soul has decayed to a dull, dying flame. You embody the convergence between warm and cold. Your mind longs to find its place within his arms, to fall into him once more and never return, as much as it believes you should push him away. There's a conflicting, swords-crossing battle inside your own heart. He experiences each of your sensations, tastes and samples them: the pleasant, and the painful. Echoing, exhausted, whispered in your own voice, he hears what you are thinking.
Please, Gods. Why can't I forget him?
Oh. Your mind doesn't lie.
The boundaries of your psyche begin to crumble — toppled bricks, chipped stone, and he can't help but tense. He feels sharpness stab into every part of him, like the closing walls of an iron maiden.
Look at what has become of him. Why must you hold on, when it would be infinitely easier to just let go? Viktor understands. He is well-acquainted with the strife of forgetting.
It must be torture, to hold someone so close to your heart. To remember them as the sun, when all that remains is their shadow. A half-dead symbol of divinity.
Everything would've been easier, more simple, better for the task he sought to accomplish, if he was able to cast his affections aside. This body should make it trivial, but it is still Viktor's body. It is still his vessel, and his mind, and his memories.
Emotions hinder progress. They killed countless Gods before him, and yet love digs in deep and persists. Consumes, from the inside out. It sets fire to your soul, and makes you watch as it burns itself out. The whims of the heart are impossible to stifle. He was correct, to predict your return. But what of a body without a heart, what of him, what of the future?
I believed I could untwine fate, Viktor thinks, as his palms brush the intricate stars laid out before him. Yours, mine. But my attempts were not conceivable. Enlightenment was never strong enough to predominate over devotion. A revival cannot undo the basis of human nature. I can never unwind myself from you, but in this, I was complacent. I was prepared to let you become my ruin.
And your mind resounds. There's a voice, unable to hear him, speaking with itself. Shouting through a storm to harmonize with the whispering wind. Recalling pain, loss, and ashes.
Why was it you, when it could've been me?
Part of you envisions going back. Imagining yourself in his place, threading through options to come up with one that might save him. Or perhaps, in a blind stupor of sadness and frustration, you would've returned to the Undercity. You would try to find yourself and change your path, assuring your younger self to stay, you weren't cut out to be a scientist — to undo the outcome of ever meeting him.
Regret eclipses you, the moment the thought crosses your mind. He overhears your internal struggle, your own voice fighting with itself. No, that isn't true. It can't be, you couldn't bear it.
But perhaps, he thinks, for you, it would have resulted in less pain.
He witnesses every thought, feels every regret and all of your uncertainty. As sharp as a blade, twisting within you; pressing inside him, in turn.
Until Viktor's shaky fingers trail the back of your neck, his eyes fluttering open. He realizes you've collapsed into him, as his own weakness forces him back to the present.
Viktor holds you, for a long stretch of time. You promised you'd leave, and yet, here you are, running into his arms once more. It's still sublimely surreal. Your palms trace his open sides, examining the golden bands, the deep indentations where ribs might sit. When his arm around your back grows loose, you're prying yourself from him hesitantly. He meets your gaze, and his lithe fingers delicately find your jaw. Admiring, thinking.
You are terribly beautiful. Wonderful. There is nothing comparable. Not the sea of vivid flowers, not the sun, not the countless collisions of stars that he's witnessed. If he could go back, he would hold your pain in his hands. He'd make it his.
It would mean more to him than anything, more than all of this, to see you happy, smiling, and free. You've always been so lovely. An inspiration. A dream.
The arcane could strip him of himself, but even as it's pulling his bones from his body, it could never take away the devotion he remembers. Your touch, your voice. Your atoms and your particles, falling like rain at his fingertips, forming every retained, held-onto expression of you.
Soft letters, exchanged between the margins of messily sketched blueprints. Tearing the paper, to keep the note you'd left, because your handwriting felt like home. Drowsy words, shoulders pressed too close together, and almost falling asleep, but trying to stay awake to talk for just a little while longer. Even though hindsight would tell him he's acting a fool. Even though the night is melting into morning, and you have projects to complete by tomorrow. None of it ever seems to matter, when the two of you are lost in each other.
He remembers smiles like sunflowers, bright and radiant. Giddy laughter and naive wishes. Hands brushing when they shouldn't; finding one another under tables, between meetings. Fingers interlacing to swear promises, palms pressed to a quickly beating heart.
Further, there are gentler sentiments, moments that could only come with age and years of understanding. Sitting together in silence, because it helps, when sleep refuses to come. Lessening pain wherever you can. Soothing tired muscles, holding shaky hands. Knowing where it hurts without the need to ask, and when to encourage, but also when to rest.
Falling apart, in the ways no one else gets to see, because he knows you will be there to put back his pieces — and Viktor realizes every memory, every recollection, every death begins and ends with you.
Gods. He breathes soft shushes, and little murmurs of, It's alright. All it takes is one brush with your heart to bring his humanity circling back.
Your expression weakens, your heavy gaze stays steady on his own. For a moment, he expects you to collapse again. He knows he will catch you. But you breathe deeply, and when he caresses your cheek, nice and gentle, your eyes take on a dull sparkle — the same light he remembers, from countless lifetimes ago.
"No," Viktor coos softly, with a shake of his head, "No, I believe this is precisely where you were meant to be."
He holds your chin delicately, between his thumb and forefinger. "Stay. Please." He murmurs, continuing. I need you to stay. "Spare me a few more moments."
His voice sounds impossibly human. There's less of a rumble, more of a tremble. Uniquely him, decidedly weak.
It's fruitless, and he knows it. A few more moments is hardly enough, it won't make up for everything you've needed. But it's all he can have. Because in every reality, this doesn't work.
There are mistakes he can't take back, pain he can't reverse. Humanity is a vice he can no longer hold onto. And you — once again, at the center of everything — you do not deserve this. After the boundaries you've crossed, the lengths you've travelled, you must be so, so tired. You, his dream, for all of the radiance and light in your heart, do not deserve to be drowned in more darkness.
For every almost, for each soft touch and pained reminder of his fragility — the warmth of your arms around him, dulling the sharpness in his leg — he should have pulled you closer. From the very start, he was running out of time. He should have died. Yet, he must continue to live, with the same weight in his shoulders, with the knowledge of his failures. And with the palpable reminders of the twin flame he lost.
He's strayed too far to make things right, now. You're two ships on different currents.
If you were to change course and crash together, hands grasping one another tight, soft skin entwined with unnatural fingers made of violet; close enough to let heavy breaths meld into one; close enough to taunt the forces that made him, the result would prove catastrophic. Shattering his goals, the hold the arcane has on him, and your wavering heart.
Viktor knows he cannot put you through this. His new purpose, his curse, perpetuated by the Hexcore's distant, inexplicable itch, surmises that he is destined for rebirth. Over, and over, and over again. You've already grieved him, and for your sake, this needs to be the final time.
"Okay," You breathe, exhaling heavily, inhaling weakly. He holds your cheek in his familiar hand, and you tremble, struggling not to lean into his touch. "I… Okay. I'll stay."
Your warmth radiates against Viktor's palm. Low and soft, tired and grief-stricken. Then brilliant, burning.
You already know what it's like to lose him; how it feels to watch light slip from his gaze, either as a slow descent into torment, a faint snuffed out flame. Or as a vivid, scorching implosion. Forcing you to remember blood and fire, as smoke overtakes the edges of your vision.
Ash chokes your lungs. Pain thrums in all of your joints. Muffled screams echo in your ringing eardrums. Panicked breaths, and shouts of, he's not breathing, between Jayce grabbing your shoulders, trying to shake you awake, but you just —
Viktor pulls his hand away from your cheek, as though he'd been burned. Dull remnants of your pain linger in his chest, sharp, strained, and ashen. His index finger presses to the side of your jaw, gently guiding you to look at him.
"Don't imagine such things," He mumbles gently; his color-rich gaze finds yours, as naturally as the moon finds the Earth, locked within the same orbit. "You are only going to exhaust yourself further. What happened that day was- it was not your fault. Not in any capacity. You know this, right?"
Right? The soft lilt in his voice — pleading for confirmation — makes a tingle trace your spine.
"I know," You answer dryly, your voice a little sore. "I'm fine."
Your eyes have long since dried up, but you still sound deeply numb. Distant, as though your soul is somewhere far away.
