#even if he's doomed to always destroy them

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

“Wuthering Heights” inspiration on “Nosferatu” (2024)

Robert Eggers revealed, in several interviews, that “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë was his main inspiration for this story, even over the “Dracula” novel itself. What Eggers did with the “Dracula” themes was, in fact, a subversion. “Nosferatu” (2024) is “Wuthering Heights” on steroids, horror version.

“It was always clear to me that Nosferatu is a demon lover story, and one of the great demon lover stories of all time is Wuthering Heights, which I returned to a lot while writing this script,” Eggers explained. “As a character, Heathcliff is an absolute bastard towards Cathy in the novel, and you’re always questioning whether he really loves her, or if he just wants to possess and destroy her.” (Robert Eggers wants you to see his Nosferatu as both a lover and a biter (interview)

“[Orlok] represents a sort of forbidden desire for Ellen […] Eggers, for his part, was eager to bring out the sexual subtext of Nosferatu, calling his version a clear “demon lover story” and likening it to Wuthering Heights (which he reread while trying to crack the script) […] the only ‘person’ that she can kind of connect with is this demonic force, this vampire, this demon lover. [And] Orlok is also alone.” (Nosferatu director needed Bill Skarsgård’s vampire to look like a creepy corpse - Interview)

"This is also a demon-lover story, like Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Is Heathcliff really interested in Cathy, or does he want to possess and destroy her? You’re drawn into that story, but it certainly is not a healthy relationship." (The Melodrama of Robert Eggers)

“Yes, it is a scary horror movie with a lot of dread and even some jump scares. But more than that, it is a tale of love and obsession and a Gothic romance. (Filmmaker Robert Eggers Talks 'Nosferatu' and Remaking a Classic)

The “Wuthering Heights” inspiration is seen in themes throughout the film:

Ghost at the Window: Orlok's shadow at Ellen's window during her teenage years;

Love Triangle: free-spirited and medicalized woman (Ellen/Catherine); beastly man (Orlok/Heathcliff) and a gentleman (Thomas Hutter/Edgar Lindon);

Locket with Lock of Hair: "haunt me, then";

Catherine’s Madness and Ellen’s Sickness: "I am Heathcliff!"/Ellen believing Orlok is a demon possessing her;

Destructive Power of Love and “Blood Plague”: Orlok forcing the characters to relive his own dark trauma through their "blood plague" deliriums;

Separated by death/United by death.

Ghost at the Window

"Come in! come in!" he sobbed. "Cathy, do come. Oh, do—once more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last!" The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.

Orlok was no more than a shadow at Ellen’s window during her teenage years (she calls it “childhood” because the concept of “teenager” was only created after World War II).  As we see at the prologue, Ellen didn’t give him entrance into her family home (and her opening the window to him at the Harding household, dooming everyone inside, confirms this, she didn’t know Orlok has to be invited in, like your regular vampire). Ellen was masturbating and when he grabs her neck, she almost suffocates to death (confirming he wasn’t touching her before). The prologue also established their communications are telepathic, Orlok talks with her inside of her head/mind.

Herr Knock’s Sex Magick ritual (masturbation) will confirm its sexual energy that conjures Orlok, and he has to be summoned (invited) for these telepathic communications to happen. This will explain everything about Orlok and Ellen’s communications: the “hysteric fits” are all on herself, and she’s summoning Orlok for them to talk inside of her head. In her teenage years, she would masturbate and he would appear at her window, as a ghost, similar to Catherine's ghost with Heathcliff, calling him to his grave.

And her father caught her masturbating and shouted “sin!” and threatened to have her institutionalized because masturbation was considered the “ultimate sin” in Victorian society. It was called “self-pollution” and “self-abuse”, and both a moral and physical evil. Medical manuals adverted against this “evil”, for both men and women. In the early 19th century, female masturbation was considered a “anti-social behavior”, a form of insanity (“lunacy”) and epilepsy, and was believed to increase the risk of hysteria in women. Which is aligned with the Victorian diagnose of Ellen's character: "hysteria" ("shame") and melancholy (“abnormal beliefs”, hallucinations, delusions).

Ellen is also seen at her window throughout the film, which is both based on strigoi myth (when strigoi rise from their graves for the first time, they return to those they have loved the most in life, and are said to appear at their loved one’s windows, asking for entrance), and "Wuthering Heights" with Catherine's window: where windows (and doors, too) are usually connected with Catherine and Heathcliff’s separation, and his inability to reach her. In “Nosferatu”, we also see this with Ellen and Orlok: in the prologue, Ellen’s window is wide open (when she meets Orlok), then it’s shut (separation) until the third act, when she asks him to come to her (reunion).

The intense horror of my nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in—let me in!’… As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window […]: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’

The Love Triangle

“In this “Nosferatu,” he’s [Orlok] coming for Ellen. This love triangle that is similar to “Wuthering Heights,” the novel, was more compelling to me than any political themes.” (Robert Eggers; “Dream of Death”)

This is the easiest to recognize. The love triangle between a free-spirited and medicalized woman (Ellen/Catherine) and a beastly man (Orlok/Heathcliff) and a gentleman (Thomas Hutter/Edgar Lindon). The “demon lover story”.

We see many similarities between Catherine and Ellen, even in her teenage years (Ellen calls it “childhood” because the concept of “teenager” was only created after World War II). Love of nature: While Catherine enjoyed being in the moors of Wuthering Heights, Ellen liked to be in the forest and in the fields. They both stopped because of social pressure (society gender expectations of them); while with Catherine this was more of her own choice, with Ellen it was her father who started to forbid it, and confined her to the domestic sphere. They were both wild and free-spirited; Ellen’s father called her “changeling girl” (European folklore) because she enjoyed being in nature so much. Both characters spiral down into madness, apparently because of Heathcliff/Olrok, when, in truth, they are done with society expectations of them.

Orlok is similar to Heathcliff after Catherine's death. He’s a literal beast, a monster, a strigoi from Balkan folklore. The two are compared to “the devil”, brutal, cruel, dangerous and unforgiving. Both are demonized by society: Heathcliff because of social class and racial issues, and Orlok because of his occult dealings, as he's slandered as a “Devil worshipper” when he’s, in fact, a Pagan enchanter worshipper of Dacian God, Zalmoxis.  However, the sinister and cold behavior of both characters hides a tragic and romantic motivation, both are deeply sad characters, filled with grief and rage, driven by revenge and tormenting everyone around them because of their trauma of losing Catherine/16th century Ellen. I’ll explain this theme in a minute. Heathcliff feels his soul is already dead, and the grief destroyed all the good left in him; he's described as a "living dead" with no mercy nor compassion.

Three representations of unbearable/maddening grief in "Nosferatu" (2024)

Thomas is extremely similar to Edgar Linton. They are both gentlemen, constant, gentle, polite and well-mannered, embodiments of civilized virtues. Both Edgar and Thomas seek to be good Victorian husbands, and fulfill their provider gender roles. Similar to Catherine with Edgar, Ellen chooses to marry Thomas when she meets him, over accepting her covenant with Orlok. Both Edgar and Thomas don’t understand what Catherine and Ellen are experiencing, but stand by them. Both will become grieving widowers at the end.

Like Heathcliff and Edgar, Orlok and Thomas are each other’s foils and opposites, in every single way. Thomas is life; Orlok is death; Thomas is beauty, Orlok is the beast; Thomas is Victorian love, Orlok is passion, Thomas is society, Orlok is nature; Thomas is well-mannered, Orlok is a monster (literally); Thomas is gentle; Orlok is brutal; Thomas is Middle-class, Orlok is a count (aristocracy). Thomas cares about wealth, Orlok doesn’t (he’s already dead).  

"Heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice.”

“Wuthering Heights” is, at its core, a love triangle between Catherine, Heathcliff and Edgar; which is also the case in “Nosferatu” (2024) with Ellen, Orlok and Thomas:

Ellen and Orlok didn’t grow up together (like Catherine and Heathcliff), and their passionate and wild past as lovers happened in the 16th century (reincarnation theme); 

Ellen, like Catherine, feels ardent desire and passion for Orlok/Heathcliff while being married to Thomas/Edgar: "this demon lover that attracts her, and she doesn’t know why, but somewhere there is a deep understanding there and a deep attraction". The “why” is because she’s the reincarnation of Orlok’s wife, and she has some sort of memories of this (the lilacs, her believing they were lovers “then”, the erotic dreams of Orlok, “you could never please me as he could”);

Like Heathcliff, Orlok also disappears after Ellen/Catherine marries Thomas/Edgar, and returns with a vengeance. In Ellen’s case, she stops conjuring Orlok, and that’s why the haunting ceased (she doesn’t understand this because society doesn’t give her the language for her to understand her power, like Robert Eggers says in interviews).

Like Heathcliff, Orlok also comes between Ellen/Catherine and Thomas/Edgar. Orlok whole ordeal in Transylvania with Thomas is, literally, to scare the crap out of him (hallucinations of the Handsome Roma vampire hunter, the heaviness of his shadow, his jokes about the "torturous grave"), and the the Divorce Sex Magick ritual (which is the whole point why Thomas is there in the first place, as Orlok wants to annul his marriage to Ellen in both the physical (covenant papers aka divorce papers) and the spiritual realms. And then Orlok will go on to influence and possess Thomas.

Like Catherine, Ellen sees her love for Thomas/Edgar as social acceptable (made her “normal” and stopped her medicalization by Victorian society), while feeling Heathcliff/Orlok is a part of her (“I’m Heathcliff!”). In Ellen’s case this is very literal because she believes Orlok is a demon possessing her (because of what Professor Von Franz said, only he spoke of “spiritual obsession”).  

‘No, it was not because I disliked Mr. Heathcliff, but because Mr. Heathcliff dislikes me; and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity."

"I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do!"

"You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."

Locket with Lock of Hair

"I shouldn't have discovered that he [Heathcliff] had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse's face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair [Edgar's], fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine's neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own."

After Catherine’s death, Edgar spends the day at the chapel with her coffin, while Heathcliff goes there at night. He opens the necklace-locket she has on her neck and places a lock of his own hair inside (tossing away Edgar’s) as he begs Catherine’s ghost to haunt him.

Ellen does her “maiden’s token” in front of her symbolic window, and the next after is Herr Knock conjuring Orlok to communicate with him. Ellen has premonitions and just had a dream about Orlok after the prologue, she knows Thomas will be sent to him. Her heart-shape locket is an invitation for him to haunt her again (because he needs to be invited).

"You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Catherine Madness and Ellen’s Sickness

"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

When Edgar forbids Catherine from seeing Heathcliff, she locks herself in her room, and isolates into silence and starvation, confined to her bed. According to Nelly, she’s delirious, hallucinating and inflamed with declarations of madness. She becomes consumed by her passion for Heathcliff and death. Catherine is mentally devastated by the constant fighting between Edgar and Heathcliff, and, then by being separated from him and him running off with Isabella. Catherine’s mind and body are consumed by her passionate feelings for Heathcliff, and she’s not able to control herself. When he goes to visit her, behind Edgar’s back, they finally confess their love for each other and Catherine blames him, and says he killed her, comparing her passion for him with murder. In her death bed, Catherine, after giving birth, calls out for Heathcliff, saying she won’t ever rest until he’s dead by her side.

Catherine famously declares she’s Heathcliff, as in they share the same soul, the same spirit, they are soulmates: “he’s [Heathcliff’s] more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” For his part, Heathcliff feels the same, as he declares he can’t live with his soul in the grave, nor without his soul, after Catherine’s death.

Ellen resurrected Orlok when she was 15 years old (confirmed by composer Robin Carolan in an online interview, alongside Robert Eggers), and, through her prayer, she commands “a guardian angel, a spirit of any celestial sphere, anything” to come to her (enchantress). She unconsciously brings Orlok back from the dead (necromancer). There’s an immediate recognition from Orlok’s part: he not only knows what she is, but who she is (reincarnation theme: strigoi haunt the one they loved the most in their life). After her father caught her masturbating, she’s medicalized by Victorian society as hysteric (“shame”; connected with female sexuality) and melancholic (delusions, hallucinations). Orlok stopped haunting her when she met and married Thomas because she stop masturbating and conjuring him in the process.

However, and like Robert Eggers tells us in his interviews: “Ellen has an innate understanding about the shadow side of the world that we live in that she doesn’t have language for. This gift and power that she has isn’t in an environment where it’s being cultivated, to put it mildly. It’s pretty tragic”. Ellen doesn’t understand her power, and Victorian society tells her sexual desire and expressions outside of marriage are sinful and demonic. As such, at the beginning of the story, she believes it was Thomas who stopped her “sickness” (and consequently her medicalization). But, she never forgot Orlok, and she most likely has memories of her past life, to the point she mixes the two in the narrative (16th century and 19th century). Catherine goes out into the pouring rain searching for Heathcliff; Ellen does the same, but runs into Thomas, as sees him as her “lifeguard” (sort of speak).

As the story progresses, Ellen, like Catherine, also becomes consumed by her passion for Orlok, as she keeps having these “hysterics fits” to conjure him and communicate with him (telepathically, inside of her mind). Like Catherine, she can’t control herself. And, like Catherine, she will also put the blame on Orlok/Heathcliff; here motivated by Professor Von Franz saying she’s “obsessed of some daemon” (spiritual obsession). Ellen interprets this as Orlok being a demon possessing her and forcing her to have these “hysterical fits” (“I have felt you crawling like a serpent in my body”). Ellen can’t accept she’s the one who keeps summoning Orlok because that’s too shameful, and her sexuality is owned and controlled by her husband, which is why her answer to Orlok “it is not me, it is your own nature” is “no, I love Thomas”.

Professor Von Franz also began to give Ellen answers about her power, mainly that she’s a medium and can communicate with the spiritual world through her trance mediumship. But she thinks she can only communicate with Orlok specifically; which she discovers it’s not the case during the “possession scene”. This scene is important to her character arc because it’s when she realizes Orlok is not a demon possessing her, it’s all on herself (which is why she declares “I’m unclean!” because that’s what Victorian society tells her about her sexuality). In this scene she sees Thomas will always call the doctors to deal with her, too; he will always medicalize her.

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… Why am I so changed? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills."

Several Feminist literary critics have interpreted Catherine madness in “Wuthering Heights” as a result of her imprisonment. This topic is explored in the book “The Madwoman in the Attic” by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Themes of childhood vs. motherhood, freedom vs. imprisonment, home vs. outdoors, society vs. nature are present in Catherine perceived descent into madness, as Nelly becomes the representative of patriarchal authority to report her behavior.

When Catherine meets the Lintons, she’s “domesticated”, robbed of her independence, nature and individuality, as she seeks to become socially acceptable. She decides to marry Edgar Linton, and struggles to define her identity as a woman in her husband’s household. Her confinement in Thrushcross Grange (society) makes her life unbearable, she wants to return to her Wuthering Heights and to Heathcliff (nature), and this leads to her premature death. To Gubar and Gilbert, it’s Catherine’s marriage to Edgar that causes her to feel trapped, she can no longer make sense of the world, sees things entirely from her own perspective, and ultimately is confined to her bed with illness. This connection between mental breakdown and imprisonment is common to many Gothic tales and Romantic poems, notably Lord Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon”and some of Emily Brontë’s Gondal poems.