"You are not," Viktor counters quickly. Like you're two rival schoolmates, arguing once again. Not two inseparable souls, on the verge of the end. Close to collapsing and crossing an edge neither of you could come back from.
"I am. I promise."
"You have not slept. You have been following the trail to the commune for days, now. And the moment you try to rest, to let sleep find you, your mind is plagued by fits of nightmares. I do not think you need me to tell you this, but you are pushing yourself to the brink."
It hurts, somewhere in his fragile system, to see the pain he has caused you. He hasn't merely witnessed it, he has felt it. All of your guilt and your emotions, surging through his filaments. Nearly as strong as the passive waves of magic.
"The nightmares started long before this," You're arguing on impulse, mumbling under your breath.
They began when he was dying.
And he knows the nightmares, the visions he saw through your eyes, of embers and death and destruction and fragility — they are all because of him.
You swallow, before you sigh, and your tone quiets when he places a reassuring hand on your tensed shoulder. "I wasn't asking you to pity me. It's just- it isn't anything I'm not used to."
Viktor pauses. Then, he gives a small, amused huff.
"You are as stubborn as you were when we met."
He recalls it vividly: your very first meeting. You were both young, immature, and terribly eager to prove yourselves. Determination and stubbornness were traits you unfortunately shared.
You argued. Over some unimportant invention, and then over your notes, and the ways they differed. Viktor can barely remember the assignment. But he recalls the pinch in your brows, the fiery heat in the back of your gaze. Convinced you were right, and unable to get Viktor to budge, you left, tossing some remark over your shoulder as you slammed the door shut behind you. We should ask the professor if we can change partners. It's clear we'll never get along.
"Am I?" You mutter; it's rhetorical, obviously, made evident from the half-hearted roll of your eyes. He's sure you're dwelling on the very same memory. You breathe something of a feeble, fatigued laugh, "You really think I was the stubborn one?"
"Mmm," Viktor hums. His lips twitch into the faintest imitation of a smile. "Possibly. You haven't told me to shut up yet. I suppose we could consider that an improvement."
Ambitious and tender, alive and in front of you, is a part of him you'd thought you lost.
"And you somehow still remember."
Viktor's temple forms a knot, but his gaze is entirely unreadable. He brushes an exploring palm down the small of your back, keeping himself propped up on his elbow. You're leaning into him naturally, as though you've hardly planned to. Your arms rest on his shoulders, your weight settles gently and tangibly in his lap.
"I told you," He says, voice barely more than a whisper, a plea, a prayer. "Regardless of what is taken from me, you are far too precious to forget."
Your breathing is unsteady. It echoes in his ears, becoming all he can focus on. Sharp in, shaky out.
"I didn't know I mattered so much to you." You're glancing away, while you brush his long hair from his eyes; your breath shakes, you twirl an ombre strand around your finger. "I mean, not after- not when you're- fuck, I don't know."
"Not as you remember?" Viktor completes.
You reply with a shallow nod. "You're just… different."
Alive. Anew. A vessel, not a man, not the one you admired.
Viktor's jaw tenses. His chest stings, it pulls at him like there's a black hole where his heart should be. And this time, he isn't caught between the residuals of your emotions. He is feeling his.
He gives a low, quiet, simple answer. "There is much between us that differs, now."
You're silent, for a few moments, caught chewing on the inside of your cheek.
"The Hexcore," You start, "You… absorbed it, right?"
"In theory."
"Our studies made it seem alive. I wasn't sure if something like that was even possible. I read your notes, Vik, I saw the runes and your leg, and I didn't- I should've been there."
Viktor takes a breath so quiet it nearly goes unnoticed. "I should have made you stay out of it."
He sees the heartache on your face before he feels it — Viktor's fingertips, rough and metal-like, trace the gentle curve of your jaw. But his power is weakened. Your emotions thread through him as faint pulses, and he can't dive deeper.
Even when he closes his eyes, there's a barrier; a wall, for him to bang his fists against, despite knowing there's no way to reach you. Your soul manifests in his horizon line. Admirable and bright, unable to be touched.
When Viktor's eyes flutter open, they're whirling in dizzy, wild shades, like the colors beneath have been mixed and shaken. They shift from crimson, to cobalt, to citrine. Impulsively, he cups your face to keep you close, to make certain you won't disappear. To remind himself that he can still feel your soft skin against his blasphemous palm.
"You have blamed yourself enough for my atrocities. So much of your pain could have been circumvented, but then I-" Viktor softens. He brushes his thumb over your cheek slowly, over and over, like an anxious, desperate tick. "Perhaps I should have turned you away the moment you reached the commune."
Your hand finds his, grasps it tight and keeps him pressed to your cheek; and your pain bleeds for him, inviting him in. Foggy and infinite, covered in thorns. Curling in on itself, an infinite fractal of warm tenderness and icy, bitter melancholy —
"Viktor- that isn't-"
"Your mind crumbles, in all cases, each and every time you look at me." He speaks carefully. Chews through every word, before he spits it out. His voice rumbles, reverberates like an earthquake, "Why?"
He supposes he already has his answer. Delving inside your mind left him with no room for doubt. This is his fault. It's a form of self-sacrifice, a familiar brush with endless destruction, he thinks, to hear you say the final words. The ones he already knows. You are allowed to let go. Fate will embrace you in the ways I could not.
"Because, dammit, I still care about you," You're blurting out, "More than anyone, or anything else."
"I do not deserve it. Considering what I have-"
"I don't care, Vik. And every time I see you, when I feel this," You squeeze his hand hard, enough to incite the rigid surface of his faux fingertips with transcendent sparks of the arcane, "I remember your notes, the fire. The days I spent following you into the Undercity. I see the empty look in your eyes when you first saw me, and I keep thinking this isn't real. That I'm going to wake up, and you… you'll be gone."
Viktor's gaze flickers over your face, wide and iridescent, a perfect contradiction. His breathing runs quick, his palm shakes. But within the dance between your soul and his, he's daring to reach for you.
Bright, vivid light washes over. It blinds him, for a moment. Bathes his figure in radiance. A force within him is gnawing, whispering in runic words that he shouldn't be able to understand, telling him he isn't supposed to feel this, isn't meant to have a place within him carved to fit your shape. The best option is to turn you away, to listen to his head. Evolution requires a steady mind, an unwavering resolve. An inhuman herald.
Viktor refuses. He listens to his non-existent heart, instead, and he feels your petals, closed yet delicate. He lets himself become your sun, so he can watch you bloom. A figment of his own humanity shimmers before him. The light obscures his vision, it burns his eyes. But he holds on — pallid palms pressed together with all his might, containing his bursting luminescence and the flowery resonance of you.
A gentle thumb brushes your cheek, and you're sighing, confessing, "I shouldn't. But I missed you, Viktor. So much."
Your thoughts echo inside him like a ripple in water. I wish you could be more than just a memory.
Nothing exists for him to promise. Your breathing shakes, your eyes flutter. Your body subtly arches into his touch, when he comfortingly caresses the back of your neck.
"I missed you more than words could express," He admits, voice low, close to cracking like the edges of old stone. Everything blends, in a haze of his own making, as his palm clumsily returns to hold your face. As he gently guides you, tilting you towards him by your jaw.
"Look at me. You meant everything. For so long, so deeply, I treasured you- do not ever think otherwise. But I was powerless. Over and over, I perpetually imagined the last time I saw you. The soft sound of your voice, and the mundane instances in between. I would have done it over again, in the same order. To be frozen in time, with this memory of you."
Stars fade, the galaxy around him chips and splinters. But he knows this is the truth. The arguments, the introductions, the pain, the softness, the falling, the fading — history would repeat itself infinitely, and he would gladly lose himself in its spiral with you.
Your hands clench on his shoulders, your gaze grows lost in his own. You drown in the gentle nebulas of eyes that still feel so remarkably his.
Every outcome before him weaves into the same ending, every star carries the same grim message. He cannot go back, that's the crucial cusp of it all. The strings of fate pull him along, igniting a sharp taste in his throat. They seek to make him into the arcane's chosen puppet.
"Viktor," You're sighing, and oh, the syllables of his name are more than a plea when they're breathed from your lips, they're a washed-out memory, a poem and a promise between his ribcage —
"But you have me right now."
"I know," Viktor says, because it's all he can say, "I know."
When you trail off into silence, Viktor finds that the abyss of your soul echoes with a single unfathomable sentence.
I still love you.
So this is the tragedy.