We see something similar with Ellen in “Nosferatu” (2024); she has a clear connection to nature, in her teenage years she enjoyed being in the forest and the fields, and now she wants to go to the beach. Society wants to keep her imprisoned in the domestic sphere, which is represented in her marriage to Thomas, as he seeks to buy them a bigger house and a maid because that’s what Ellen deserves. Like Catherine, Ellen is also “domesticated” when she meets and marries Thomas, as she represses her power because of societal expectations of her, until it eventually explodes and she keeps summoning Orlok to her. And like Catherine, Ellen’s desire for freedom will also lead her to her premature death (in a different context). And while Catherine and Heathcliff had their Wuthering Heights, Ellen and Orlok have their garden of lilacs (like we saw at the prologue, when he revealed himself to her; which is probably also a reference to their past life since these flowers are native to the Balkans, and both Ellen and Orlok associate them with each other).

The Destructive Power of Love and "Blood Plague"

"One of the tasks I had was synthesizing Grau’s 20th-century occultism with cult understandings of the 1830s and with the Transylvanian folklore that was my guiding principle for how Orlok was going to be, what things he was going to do, and the mythology around him. I was synthesizing a mythology that worked with all of that." (Robert Eggers; Dream of Death)

Theme of the all-consuming, obsessive and self-destructive passion, wrecking the lives of everyone around them and only stops when they are both dead.

Robert Eggers' Count Orlok is a strigoi morti from Balkan folklore, with roots in Dacian mythology, and that's his lore and what explains his actions/motivations in this story. Strigoi haunt one person (usually the one they loved the most in their life), and the rest like unfortunate collaterals. In “Nosferatu” (2024), it’s Ellen who’s the target of this haunting; as Orlok’s every action in the story is connected to her. Having her soul by his side for all eternity (“you shall be one with me, ever-eternally”) is his sole motivation.

"May she [Catherine] wake in torment!' he [Heathcliff] cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings!"

Strigoi feed on souls (“life force”, soul in the blood), they are the original “psychic vampires”. As Orlok is feeding on his victims, he’s gradually trapping their souls inside of Nosferatu (the rotten corpse), alongside his own. This is a sort of reversed “possession”; where the victim becomes part of Nosferatu, taking residence there until Nosferatu is destroyed and the souls are set free (including Orlok’s); because strigoi are sustain by the souls of others  ("I will drink upon thy soul"; "I relinquished him my soul").

Besides the physical symptoms of the “blood plague” there’s a notorious change of behavior on Orlok’s victims, as they seem taken by madness and delirium. This is interpreted as “fever”, but it’s them having access to Orlok’s soul inside of Nosferatu, and vice-versa. He's dragging these characters into darkness (Nosferatu) alongside him, forcing his own pain and torment upon their souls, like Heathcliff did with the characters of “Wuthering Heights” after Catherine’s death.

In his own essay to “The Guardian” about his “Nosferatu”, Robert Eggers writes: “what are we to make of stories like this? What kind of trauma, pain and violence is so great that even death cannot stop it? It’s a heartbreaking notion. The folk vampire embodies disease, death, and sex in a base, brutal and unforgiving way.” The answer to Orlok's dark trauma, connected to Ellen, that death cannot stop it, is on the story itself.

Orlok is forcing all of these characters to relive his own trauma throught their "blood plague" deliriums, which fits the “demon lover story” in a, indeed, brutal and unforgiving way. He compells Ellen to confront her own power (death), destroy her Victorian self-deception (“You deceive yourself”) and for her to remember their own shared trauma, at the same time.

Unbearable guilt: Thomas blames himself for everything that is happening, he believes he was the one who unleashed Orlok because he sold him a house in Wisburg. He thinks Orlok is already getting to Ellen the same way he did to him once he arrived at Transylvania. He's now on a vendetta against Orlok ("I'll kill him!") and wants to be forgiven ("Please, it is my fault! Forgive me my dear, sweet friend!” as he’ll say to Friedrich).

Burden of reproduction: Anna feels her pregnancy is eating her away, because her unborn child is hungry like their father, and asks Ellen for explanations;

Maddening grief: Friedrich Harding blames Ellen’s diseased mind for his grief, and he'll go on to blame himself when Thomas proves Nosferatu is real.

"I’ll kill him! He shall never harm you again. Never! [...] Please, it is my fault! Forgive me my dear, sweet friend!" "Suffocating… I… feel so weak… I… I fear little Friedrich is so strong and hungry, he’s eating me weary." "Anna, my love. Our son … our little son… forgive me. I shall never sleep again. Never."

And we also have Herr Knock's delirium, which is "death wish", and wanting to be executed because Orlok broke their covenant in favor of Ellen.

The “blood plague” victims are mimicking Orlok’s dark trauma: 16th century Ellen either died on childbirth or had a pregnancy-related death (like Catherine in "Wuthering Heights"); which embodies disease, sex and death. Which will find parallel in Thomas, but mostly in Friedrich Harding blaming himself because of his wife’s death. Which is also expressed in Anna Harding saying their son is so strong and hungry (like his father) and it’s eating her away. Orlok’s appetite is the culprit of his wife’s death. He kills the two Harding children as revenge for the burdens of reproduction. Like Friedrich Harding, Orlok was also an extremely wealthy man (count; ancient line of nobility; etc.) but his greatest treasure was his wife. Without her, he didn’t want to live anymore, and this will resonate in Herr Knock seeking a violent execution to punish himself. He was either executed because of witchcraft or committed suicide. The symptoms of the "blood plague" (shortage of air, lung infection) and Orlok's "wheezing" indicate he died by suffocation (drowned; hanging or strangled).

And this also makes sense with the strigoi myth where “bad death”, violent, like execution or suicide is believed to be one of the reasons why a person becomes a strigoi after death. And since Orlok calls Ellen his "affliction" (sickness; plague; sorrow of all sorrows), his death is related to her.

Olrok targets Friedrich and Anna Harding because they are the mirror pair to him and Ellen, which indicates they were a similar couple to the Hardings in the 16th century (only Ellen was more sexual than Anna, because she’s similar to Friedrich Harding).

"I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep and throw the church down over me, but I'll not rest till you are with me. I never will!”

Orlok possesses Thomas during the "possession scene" after Ellen begins to "remember", as she says "you could never please me as he could".

Separated by death/United by death

After Catherine’s death, she’s buried in the churchyard, near the moors she loved. While Edgar’s grief is quiet sadness, Heathcliff is pure desolation, suffering and anguish, which will set him on a path of self-destruction. Edgar will be buried next to Catherine. Later, Heathcliff bribes a sexton to unearth Catherine’s coffin and remove the wood on one side, so when he’s buried next to her, their corpses will be together, with not even a piece of wood between them. After their deaths, peace returns to Wuthering Heights and the people swore they saw their ghosts, together, in the moors. The last scene in the book is Mr. Lockwood seeing Catherine and Heathcliff ghosts approaching the window.

Given all the context, it was Orlok’s maddening grief and unbearable guilt over his wife’s death that caused him to be cursed to become a strigoi after his death. Reincarnation is one of the main beliefs in Zalmoxis worship, and so, he died believing he would find his wife on another reincarnation. Only this didn’t happen; he became a strigoi, and his wife’s soul (Ellen) moved on to the next reincarnation. When Ellen calls out, he’s resurrected and immediately goes to her window, asking for entrance, truth to strigoi folklore.

Orlok’s actions with Ellen are very much rooted in Balkan folklore of the strigoi: he’s dragging her to her grave (“you are not for the living. You are not for human kind”); and he needs to have Nosferatu curse removed from him in order for them to be together in the Afterlife, because his soul is trapped in that rotten corpse. At the end of “Nosferatu” (2024) we have two strigoi legends; if a strigoi haunting isn’t stopped, the haunted will, inevitably,  die, broken hearted and insane. In some legends, strigoi return to their widows to have sex with them, until they die of an excess of intercourse (exhaustion); and Ellen literally dies of a “broken heart” because he fed off her heart blood. At the end, Ellen is possessed by Orlok, as their souls are one inside of Nosferatu, she has access to his soul, and her blood plague delirium is love.

'I wish I could hold you,’ she continued, bitterly, ‘till we were both dead!'

And that “final look of love” she gives Thomas isn’t about him at all, it’s about her and Orlok, as their joined blood/souls are pouring out of Nosferatu and ready to ascend to the Afterlife, together forever. Like Catherine and Heathcliff, their bodies are united in death.

Heathcliff grieving Catherine: "Wuthering Heights" BBC Minisseries (2009)

At the end, Ellen and Orlok return to their spiritual garden of lilacs, like Catherine and Heathcliff went back to their Wuthering Heights. Both pairs were separated by death, and are united by death. In both, we have Mr. Lockwood and Professor Von Franz looking out of the window, smiling:

‘They [Catherine and Heathcliff’s ghosts] are afraid of nothing,’ I grumbled, watching their approach through the window. ‘Together, they would brave Satan and all his legions.’ As they stepped on to the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at the moon—or, more correctly, at each other by her light.

[llondonfog]

half the time i'm torn between this is my blog!! i write what i want!! and rocking in a corner wondering if the concept is too dark and out there to be well-received by the three dears who read them :'))

[madou-dilou]

[maenefa]

Why does Eowyn want to die?

Because Aragorn won’t love her? Because she feels trapped in her feminine gender role?

These are the explanations we get in the text. However, none of the characters really acknowledge Eowyn’s darkest fear: being taken alive by the enemy.

There are some bad takes on Eowyn that boil down to patronizing her and downplaying the seriousness of her problems. People say that she had a naive desire for glory and Faramir teaches her that war isn’t actually fun. Then there’s the whole “Eowyn was a deserter who selfishly ran away from her duty” argument.

You can only say these things if you ignore how dire the situation was, how close Sauron was to winning, and how gruesome Eowyn’s fate would have been if he won. She knew that death or capture likely awaited her, and she knew that dying in battle was the least bad option. (She also knew her own worth and believed that she was too useful a warrior to be left behind with the civilians. And she was right.)

Eowyn’s actions are ruthlessly practical! She wants to die fighting because that’s better than waiting around for The Horrors. Let’s be real, Eowyn is too sensible to be suicidal over an unrequited crush.

Here are some of her most revealing quotes:

“All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honor, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more.”

“And those who have not swords can still die upon them.”

“Nor is it always evil to die in battle, even in bitter pain. Were I permitted, in this dark hour I would choose the latter.”

“But I do not desire healing…. I wish to ride to war like my brother Éomer, or better like Théoden the king, for he died and has both honour and peace.”

In the end, Eowyn only stops wanting to die after Sauron is defeated. Just before the Ring is destroyed, she tells Faramir:

“I stand upon some dreadful brink, and it is utterly dark in the abyss before my feet, but whether there is any light behind me I cannot tell. For I cannot turn yet. I wait for some stroke of doom.”

Eowyn can’t turn to light and life until the war is over. Hope is too painful; death at least offers “honor and peace.” This passage is so important because it EXPLICITLY links Eowyn’s despair to the outcome of the war and makes it clear that she is not simply having a meltdown because Aragorn rejected her.

There are two important moments where Eowyn is threatened with violence. The very first time we meet her, we are told by Gandalf that Wormtongue planned to turn her into a sex slave after Saruman conquered Rohan. Even though this threat is dismissed quickly, it’s a disturbing reminder of what could happen to Eowyn if Sauron wins.

Then we have the most triumphant moment of Eowyn’s story: her battle with the Witch King. Once again, Eowyn is not threatened with death, but with captivity and torment:

“Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.”

Eowyn laughs at him and makes sure to announce that she is a woman before killing him. Her victory is all the more satisfying because the Witch King has just threatened her with captivity, loss of agency, the violation of her body and mind—all threats that Eowyn has faced before. But the Witch King’s words continue to haunt Eowyn and us. He threatens to withhold death; and death is therefore framed as an escape, a gift. Eowyn is taken to the Houses of Healing, but she is obsessed with returning to battle and fighting until she dies.

When Eowyn says that she fears “a cage,” this is a brilliantly simple metaphor for the entire spectrum of oppression she has faced: from the well-meaning restrictions of her culture to the horrifying enslavement threatened by Wormtongue.

Once the war is over, Eowyn is able to laugh at her fears. She teases Faramir: “And would you have your proud folk say of you: there goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North!” Her fear of being caged has been turned into a bit of flirtatious banter. She feels completely safe with Faramir, and the idea that he “tamed” her is nothing but a joke between them.

[wriokitty]

"Is it true, my lord?" you murmur softly against his chest. It's quiet, and you're bare, the both of you. The words are forced out like they're glued to your lips, so you pry them off, ripping off the skin in the process and leaving you bleeding.

Ayato is clever. Cunningly so, you think. Something about the way his lips quirk makes you think he's well aware of what you mean. Something about the way he raises his brows makes you know he's not going to make this easy for you.

"Is what true?" he asks smoothly. Too smooth. It's like he's been waiting for this question. He glances down at you as you fight the urge to hide against his sternum.

"There is word, my lord," you say carefully. "I'm certain you are better acquainted with the rumors than myself."

"Word of what, exactly? There are many rumors across Inazuma, you know."

Ayato is also infuriating. He always has been.

You think it's the way he's so easy to disappear. He's there one second, like pelting rain. Cold. Unbearably difficult to ignore. Lingering on your skin as it rises with goosebumps and brings a shiver down your spine. And then he's gone. The harsh droplets blended with the current and carried away downstream, slipping through the cracks of your fingers like he was never meant to fit between them in the first place.

Ayato was never meant to fit against you in the first place. He does an impeccably cruel job of making you believe it's possible that he could, sometimes, though. You wonder if that's the irony of his vision—what justice is there to how he rips your heart from your chest, inspecting it closely in awe for just a moment before tossing it to your feet in indifference?

Surely, the god of Hydro does not recognize such sadism, let alone reward it. Surely, there is some form of injustice to how he toys with your feelings.

Patience is your strong suit. It has to be when loving Ayato—it has to be especially when you love him from his shadow. He faces the sun, just as any head of a clan should. You linger in the space behind, devoid of light—and, for a moment, you wonder if that's why he likes to keep you around.

Everyone who faces the light needs a shadow.

"If you wish to be coy," you say bitterly, "then allow me to be plain. There is word that the Kamisato clan seeks the betrothal of their head. Forgive me for seeking confirmation directly from the source himself."

"Ah," he drawls, so sickeningly sweet in that voice of his. You love him. You always have. You have never hated that truth more. "Yes, it is. It seems the elders believe I will be well past my prime should I wait any longer."

"And what do you believe, my lord?"

"That it is my duty to fulfill the wishes of my elders."

Your heart sinks. You already knew it would—made room for it so it wouldn't destroy any more of yourself in its path, even. You expected it to hit that place at the bottom of your guts that makes you feel nauseous and numb all at once. It was only a matter of time, of course—you're not naive enough to believe he could be yours like this forever.

You always liked to daydream, though. A day where Ayato and you faced the sun together, no longer hidden in the shadow of the moon under his sheets. No longer quiet in your affairs like they're disgustingly wrong. Maybe you are naive, though—maybe such a daydream is only proof your mind is painfully self-indulgent to the point of doom.

"Do you eye someone in particular?" you force yourself to ask. You're not sure why. Maybe masochism makes it easy to breathe when it's your heart that's bleeding and not your lungs.