His faithful step in the universe's eternal return. An infinite expression of his fleeting, useless affections, strung throughout an inseparable existence.
Viktor realizes now, the truth was merely a means to the end he expected. This is the predetermined resolution, where he finally gives in, and recognizes he cannot escape the path laid before him. He was always going to break you, perhaps from holding on too tight.
Once again, he is powerless; this time, to his own body. He can sense the thrumming in his limbs, glowing through every vein. This can't last forever. He knows you are his focal point, and once you disappear, the arcane will take your place. In his hands, in his chest, in every breath he takes. Blotting out the last of his humanity.
You smile, and it's a crooked, broken, undeserved thing — but it captivates him just the same. A flicker of heartache catches the light in your eyes. He believes he is watching you think, seeing the cogs click into place as your jaw grits uncomfortably, as your eyes threaten to well up again, as you come to the same conclusion. This is futile.
Then, let this moment at least be yours.
Viktor places both palms on your face. He guides you to follow him, when he falls back. The weight of your body presses his chassis into the ground. His head rests against the flowers. His hair fans out around him, faint blonde strands interwoven, like a painting's highlights: the finishing touches.
But you aren't staring at him. Not at his eyes, your gazes don't meet. You're staring at the pretty mole, placed perfectly above his mouth — and he knows, because this isn't the first time.
It's where you would focus when he found you lost in thought and drowsy, coming up with excuses not to stare at his lips. He remembers feeling you touch the corner of his mouth, close but not quite, before your fingertip brushed down the length of his nose; the space between you barely leaves room for accommodation, and Viktor brings a palm to your chest to push you apart, despite wanting to drop his cane and use both hands to —
Dangerously, you stop yourself by leaning close. Viktor's eyes flutter shut, as your forehead comes to rest against his own.
His voice is barely audible. Accent thick, low, and familiar.
"However this may end, I need you to realize," He exhales, slow and shakily. "There was never a moment where I did not adore you."
Those words press into you like an arrow in your chest, a hot knife lodged between bones. You breathe in deeply, you sigh carefully, and Viktor feels your breath as it fans against his mouth.
It's merely the surface of what he wishes he could say. There is so much more, I admired you since we met. You were smart, radiant. Gods, was it the most egregious combination, because you both intimidated and captivated me. You were effortless to adore. I thought I made myself obvious. Requiring your help for every insignificant invention, stealing you at every turn because it felt delightful, to have you all to myself. Those moments are distant, yes, but they are not blights. They were brilliances.
An infinity would not be near enough time to fall for you. I would wish to alter fate, but I can't, I cannot save you from myself. From this… inevitability, this expectation that we are doomed for ruin.
You unfurl, you blossom. The sparkle of your soul follows the glow in his palms, eclipsing his body, shining over the rot; two lighthouses glimmering towards one another, communicating in their own code — and your mind pleads for him, one last time.
Prove it. I need you to show me.
And he almost does. Really, truly, almost. He nearly pulls you in, denies destiny to follow impulse, and veers both your courses towards destruction.
The simplicity of a kiss would prove this is real, prove his humanity. It would be something for him to have, not a token for the arcane to take. No, the arcane would weep, as he ignites his new body's first experience with selfishness. The intensity he's longed for would no longer be numbed, he'd feel it surge and shine and breathe through him. Pooling at his fingertips, as he pulls you in, guiding heat to draw itself into you.
It'd feel good, to press his mouth to yours, and discover what your lips feel like in the ways he's imagined for ages. He could hold you as if you'd never have to leave. He could pretend, as though the coolness of his sanctuary is just the evening draft in the lab, and he isn't making up for past regrets, he is fixing them.
Warmth would return to his figure, his soul would converge into his body, and fate, as cruel as it is, would be forced to do nothing but watch.
Viktor allows his eyes to open. His palms are still on your face, your gentle weight is still pinning him down. The light of the moon above you creates pale, hazy crescents in the edges of his vision. You are so close. Your heart is its own entity. Pounding so hard in your chest, he can practically feel it as his own. His gaze flickers to your mouth, as his hands faintly caress your skin.
Prove it, prove it, prove it.
For a few moments, he debates the repercussions.
It could be swift, fleeting, an accident. Barely more than a brush, a taste, before he drags himself away. Or, it could be more.
A point of devotion, expressed with closed eyes and soft lips. Admiring you without seeing, confessing without words.
Would your lips feel plush, would you hesitate, would you send him spiraling down along with you, as you pulled him in and whispered his name?
Perhaps it might escalate, into a feverish mess of your hands in his hair and your lips at his throat, and would he still feel them there? Against the gold notches embedded into his neck, kissing down to admire where his body meets magic. Could either of you manage to stop if you tried, or would time bleed together, until he could die like this — until he's convinced he is dying?
Viktor's thumb brushes your lips. Shakily, mechanically.
Gravity threatens to drag him in, steady on your pull, strong like absolution. Centimeters stop him from closing the distance, from pulling you close and colliding so softly, so vividly. In one simple, fluid, perfect movement. He dreams of it. But still, still.
Still, Viktor struggles to catch his own breath, although it hardly makes sense for his perfected system. Still, he allows himself the small privilege of caressing your cheek, feeling your skin beneath his ruined fingertips. Your gaze widens — he can't help but wonder, but foolishly, uselessly hope, that you might've been expecting more — and he finds your chest with his palm, to repeat past actions, to carefully push you away.
It isn't the choice he would wish to make. But for once, it will be his choice, all the same. There is strength, a grounding sense of responsibility, a misguided tenderness, in this. Even if it hurts.
Even if Viktor is already regretting it, the moment he sees the softness fade from your eyes. A wavering gaze stares back at him, as dark as a knot of storm clouds. His hand steadies on your chin to keep you in place.
His last tie to humanity is a knot he can't undo. The one of few left to mourn him deserves more than empty words, or false promises. You deserve to heal. You are his greatest mistake, and his most lovely exception.
You were worth every moment, every word, every star. He can feel you, in the chasm of his chest. Guilt runs thick in his makeshift veins. Newfound pain pushes out from his shoulder blades like wings, and he knows you may have been unable to change his fate, but you have changed him. Every piece of you will always press together to form a part of his entirety — with the same soft edges, amongst familiar galaxies of convergences.
This isn't the end, not yet, not quite. Viktor hopes he can show you. The sun will rise again; you will bask in its glow, warm and unburdened. You'll rediscover your spark. Your soul was meant to burn on a pyre that reciprocates, and logic dictates an inhuman vessel cannot. For you, for your gentle, beating heart, this is only the beginning.
There will be no more nightmares, no more exhaustion. He can be of use, he can help you rest. His power has limits. However faint, however controlled. But this, the science of dreams, leading their way into passages, establishing connections and fateful meetings — considering his experience with magic and the astral, it should be relatively easy to grasp.
And he knows it will hurt hard. To see you, to lose you. Though, unlike him, you cannot force your emotions into silence. Viktor harbors a hint of envy. A flourish of frustration. You have never deserved the world's blind cruelty. He would have torn the universe apart to at least keep his pain, so the sharpness in his chest and the blood stained into his palms could serve as final reminders of you.
One last pleasant memory won't fix what's broken, but it could save you, where he can no longer save himself.
He supposes it's worth a try.
"Viktor," You're murmuring, and he hates the way his own name makes your bottom lip quiver, how your shoulders tense as though you could curl in on yourself. "Sorry, I-"
"No, no, please don't apologize. There is…" Viktor starts; he attempts to keep the words from stammering, but it's difficult when you're still so close. You are all he can see, as your moonlit gaze matches his, like it could guide his waves without trying.
He grinds his jaw, glances away, and tries again. "There is something I've wished to show you. Could I sit up?"
Your palms, pressed to either side of his head to prop yourself up, fidget and clench, fingers trembling. But you nod, you shift. He feels your weight leave his lap when you finally slide off of him.
Viktor pushes himself up. The metal decorations that fix his clothing into place clink together faintly. He carefully folds his legs. He glances towards you, gives a coaxing tilt of his head, and gently pats his palm to his knee.
"Come."
The whispering meadow in his elaborate space leaves you plenty of room to sprawl out, as you rest your head in Viktor's waiting lap. Blades of grass tickle your arms. He is firm, rigid underneath you. Not quite the most comfortable pillow, but it hardly matters to you, because your eyes are already growing nice and heavy.