"I do," he confirms. Cruel, you think—so cruel is the Yashiro Commissioner to keep you close, fighting against space itself to have your body close by night and give into its wickedness during the day. And so wicked, heartless, and brutal is space—you hate it more and more every day.

"You should not bed someone when dreaming of being betrothed, Ayato," you bite. The words are laced with venom, tasting acrid on your tongue as they flow past your bleeding lips.

"On the contrary, my dear," he hums, pulling you tighter, closer. Fighting against space just as he always does—winning so easily, you wonder if space has ever tried in the first place. "Who else should I bed if not my betrothed?"

You blanch. Something stirs in your heart—you force it down and scold yourself for having the audacity to hope. Hope is not for you. Not for someone so plain. So mundane. So outside the realm of nobility.

You swallow thickly and croak, "You should be kinder, Ayato. Such cold games are hardly befitting of a husband."

"Is that so? Then I will do my best," he murmurs. His lips find yours, pressing a delicate enough kiss against them that it feels as though the rough, raw skin mends instantly. "Rest assured your husband shall be as kind as you need, my dear."

Your eyes widen. Something in you nags in a breathlessly hopeful voice—divinity is never wrong. The god of Hydro is not mistaken. Justice is the love that seeps into your broken heart from the man who tore it in the first place, patching it together better than it ever was to begin with.

[flwrkid14]

Love, in All its Impossible Forms

Tim Drake loves with everything he has. He always has. And maybe that’s his fatal flaw—he doesn’t know how to hold back. He throws himself into it the way he throws himself into everything else: completely, recklessly, without a second thought for his own safety.

But love, for Tim, is never simple. It comes in forms that twist and tangle, leaving scars even as it gives him something to hold onto. And if you ask him, he could probably tell you exactly what kinds of love he’s experienced.

There’s love that is doomed.

Steph was chaos, energy, and unrelenting determination wrapped in a bright smile. She was Tim’s equal and his opposite all at once, and when he loved her, he did so fiercely, wholeheartedly. She didn’t just step into his world—she tore through it, unapologetic and unstoppable, showing Tim a version of himself that didn’t have to be so calculated, so controlled.

But their lives were chaos, a whirlwind of masks and missions, and when the dust settled, there was never enough left of them to make it last. Tim loves her in a way that feels like holding sand; no matter how tightly he grips, she keeps slipping through his fingers. And maybe that’s why he held on so hard—because he knew she’d never stay. Steph was never meant to be tamed, and Tim loved her too much to try.

Even when it ends, there’s no anger, no resentment. They don’t blame each other for the way things fall apart. They don’t have to. They always knew, deep down, that no matter how much they wanted to hold on, it was never meant to last. It wasn’t about a lack of love—it was about the world they lived in, the lives they led, and the way they could never quite fit together the way they needed to.

Steph was the love that burned brightly but couldn’t last, no matter how much either of them wanted it to. She was the fire he couldn’t hold onto, the storm he couldn’t contain, and the one who left her mark on him in ways he’d never forget. They were love, doomed from the start.

Then there's love that dooms them.

Kon wasn't just Tim's best friend—he was everything. A partner in every sense of the word. Loving Kon felt like second nature, so easy and so effortless that Tim didn't realize how deeply it ran until it was too late. Until Kon was gone.

When Kon died, it destroyed Tim. Grief didn't come in waves-it came in obsessions.

Tim couldn't let go, so he didn't. He turned to stolen data and secret labs, creating clone after clone in a desperate attempt to fill the void Kon left behind

It wasn't about moving on. It wasn't about closure. It was about holding on to the only person who ever made Tim feel like he could breathe, even when it was killing him to do so.

When Kon returned, whole and alive, it should have been everything Tim had dreamed of. But the shadows of what Tim had done lingered between them. The lengths he went to, the obsession that fueled him—it left cracks in the foundation of what they once were. Kon loved Tim, he always would, but part of him wondered if he'd ever been loved for who he was, or for what Tim couldn't let himself lose.

And Tim, for all his brilliance, couldn't figure out how to bridge the gap he'd created. He oved Kon with everything he had, but love born out of desperation carried its own weight, and he wasn't sure how to lay it down.

So they stayed in the gray space between what they were and what they could have been, bound by love so fierce it hurt, but too fractured to fully mend. They were doomed by their love.

Finally, there’s love that dooms anybody else.

Danny is chaos, but not the kind that breaks Tim—it’s the kind that grounds him. Danny exists between worlds, between life and death, and yet he’s more alive than anyone Tim has ever met. He doesn’t fit neatly into any box, doesn’t follow any rules, and yet there’s something about him that feels inevitable, like gravity or the pull of the tide.

Danny doesn’t ask for Tim’s sacrifices. He doesn’t need to be saved, doesn’t want Tim to burn himself out in the name of love. Instead, Danny challenges Tim to slow down, to stop trying so hard to hold the world together and just be. With Danny, Tim learns how to live in the moment, how to breathe without feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.

It isn’t an easy love, but it isn’t supposed to be. It’s a love that demands courage, the kind that doesn’t come from donning a cape or taking a hit for someone else. It’s the courage to be vulnerable, to stop hiding behind plans and strategies, and let someone see every cracked, raw piece of himself. Danny is relentless in breaking down Tim’s walls, not to fix him but to show him that he’s worthy of being whole.

Together, they are something untouchable. Their love is an anchor and a storm, a lighthouse and the waves crashing against the shore. It’s a love so big, so consuming, that it leaves no room for anything else.

And that’s where the doom lies.

They are the kind of love that consumes the world around them, leaving it scorched and battered in their wake. Not because they want to hurt anyone, but because their connection is so fierce, so all-encompassing, that nothing else can survive in its shadow. They are the eye of the hurricane, calm and steady, while everything outside is chaos.

It’s the kind of love that makes people ache to touch it, to understand it, even as it destroys them. The kind of love that people will write stories about and linger in though, long after the last page has turned. Love, that will echo through time in whispers and legends. But no one will ever truly understand it, because no one else could ever bear the weight of it.

Danny is the love that makes Tim believe he might deserve to be happy after all. Together, they are the love that dooms anybody else—unapologetic, overwhelming, and utterly unforgettable.

[dekariosclan]

Imagine Gale as a talented and impressive young man, able to compose the Weave at will, skilled in a way that few can match, and favored by the Goddess of Magic herself. Imagine that because of these accomplishments, he’s caught the eye of a few up-and-coming magic adepts, and he falls in love with one of them—his first real love. Gale isn’t one to toss the ‘L’ word around lightly, so when he tells them he loves them, he means it; he gives himself over to them completely.

And in return, they love him for his potential. For his status. For the magic he can command. They love the wizard they see on the surface, but not the man underneath. They are attracted to his power, but not to him.

So of course the relationship fails, after the thrill of his magic wears off. But because Gale is a resilient young man and he’s caught the eye of so many, he soon falls in love with another.

And then it happens again. And again.

And each time Gale’s heart is ravaged, his ambition to become a better wizard grows, because he’s being shown time and time again that his magic ability is all that matters.

So much so that, by the time Mystra decides to elevate him from Favored to Chosen to Lover, he welcomes her with eager, desperate arms. Because if all his worth is in his magic, and that’s all he has to offer, and that’s all anyone wants from him, who better to love him than the Goddess of Magic herself?

Except…there’s a nagging voice in the back of his head that whispers she doesn’t really love him. There’s anxiety in his heart as time passes, and he reaches both the limit of what his talents can do and what Mystra will allow him to do. And most troubling of all: a growing panic that, just like his other lovers, she will soon grow tired of him and discard him if he can’t improve his magic any further.

He tries pouting, and pleading, and begging her to let him take more power, to let him be more for her, but she refuses. Smiles patronizingly. Tells him to be patient. But Gale can’t be patient when his power is tied so closely to his self-worth; he can’t be patient when doing so in the past has only ever lead to heartache.

So he does what he believes will be a Grand Romantic Gesture, one that will finally put him on equal footing with the woman he loves. Instead, it turns out to be a folly that dooms him and destroys his talents. And just as he’d always feared, Mystra tosses him aside the moment his magical gifts are gone—because what’s left of him holds no value for her.

————

Imagine Gale in his tower, alone, afraid, the ever-hungry orb in his chest, with only his tressym there to help him. No other friends to speak of. His colleagues forced to keep away for their own safety. His magical talents utterly stripped down, so that even when he does try and distract himself with illusions, he’s bitterly reminded of what he used to be capable of. Waking every morning wondering if it will be his last, ending every day full of loneliness and disappointment.

…and then he meets Tav.

At the lowest point in his life, at his most vulnerable, when he knows he’s going to be considered a burden, he meets this stranger and their group. So he does what he can to be useful—assigning himself to be camp cook, offering up his (now meager) magic skills, turning the charm up to 11—as he desperately hopes this will somehow work out. He’s pleasantly surprised when, after providing only minor details of his condition, Tav agrees to help him. He’s even more surprised when they actually follow through.

Imagine how Gale feels as Tav treats him kindly. As he grows to trust Tav, and then grows to like them. Imagine his surprise as he opens up and shows them more and more of himself, and they don’t turn him away.

But then his condition worsens. And he has to reveal everything: the foolish mistakes he’s made, and how dangerous he is as a result. He clings to Tav’s hand as he shows them his folly. He’s at their mercy now, and he knows this might be the last time he’ll ever feel the touch of another being, if they decide—and Gods, why wouldn’t they decide?—to cast him out.

…but they don’t. They don’t. Instead, they tell him to stay.

Imagine the relief Gale feels. The gratitude. And perhaps…just a hint of something more. Something that he dare not name, but that flares to life every time he thinks of how warm their hand was in his. Something that feels dangerously close to jealousy, when he’s had too much to drink and sees Tav smiling at another…

But he knows these are all foolish thoughts, because he has nothing to offer Tav. They are wonderful just as they are, but he…he is an empty shell of a man, a discarded husk of a wizard, and while they might tolerate him, he could never believe they might actually want him.

And besides, he still thinks of Mystra. He still longs for Mystra. She who cast him out, but to whom he still feels tethered. Sometimes he needs to cocoon himself in the weave, just to try and calm his fears and bring some joy back to his life, because magic is his life. And sometimes he just needs to see her face, even though that hurts as much as it heals.

One night he’s lost in thought, having conjured Mysta’s image after settling down at camp. Thinking that even if she hadn’t ‘loved’ him—certainly not in the way he’d loved her—she’d given him enough otherwise, hadn’t she? She’d amused him and been amused by him, they’d shared countless pleasures, why hadn’t he been satisfied with that?

Gale is so lost in thought he doesn’t realize Tav has come up behind him. Until they ask a question, startling him out of his trance. He’s a bit shaken, so he tries to turn the conversation from Mystra to the weave itself. And then a wonderful idea occurs to him, something that he’d been toying with already: what if they were to conjure the weave together?

He can show Tav how important magic is to him, let them experience what he does, perhaps even impress them a bit. But most importantly, share a moment with them. As friends would do…

He’s elated when Tav agrees. He leads them through the steps effortlessly, and they’re a surprisingly good student, following his instructions correctly (if a bit clumsily). He’s as excited as they are—perhaps even more so!—when they succeed in channeling the weave.

It’s such a pleasant, familiar feeling for him, like coming home to his tower in Waterdeep. Even as the weave connects him with Tav and makes them one, he’s easily able to hide his innermost thoughts, because he’s done it so many times before.

…but he’s forgotten that Tav has not.

————

Imagine Gale knowing every romantic partner he ever had only wanted him because of how he could raise their status, or how he could amuse them, or how he could command magic for them. And, each time, he was happy to oblige them, even desperate to oblige them, because if that was the price of their love, then he was sure it would be worth it.

But it still all came to nothing.

Now imagine Gale connected in an intimate way with someone he likes very, very much—while being what he considers his lowest, most worthless, and most humbled self. As far from the powerful, impressive wizard he once was as he could ever be. And suddenly a vision enters his mind from the lovely creature standing next to him. Only, to his complete and utter shock, it isn’t one where he is providing them with a service, or wowing them with his magical ability, or granting them some kind of power from one of the spells he commands.

Instead, when he sees their desire laid bare before him, it’s a vision of kissing him. Of holding his hand. The two most basic forms of affection and physical connection. The two things that he would still be able to offer them even if every last ounce of his remaining magical abilities were stripped from him. The two things he could share with them even if he was no longer Gale of Waterdeep, and just plain old Gale Dekarios instead.

Imagine the embarrassment and trepidation he feels at first, because surely he is mistaken?…and then the elation when he realizes that he is not. So much elation that his concentration is broken, the weave dissipating as he forgets about channeling it, as he forgets about Mystra. Because all that matters to him now is the image before him—the most pleasant and welcome image he’s seen in a very, very long time.

Imagine how that would feel…and how besotted, enamored and completely devoted he’d be to Tav afterwards. To know that someone finally—finally—just wants him.

Just imagine.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Cannibals [Chapter 7: Lightning and Rust]

A/N: Only 3 chapters left!!! 🥳❤️💙🦇

Series summary: You are his sister, his lover, his betrothed despite everyone else’s protests; you have always belonged to Aemond and believe you always will. But on the night he returns from Storm’s End with horrifying news, the trajectories of your lives are irrevocably changed. Will the war of succession make your bond permanent, or destroy the twisted and fanatical love you share?

Chapter warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), babies and parenthood, blood and violence, character deaths, I really cannot summarize this chapter you just gotta experience it, I'll pray for you 🙏

Word count: 6.8k

💙 All my writing can be found HERE! ❤️

Tagging: @themoonofthesun @chattylurker @moonfllowerr @ecstaticactus @mrs-starkgaryen, more in comments 🥰

🦇 Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🦇

You’re curled up in bed with a velvet pouch of hot stones that have gone cold, bloody rags bunched between your thighs, trying desperately to sleep, and outside a storm is brewing over Blackwater Bay and bringing with it dark skies and strikes of lightning that stalk ever-closer. Through the open window, the air tasting like late-summer rain, you can hear Helaena and the maids corralling the children back into the Red Keep. They are laughing because nobody is dead yet, not even the ailing and absent King Viserys, not even doomed little Luke Strong.

Aemond lets himself into your chambers and stands over your bed, staring down at you with some combination of annoyance and concern. You have failed him. You were not where he wanted you to be. “Why weren’t you at the beach?” Playing with your niece and nephews, collecting your seashells.

“Because women are cursed.”

Aemond smiles, perhaps a bit relieved; he has his answer. “And you more than any of them, because you’re so wicked.”

“Maester Orwyle says I can’t have more milk of the poppy for two hours.”

“Then we must listen to him. It is a powerful remedy, and we cannot endanger you.” He takes off his boots and climbs into bed, lying behind you, one hand following the curve of your waist to settle on your lower belly. “I can relax the muscles. It might ease your suffering.”

Right now? “Oh no, no, you don’t want to do that,” you warn him. “It’s very messy.”

“You think I’m afraid of your blood?” Aemond says, amused. “Everything we’re built of is the same.” He lifts the hem of your silk nightgown and reaches underneath the nest of rags, sliding there in the coppery wetness as you inhale sharply, startled but not unwilling. When Aemond removes his hand, the carnage he is stained with is bright crimson but dotted with clots. Then he licks the blood from his fingers and paints his tongue red. You can’t keep the shock from your face. Aemond grins, wets his hand again, draws a heart on your left cheek just beneath your eye. You laugh and pretend to try to shove him away.