You're losing your battle with exhaustion, he figures. Resting against him is especially potent at making your tiredness shine through. (He recalls somewhat-sleepovers, sharing the same dorm, your head falling against his shoulder as your breathing echoed into his ear.) He assists the endeavor, brushing his fingertips down either side of your face, adjusting you to make sure his lap is comfortable. You shiver, and he toys with your hair, continuing until you're sighing, relaxing.
Viktor smiles. His gaze above you meets yours, shines with devotion. There's a new color in his eyes. Some cross between amethyst and crimson, like a swirling red wine, like drops of blood in water — sickeningly sweet. His hair frames his face. Strands brush the faux edges of his jaw.
A few more moments to admire you is all he allows for himself. Then, he breathes deeply, calmly. He reaches beside him, into the grass, to delicately snap the stem of a tiny, almost-hidden white daisy.
"I want you to picture," Viktor tucks the flower behind your ear, continuing slowly, the words spoken with a calm, yet melancholy edge: "A place where you can be at peace."
"Mmm," You hum, hands clasped, resting neatly on your stomach, "Like a memory?"
"It could be one, yes."
"Like when we snuck out of our classes to go look at the stars, to see the autumn meteor shower. We missed an evening lecture, and the professor made us write lines…"
Viktor distantly recalls the way his hands cramped for weeks, how his knuckles ached. His palms had thick calluses from where he tightly held his pencil, his skin was stained with graphite from where he rested his hand against the paper — but vividly, as though he could close his eyes and be transported there, he remembers your excitement.
Your pure elation, as you hurriedly climbed the endless stairs to the very top of the viewing tower, mumbling about how you didn't want to miss it. You never stopped grinning, as you guided his hand to show him where the stars would fall, pointing to every distant shimmer in the sky. Although, to him, they never seemed to shine brighter than the look in your eyes.
Ages later, you both returned to that same spot on the outskirts of Piltover, perhaps in an attempt to relive your youth. The viewing tower was rickety and silent. The stairs to the top were long and grueling. The fancy lights shining from various new buildings made the stars impossible to see, now.
The Hexgates were conceptualized the next year. Viktor's doctor recommended a crutch and a brace. So it was your last attempt, in the end.
Your tired eyes flutter open, and Viktor gazes down at you, lips upturned into the faintest hint of somber amusement.
"It only occurs every two hundred years. The professor warned us, he said the meteor shower was a waste of our precious time," Viktor recounts, with a small, playful huff. "He had already seen it, and it failed to impress him."
"We would've seen more elsewhere, he said, which is true, but…" You shrug lazily. "It was so quiet up there. With just us, and the stars."
"The calmest place in all of Piltover," Viktor replies in agreement.
"After that, we talked about getting out of the city. Maybe vacationing somewhere once we graduated, just for a while."
There were late night talks, sleepy confessions, foolish dreams of far-off places. Much like this, really. Your brows pinch, you stifle a yawn. Viktor can't help but find it adorable.
Then, your head tilts back, as you gaze at him again. "Remember?"
Viktor softens. "You dreamt of seeing the flowers in Ionia."
Your smile widens. "I'll try to picture that, then."
Moonlight burns in the back of his gaze. Magic returns to pulse through him — connecting threads to the minds of hundreds of followers, casting a line to hook into the arcane. The sort of pain that becomes a new heartbeat, offering to seal itself within him. His fingers shake, as he hesitates to bring them towards you. He forces himself to steady, to meet your tender expression, and commit the depths of it to memory.
Everything must come to an end. Viktor cups your face in both palms, and prepares for his last dance with mortality.
"Imagine a field of endless, untouched blooms. Culminating in stunning magic, able to be sensed within the ground itself, thrumming underneath your feet." Viktor's voice is a low, level, comforting murmur. Like he's reading straight from an Ionian textbook; in another life, it would be enough to put you to sleep.
"And the air smells lovely," You're mumbling, tired. "And the sky is full of thousands of stars."
"Yes, but," Viktor ever-so gently brushes his fingertips over your eyelids, guiding you to close them. "You must close your eyes, little spark."
Your expression is perfectly, wonderfully peaceful. For a few moments, he savors it. He brushes his thumbs over your skin and relishes the softness. He watches the gentle heave of your chest. The slow, mortal intake of every breath. Heavy with exhaustion.
Viktor feels his heart crumble, although he knows he does not have one.
He swallows, he holds your face tenderly. Energy surges from his palms. Crisp, reality-warping fragments of light. Vivid paradoxes. Sparkling against your skin, in prickles of dull static.
The warmth of your soul is a small, kindled flame, held weakly in his palms. This time, you can feel it. Touches reaching between your ribcage. Tracing your bones, leaving bright flowers and pockets of starlight wherever his fingertips brush. It is a gradual, languid sensation; like a baptism, hands cradling your edges to carefully lower you into deep, warm water. It consumes, distorts and collapses, connects the two of you in a haze of entwined hands and twisted-together veins. Blood and magic, pain and healing.
Viktor allows his voice to echo through your weary mind — though he is sure his words will be forgotten, by the time you awake.
Rest, now. Perhaps, in another reality, or within a distant, rewritten future, we will be offered the chance to begin again. If you and I will it. Not fate, nor the infinite tides of entropy.
His voice sounds clear, undistorted. Rich and enveloping. There's hints of hesitation. A clear shake. Deep traces of a faltering, human-like weakness.
Thank you, for the opportunity to appreciate you one final time. Your mind and your emotions were lovely to be lost in.
And I must apologize. I know our time was meant to be impermanent, yet, I cannot help but believe it was not enough. I am not myself. Your memories showed me this — they reminded me of who I was before I'd lost you.
I'm sorry. There is a revolution I must lead. Burdens I am destined to bear alone.
Viktor's palms leave fingerprints on your soul. The light he presses into you is glittering, hopeful. As bright as a cloudless summer's day. Waves roll over your figure, tenderness and exhaustion running thick like honey — akin to a warm hearth, like the sun in full-bloom.
It perplexes, does it not? The very crux of humanity. I could have held every conceivable universe in my hands. And I would have traded it, to do something good, to earn the privilege of coveting you.
The entire false, star-bound sky shakes with the weight of Viktor's trembling exhale.
But our old sentiments hardly matter to the present. A tragedy claims itself as such, because it is certain, in its irreparability.
Every end merely led me to your beginning.
Your vessel drinks him in. You taste the arcane in your throat, you choke on the way his name blossoms inside your chest, and you allow yourself to drift. To be swallowed in his gentle, heartsick shadow.
I loved you. For as long as I have known you. As immensely as a soulless body is capable.
The last sensation to grace you is Viktor's lips, ever-so gently ghosting your forehead — and then, his fingertips, pressed subtly against your skin, to form a silent goodbye.
Please. Do not come back.
Then, everything concludes. The world pops like a bubble, covering you in mist. Your mind runs blank. A vibrant chalkboard of thoughts and equations and colors, erased. You collapse, even though there's nothing for you to collapse against. You're unsure if someone — if Viktor — caught you, or if you were left to descend, disappearing beneath the earth.
Sleep comes to you in a large, encompassing swell.
And you dream.
—
A meadow manifests before you.
Flowers trail as far as the eye can see. White roses. Red carnations. Puffs of pink and purple hydrangea. Flecks of pollen drift into the air, glittering with magic, shining like little stars. Soft grass tickles your bare feet. Energy surges from the ground, threading through your every limb. Your body feels weightless, warm, and free. The air is crisp, allowing each breath to be deep and clear. You can see distant trees, and above you, intricate galaxies, spread across a dark blue sky.
But you aren't alone.
A figment of luminosity, an anomaly, a hazy spark of pure magic shifts, nearly blinds you, and then convenes into a figure. With a palm cupped over his eyes, to shield himself from his own light, before it finally begins to simmer down.
The phantom edges of his shape shimmer with starlight. His slender frame — astral, seemingly untouchable — shifts in endless, vibrant colors. Faux moonlight shines through his hair, short and tousled, pure white; like soft snow, like the foam at the edges of waves. Swirling with faint whispers of blue, the fluffy tresses remind you of a cloud-filled sky.
Your gazes meet, and it feels familiar; it isn't the first time. When he sees you, he glows, his figure alighting in shades of sunlight and gold. The amber in his eyes catches the moon's low rays, his cheeks soften into a shade of rose. His skin is warm, less pallid. The stress present on his features has changed into soft eyes and smile lines.