“You’re deranged, you’re a monster—”

“Let me help you,” Aemond whispers, nuzzling blood from his lips into your silver hair. “Let me take your pain away like you quiet mine.”

And you surrender to him like you always do—worn down, overpowered, intoxicated, bewitched, seduced, perhaps all at once—and as Aemond’s hand works and the gory metallic ether of blood fills both of your lungs, the cramps dissolve into nothingness and then build to desire, and you’re opening your thighs for him and the rags are whisked away, unnecessary, forgotten, and now there is blood on the bedsheets and your fingers are twisting into the pillows strewn around you, and it doesn’t feel shameful at all anymore, because what is blood if not made from the same minerals as coins and blades and ocean and ash, and what is lust if not a fire that burns the constraints of the world away?

You kiss him as you come, moaning into his bloodstained mouth, biting his lower lip, and if the careless pressure of your teeth makes him bleed then that’s just more iron and copper and steel to add to the molten sea you are marooned in, more magma, more rust. “Enough,” you gasp when the last of the waves have passed and you are emptied and too sensitive, and Aemond knows to listen. Then you reach for Aemond’s trousers, where you can see he is hard. You are abruptly and ruinously exhausted—you struggle to keep your eyes open—but it feels wrong to not take care of him in return.

It shouldn’t take long, he’s already flushed, he’s already dripping sweat—

“No need,” Aemond says, gently stopping your hands. And as you burrow into the pillows and your eyes dip closed, your skin and hair still splattered with red, he slips away silently so you can sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I don’t want to leave you,” Jace says, knowing that he has to anyway. “Either of you.”

You are nursing the baby in a chair by the fireplace; you needed a change of scenery from the bed. The upholstery is pale blue velvet. The blanket the baby is swathed in is embroidered with pine trees and foxes, and far beyond your skill; Lady Caro made it. She is nearly as gifted with a needle as Helaena. On the walls of the bedchamber you share with your husband are mosaics you’ve pieced together over the past nine months here at the modest castle of Heart’s Home in a cold, remote corner of the Vale. The fractured faces look in on you like curious gazes through clear windows: Aegon, Helaena, Daeron, Jaehaera, Maelor, Mother, Criston. You aren’t any closer to them now, but you feel like you are. The world seems softer, warmer, smaller.

You smile as you ghost a fingerprint over the baby’s faint dark eyebrows. He’s half-asleep as he suckles, hushed and content and entirely helpless. He has Jace’s coloring, but something about the shape of his eyes reminds you of Aegon. “We’ll be here waiting when you get back.”

“I think he looks a lot like Luke,” Jace says, admiring the baby. He’s standing with one arm draped over the back of your chair and the flickering firelight from the hearth on his face, turning his skin from snow to sunstone. “And Joffrey. His face is rounder than mine.”

“Have you been to the Eyrie to see them since the war began?” Joffrey, Rhaena, Rhaenyra’s young white-haired sons Aegon and Viserys.

Jace shakes his head. “I never wanted to be away from you for longer than necessary. I didn’t want to risk being spotted and revealing where they’ve been hidden. And I didn’t know what to say.” About us, about our marriage, about our baby.

“You should visit them, Jace. I would visit Helaena and her children if I could.” You leave out the others intentionally; Helaena is your only sibling that Jace considers blameless. You miss Aegon and Daeron just as much, but in the solitude of your own heart—in the stillness, in the silence—you aren’t sure if you want to see Aemond again. You don’t know if he will be soft with you, or vengeful or cold, or if he has filled the void of your absence with a lover, something that you cannot think about without your stomach lurching and your skull aching, and so you put him out of your mind as much as you can and stay here with the baby instead.

Jace rests a hand on your shoulder reassuringly, then strokes your cheek. He says, meaning the baby: “We’ll have to get him his own egg.”

“I hope he won’t inherit my affliction,” you murmur somberly. “I hope he’ll have a dragon someday.” Without them, we are powerless. Without them, we aren’t real Targaryens.

“Maybe there’s something you need to do first.”

You look up at Jace, not understanding.

“I’ve spent a lot of time considering what inspires a dragon to bond to someone,” he says. And you think, feeling a fleeting stab of betrayal before you stitch the wound closed with invisible thread: Because you’ve been helping the Blacks search for riders. “It seems that each creature has their own preferences. Meleys favored women who were spirited and highly intelligent. Dreamfyre has chosen two riders, both gentle, shy, and fond of animals. Seasmoke bonded to two sons of Corlys Velaryon with similar temperaments, agreeable and charismatic, Quicksilver to a father and son who were both considered weak and died young. Caraxes seems to have an affinity for warriors.” It does not escape you that Jace neglects to mention Vhagar, as if through his silence he can make the beast and her rider vanish. “And Vermithor…” Jace offers you a small, sympathetic smile, remembering that you once wanted him. “The Bronze Fury bonds to riders who are imposing in body and ambitious in spirit. And I suspect he only likes men.”

“So it was always hopeless,” you say gloomily. You recall the miniature Vermithor that Aegon once carved for you out of oak wood. You hope that Aegon is still alive somewhere, scarred but lying in wait, always underestimated, always so much deeper than he seems, an ocean that Mother and Father mistook for a puddle, messy and marginal and inconvenient.

“I believe dragons often gravitate towards riders who are mirrors of themselves. Even Vermax, he is…” Jace considers this. “He’s proud, and he’s clever, but he’s not as formidable as he imagines himself to be.”

“Like you,” you say before you can stop to consider whether Jace will be offended by it, and he gives you an amused smirk. The baby has stopped nursing and fallen asleep; you fix the bodice of your gown and cradle him against you. There are maids to take him when you’re tired, and Jace loves holding him, and Lady Caro steals him away often, but right now you don’t want your freedom. You don’t want your mind to be untethered and to wander to all the places you’re not supposed to be.

Jace continues: “What I mean is, perhaps there is some quality you must cultivate within yourself before the beast you are meant to have judges you worthy.”

“Hardly any unclaimed dragons are left now.” Then you tease: “Do you suggest I become quiet and timid so Grey Ghost will like me?”

Jace laughs. “No, I fear that’s a lost cause, princess. You could never be timid.”

You are intrigued. “Then what am I?”

“I think you’re hungry,” Jace decides. “I think you always want more.”

“I never wanted that many things.” Aemond. My family to be safe. And I wanted Vermithor.

“Every line that is drawn, every place you’re told not to go or act you’re not supposed to do, you insist upon overreaching.”

Is that why Aemond and I were so drawn to each other? you think doubtfully. Because it was forbidden? Because it horrified people who climbed high enough to live alongside Targaryens but could never understand them?

“I think Meleys would have been a good match for you,” Jace says after a while. “If she hadn’t already been claimed by Grandmother.”

“And now the Red Queen is dead.” Like Arrax, and Moondancer, and Seasmoke, and probably Sunfyre too. How many dragons will be left when this is over? How many Targaryens? You clutch the baby closer to you; he stirs in his sleep, tiny fingers grasping at nothing. “What sort of rider does Silverwing favor? What could this illiterate drunk Ulf the White possibly have in common with Good Queen Alysanne?”

Jace snickers. “That’s a good question. I’ve been ruminating on it. My theory is that since Silverwing was never ridden into battle, and has always been relatively docile and accustomed to living peacefully near humans, she was attracted to Ulf’s…how to describe it? His lack of military prowess. Or, alternatively, once Vermithor was claimed Silverwing was very, very lonely.”

You smile, and then it dies. It must be indescribably painful to be separated from one’s mate after a century together. Unsurvivable, even. “Can Silverwing fight, do you think?”

Jace heaves a sigh and shrugs. “I’m not sure if either of them can. Ulf will try, at least. Hopefully it won’t come to that, and Vermithor is enough to protect King’s Landing. Hugh Hammer is an inexperienced rider, but he’s brave and he’s committed. Each time I see him he’s better than he was before.”

Hugh Hammer is a bastard blacksmith, but he has more power in this war than I do. Ulf the White is an idiot and a drunk, but he’s a true Targaryen and I’m not. You rock your sleeping child in your arms, quieting the voices that flutter in your skull like bat wings. You kiss his wisps of dark curls and breathe in his warmth and newness and blood that is interwoven with yours.

“You could learn how to hate your own kind and claim the Cannibal,” Jace jokes.

You chuckle. “I don’t hate anyone.” Not here, not now.

Lady Caro arrives in the doorway carrying a tray of cinnamon tea. “I have come offering a trade,” she says, grinning, and shuffles excitedly across the room. She sets the tray down on the table by your chair and holds out her hands. Reluctantly, you surrender the baby. Lady Caro coos and beams at him as you and Jace sip cinnamon tea, sweet and loosing steam like morning mist into the air. “Surely by now you’ve made the logical decision to name him in my honor.”

“Carolei would be a very strange thing to call a boy,” Jace says.

“Caroson,” she jests.

You add: “Carogon. Carocaerys.”

“Awful!” Jace says, laughing.

“Have you been feeding the baby again?” Lady Caro scolds you. “We have wetnurses for that.”

“They get him all night. I want time with him too.”

“You’re barely even producing any milk. You’d make for a terrible goat.”

“Then I’ll nurse him for as long as I can.”

“You’ll end up with pitiful floppy breasts like mine.”

“Isn’t this what they’re for? Nourishing children, not being gawked at and tugged on by some man?”

Lady Caro turns to Jace, exasperated. “She has some disease. She can’t listen to anyone.”

He smiles. “She’s an untamable beast, I’m afraid. Burns up anyone who makes the attempt.”

Lord Corbray walks in, and nestled in his ancient arthritic hands is a sword in a sheath. There is a large heart-shaped ruby in the hilt. “Prince Jacaerys, I cannot begin to tell you what an honor it has been not only to host you and the princess here in our humble castle, but also to have a future king of the Seven Kingdoms born within our walls.”

Jace stands up straighter, as his mother would want him to. He’ll never look like the heir to the throne, like a Targaryen, but he can act like one. “We continue to be grateful for your hospitality.”

“To commemorate this happy occasion, I wish to gift you a cherished heirloom of my house. This is Lady Forlorn, made of Valyrian steel. She came to House Corbray over a century ago, and now I bequeath her to you. I hope she will aid you in your victory in this unjust war, and that all the realm will soon be at peace and under competent rulership.”

Jace looks at you uneasily; you pretend to be preoccupied drinking your tea. You ignore Lord Corbray’s slight against the Greens. You don’t have much choice, and you’ve had plenty of practice. Jace takes Lady Forlorn from Lord Corbray and unsheathes her, studying his reflection in the cold smoke-colored grey of the blade. His face is grave. Now he feels the weight on his shoulders of being not just a prince, an heir, a soldier, and a husband, but a father as well, something he himself never had in a way that was truthful and pure. You are alarmed to see tears gleaming in his dark eyes.

“Jace?” you say, touching his arm.

He regains his composure. “Thank you, Lord Corbray. I will treasure Lady Forlorn, and I will endeavor to always use her wisely.”

Lord Corbray smiles fondly at the slumbering baby in Lady Caro’s arms. Across the Riverlands, their sole surviving child, Jessamyn, is in hiding with her husband and children. At Lady Caro’s insistence, they fled from the Mallisters’ castle at Seagard in case Aemond and Vhagar descend upon it. He is still burning. A monster? you think. “I assume you’ve named your firstborn?”

You and Jace exchange a glance. You haven’t yet; you are afraid to discuss it with each other. There are so many possibilities—Targaryen or Velaryon or Strong—and none seem to be without some unspoken allegiance or condemnation. There are so few guiltless names left. But you think you know what Jace would choose if he dared to speak it aloud.

“We should name him after Luke,” you say. A boy, an innocent. A victim of a horrific accident that started this war.

Jace is surprised, but there is relief in his face too. “Lucerys?” he says, trying it out. Then he is solemn again. “It feels wrong to use the exact same name. Like I’m trying to replace him.”

“Lucerion,” Lady Caro suggests, still holding the baby. “It sounds like a prince’s name. It sounds like a king’s.”

Jace attaches Lady Forlorn to his belt and then takes the baby, obviously against Lady Caro’s will. “Lucerion,” Jace murmurs, smiling down at his son who is stirring awake and beginning to whimper. “Is that your name? Is that what we’ll call you?”

“Perhaps Luca for short,” you say from your chair, feeling drained and like you need to lie down. You’ll have to change your rags again soon, or you’ll bleed through them.

“Luca, the littlest dragon,” Jace proclaims, touching his fingertip to the baby’s puggish nose. Then he turns to you. “Did you have a nickname as a child? I always did and still do, of course. And Luke…” Jace trails off, thinking of his dead brother, murdered by yours.

You see your red bat traveling around the board; you feel the warmth of blood on your cheek. “They called me Red.”

“Red?” Jace is baffled. “Like the color?”

“There was a game we played when we were young, and my piece…” You close your eyes, not wanting to remember, not wanting to feel the weight of their absence. “It doesn’t matter. It was so long ago.” And you fear that Jace will hear the evasiveness in your voice and ask you more questions; but he is absorbed with the baby, and he has already forgotten.

Two days later Jace and Vermax fly south to King’s Landing, and you and Luca are left in the care of the Corbrays and the maids and the ghosts that haunt the drafty stone corridors of Heart’s Home, soldiers killed in the Riverlands and the Reach, women and children burned and starved, bones devoured by dragons, generations of names forgotten.

Sometimes you giggle with Lady Caro as you drink cinnamon tea in the Great Hall. Sometimes you stand in the castle rookery listening to the ravens caw and stare out into the cold mist of the mountains, wondering what is happening in the world outside. And sometimes you have Luca nestled in your arms and walk with him around your bedchamber, introducing him to the faces of the people you left in your old life, when you were called Red and you believed you could be someone like Visenya. But you never mention Aemond, and not just because there are no mosaics of him on the wall.

You wouldn’t know what to say. You wouldn’t know where to begin.

~~~~~~~~~~

You learn Jace is back when he climbs into bed just as you are drifting off one night, silver moonlight spilling in through the glass of the window, his body folding into you, his arm skating over your waist to find your hand and weave his fingers through yours. Two months have passed since he left, moons that grow full and then vanish, milk that dries up and blood that ceases flowing and rebuilds inside you for the next child, if there will be one, when there will be one. Luca is sleeping in his own room with his maids and wetnurses. Jace’s curls tickle your throat as he nuzzles into you as if he wants to disappear.

He says: “The littlest dragon is much bigger than I remember.”

“How was Helaena?”

“Troubled, as is to be expected, but in good health. Jaehaera and Maelor are well too. King’s Landing is cold some days now. I think they’ll have snow soon. The taxes, the riots, the stockpiling of food as the Reach and the Riverlands burn…it’s a disaster. Mother is desperate. She misses Luke, I think. And Baela, and Daemon. She’s lost so much weight I barely recognized her. But she was very, very happy to hear about Luca. Hopefully she can meet him soon. Although we’ll have to be careful traveling with him while he’s so small, we’ll have to ensure he’s warm enough.”

Winter is coming, you think, remembering Cregan Stark’s army under the protection of Daemon and Caraxes. “Did you see Rhaena and the boys at the Eyrie?”

“I did,” Jace admits, as if it was a fraught experience.

“And what happened?”

“Rhaena called me a traitor.”

“For marrying and fathering a son with me?”

“No, that she understands,” Jace says. “But it is treason to love you.”

You turn around to look at him in the shadows, in the moonlight. “You told her?”

“She could tell. I cannot hide it. I am a glass jar and you and Luca are the butterflies inside.” And Jace kisses you softly, his fingers hooked beneath your chin, his flesh coming alive again after so long away: managing and conciliating, lifting Rhaenyra’s spirits, pawing through the heaps of bastards in King’s Landing for dragonriders, flying on Vermax through storms and snow.

When you kiss Jace back, when your hands go to his chest and his jaw and his face, when you open his tunic so you can feel the heat of his skin underneath, you are aware that parts of you are waking up again as well. There is a dull but definite ache of lust beginning to bloom like a blood drop soaking into white cotton.

“Are you…” Jace begins. “Do you think you’re healed enough, I mean…have you stopped bleeding?”

You hesitate. “I have.” You think of your first time with him and how painful it was, the sensation of burning, of tearing, and you can only assume it will be worse now. “But I’m rather terrified too.”

“No, no, don’t be afraid,” Jace whispers, he pleads, running his fingers through your long unbound hair. “We don’t have to do that. I won’t hurt you. I’ll wait for as long as you want.” His dark eyes travel down the white nightgown that clings to your body, your breasts, your belly, and then lower. “Can I…can I try something?”

“Try what?” you ask, bewildered. Then as Jace begins to push the hem of your nightgown up over your hips to your waist, you grin and kiss him again in the dim celestial light, cool night air rushing up over your bare legs, blood surging through your arteries to where he bends low to taste you once—a long, slow, tentative drag of the tongue—and then moans quietly and pushes your thighs further apart so he can bury himself there and lick, suck, swallow down your clear mineral wetness as it pools for him.

Something isn’t quite right—not enough pressure, not the ideal angle—but it’s exquisite to be reacquainted with this side of yourself, to know you can feel this way again, insatiable and desired. When you reach to touch Jace, there is a moment when you are startled to find dark curly hair in place of silk-smooth silver, and there is a ghost in the room like a voyeur watching, and you think dazedly: If Aemond knew about this, would he kill me?

“There,” you gasp, jolting as your husband stumbles upon the perfect place and rhythm. “Jace, right there…”

He listens, he is groaning with desperation for you, and you roll into a climax that is brief and sharp and a little painful, but good. Instead of being extinguished, you are a kindled flame. You turn over, straddle Jace, and unfasten his trousers. You begin kissing your way down his belly, nipping at him, your palm kneading his hardness, and you know he wants you but for some reason when you go to take him in your mouth, he pushes you away.

“You don’t have to do that,” Jace says, alarmed.

“I know. I want to.”

“No, seriously. Stop.”

You look at him, wounded, rejected. “Jace, I’m not doing this out of obligation. I enjoy it.”

He is staring at the wall. “I just…for you to…I’m sorry, it just feels wrong.”

“I can do things you believe are only for whores and still be your wife.”

“Shh,” he says, and his voice is gentle but his face is pained. You think of something Criston once told you when you were collecting bones from the Godswood of the Red Keep: Red, it hurts your mother when you’re like this. Are you cursed to disappoint people, to repulse them, to be eternally misunderstood? “I have a gift for you.”

“A gift?”

Jace gets out of bed and fetches a small wooden box he must have brought into the room with him when you were still half-asleep. He opens the box, debates whether to reach in, decides against it and passes you the whole box instead. “I asked the castle maester to procure some while I was away…”

You squeal with delight when you see what’s inside: three black and white bats the same breed as Sapphire was, large fanlike ears and wiggling noses and small black eyes that peer curiously up at you. When you offer them your open palms, they immediately scramble into them.

“I hope they’re good ones.” Jace chuckles nervously. “I don’t really know what makes a bat suitable or not.”

“They’re perfect,” you say, smiling. “I’ll build them a roost. I’ll introduce them to Luca.”

Yet you cannot stop yourself from thinking: Aemond wouldn’t have cared if I was still bleeding.

~~~~~~~~~~

You are snuggled up with Luca in your chair by the fire, cool midday light—the color of steel, smoke, rainclouds, ash—streaming in through the windows. The baby’s eyes have turned dark like Jace’s, and his curls grow longer. He is only half-awake and blinking drowsily, his diminutive hands clasping your fingers. He doesn’t cry often, but he doesn’t smile either. Lady Caro believes he already has the temperament of a good king, a calmness, a graveness. She says: How improper would it be for him to be full of complaints or cheerfulness, the way the world is right now? No, he ought to be serious. He ought to be grateful he’s not starving or being roasted alive.

“I have some new friends,” you whisper to the baby like a secret or a myth. “They’re asleep right now. They sleep all day, kind of like you do. But then at night they come alive and they’re free, and they fly around like hawks or dragons.”

You speak for Luca, a soft bird-trill of a voice: “What are their names?”

“Good question,” you say, smiling. “Iris, Shark, and Flood. And you’ll meet them soon.” Your eyes go to the mosaics on the walls. Jace hasn’t asked you to take them down, but he doesn’t acknowledge them either, except for the mosaic you made of him that hangs by the headboard of the bed. He beams at that one and calls it fine work. “You’ll meet the people I grew up with too. Aegon will make you wood carvings. Helaena will sew you blankets. Daeron will take you on adventures. Jaehaera and Maelor will play games with you. And Mother and Criston will love you because you won’t be like me. You’ll be sweet-tempered and honorable, and when you’re old enough you’ll have a dragon to help protect us with.”

There is a knock on the doorframe; one of Luca’s wetnurses has arrived to feed him. You regret that you can’t anymore. Lady Caro was right; you’d be a terrible goat or cow or yak.

“Princess,” the wetnurse says, curtsying before she takes the baby from you. You watch her leave with him for his own bedchamber—Lady Caro has already filled it with toys and children’s books—and as soon as they are out of sight, the darkness of your losses creeps back in like spiders scurrying down the corridors of your veins and arteries, like rust growing over steel. Then you hear the rumbling of voices downstairs in the Great Hall.

You stand and swish in your gown—one of the Vale’s anemic colors, a faint dusky rose—through the hallway and down the spiral staircase of the tower. In the belly of the castle, the commotion is louder, and you sweep into the Great Hall to find men gathered around the table closest to the roaring hearth, Lord Corbray and his knights and the maester, and Lady Caro too looking on anxiously. Jace is holding a piece of parchment in his hands, presumably just delivered by a raven. He shakes his head as he reads it. Outside, snow is falling.

Lady Caro is saying: “Well you’ll have to tell her. Oh, the poor dear, as if everything else isn’t bad enough. And only the gods know where Aemond is, he hasn’t been spotted in the Riverlands for days…” Then she spies you and shoos Lord Corbray and his men from the room. They bow to you as they depart, swift little bobs of the head. They have to; you are now both the wife and mother of future kings.

“Jace?” you say when the Great Hall is empty except for the two of you and Lady Caro.

Jace’s face is stricken. Lady Forlorn hangs from his belt. The letter is still clutched in his left hand; the right grips the hilt of his Valyrian steel sword. “I’m so sorry.”

“What?” you ask, immediately horrified. Aegon dead of his burns, Daeron killed in battle, Mother executed for treason, Aemond…? “What happened?”

“You have to believe that I had no idea about any of this, I never would have given Hugh the order if I’d been there, or let Mother do it—”

“Jace, please tell me.”

Aemond, Aemond, Aemond??

Instead, Jace says absurdly: “It’s Helaena.”

You stare at him. “Helaena isn’t a warrior.”

“No,” he agrees. “But she got to Dreamfyre somehow and tried to escape the city.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

That’s impossible. She wouldn’t leave Mother and the children. “No, she couldn’t have, she—”

“She took flight,” Jace insists. “And my mother sent Hugh Hammer after her on Vermithor.”

Vermithor was supposed to be mine, you think numbly. “And Helaena, she…she was…?”

Jace is trying to keep his voice steady; his dark eyes gleam, begging you not to hate him. “Dreamfyre attacked when Vermithor flew close to her. She wasn’t an especially aggressive dragon, but she was large and formidable, and she fought to defend her own life and that of her rider. Vermithor ripped out her throat, though Hugh was burned to death in the saddle. Then Vermithor flew eastward, and no one knows where he is now. Dreamfyre crashed to the earth, and Helaena with her. Their bodies were found on the beach outside the Red Keep.”

She can’t be dead. She never hurt anyone. She just wanted to be with her creatures and her family. She embroidered my blankets with red bats, she put ladybugs into my open palms. “Why would Helaena try to run, why would she do that?”

“I don’t know.”

You think nonsensically, as you have no way of knowing this: Because she was trying to stop something terrible from happening. “I told you to give her more freedom. And that freedom allowed her to sneak away to the Dragonpit.”

Jace reaches for you. “This isn’t your fault—”

“All of it is my fault!” you shout at him, and Lady Caro shrinks away and covers her mouth with her hands. “If I’d had Vermithor, the Greens would have been unstoppable! And Rhaenyra never would have tried to claim the throne, and Aemond wouldn’t have been sent to Storm’s End, and Luke and Jaehaerys and Baela wouldn’t have died, and Aegon wouldn’t have been burned, and Aemond wouldn’t be destroying the Riverlands, and Helaena would still be alive, but instead I’ve always been useless!”

“You aren’t useless,” Jace pleads.

“Not normal enough to be a good wife or daughter, not extraordinary enough to have a dragon!”

Again, Jace tries to touch you, to soothe you. “Please don’t—”

You fling his hands away. “What was our marriage for if not to stop this from happening?! To end the dying, to protect the people we have left?” You whirl away from him and flee from the Great Hall, the castle, yourself. Behind you, Lady Caro is comforting Jace with soft tenderness you’ve never been capable of.

“Let her go, my prince,” she is counselling. “Give her a moment to grieve…”

You throw open the first door you pass and trudge out into the snow, no fox fur coat, bare feet. The cold stings and then your skin goes numb and it doesn’t bother you anymore. The icy mountain wind tears at your hair, flowing in long waves like the women of the Vale wear it, delicate and feminine, pretty and powerless. Tears cascade down your face; currents of red magma scorch your throat. When you close your eyes, you see the yellow butterfly that was once Helaena’s game piece.

She never hurt anyone. She never did anything wrong.

Now you are under the shadows of the soaring pine trees, their green needles so thick you cannot see the grey of the sky.

She never met Luca.

You gaze up into the branches, covered with tufts of white snow and icicles like fangs, and you have the overwhelming, ravenous feeling that you need to go home. You don’t belong in the Vale. The Vale almost killed you when you were a child, Aemond’s hands shoving you into a rushing stream freckled with ice.

And then all at once—like you’ve been hit, like you’ve been stabbed with a blade—you are flying high above the castle and the wind is raking over your cheeks, but it is not your face but Aemond’s, half-blind and half-scarred, torrential red waves of a sea of blood in his skull.

He’s here, he’s here—

And if he’s able to see through your eyes that you are outside in the forest…

The castle!!!

You bolt through the trees back towards Heart’s Home, your bare feet leaving tracks in the fresh powdery snow that is nearly up to your knees, and you stumble out of the shadows just as Vhagar soars overhead and unleashes her flames on the castle, wood burning, stones collapsing, people inside shrieking as they incinerate. You’re screaming for Aemond to stop, but he does not hear you and he does not see you either, he is high above in a place you’ve never been and never will be, he is flying, and he is hearing only devastation and he is breathing in its dark, intoxicating smoke, and as Vhagar swoops by the stable and it bursts into an inferno—horses galloping loose and engulfed in fire, dead but not knowing it yet—you run into the crumbling castle.

“Jace?!” you shout, but the air is full of smoke and the sounds of wood cracking and stones caving in are deafening. You feel blindly for the spiral staircase that leads up to the tower where your and Luca’s bedchambers are located. From the part of the castle that was once the Great Hall, you can hear Lord Corbray and Lady Caro screaming as their skin blisters and sloughs away and their flesh is cooked and their bones are charred black, and when the flames reach their lungs the screams go quiet. You cannot think about them. You don’t have any time; you must think of Luca and Jace. “Jace!” you bellow through the smoke.

And then there is a weak reply: “Here.”

You follow it into the stairwell. Parts of the wall have been blasted away; you can see the pine forest outside, the cold barren sky, the Mountains of the Moon. Jace is halfway up the steps, slumped against the fractured wall and pinned there by stones that have rained down on his legs. His bones must be broken; his face is bloodless and his curls matted to his forehead by sweat. His right hand fumbles futilely for the hilt of Lady Forlorn. Now, dimly, you can hear Luca crying.

Jace rasps as he stares vacantly up at you: “I tried to get to him. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Jace, I can do it.”

“I love you.”

“I’ll be right back.”

You climb over him and chase Luca’s wails up the staircase. Vhagar is back, and the ruins of the castle tremble when she roars, and you feel the heat of her flames radiating up through the floor. You lose your footing and clamber up the last few steps on your hands and knees, then manage to stand again and careen into Luca’s room. Half the roof has collapsed; a wetnurse is sprawled on the floor and half-buried in fallen stones, blood hemorrhaging out of her mouth and ears. You grab the baby out of his cradle and quickly bundle him in his blanket patterned with blue dragonflies. His tiny hands grasp at your face and your hair as you rush back down the spiral staircase to help Jace. Smoke needles your eyes; you and Luca are both coughing as you try to clear your lungs.

You reach Jace and kneel beside him, holding Luca in your left arm and using your right to try to roll the stones off Jace’s legs, but he’s not helping you.

“Jace, please, we have to go now,” you say, but when you look at his face he’s not there. His dark eyes are glassy, his chest doesn’t rise and fall with the tide of air.

He’s gone, you think. Like Father, Luke, Jaehaerys, Baela, Rhaenys, Helaena. And you are struck by an excruciating pang of fondness for Jace more forceful than anything you ever felt for him when he was alive, and you cannot leave him here. He was your husband, he was Luca’s father. And he loved you. He must have. He said it over and over again.

“Jace?” you sob. But outside Vhagar is still flying—the gales churned up by her wings gust into the jagged holes in the castle walls—and she could be coming back, she could be returning to burn you, and Jace is dead but the baby is still alive.

You clutch Luca to you as he cries and you race down the steps, following the smoke-filled, twisted passageway. The heat is suffocating, the sounds of a dying castle engulfing, Heart’s Home turned into a graveyard, into a shattered skeleton, charred and cursed like Harrenhal. You crash through the door at the base of the stairwell and into the ground level of the castle, and you are almost out—

Something ignites, something explodes, and stones from the castle wall you are feeling your way along rip out of their centuries-old mortar and collide with you. Your ribs crack, you are thrown to the floor, but even as you scream and claw your way out of the rubble you don’t let go of the baby. You force yourself upright and stagger with Luca towards a gaping chasm where there was once a wall. There is a tremor like an earthquake. Outside, Vhagar must be landing.

Now you are in the snow again, bare feet and a gown covered with soot and wreckage. The baby isn’t crying anymore. When you glance down at the blanket he is swaddled in, the white space between the blue dots of dragonflies is turning red with blood.

Blood?

You can’t look. You can’t allow yourself to feel it; it will consume you until there is nothing left. The last vestiges of the castle are crumpling. Across the field, Vhagar is devouring Vermax’s small, broken corpse, crushing his bones in her massive, monstrous jaws.

Blood??