Memorized, pretty moles greet you. The one on his cheek stands out like the guiding north star, shining amongst a clear night sky. The mole by his mouth follows along when his lips tip into a carefree, radiant smile. Wide and euphoric and foolish. It shows off the small gap between his teeth.
He looks just like you remember. Just as you wanted to remember. The same handsome features: thick brows, a sharp jaw, eyes that shine as brightly as they once did, when he was lost in his passions. His expression carries a familiar sense of warmth. It reflects the same tenderness he'd reserve just for you, beloved and beckoning. The sight of you is enough to make his eyes well up with tears.
And Viktor walks, strides, runs to you.
He's pulling you into an embrace before you have the chance to breathe; arms holding you tight, squeezing you desperately. Pressing you into his blurry, stelliform shape.
Your palms find his back, feeling where the cosmos meet his skin. He buries himself into your shoulder, brings a shaking palm up to lovingly cradle the back of your head. Breathing you in, he fills with tenderness, spilling over. His nose brushes your nape, weak droplets tap your skin like rain. A heavy throb works its way into every inch that you touch — his back, his shoulder, his neck, like bruises hued in shades of lilac. Your bodies fit together as though they were meant to.
When he finally pulls apart from you, it's slow, gradual. He places both hands on your shoulders, so clumsily it slightly jostles you back and forth. His brows pinch, his hands clench until his knuckles are strained. He takes you in, gaze weakening as it flickers over your form. A palm finds your cheek to hold you tenderly; he can barely believe he is touching you.
"There you are- oh, look at you." Viktor's voice is lovingly fragile, yet perfectly, utterly enamored. Brushing his thumb over your cheek, he can't help but choke on a weak, worthless sob. "Finally, you came, I thought- I was sure it wasn't going to work, but it- I can-"
He cannot think, can barely talk; dizzy, his chest heaves with every sharp, quickened breath he takes in. Viktor tapers off, his palm slips from your face and his hand on your shoulder goes loose as he falters.
Head pounding, chest aching, the very figments of his body burn like dying stars. His own pulse thrums in his throat until he can taste blood, until he believes he might cough up his own heart. He gazes at you like you might fade out, brushes his palm from your neck to your jaw like you aren't real.
But you merely smile, and stare at him as though he holds the entire universe in his eyes.
"Vik," You're mumbling sweetly; your hand blindly reaches for his, your fingertips brush in a clumsy waltz, before you're grabbing, squeezing, steadying him. "You're so beautiful."
Oh. Viktor feels your hand in his, he melts in the heat of your light, and he believes heaven is here, right at his fingertips. He reflects your words, as his figure shimmers brighter than the luminous sky above — he is more than a memory. He is yours: a star incarnate.
"You-" Viktor murmurs, lacing his fingers with yours. Warmth washes over his cheeks and his shoulders; he feels foolish, like he's young and stupid and crushing again. "-rival the divine."
Tension briefly buds in your shoulders. "You won't… you aren't going to disappear, right?"
Index drifting underneath your chin to keep your gaze tilted towards him, Viktor grins, putting the both of you at ease.
"Attempting to get rid of me already?" He asks, a little confident, entirely playful.
When your palm teasingly pushes at his chest, hardly trying to guide him away, your touch ricochets through him. It makes his vessel surge with energy, as though he'd touched a live wire. He can actually feel it. Hues of scarlet and sunset and the sea swirl down from his neck to his shoulders. Glowing fiercely, rippling incandescently.
"No, never," You answer, "I just- I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be worried. It's just been… difficult. Without you, I mean."
There's a hazy cadence to your words. It rivals the intricacy of flower buds opening, revealing themselves to the waiting moon. Familiar to him, by now. In this pocket of the arcane — free from strife, some dreamy recreation of the Garden of Eden — your minds can be blissfully one.
Viktor breathes something of a sigh: a tender, understanding revelation.
"I will stay here for as long as you need," He's cooing, guiding you to look at him again with a soft hold on your chin, even though his radiance in your vision is dazzling. "I promise. We can talk- there is so much I have waited to tell you. Or we can simply lie here. There is time for anything you prefer, my light. My sweet, little spark."
Gaze never leaving yours, Viktor admires you with a look that cradles; palms gentle, when they hold your wings. Your hand reaches up to mirror his, your thumb gently caressing the mole placed onto the apple of his cheek.
He's staring, and you can't help but stumble out a laugh. "What?"
Viktor doesn't answer.
Suddenly, the depths of shared pain and the regret tied to his chosen goodbye barely matter. They are forgotten when you are right here, finally. A thousand emotions thrum through him, thick and overwhelming: fear, regret, hunger, devotion. He can't speak, he couldn't possibly explain everything your warm smile does to him. It reminds him of moments stretched through years, times where you almost pulled him close, and he knew you were just friends but Gods, did he want more —
And perhaps, here and now, in this dream away from reality, the both of you can have it.
Carefully, his palms hold your face: soft skin against the ethereal. Pulled in by gravity, mere inches separate you. Viktor's nose brushes yours — slightly awkward, all-too human. He breathes slowly, for a moment, before he exhales a heavy sigh, that feels like finally letting go of everything. His hesitation, his weakness, his destiny.
And when Viktor kisses you, the infinity before you slips away.
The surrounding galaxy becomes finite, flourishing and existing for only the two of you. It's only a kiss, but it is the implosion of stars, and the formation of new ones — energy explodes in between you with thousands of colors, smearing out from Viktor's form like paint. As though he can't contain his own resplendence.
It is everything you have ever wanted. He makes you feel alive.
Head tilting, he guides you close and keeps you there. Magic sparks within him from the inside out. And yet, this is the closest he's ever been to humanity. In the eyes of a distant astronomer, the press of your figure against his could be mistaken for one singular shape. A puzzle, a paradox. A supernova of affection.
One of his hands remains steady on your cheek, the other confidently reaches for the curve of your waist. Every brush of his lips against yours feels like electricity, tastes the same as palpable desire. He's softer than the ground beneath you as you fall, weightless, landing on your back. Pressed against the flowers and the grass, as if they're made of clouds.
Your thoughts fade out, they burn, becoming fuzzy, unfocused. All you can think about is him. Viktor's touch and his mouth, and every moment where you needed this, desperate to learn how his lips might feel against yours —
Perfect. They feel perfect. Simple, guiltless, and lovely. Like biting into an apple, like giving in to sin. As though this moment was destined in time, and every reality has converged, so the stars and their higher powers could turn to watch it take place.
Viktor laces his hand with yours. The flowers surrounding you tickle your skin, they blossom from his hands. Threading into you when his palm traces your side, intimate petals sweet enough to taste on his tongue. Every kiss brings you closer, igniting past memories. Frustrations you wished to take out, by slamming your mouth against his. Promises and pleas, stifled farewells. Held back tears, silent confessions.
This feels earnestly real. Not a goodbye, nor a useless prayer. But a kiss meant to be shared between two destiny-bound lovers.
Your free hand desperately clings to his shoulders, his back. His body feels radiant, like if a shooting star was tangible. Your fingers thread through his hair, and it's akin to touching waves, or playing with the wind, or sinking your hand into fresh snow.
Viktor curls into your touch; he chases it, as desperately as his lips seek yours. You're sighing, when he shifts to kiss your jaw, your throat. Then, you're arching into him, blurring the outlines between your body and his, sealing his fate, as he presses his mouth to yours once more.
He only pulls away when you're both breathless and panting.
Slowly, gradually, he shifts back to place his figure above you. The light of the sky's faux, anomaly sphere shines onto him. It gives him a halo, bathes him in radiance. You can't decide if it's moonlight or sunlight, or if he is reflecting every ray from within.
Viktor breathes in heavy gasps. The meadow dims, smudges, losing detail. It becomes hazy, and although he knows deep down this won't last forever, the thought hardly crosses his mind. He can only focus on you; a fallen angel, underneath him. The keeper of the love he sought to chase and possess and drown in, until the rest of the world has faded away. An arm braces beside you, while his free hand curves to hold the small of your back.
"Your lips are even softer than I once pictured," He murmurs; his eyes sparkle, tender and loving and jewel-like. "Should… should we stop?"
"No, please," You answer. Your voice is beautiful, unforgettable. Curling into him like a fated spiral. Your fingertips trace the back of his neck, before they re-tangle in his pearlescent hair. "Don't, Vik."