Aemond’s footsteps are behind you, crunching in the snow. His cloak cracks in the frigid wind like the sails of a ship. His words are full of dark, euphoric, lethal triumph, a high like nothing he’s ever known, not even when he claimed Vhagar, not even what he imagined he would feel on your wedding day when you’d be bound to each other with fire and blood in the tradition of Old Valyria. “I said I would find you, and I did.”

You hear your own voice as if from a very far distance, lightning strikes miles away but moving closer. “You killed him.”

Aemond is puzzled. You are supposed to be happy. You are saved, you are home. “Killed who?”

“He’s dead, and there will never be another. Not like this one. Jace was his father, but Jace is gone. You killed him too.”

And you turn to face him, and Aemond sees what you are holding in your arms, and only then does he understand.

[funnylittlemicrowave]

ultrakill is a game about finding even small hope when everything seems inhospitably bleak.

swordsmachines modify themselves to become and keep what they find beautiful and mindflayers create a body that they love, even in a world where such bodily modifications do not serve a combative purpose and are resource-intensive.

sisyphus fought the forces of heaven alongside his brethren for all of their freedom knowing he would lose, since the very act of fighting against their oppressors was the ultimate rebellion in his eyes. and then proceeded to enter another fight he would lose without regret with v1.

even if the council which was indifferent towards the ferrymen surely would have had them destroyed, they sculpted idols out of compassion for the life that resides within them, and the idols use what power they have to protect others out of that same compassion.

gabriel destroyed the council by his own hand to give the residents of heaven the ability to choose their own fates and right the wrongs he had made, knowing very well that doing so would destroy his last chance at avoiding certain doom.

the player, knowing that soon hell will have no creatures from which to wring blood and sustain v1, travels anyway. every single retry of a level they love. every single retry to p-rank. becoming more proficient and stylish in the craft of ultrakilling, even if only by a little bit, each time.

2-S’s message of finding meaning in a seemingly uncaring universe doesn’t just apply to 2-S, but the whole series in small places. Even when it doesn’t seem possible, there is always a chance for something to be just a little better.

Radiant is ULTRAKILL, for it is full of lights in the darkness.

[luvsophen]

The romanced Inquisitor and the Redeem ending (Veilguard spoilers)

I often see misunderstandings and critical comments, especially on Reddit, about the role of the Inquisitor in the redemption ending. I want to explain how I see it from a narrative designer's perspective. I'll approach the topic from a broader angle, so I ask for your patience and understanding. Long read.

To understand the ending and why the Inquisitor is written the way they are, we need to revisit Solas's motivation and psychology as presented in the game. Even in “Inquisition”, it’s clear that Solas clings to the past as if it were the ultimate truth. He asks the Inquisitor to prove him wrong, but that idea feels doomed from the start. Just as I thought ten years ago, I still believe that his primary motivation isn’t solely about his people but rather a deeply complex internal crisis. Solas is a complex and layered character, and his motivation should reflect that complexity according to all the rules of storytelling. It’s incredibly unfortunate that the story arc involving the rebellion and the spirits was cut, as this truly simplified his character and didn’t give players a chance to ponder his beliefs more deeply. But we know that this motivation exists in the background and is alive. We only hear about his motivation related to his people, that is, the spirits, in the final choice with Rook. Naturally, the fact that Bioware put his personal regrets and trauma front and center is psychologically accurate, but the player should have come to this conclusion on their own, discovering it themselves. It’s too obvious, but such are the modern trends in storytelling.

Now, regarding Lavellan. The ending with a romanced Inquisitor suffers from the same issues as the rest of the game — lack of variety and exclusive choices.

I see that some people are disappointed with the ending because the Inquisitor's love and pleas were not enough. I assure you, it was never intended to make it enough. If the Inquisitor’s love/friendship had been enough, Solas's story in “DAtV” wouldn’t have even begun. Solas is as immersed in his past as any millennia-old being could be, leaving no room for anything but his burden, guilt, and despair. Left to his own devices, he will always choose the path of least resistance to his trauma, repeating his mistakes in what he believes is for the greater good until he reaches the point of ultimate self-destruction. He is truly a broken man because of all the terrible things he has done and the horrors he has endured.

The point of the storyline was to showcase the depth of his regrets, the weight of his burden and moral downfall. The Inquisitor (friend/lover) affected him in a way that no mortal ever could. Solas runs from them, and there are objective psychological reasons for this beyond simply not wanting to hurt someone he cares about. Lavellan isn’t wrong when she says she could influence Solas. Yes, if they had years and time for such conversations, but that opportunity doesn’t exist. He doesn't leave her a choice and decides for both of them.

The logic of the ending is that you need to peel back Solas's “layers”. In the finale, Solas is deeply wounded and exhausted, and it’s the perfect moment to play on his emotions while he’s so vulnerable. From a dramaturgical perspective, the focus was correctly placed: the present, future, and past must come together to lift the burden from his shoulders, show him a new path, restore his wisdom, and give him a new purpose. This is how the writers envision his salvation without killing him or distorting his spirit.

Rook represents the present — the modern world and its people. And the modern world asks Solas for mercy, pleading with him not to destroy their lives even more, reminding him that more violence won’t make “the flowers” bloom as Solas wishes. Rook delivers the first logical blow: “Who benefits from tearing down the Veil —you or all of us? You’re lying to yourself and drowning in regrets”. Solas knows this, but knowing and accepting are different things for the psyche. That’s why Rook, as a representative of the world Solas aims to destroy for the “greater good”, steps forward first, asking him to reconsider his true motivations. And Solas does ponder. By this point, he’s already filled with doubts, born long ago, but he’s still not ready to make another choice. The massive burden of the past and a graveyard of sacrifices remain on his shoulders. Solas rejects Rook, rejects the desires and opinions of the present, the modern world, just as he always has. As he must. For now.

Then the Inquisitor steps onto the stage. Whether a friend or a lover, the Inquisitor was the first to show Solas during their time together that he was wrong, cracking his convictions. This is especially clear in the letter to his beloved Lavellan.

Look at how he acts in this scene. How he freezes upon seeing the Inquisitor, how he lowers his head and dagger, the sadness and regret on his face, the tears welling up. In Lavellan’s case, he exhales painfully: “Vhenan”. After all these years of separation and his betrayals — “My love, my heart”. For me it was a emotional moment of vulnerability.

The Inquisitor is here to give Solas two things: forgiveness, which Solas cannot grant himself, and a reminder of who he is, who he dreamed of being, offering him a choice for the future. But even these gifts may not be enough for Solas because a person trapped in the past and overwhelming regrets, committed to self-destruction and mass deaths, sees no reason to choose a different future.

He has lost all hope for it. He believes he deserves neither happiness, love, nor forgiveness. And when Lavellan says she forgives him, Solas doesn’t understand why. What’s the point of forgiveness after all he’s done? Look at his face in that scene. He can’t forgive himself. He tries to prove to himself that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness: “I lied, I betrayed you”. The contrast with his self-justifications in “Trespasser” is stark. And yet, she forgives him. It means a tremendous amount to him, and he turns away from this gift in disbelief. It will take years before he truly forgives himself.

This scene is meant to show how deeply he’s sunk into his past, into his own darkness, unable to step back even for the sake of his beloved or a friend, for another path and future. He’s filled with self-justifications.

Solas explains why Lavellan’ forgiveness isn’t enough: “And then I... and then she died for nothing”. No, not because “she/Mythal” died for nothing. Everything he’s been through, everything he’s done to the world—everything—was for nothing if he keeps the Veil. And how can he live with that? All the suffering must be justified. His millennia of fears, pain, and guilt—these are stronger than his feelings for the Inquisitor. This is realistically portrayed, even if it hurts his beloved, even if it hurts you as a player. He can’t release himself from his burden and guilt. He’s come up with a thousand justifications. You hear this throughout the game from Mythal, Ghilan'nain, Morrigan, and so on. Solas is an unreliable narrator.

The present, the future, the past. Mythal is the catalyst for everything. That’s why she has to deliver the final blow, and she breaks him. For the last time. I won’t touch on the ethics of this moment. His entire tragedy began with her; his downfall started with her. He ties all his burdens to her. She embodies all his past and all his pain. Through her more benevolent version in Morrigan, Mythal shares the burden of their joint crimes with him. She doesn’t apologize or express remorse to him but directly destroys his last justification—that it was all for her. She no longer needs it. He is free. The world has suffered for too long, Solas has suffered for too long. It is time to stop. And in the finale, there’s no time for him to create another reason to justify his “delusions” and mass deaths.

Solas no longer has the strength to fight himself, and he agrees to stop. His past, present, and future simultaneously redefine his purpose. Now he has a new goal. This suits him as a spirit bound to serve his purpose. But he can't forgive himself and that's logical. The romanced Inquisitor is here to demonstrate for him immense wisdom and generosity by mortal standards, a deep understanding of Solas's spirit, and the strength of her love for him. It should break through any rational defense of his psyche. He is seen, heard, forgiven, given hope and purpose, his fear of being alone is shattered, and he is loved so deeply that he can hardly believe it. These are all the needs and desires of Solas that we have learned about from the two games. He desperately needed it and Weekes gives it to him with the help of the Inquisitor, his beloved. This is intentional. Solas is so disoriented and broken that he can't say anything to her except to give her a choice, one last chance to turn away from him, because he himself will no longer turn away from her.

Narratively, the Inquisitor, friend or lover, represents a bridge between Solas’s past and future: a factual happy future and a new purpose if you are his lover and leave with him; or you grant him a new purpose, reminding him of who he is, if you do not leave with him or are his friend. Solas faces dangerous work both on himself and on the Blight; this is not a respite.

The Inquisitor, however, will never be freed from their religious and mythical role. This character will always be tied to that role in the story.

Lavellan here embodies almost a religious myth about the great power of love that surpasses all contradictions, a bond stronger than rational reasons. It’s pointless to rationalize, and you won’t find solace in that process — their relationship is meant to be a deeply emotional romance with an irrational, mystical and mythical connection between two lovers.

Lavellan performs a strictly narrative function here, but out of respect for those players who cannot associate themselves with such an Inquisitor, there should technically have been an option to not go with him into the Fade right in that scene, instead of at the tavern.

Narratively, the writers are concluding the arc involving the story of the Evanuris, Solas, the Blight, and the Veil. Above all, the writers focused more on this overarching narrative than on how to incorporate the player's various choices into the plot. Therefore, the canonical character of the Inquisitor takes precedence here — that's how the writers envision this character.

Canonically, The Inquisitor like the HoF, is a hero with a specific, grand purpose in the plot. This is a character who brings order to a world on the brink of madness. They think on a global scale and resolve global conflicts. They don’t create problems, they solve them. The same approach is shown with Solas. He is both a global and personal problem for Lavellan. Solas forces the Inquisitor (any of them) to endure a lot of pain and unpleasantness, turning their life upside down.

Lavellan’s resentments, wounded pride, and sorrow may later be expressed or dealt with differently, but right now, the fate of not only Solas but the world is being decided (quarrels will not help anyone solve the task on a global scale; Lavellan will not be petty, nor will she be too proud, just as she won't think of herself first when faced with the world's fate; she will only think about it once the world is no longer in danger). Lavellan cannot convince Solas, but will keep trying with the influence she has.

Personally, I believe that this type of love (type of the lover) is exactly what Solas needs for his personal growth.

The Inquisitor offers him forgiveness and understanding because that is their role here — to be above it, to be wiser than Solas, to show more mercy, patience, and understanding toward others’ nature and spirit than Solas ever did toward the modern world and mortals. And this is especially valuable for the narrative. Mortals (Rook, the Inquisitor, Morrigan) give Solas what he couldn’t get in the past: the freedom to be himself, and salvation and/or love. This idea is even repeated in the game’s cut files.

According to interviews, Bioware wanted to level the playing field so that any player with any world state/choices could choose the redemption ending — I'm not a fan of this decision from the perspective of character development, but after all, this is a game, not a book story.

I’m not too critical of the Solavellan ending, even though I’m not a Solasmancer; I just like him as an antagonist and a character. I don't find the ending with his solo redemption psychologically credible. I'm sorry they didn't add at least Cole to the game to help him on this painful journey.

In my opinion, Solavellan ending is the best thing that happened in the game for Solas (and in his whole life). At least somewhere, he was given happiness and something he didn’t even dare to hope for.

The game itself is a big disappointment in terms of narrative, but I don’t want to criticize Bioware too much without knowing the reasons why it turned out this way. And for this reason, you should try to look beyond the execution and focus on the content and context of the story to understand the writer’s intent.

Thank you for reading to the end!

[baldursgate3tempobsessed]

Astarion teaching Tav embroidery/sewing. Preferably with him dragging them onto his lap for a close-up demonstration.

Why do I make everything so long? Do I have a problem? There is always so much introspective nonsense idk man. Anyway adorable idea actualized below!

Also mentions of sex but this is totally sfw. I went with the timeline of when your sleeping together but he hasn't quite admitted his feelings to himself, as a side!

~

Astarion had no idea how he became your camp's designated seamstress. How was it possible that a team of eight adults were all incapable of knowing the basics of such a fundamental skill?

Then again, Karlach seemed to be perfectly fine with wearing her clothes to tatters. Wyll was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Lae'zel, for some gods forsaken reason, was only capable of fixing up heavy armor. Gale seemed to prefer eating magical clothing items versus being able to salvage them and the rest were mediocre at best.

The look of confusion on Shadowheart's, who was the second most skilled by far, face when Astarion tried to explain a ladder stitch was enough for him to give up entirely. It was quicker to fix the tears then to explain simple concepts to simpletons.

Brats. All of you. With one who was significantly more brazen than the rest when it came to using Astarion as their personal tailor.

Tav, the lovely thorn in his side. Who could handle wielding a glaive with startingly accuracy, but somehow managed to consistently stab themselves every time they picked up a sewing needle. It was impressive, how useless someone who was otherwise extremely competent could be.

Impressive as it was frustrating. Because somehow you managed to destroy your clothes more often than anyone else. Always bashfully handing him over torn trousers and ripped shirts every other night. Anyone else he would have told to fuck off by now. Even the rest of the camp knew better than to test their luck with anything more than once a fortnight. But you lacked the very basic level of self-control.

It was his own fault for giving you special treatment in the first place. But sleeping together did warrant a few extra benefits. He got your protection and you got to experience the pleasure of being with him. Simple. Or it would have been if you didn't insist on making things complicated.

Because Astarion was starting to feel things. Things that he hadn't anticipated. Because your company was... oddly pleasant. You were an interesting little thing, he had to give you that. Well-read and talkative, but not boringly so. No, Astarion sometimes found himself losing track of time when he was with you. A simple question could easily turn into a two-hour conversation about the silliest things. It was... nice. New. And oh so different from what he was used to.

Cazador didn't even allow him or his brethren to speak in his home, let alone speak to each other unless it was strictly necessary. But here he was free to do whatever he pleased. And he was finding that included being near you, despite how differently you both saw the world.

He couldn't quite blame you for your delusional optimistic views. As a Tymora worshipper you were basically doomed from the start to believe inane concepts like good fortune, luck, and gods, the good that could be found in "anyone".

You were as sweet as you were aggravating and Astarion truly, honestly, had no idea how your insane trusting nature hadn't managed to get you killed yet. But then again he... kind of liked that about you. He liked that you trusted him. It made his life more convienet and... it was nice to be seen as a person worth confiding in. Instead of the blood-sucking monster he really was.

He... liked that. He liked you. A fact that he didn't enjoy thinking about. He didn't really know what to do with it, and the implications of where his feelings could lead were starting to become unsettling. So he pushed it out of his mind. It was an easy thing to do when doom was always looming in the background. He had plenty of things to think about that didn't include his fondness for you.

Like the inner-rage you caused when you managed to somehow rip the same shirt twice in one day.

"That's it," Astarion announced when you bashfully asked for his help yet again, "Come here. I'm teaching you how to sew."

"But you always get mad when you try," You whined. But despite the hesitancy you still obediently sat next to him as he got out the sewing kit, "Do you promise not to snap this time?"

"That depends," Astarion said with a roll of the eyes, "Do you intend on not maiming yourself with a sewing needle?"

Astarion smirked at the way that made a blush crawl up your neck, "That was one time!"

"Actually darling it was closer to seven," Astarion corrected as he snatched the shirt from your hands, "Now pay attention. Look at where the tear starts. Notice how it's on the seam?"

You nodded along as Astarion explained the basics to you. He could tell that you were trying your damndest to pay attention, but when it was your turn to hold the needle your hands couldn't stop shaking. Astarion frowned as he tried to watch you work, his view obfuscated by the angle and the flow of your hair.

Well that wouldn't do.

Before he could think better of it he was hauling you into his lap, ignoring your surprised squeak as he situated you just right.

That was better. At least now he could see what you were doing. It was a sloppy stich, sloppy enough for him to undo it before putting the needle back in your hand.

"Now do it again," Astarion ordered, "Let me see what your doing wrong."

Astarion watched as you tried again, frowning when he realized your shaking was even worse than before. In fact, you seemed more nervous than ever, your face red as you kept your eyes down.

It made Astarion torn between watching your hands and looking at your face. You really were adorable, getting all worked up from simply being in his lap, all while trying to stay dutifully undistracted. He could almost hear your heart racing, obvious through the tension coursing through you.

Silly little thing, acting all shy like he hadn't already literally been inside of you. But at least you were doing better, your stitching straighter than Astarion had ever seen it. Maybe he'd have to make the lap-sitting mandatory from now on, for the good of your learning.

"See," Astarion said softly, his breath tickling your ear as he leaned in closer, "You're perfectly capable of learning this."

"So it looks good?" You asked, taking a chance to glance at him. Astarion hadn't realized just how close the two of you really were. He had never... seen you like this before. So closely. Even when you slept together, he had been a bit distracted by other parts of your body. He never noticed just how many light freckles were hiding across the bridge of your nose, how your eyes looked almost golden in candlelight. You smelled nice too, sweet. Like you had been rolling around in a field of lilies. Considering your personality, Astarion had to wonder if that's exactly what you did.

It would take almost nothing to press your lips together. Barely a turn on the head.

"Astarion, are you listening?"

The sound of his voice snapped him out of his revelry. He straightened, clearing his throat as he looked over your work again, embarrassed in a way that he couldn't quite describe.

Maybe you weren't the only one being affected after all.

"It looks better," Astarion said honestly, "But still needs work. You'll almost certainly be needing more lessons."

Preferably like this. Astarion wasn't quite ready to let you go yet, not when you felt so pleasantly warm in his lap. But luckily enough for him, you didn't seem quite so keen to leave.

Astarion tightened his hold on you laughing at the way it made you gasp, "But that's enough for today. I think you've earned a reward. Don't you?"

"I-yes?" You said back, your eyes flitting from Astarion's mouth and back, "Please?"

You really were too precious. How could he possibly say no to that?

Astarion grinned as he tilted your chin up, finally pressing your lips together. It was an odd feeling, kissing someone when he couldn't stop smiling, but he supposed you just had that effect on him.

Maybe being the camp seamstress wasn't so bad after all.

[linkspooky]

YUTA WAS ALWAYS SELFISH

I was originally going to make this post the week the big twist with Yuta in Gojo's body happened, because of the massive subversion that it was. It was the kind of twist that made you question if everything you ever knew about the character was wrong. Namely, Yuta one of the most empathic sorcerers we see in the series - the character who seems to lack the selfishness of the other sorcerers that make up jujutsu society. The kid who fights with the literal power of love.

Was Yuta a monster to begin with and we just didn't see?

So ignore the clickbaity tagline, Yuta is one of my favorite characters I'm not going to start calling him a terrible person. Rather that Yuta is dismissed as a soft kid or a wifeguy, when he's actually more cunning and cutthroat than anyone gives him credit for.

If a sorcerer is nothing more than a con-artist, then if the talent for trickery he displayed in the Sukuna fight is anything to go by Yuta is a true sorcerer down to his bones. Yuta turning Gojo's body into a puppet seems like a massive twist, and almost out of character for Yuta who was so devoted to Gojo.

His earlier fight in the culling game even seemed to hint that Yuta was too soft and he didn't truly have the attitude to fight someone like Ryomen Sukuna who was the embodiment of a calamity.

These panels seemed like a prophecy that Yuta was doomed to fall short against Sukuna. That he could never live up to his title as the next Satoru Gojo, because unlike Gojo and Sukuna who can stand on the top alone Yuta clings to his loved ones.

Sukuna got to where he is by rejecting love. Sukuna is Sukuna because he's never needed anyone to satisfy him. So how can Yuta who needs to be surrounded by his loved ones at all time to validate him and tell him it's okay for him to be alive even compete?

However, even in JJK zero Yuta's love is questioned on whether or not it's as selfless and "pure" as it seems. To begin with, Maki calls him out early on for attracting bullies by playing the victim a lot. He pretends to be a good and innocent person put upon by his circumstances and bullies when really he doesn't want to help himself. Instead of standing up to the bullies he's always let Rika protect him and then condemned her for being a monster. He's let Rika take the blame for all the destruction, even though Rika is HIS cursed technique, created by HIS emotions, and is protecting him.

Yuta doesn't make any attempt to try to learn to control Rika, or even work with her, he just shrivels away in fear.

"You act like a good person, but it feels fake..." Yuta has always adopted the facade of a good person. He seems soft, socially anxious and withdrawn, even after he gains confidence as a sorcerer those traits don't go away because they're a part of his outward persona. Jung divides the psyche into two parts, the persona a mask that faces the world the parts of yourself that come out in your social interaction with people and then there's the shadow your repressed personality.

Yuta's shadow is a literal monster that declares her love for him and then expresses that love by violently destroying everything around him.

Yes, Rika initially contained the soul of someone else but Rika the curse was created by his technique, her power corresponds to his emotions, she comes from his shadow, and even after the real Rika passes on the Shikigami RIKA still remains completely under Yuta's control. Rika is Yuta, the embodiment of his twisted definition of love that would curse his loved ones to keep them by his side forever because he can't live without them. All of Rika's insane possessiveness? That's Yuta's too. Rika's violent overprotectiveness? That's Yuta.

How poetic is it really that Yuta and Rika are so codependent that Yuta's shadow, the other half of his personality is literally RIKA. Yuta cannot exist without love, and without someone too love, he's so terrified of being alone that he cursed Rika and then turned her corpse into a puppet after death. He uses his loved one as a weapon to fight his enemies.

If you think about it for more than five minutes Yuta's cursed technique and Rika has some seriously messed up implications, but it's hard too because as messed up as Yuta's love is it's still genuine.

Love is a curse, but in 236 Nanami speculates that sometimes curses can save people too, just like how Jujutsu Sorcerers use curses to fight and protect others.

So Yuta's love is a screaming, raging, overprotective monster, but it's also what give shim the motivation to fight ofr others. Yuta's love is a curse, but curses can save people too.

Yuta on the other hand isn't aware of his own darker nature most of the time.

The big twist in Jujutsu kaisen Zero is that just as Maki accused him of from the beginning, Yuta was playing the victim all along. He acted like Rika cursed him with her dying breath, but Yuta was the one who cursed her because he couldn't bear to live without her.

However, even this apology is a bit telling of Yuta's self-centered nature. He immediately turns everything into his fault and starts beating himself up over it. He doesn't look at anyone else's perspectives or that other people had a role to play. He deliberately ignores Rika's feelings on the past few years, which Rika is quick to point out for him.

This scene has a parallel later where Yuta ultimately, only thinks about himself first and foremost. In spite of wanting so badly to be surrounded by his loved ones, it's more about him loving them, and less about their feelings for him.

After all he's completely willing to commit a double suicide with Rika to protect his friends, ignoring the fact Rika doesn't want him to pass on just yet, and Maki, Inumaki and Panda wouldn't want him to disappear either. This scene has a direct parallel a year later in the fight against Sukuna when Yuta gives up his body.

Maki almost breaks character from her usual culling game arcs stoicity to fight and argue with Yuta to stop him form doing this, and Rika who one year earlier told Yuta to live a long life so she wouldn't have to see him on the other side so soon is reduced to screaming and sobbing while holding his dead body.

Yuta loves people, or at least he feels an intense amount of love for people, but he can be as self-centered as the other sorcerers we see in the story. Geto even points this out right away, that Yuta is selfish, that he's seeking self-affirmation first and foremost. He needs other people's approval, their love, to feel like he deserves to exist. He'll do anything to earn that love, and once he has it he'll do anything to protect it but it's ultimately for himself.

It manifests in Yuta's technique itself copy, which first and foremost requires Yuta to consume parts of his loved ones that can never be healed if he wants to keep their copied technique. Yuta gets stronger by literally eating his loved ones. We have canon confirmation that Yuta fed part of Inumaki's severed arm to Rika.

Yuta's cursed technique is to emulate the strengths of all of his loved ones copying them and making them a part of his oqn technique, because Yuta will take any shape and form in order to be loved. It's also the perfect technique for fighting as a part of a group, because someone like Sukuna will naturally assume that Yuta's technique STEALS instead of COPYING so he'll forget that the original still retains their technique.

Yuta's not only selfish and has a very selfish, overprotective love for others, but it's those exact qualities that make him an effective sorcerer strong in the area that Gojo is the weakest. Group coordination.

Gojo is in his element when he's alone, but Yuta is so codependent that he literally cannot exist unless other people are looking at him. His strength comes from the things he copies and takes from his friend, and he turned his loved one into a puppet to fight others. Is it really that surprising that this kid would willingly use Gojo's body as a weapon after death when that's literally what he did to Rika.

How telling is it that like Yuta learned that Rika was cursed by him, went so far to exorcise her spirit, and then after finally letting go after her spirit passed on he made a second Shikigami named Rika a few months later made out of the small remnants of cursed energy that Rika left behind as a gift after passing on. The dude is not over Rika, he's like, Geto and Gojo levels of not over Rika.

Yuta's cursed technique being the literal weaponization of his love and his loved ones makes him the best character for group coordination in the entire series. Yuta even adopts apsects of hakari's persona when making his plans against Sukuna since he decides to gamble at several key points in the plan.

Several of the key moments in the fight are all Yuta's plans, with some collaboration from Angel. He makes several bets too like Hakari would. The first being going to finish Kenjaku by himself and using both Todo and Takaba in conjunction to trick him. The second is the bet that he'd be able to make it back in time to rejoin the fight in case Higuruma's plan fail.

It was Yuta who let his own domain barrier down on purpose to let Sukuna think he had the victory so he would let his guard down and make it easy for Maki to ambush him. Something that also required perfect coordination between Yuta and Maki working in tandem with one another.

Yuta set up Hana to do one large jacob's ladder when Sukuna least expected it because he knew Sukuna would forget that his technique is COPY and not steal. He also made the biggest bluff which was leading Sukuna to believe that he fed Rika his last finger.

These aren't just good bluffs, they require near perfect coordination with your allies and taking several chances on them. Nobara might not have even woken up so the last finger / resonance Gambit was perhaps the biggest gamble. Maki and Yuta had to coordinate with each other well so Maki would be there when Yuta dropped the barrier. Yuta needed Takaba a relatively new and inexperienced sorcerer to survive against the threat that was Kenjaku, and he needed all of his allies to stay alive while he was prioritizing Kenjaku.

These are all plans Satoru Gojo would never have been able to pull off, because Gojo only ever relies on himself. If Yuta and Hakari had intervened in the Gojo and Sukuna fight then he would not have been able to go all out, whereas Yuta REQUIRES people collaborating with him in order TO GO ALL OUT.

This is Yuta. This is his strength. Yuta is nothing without love, so he takes on the forms of the people he loves and takes things from the people he loves in order to gain the power to protect him. Yuta copies everything from the people he loves, so is it really that much of a surprise that he'd become a monster just like Gojo.

In some ways, Geto and Yuuta were the same. Geto was too sincere. To someone like him, the reality that the world of sorcerers presented to him was just too cruel. ’…that in a world like this, I couldn’t be truly happy from the bottom of my heart.’ To live for the purpose of being yourself. And for that goal, Geto could only continue to pursue his twisted dream, drowning himself in the curse that lies in the gap between ideal and reality.

Love is a weapon for Yuta. Just like his curse technique can take any form, so does Yuta's love, and so does Yuta himself. Love always wins, and in order to do so Yuta will take any shape necessary, no matter how twisted.

Love is the worst curse of them all, and Yuta will become the worst monster of them all if it means protecting his love ones.