So Viktor doesn't. He pulls you in, he pretends destiny is within his grasp. He guides you with a hand on your cheek and stars at his fingertips, to kiss you again, and again, and again.
—
When you wake, you are far from the Undercity.
Your eyes flutter open, slowly and reluctantly. You recognize the softness of a bed underneath you. The surrounding room is simple, with empty grey walls, and a plain white ceiling. The vents make a low clicking sound as they struggle to choke out warm air. Familiar, the sounds of Piltover hum. An echoing train bell. The tick of gears on the side table's clock. Unfamiliar voices are kept low, just beyond your quarters.
Tingles rake down your entire body once you sit up. Sparks trace your spine, your shoulders, your face, like a phantom touch. But they fade into nothing, as quickly as they came.
It's strange for you to be this well-rested. Your mind feels clear. Relaxed. You were free from nightmares, for the first time in ages; as far as you can remember, at least. You recall sneaking out of Piltover, to descend into Zaun. You were exhausted, stressed, but you reached the commune, and —
Oh. You're throwing your blankets aside, then.
You toss on your old clothes; they smell like magic and citrus. A nurse finds you before you can leave. You've been staying at an old, run-down infirmary, on the outskirts of Piltover. Established to provide care to the Undercity, ages ago. It takes longer than you would have liked to convince her you're fine, you don't need to stay. You have somewhere you need to return to.
You were carried here, she explains, as she walks you to the exit of the infirmary.
There were a few people. Strange garments, they hardly said much. You slept for nearly a day, but otherwise, your condition is stable.
Your heart twists; carried? Why and when and how would you be carried out of the commune? Your mind is still hazy, you suppose. You can barely remember where you were, or if you even reached your destination in the first place.
Perhaps you collapsed just outside of it. Perhaps you failed, and the rumors were wrong, and the one you were searching for wasn't there after all.
Dead men aren't supposed to come back.
Despondent, you offer the nurse a few small words of thanks, shaking her hand before you turn to leave.
She stops you first, though.
Oh, she says, and as for the marks on you, I wouldn't worry. There's been plenty of cases similar to yours, with the same sort of scars. They seem like nothing to fret over.
You freeze.
Reaching up, you shakily brush your hand over your own face. Inscribed onto your skin, marble and metal-like, rests four unmistakable marks to your forehead — the lingering outline of Viktor's fingertips.
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FRRRRRRRRRRR I FEEL YA OP
Pokémon Horizons Episode 24 spoilers under the cut!
HEY AMETHIO BESTIE WHAT DOES THAT MEAN . WHAT DOES THAT MEAN
#pokemon horizons#pokémon#pokemon horizons spoilers#I love that screenshot so much Bro is like “Wtf is this guys deal.”#also it just... gives me Hunter energy from Hunting Palismen or Eclipse Lake ya know#also PREVIOUSTAGS SO TRUE#WTF IS GOING ON#WHAT IS THE STORY BEHIND DIANA AND THE BUTLER#Why is he so intimidating???#hello???#just rebloging#my current theory is like - maybe Amethio's a descendant of someone who knew Lucius?#and maybe they're the reason why he's been missing all this time? because that was anger Hatenna was sensing I feel#and terapagos was acting so aggressively thinking that Amethio was that same person from before /insane /insane /insane#I thought that Liko could possibly be a descendant of Lucius as well but it seems like Diana only knew him through his journals-#-not by relations like I initially thought#<< prev tags#Well the journals could be a family heriloom or something that was passed down ya know??#hmmm#many thoughts
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NOT SPOILERS! I started this comic before the leaks even came out, it's just my idea of how their reunion should go :)
I thought it would be neat if the portal opened to Eclipse Lake, since if Philip Wittebane was telling the truth in his diary that's where he first entered the Boiling Isles. If you've seen the trailer you know my Mattholomule design is inaccurate, but it was too late for me to change it (and I still think he deserves a horn). Gus starts on the ground because if you recall, he dove through the portal at the end of Thanks To Them instead of walking like a normal person, bless ❤️
Also I have NOT seen the leak so PLEASE no spoilers!
#the owl house#toh#gustholomule#gus porter#mattholomule#gus x matt#toh art#toh fanart#toh comic#gustholomule reunion#the owl house art#my art#my comics
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TIME TO DISCUSS DYLAN FADENS DRAWINGS!!! THE LAKE HOUSE EXPANSION SPOILERS AHOY!!!!! LETS GOOOO
first of all DYLAN IS AN ARTIST I LOVE HIM SO MUCH IM GONNA CRY..... TTvTT idk if theyll actually make this part of his character or if it was just a convenient way to link him to the lake house but either way im filing this fact away in my brain. do you think casper darling was proud of his little artist boy at all when he sent the drawings to the marmonts. kinda braggy. or do you think he doesnt appreciate art much and just saw them as fodder for further experimentation.....
ANYWAY on to the real stuff. analyzing dylans drawings!! i find it interesting that they are entirely done in black and white aside from the red. this is pre-hiss, so what was the significance of the red to dylan?? are these drawings prophetic, or did they help shape reality once they made contact with cauldron lake??
this drawings appears to depict a hiss possessed individual. upside down, it would look exactly like one of the figures suspended in air in the oldest house. but is this figure really hiss?? they arent hanging in the air, but are instead plummeting downwards. also note that they appear to be dressed similarly to dylan. even has no shoes!! so instead this could depict something else yet to come...
now this one could be a reference to yggdrasil. i havent really any thought beyond that. trees clearly hold significance in remedy lore. UPDATE: based off of a comment i think this is probably meant to be the same tree seen nearby the nostalgia department!! i forgot all about it lol
tbh i have no clue what this could be depicting?? this is the only one without any red. the way the jacket looks leads me to believe that this could be an agent, possibly estevez (not enough hair to be saga). i can picture that white space on the back of the jacket being the fbc logo. are they in a cave?? or beneath something?? im not sure.
this one is REALLY interesting. a face, obscured by a red circle. the circle could represent a lot. circles were a repeating image in that vision you see after talking to dylan. it could represent a hole or portal (we came in through the hole in you), could be an eclipse, a gunshot wound (bullet hole wounds in the face, specifically the forehead, are a repeating theme in aw2). is the face anyone specific, or just a random person?? it looks familiar.... but i shant say.... (it looks a bit like ■■■■■.... maybe im crazy). either way, is this also a prophetic drawing??
i have so much more to say about dylan specifically but this feels sort of longwinded already.... maybe i will post at a later date about what dylan says, and the implications of his vision. (also, are we all in agreement that dylan has some form of future vision?? this has been my theory for a while)
#the lake house spoilers#the lake house dlc#dylan faden#also want to talk about poes new song and what it could mean for poe herself as well as the characters in the game!!#so cute that poe is like . a character now
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Some thoughts on S2 from a first-time watcher!
It's good that I saw a bunch of spoilers before watching S2 and S3, because after seeing how the plot arrived to some of these points, I feel like what I imagined would have worked better; useful for understanding one's own likes and writing.
I thought Toph would have been in bigger danger while in the metal box. In canon she's technically just being dragged back to her family, right? But the emotional impact of her success of bending metal (something believed to be impossible) would have been stronger if she was in a much bigger danger, in worse circumstances, for longer.
Long Feng was so quickly "taken down" at the start when the Earth King decided to stop following him! Yeah the Dai Li still answer to Long Feng but it felt like him losing outward power happened too quickly and he was actually scared that he had lost all power instantly. He even allowed the kids to try to show the king the truth. So which is it, do Long Feng and Dai Li have huge power, or little power?
I liked the plot twist with plot twist with plot twist with plot twist with plot twist with Azula and her goons in Kyoshi warriors' disguises, and the Dai Li still answering to Long Feng. This uplifted the plot part a bit that had been sunk in my mind just before.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Jet was actually ok in S2; he succumbed to a weakness of his by getting obsessed with "random" firebenders, but then he truly tried to be of help, he beat the goddamn brainwashing and did everything he could to help Aang and his allies. He was given a "heroic death" offscreen! Perhaps he survived, gravely injured but who knows. The writing portrays him as an ok person at the end.
If he was supposed to be an "evil version" or "irredeemed" version of Zuko, that could have been portrayed only if Jet had demonstrated more, and persistent negative traits that he would refuse to change. Before giving him an on-screen death.
It wasn't very believable to me that Iroh managed to follow Zuko so quietly and so well under lake Laogai; but from spoilers, I was convinced that Zuko had arrived to a moral decision to set Appa free and let go of his need to belong back at the royal family of the Fire Nation, all on his own. That might have been a bigger triumph of character, but... even coming to this decision because Iroh pressured him into thinking about choices (the fact that he had choices), doesn't diminish what he decided by a lot.
Fever was excellent lmao. Iroh gave him some ibuprofen But the subsequent very cheery behaviour feels like big and heavy Copium from Zuko to me!
Damn. Aang literally speedrun all those chakras opening. Guru Pathik seems alright to me and doesn't feel like a huge deus-ex mechanism considering many other elements the show has used. But I feel like the show would have benefitted a LOT more if separate episodes were devoted to unblocking the chakras. Those are supposed to be a big deal, something difficult to overcome for the hero. But also; Aang refusing to let go of Katara right at the moment when he sensed she was in danger, is actually a correct choice (from a narrative standpoint) - we aren't supposed to cheer for him to let her die. Of course we as the audience want him to try to help Katara! However what Guru Pathik had told him about attachment still stands in the writing (maybe it could have been made more clear that this attachment in question means a selfish possessive one). The writing still sets it up so that it seems like Aang WILL have to let go of the attachment in the future to successfully open the last chakra. Just... later, because this is not the right moment! ^^
Oh man. The best the writing could do for Katara was to have her make a dumb joke about Momo knocking over figurines in the war meeting? And the plan was just... "go forth and attack the Fire Nation during a solar eclipse"? This was the best the text could do?? No bits of additional strategy, problem-solving, no Katara being serious about it? And after that she decides to go for tea despite being on a crucial mission? And why would the delicate scroll requiring the Earth King's seal to set the entire army in motion be left to be carried around outside by one girl. Just so that she could run into Zuko and blow his cover, despite having last seen him as broken, crying over his uncle, fighting against his sister the Fire Nation princess. Feels like the plot really got super convoluted here just to get to points it wanted. Sadge.
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*bangs fists on table* MANNY WAS ALSO IN THE IN-BETWEEN WATCHING OVER LUZ PLEASE I BEG PLEASE-
I don’t have time to draw nice and clean so take these doodles
Anyways they were friends and also very sad
Based on this drawing I made
#I know this would make the WaD scene weird cuz why wasn't he there-#but stfu it's an AU now#Papa Titan Caleb and Manny in the in-between watching over their kids and stuff#.......#*LIVE DAD REACTION* AU#Do you know how awsome it would be?!#Luz and Amity getting together#Manny: “MY DAUGHTER HAS A GIRLFRIEND!!!!! LOOK AT THEM :D OH THEY'RE PERFECT!!!!” Papa Titan and Caleb: “Aww congratulations!”#The scene in Eclipse Lake where Hunter called King a rat#Papa Titan: *chuckles* Caleb: “Noooooooo stop it-” PT: “I thought it's funny.” Manny: *giggling cuz Ratatouille movie popped into his head*#Hollow Mind cut to Caleb and Manny screaming and just Protective Dads™️ over Hunter and Luz#“GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER/SON YOU MONSTER!”#When Hunter runs off into the woods in panic: Papa Titan makes sure he's safe and guides him to Hexside#Lumity's first kiss:#Manny: *incoherent sobbing*#Camilia welcoming the kids post KT#Manny: “Oh honey it'll be okay.”#Do you know how insane they'd be when Luz got her Palismen?!#“All I've wanted was to be understood.”#*Cut to all three of them screaming and hugging on another and congratulating Manny*#The whole TtT possession arc would set Caleb off in a frenzy#Do you see my visions?#Do you?!#The dads seeing their kids and their families growing and learning and overcoming Belos and AUGH#DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN?!#the owl house#toh spoilers#the owl house spoilers#watching and dreaming#just rebloging
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Eclipse Lake is very funny, but also super annoying. The plot for this episode makes no sense, because the writers want me to suspend my disbelief and believe neither Eda or Luz can figure out there is Titan Blood in the key. Even though Eda has had the key and doorway for 30 years and Luz has been using this doorway up until the end of season 1...
... Amity figures out there's titan blood in the key towards the last third of the episode - after Hunter says you can't get to the human realm without it... She puts two and two together in this moment even though she knows her literal girlfriend has been using this key to travel between worlds.
Luz is trying to build a doorway back home, and neither Eda or Luz think "hey, we don't have to go to Eclipse Lake to get Titan Blood because we already have it in this key. All we need to do is find the right combination of ingredients to build the door."
Luz and Eda don't put two and two together because they want Hunter to take the Titan Blood back to Belos. So, Luz and Eda get lobotomized for contrived plot progression.
HOWEVER, this episode is soooo funny to me, because they insert some weird pseudo-drama between Luz and Amity that serves no purpose to the story. It just exists to take up screentime. It also doesn't benefit Hunter to make Amity feel shitty about her relationship with Luz.
At first, Hunter is trying to draw parallels between him and Amity - how unlike Eda and King, they actually have alot at stake.
... BUT THEN the focus pivots to Lumity because they created "conflict" between them at the start of the episode.
Then Hunter continues on about how Amity and him are The Same...
Hunter being the Biggest Lumity Hater doesn't benefit him at all in this scenario. It doesn't contribute to Amity's decision to unbind him. She just does it because she, Luz, and Eda need to be braindead for the plot to move in the direction the writers want it to move in. That's why despite Amity straight up saying she doesn't trust Hunter, she let's him go. And Hunter hating on Lumity doesn't give Hunter an edge over Amity in their fight for the key.
They could have just had Hunter try and find commonality with Amity because of their similar upbringings. Hunter would know Amity's history - why wouldn't he when The Blights make Abomitrons for his family? Hunter is also smart enough to be able to get an idea of someone's intentions and personality just by monitoring their behavior. That's how he's able to tell Luz was bluffing in HP. Amity is also in her Trying to Be Nice like Luz Era, so Hunter would have had a relatively easy time manipulating Amity into freeing him from her binds. He could have just made up a backstory that was similar to Amity's to get her to trust him.
But nope, bringing up Amity's past would mean Amity is allowed to be anything more than Luz's awesome girlfriend. So, we gotta insert meaningless conflict between Luz and Amity... which doesn't even work as conflict because Luz has no idea her gf thinks she's not good enough for her.
It makes you wonder why they chose to insert psuedo-drama into the first episode featuring Luz and Amity as a couple. Why did they skip Lumity's honeymoon phase and just barrel into pseudo-relationship drama?
They really had Luz's type of boy make Luz's type of girl feel shitty about her relationship with Luz... okay, interesting... why did they do that? Why was that a thing lol. That's, hmm, that's very interesting how you did that knowing you wrote a whole spoiler episode where Luz kisses a prince.
That's so interesting... too bad the conflict in this episode means absolutely nothing and will not be relevant later on! Like, at all!
Hunter trying to homewreck Lumity and Amity feeling insecure about her relationship with Luz means absolutely nothing - not in this episode, or to the story as a whole. There are no potential consequences for Hunter and/or Lumity - Luz doesn't even know her girlfriend is feeling insecure over their relationship. It's just there to remind you that Amity will only ever be Luz's awesome girlfriend and nothing more.
Basically the Lumity "drama" is there to distract you from this episodes nonsensical plot.
Oh right, and the other reason why I love EL is because they had to write Luz out of the episode. Luz literally couldn't be there, because: 1. Luz would have made sure Hunter couldn't take any titan blood back to Belos. She destroyed the door at the end of season 1, once she figures out Belos rebuilt the door, she's gonna name sure that Titan Blood never gets back to him. So they had to lobotomize Luz via magical disease.
2. They didn't want to decide if Hunter would win or lose in this fight, because they didn't want to deal with the consequences of this choice. They wanted Yesterday's Lie and Hollow Mind to happen - so they're gonna do it in a way that is easy for them to write. If Luz was at EL, it is entirely possible for Hunter to lose this fight without it feeling forced, because he values her opinion of him. That's... literally why he bulks and tells her his name in Hunting Palismen after Luz shows the slightest bit of disappointment in him. So, the writing team decided to make their lives easy by writing Luz out of Eclipse Lake.
In conclusion, while this episode is annoying and braindead THAT'S the reason why I think it's very funny and enjoyable. I am particularly fond of the way Eclipse Lake tries to dress itself up as a Lumity episode in an attempt to distract you from its contrived plot.
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TW Child abuse/manipulation general Belos shenanigans. No spoilers past 3x01, please don’t add spoilers for 3x02 to this post.
Sometimes I think about how Belos targets kids and why, because he knows that kids are still developing and don’t always understand right from wrong, and also it seems like he just likes being around kids more because he feels like he can control them. He’s very aware of what’ll upset Luz, what’ll make her mad, and what to say to her to get what he wants. He’s even more in tune with Hunter, he kind of trains Hunter on certain words like “replacement” that set him off. Hunter’s backstory that he gives in Hunting Palismen is probably almost word for word what Belos taught him to say (he always highlights how Belos gives him the staff which would be important to him as a half-witch but Belos also highlights that himself which feels... interesting, as well as the fact that it sounds rehearsed a bit, because Hunter trails off and then he remembers where to go next with “And then Belos found me”), and Belos definitely taught Hunter to respond to physical violence specifically from him with the freeze reaction which is fucking awful (ex. Eclipse Lake, Hunting Palismen- Belos makes a sudden movement and in both of these Hunter goes silent and still, and then in King’s Tide, Hunter freezes up and goes silent when Belos addresses him). Finally, the Collector he has less control over but it kind of seems like the Collector looks up to him and Belos uses that against him. The Collector gave Belos secret magic, and helped him create the Grimwalkers, in exchange in a lot of ways for Belos’ friendship. Belos and the Collector even pinky swore that Belos would let him out, and Belos abuses that and uses his position of having something the Collector wants to force him to help him.
I don’t have anything to say about Darius because we haven’t seen them interact directly or alone and we don’t know much about their relationship other than their vague past when Darius was likely a minor so. Yeah. Probably won’t get elaboration on that at this point but this is a History.
#the owl house#toh meta#tw child abuse#tw gaslighting#a small mention but Belos gaslights all three of them LMAO#could write a whole nother thing on that#this is open if you have a thought go ahead#just wait for 3x02 until the 21st though
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Eclipse Trip Report, Part 2
Sunday was an even more perfectly gorgeous day! We spent it exploring our home park. Here's the lake and swimming beach area:
Like most of the Pennsylvania state parks, the lake was formed by adding a little dam:
In addition to being eclipse weekend, it was also the opening weekend of trout season, so the park was pretty busy:
All the exploring made Sophie sleepy:
The campground was completely full Sunday night, and mostly full Saturday and Monday nights. Most of the people were in campers, but there were a few hardy souls braving it in tents. (The daytime weather was pleasant, but it got very cold at night!) We had people from all the neighboring states, and I also saw cars from Kentucky and Michigan.
Back at the campsite, I used my new cast-iron pot to make stew over the fire:
It's the kind with little legs so you can sit it right in the coals, but my fire ring had a big rock right in the middle, so I had to sit it on the rock and piled the fuel up around it.
The stew came out pretty well, though:
I made some of the flour-and-yogurt bread, too--I was going to try to do that over the fire, but with the rock situation, I ended up doing it over my bottle-gas camping stove instead, and then just put it over the fire to keep warm.
My dad showed up just in time for dinner, and then pretty much fell asleep right after. We hung extra blankets from the top bunks to provide some semblance of privacy, which is what my sister and I used to do growing up:
Eclipse day, we drove out to the park on Chautaqua. The weather was like this:
And pretty much stayed that way until about 15 minutes after totality. We got to the park pretty early--about 11, for totality at 3:17. I'd allowed plenty of time for traffic, which turned out to be completely unnecessary; there was less traffic than when I did my scouting trip on Saturday. There were maybe 3 or 4 cars already parked at the marina when we got there, so we went and got breakfast and then came back.
By the time the partiality started, the row of prime parking spaces right on the water had filled up:
(The orange cooler and chairs are our spot.) The sun occasionally peeked out, during partiality, which you could tell because of how everybody shouted and scrambled for their eclipse glasses. This band of clear sky toward the southeast steadily widened as we got closer to totality:
Which prompted lots of hopeful remarks on the theme of how the clear bit just might make it to where the sun was, in time. (Spoiler: it did not.)
During totality, I got one fraction of a second glimpse of about half of the sun's corona; other than that, the main thing to see was the 360 sunset effect, where the light from outside the path of totality was reflecting off the clouds. It was fairly neat:
We also heard some nighttime calls from birds on the lake. It was not as spectacular as a clear-sky eclipse would have been, but it was interesting and somewhat eerie.
As totality ended, you could see it getting lighter by the second, and the band at the street party on the opposite side of the lake started playing "Here Comes the Sun."
They could, perhaps, have tried playing it a little earlier, because about 15 minutes later, the sky started to clear, and we had an excellent view of the second half of partiality.
And there was still no traffic, and my dad had never seen Lake Erie, so we drove up there afterwards--we just did the Barcelona beach, because he was driving back that night. You could tell by the state of the trash cans and port-a-potties that they'd had a bit of a crowd, but by the time we got there--with totality not even entirely over--we had it nearly to ourselves:
And I found this piece of slate that I think might possibly be a fossil imprint of something:
A different angle of it:
I have no idea how you tell, but none of the other pieces of slate on the beach has a texture like that, so there must be something unusual about it. (Just in case anyone is wondering, rock collecting is listed on the beach's website as one of the activities you can do there. It is a licitly-obtained free-range rock.)
And that was about it for the trip! My dad went home that night, and Sophie and I followed the next morning. We did encounter some traffic on the way home, but it wasn't anything too drastic--about like how it gets in that area on Penn State football weekends.
Here are a few more cottage photos. This is the upper bunks and ceiling:
The view from my bunk:
The standing fan was provided; I've never had one of those in park lodgings before. The trash can is also fairly unusual.
Here's the bunks without all my stuff in the way:
The little ledge with the lamp is a nice touch, too--a lot of the time, all you get is a ceiling light.
Sophie says, this was fun, but it's time to go home now!
Exterior view in the sun:
And here's one of the park yurts:
I stayed in one of these once; they're kind of neat. The walls are made of several layers of tarpaulin-type material, on a wooden frame. There's a wooden floor inside, and they have electricity. The top of the roof is a see-through dome, which you can also raise up if you want ventilation.
Anyway, that was our eclipse trip! It was a good time and I'm glad I went, even though I didn't have the totality experience that I hoped for. (Now I'm trying to convince my dad we should try again in Iceland in 2026. His turn to pay, since I got this one!)
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op the chidren YEARN for an update on the kissing windows fic
(no pressure tho sometimes things come up i just wanted to tell you how much i LOVE that fic)
aaa thank u!! grad school & executive dysfunction have been kicking my ass, but so far ch 9 has 3595 words and it's not even halfway done!!
here's an excerpt/spoiler for the curious....
"It had been just over a week since The Eclipse when his mother knocked on the frame of his door while he was reading. “Reminder that we’re going up to the lake on Saturday, you should start getting your things together soon.” ...
“Oh, Jim, darling,” his mother began part way through the conversation, “You know, your father and I were talking and, well what if you invited Gregory to join us? Since Joe is staying with that girl of his, we’ll have a bed open. You two seem to be getting along. and I’m sure he’d appreciate feeling a little more connected to some community.” James was so surprised, he almost aspirated on the bite of food he’d just put into his mouth, coughing so forcefully tears sprang to his eyes. “Sorry,” he wheezed. “Wrong pipe.” He cleared his throat and nodded. “Sure, I’m not sure if his dad will let him but I’ll ask him if he’d like to come.” God, was he blushing? Maybe he just felt warm from his brush with death. “Oh, that man….” his mother shook her head at the mention of Greg’s father. “I’m sorry, you know I don’t like to judge but…well I hope he’s allowed to come, is all I’ll say.” James’ father and brother nodded and mumbled in vague agreement and dinner rolled along, his mom naming things they ought to pack and his father nodding and repeating his words every other sentence to make sure the boys heard her, which was fair because despite sitting 2 feet away from her, James’ thoughts were sprinting circles around him. ‘You two seem to be getting along?’ What did she mean by that? Would it seem too clingy of me to ask him to come on a family vacation after only being together for a week? Are we together?? I mean maybe we’re just friends who touch and hold hands and kiss. And so on and so forth. "
#kw ch 9#kw spoiler#ask#thank u for sending!#i appreciate the reminders that there are people excited to read the words I'm cooking up
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