[phantaloon]

the thing that makes the pjo books so good, and superior in my humble opinion, is how hard it is to stay on the "hero's" side by the end of book 5

and im not saying I would have followed luke and both intentionally and unintentionally kill my fellow halfbloods, im not saying what luke did is right, because it's not, and because in the end it was always kronos manipulating him since the start

but the thing is, luke is so right to be bitter and furious at the gods, he of all people knows what it's like to suffer bc a god simply wanted something, and they wouldn't stop until they did

losing his mom, psychologically speaking, bc it was a god's curse that made it impossible for the oracle to work right, and drove may insane

praying for years for hermes to help with his mom, for anything, and receiving silence in return

losing thalia, the first person he had been able to connect with, because of a hades's need for vengeance (bc zeus killed his lover in the first place)

going on a quest, failing and ending up with a scar and having nothing but pity simply bc hermes, his dad, asked him to go

being left behind by the gods, seeing his cabin fill out by unclaimed kids the gods are leaving behind, kids the gods for one reason or another don't want to claim

seeing how hey, there's kids here whose parents don't have cabins here, and yet the gods want there to be cabins for the twelve olympians only

and just the countless injustices he saw happen along the years, all bc of the gods will

and like i said before, kronos's manipulation didn't help, but it was luke being beyond bitter that made that manipulation work

and yeah, maybe i personally wouldn't have started a civil war between the literal strongest gods that would have ended up destroying the world, and I wouldn't have sent an innocent twelve year old to his doom to tartarus, and i wouldn't have done like a single thing luke did throughout the books, bc he ended up hurting his kind, more than he did the gods themselves

but it's so easy to see where luke is coming from, it's so easy to understand his anger, his desire to see the gods pay in some way, because they don't care about mortals and how the consequences of their actions affect them greatly

it's also easy to see that luke was, after all, simply too angry, too bitter, and that made him vulnerable to the power of those who wanted to overthrow the gods

and it's what makes even percy question everything he thinks he knows about the gods, it's what makes percy take smth from all of luke's ways of thinking, and ask for the gods to be better by the end of the last olympian

and it's what makes percy, even in hoo, think back to luke's motivations and think, huh he wasn't entirely wrong was he?

and god i just fucking love these books thanks for coming to my ted talk

[cheriecoke]

when nanami dies, there's a box of letters waiting for you.

months pass before you find it. it's not until you're cleaning out his things, wondering if you can stand to get rid of them, that the letters are there waiting for you.

its no bigger than a shoebox, dark wood engraved with an intricate design, one that you're certain kento picked out specifically for you. you've never seen it before, and you open it with shaky hands, tears already pooling in your eyes at all the memories your lover left behind.

inside, there's a stack of letters, each one dated at the top with kento's name intricately signed at the end. some are in sealed envelopes with beautiful stamps. some multiple pages long and include some little haikus that are far too lovely to be about someone like you. and some are just quick little notes scribbled on napkins.

your spread them across the floor, staring down at each of the tiny little hearts he'd drawn next to your name on each note. even though you'd been together for years, you had no idea that he'd been writing all of them—hours of his life dedicated to this little pastime, and you'd been clueless.

they're like journal entires. insights into kento's life and your relationship, both the good moments and the tough ones. he leaves behind everything to you, entrusting you to keep his entire existence safe in your hands.

you read the letters with tears streaming down your face, and you choke on your sobs, trying so hard not to smear the ink from the wetness on your cheeks.

when you pull one out with shaky hands, you realize it's a decade old. the writing has faded a bit, and the paper is yellowing, but it's kento's handwriting, nonetheless.

it makes you near sick to read it. for a minute, you have to set it aside, cry into your knees as you curl into a ball, wondering when you'll ever stop feeling this empty.

this letter is from a sixteen year old kento; a quiet boy who had a silly little crush on girl in his year that was much too pretty for him. and in the letter, he says he knows you're too good for him, but he can't help but love you. he can't help but hope that one day, in a few years, you'll want to marry him as much as he wants to marry you.

it hurts, burns in your chest because even back then, kento had known you were the one. he'd known and he wrote you these letters because he'd felt that his life would be cut short. he'd felt like that since haibara died, and geto left, and it started to seem like the life of a sorcerer was always doomed to be an unhappy one.

kento had been so afraid that his friend died without knowing how much he meant to him, and he refused to make the same mistake with you.

there are letters from even when you weren't together. from the years that you were eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and kento had been so desperate to leave jujutsu behind that it meant he had to leave you too. even then, even when you were nothing more than a shadow from his past, he adored you.

you feel so outside of yourself, nauseous and filled with so much grief that you're not sure where to put it.

sometimes, you’d doubted if kento felt as loved by you as you did by him. but there's pages and pages of him speaking of how special you make him feel, even when you were separated, and he missed you so much that the thoughts of you consumed him.

you spend hours going through the letters, and then, you see one dated halloween, 2018. even breathing feels hard, but you can't stop yourself from reading it, even though you know it will destroy you, know that you won't be able to leave the house for days after reading it.

in the letter, kento says he loves you. he talks about the day before, when you'd convinced him to watch some halloween movies, and though most of them were silly, he didn't care how he spent his time with you as long as it made you smile.

he says that he feels bad for cancelling your dinner plans, and he's going to be thinking of you when he's in shibuya. that it's such a shame that being a sorcerer is so much more fulfilling than a salaryman, because it cuts into your time together, and you’re the most important part of his life.

he says he loves you again. that he really hopes he makes it back from shibuya because even though he's never told you, he wants a family with you.

he says he’s decided he'll bring it up when he gets home safe and sound. he’s not sure how you’ll feel about it, but you better know that he’ll always love you no matter what you decide, even if what he really wants is a little girl that looks just like you. and lastly, he hopes that you don't stay up too late waiting up for him—you’ve been so tired lately, and it’s making him feel bad.

his name is at the bottom with another little heart.

you let the letter fall from your hands.

[ksascriptt]

Suck It And See - Aaron Hotchner x Reader

Aaron Hotchner x Wife!BauProfiler!Reader

Read part 2 !

Warnings: Angst, mentions of death, mentions of mutilation (just the fact that it had happened at some point), lots of crying, not so great writing :( Haley isn’t murdered in this but she has fully left Hotch and Jacks life for reasons I haven’t decided yet — I don’t want Aaron to quite have that ptsd from losing a second lover.

Summary: You and Aaron have been married for five years, and you both hold jobs at the Behavioural Analysis Unit as Criminal Profilers — how is he supposed to react when you are the target that is doomed to die ?

Notes: The original plan was a LOT different than how this is gonna turn out, so consider this as like some background info for the later chapters. Enjoy ! 🫶

Word Count: like 1100 or something close to that

✦ ⎯⎯ㅤִㅤ୭ ୨♡୧ ৎㅤִ ⎯⎯ ✦

Three Weeks Ago, 29 January.

Yesterday and the day before, with an abundance of phone calls, meetings, messages, and tears, you were delivered the unfortunate news that you had fourteen days left to live — two weeks. It didn’t seem real, but you were quick to realize just how real it was.

The deal you hadn’t quite agreed to was that you were to free two highly dangerous and hostile prisoners (which, you couldn’t even do, it was beyond your jurisdiction) or you would be killed in two weeks time. Several agents had tried to find the group that planned this, attempted to stop them even, and they were all murdered. Brutally, really, their bodies mutilated in ways you hoped yours wouldn’t be.

So, you had no choice but to accept the fact that death would hold you in its clutches when life could not. Your friends and family didn’t take this well, they all rioted and tried to make it better but somehow, the group was untraceable — the BAU team, the best of the best, couldn’t save you. Aaron was your husband, you’d been married for five years and together for seven, and he couldn’t save you either. This information destroyed him, tore his chest open and gripped his heart like a vice. How does one accept the inevitable death of their lover?

He felt helpless when he realized he couldn’t help you, felt unsure and afraid for the first time in a long time — but he was determined to change your fate. Aaron was always a focused man, his attention rarely strayed from his priorities and he was so put together. It was odd to see him now, on the floor in front of the couch, ankles crossed and elbows resting on them. His hands were running through his dark hair, messy and unruly with stress and his fingers trembling as he occasionally clenched them. Your husband wasn’t the type to sit on the ground and damn-near panic, like he was doing now, face red and the remnants of tears stuck to his beautiful face.

The lights were off and it was dark outside, the only visible glow being emitted from a lamp in the other room, casting an orange-grey shadow on the room and the man it contained. The day had already been long, many tears had been shared and shed throughout the past two days, and you were not exempt from that. In fact, you were nearly drowning in the sheer amount of sadness and fear that coursed through your blood, as though it had entered your lungs in the time it took you to realize this was happening. But you couldn’t help but set your eyes upon Aaron, his casual clothing of a crewneck and jeans, and just how different he appeared now. Everything he stood for felt like it had been crushed in just a few days. You were such a prominent part of his life now, he adored and loved you more than anyone could ever understand, how could he cope with knowing he would lose you when he spent so much time trying to never let you go?

Leaning against the wide, open-formatted archway in the living room, you couldn’t bring yourself to rip your teary eyes away from the nearly crumpled form of your husband. This wasn’t right, you knew that — but you couldn’t let this tear everyone apart from the inside.

“ Aaron, honey? “

You asked softly, sniffling a little as you tried to keep your head level.

“Come here, I think maybe we should go to bed; it’s… been a long day,” you decided, keeping your volume low even as you moved to walk over to him. His head raised, eyes red and a little bloodshot as he took in the sight of you. A short time passed until he was able to stand to his full form, exhausted from work – or, rather, exhausted from trying to find anything that could save you. The taller man merely hummed in response, frowning for a second before wrapping his trembling arms around you, as though he’d never let you go. He didn’t think he should have had to let you go. It was unfair, cruel, irrational.

✦ ⎯⎯ㅤִㅤ୭ ୨♡୧ ৎㅤִ ⎯⎯ ✦

You had managed to coax Aaron to bed, and he barely let you go, not even just to change. He hated the sudden attention to detail he had, how he was forced to commit everything about you to memory for you were running on a clock until you were torn away from him. From the world. How would Jack take this? And even worse, how could you tell him that it was inevitable? Nobody understood. It hurt, you almost felt like you had been given up on so fast, as if the FBI had decided they couldn’t even try to save you, as though you weren’t worth the trouble. Maybe you were bitter out of fear, maybe you thought it was unjust.

Your mind wandered everywhere as you lay in his arms, the cold air drifting in from the open window a harsh reality in the safety of Aaron’s hold. “I don’t understand,” he finally spoke, the first words since a mild outburst he’d had this afternoon, emotions at a high at the office. “You don’t understand?” You repeated back to him, confirming. “No,” he began, “I don’t. It’s.. untraceable, I don’t know why I can’t stop this. It’s my job to stop this, sweetheart.” Aaron was shirtless, wearing only flannel pajama pants, legs entangled with your own. You wore a shirt of his, something older; from college, probably. “I.. there’s been four agents dead because of me. There’s more risking their lives. I’ll get everything arranged,” you explained with a slowly breaking voice. Tears welled in your eyes at every blooming thought. You were thirty, barely a real adult but you weren’t lucky enough to live until your next birthday. The lottery of life was not yours to be rewarded. “I love you, Aaron.”

“I love you more, honey.”

Nobody could count just how many times those words had been uttered already, for fear every time would be the last. The feeling that eventually, you would say it once and never say it again. But the clock was ticking everyday, and you couldn’t change that, no matter how much you yearned for just a little more time. With a mind racing a mile a minute, tried to zero in on his heartbeat, not on the tears slowly slipping from your eyes and onto Aaron’s chest.

[mrs-hwangh]

a boxers heart.

chapter three

Kim Geonwoo x Fem!Reader

Summary: one day was enough to change your lifes forever. Geonwoo is your best friend, you help his mother with her coffee shop and became part of a legendary trio with Geonwoo and Woojin. However.. nothing will ever be the same again after the Smile Company entered your lifes.

wc: 2.1 K

warnings: mentions of: violence, knifes, blood

+not proof read, I'll do that tomorrow

an: I'm so sorry that I dissappeared for this long. Some things happened that I had to take care of, but long story short, I might get my dream job if everything goes right.. sooo the long pause had some kind if good reason :'D

Now back to this series, I hope you enjoy this chapter, I actually started writing it along with the first two, I just didn't know how to write the scenes because it's my first time writing something this violent. I hope I succeeded in this part, please bare with me 🥹

Anywayyyy

Enjoy

Men styled in black stood outside the now destroyed Shop, guarding it so that nobody would interfere while they traumatized yet more persons lifes.

Geonwoo tried to run past the first guy but he stopped him.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"Who the hell are you? Get lost!"

The man pushed Geonwoo back, not letting him get any closer to the entrance of the building.

He was able to steal a glance from inside the shop and there they were.

"Hey! I told you to scram, asshole!"

Two men were holding you by your arms while another, seemingly richer, man sat with his mother.

He could see both of your frightened expressions.. and this alone was enough to send him on edge.

However.. the rich person suddenly grabbed his mother by her head and pushed it against the table.

These people are doomed.

It started with one punch, then another and many more. The first guard met the ground during his attempt to keep the boy back. And so did the others. Geonwoo sent all of them flying. Avoiding most of their attacks against him, punching, kicking and pushing them one by one.

You heard the noise from outside and were in shock as you witnessed Geonwoo, fighting 15 people on his own. He may be strong but where was his limit?This was a whole squad against him, experienced criminals against the guy who would never fight unfair, always respecting his boundaries.

You saw one of them landing a hit on him and you flinched, worried that they hurt him even if you knew that this guy just won a boxing tournament yesterday. Moments passed by and he marched into the shattered and unrecognizable shop.

The two guys that held you let you go, running against him just to be defeated seconds after.

"..Geonwoo..!"

You said relieved, looking at his mother and side eyeing the hell out of the asshole who caused all of this.

The once so proud man stood up, left Geonwoos mother on her own and backed off towards the back door.

Geonwoo ran to you two.

"Mom, y/n! You allright?"

You two nodded, still in the schock of the moment.

"We're okay.. we're okay"

He hugged us tightly, his gaze analyzing us to ensure himself that they didn't do worse to his closest persons.

The poor woman was sobbing, seeing her like this was the last straw he had to make that bastard regret that he ever showed up to this place.

Their gazes met and Geunwoo wasted no time into lunging onto him, pushing him harshly against the wall.

Did he want to punch him? Yes.

Did he want to send him straight to the hospital? Oh he will.

But he firstly had know why everything of this happened in the first place.

"Who are you?"

He asked.

"Who are you to do this to our store?"

The stranger wanted to flee but there was no use in trying so, Geonwoo had him perfectly locked. No answer was offered by him, only a shocked look on his face.

"I asked you 'who are you?'"

Geonwoo's a patient person, but whoever this was was walking on very thin ice right now.

Instead of answering him, the man looked towards the door where his thugs were readjusting their positions and another men was entering the shop.

The bastard chuckled and this was the moment when Geonwoo decided to look at the person the guy was looking at.

He had a scar running across the top to the bottom part of his face. A proud look and the company of an muscular giant.

You quickly shielded his mother from the new guys. She was a trembling mess and that psycho look on their supposed leaders face didn't help.

Geonwoo let go of the idiot who dared to lay his hand on you two, looking at the new individuals now.

He was quick to walk towards your forms, taking both of you into his arms as he positioned himself in a protective manner. One hand clung onto his mother's form to reassure her, his other held yours tightly, squeezing it lightly to let you know that everything would be fine.

Geonwoo looked a them, unsure if he could keep you safe, thousands possible outcomes created the worst scenarios in his head. He didn't want to see you two suffer.. he wouldn't let that happen.

But that big guy over there looked anything but friendly, he never fought against someone like him and his position in this only worsened the situation.

The person who seemed to be their boss then speaked up.

"Calm down, kid"

How could he?

How could he calm down knowing that whoever he is tried to harm his mother and you?

Did he seriously think that Geonwoo would trust anything he'd say after this?

The man held an amused expression, his hands behind his back.

"Your mother has borrowed some money from our company"

Geonwoo looked at her and she shook her head no.

"Mh-hm"

The boy mustered his courage, the only thing racing in his mind being to get that man and his followers our of here.

"So what do you want?"

The adults gaze darkened, that playful manner now unrecognizable.

"Pay us back."

You noticed the slight shaking of his hand, of course he was nervous, everyone would be in such a situation.

The little option you had to comfort him was to turn the tables and to squeeze his hand in return, holding tightly onto it and hope for the best.

"Pay us for the damages first"

He spat, it took alot of courage in such a situation and you admired him for that ..however.. you also mentally facepalmed yourself because this was certainly not the answer this criminal was hoping for. The said man stepped closer, not breaking the eye contact he had with Geonwoo until he stopped. His gaze switched between his, his mothers and yours.

The look of this psychopath would hunt you in your dreams, these eyes spilled all of his darkest secrets, leaving no room for hopes of a happy ending.

"G-Geonwoo.."

"Don't worry, I've got this"

He lied or he tried to reassure himself. Whatever it was, you could feel the slight tremble of his hands while he held you and his mother. The stranger stood there for a while until he smirked and stepped back. When he passed the buffed guy, he whispered something.

"Beom"

His name? Whatever it was, it wasn't a good sign. The stranger walked out of the line and took one of the chairs, putting it on a corner to sit on it.

The Gorilla of a man then took his hat of and threw the closest chair to him violently to the ground. Geonwoos grip on us tightened but all it took was one look to understand what'd happen.

"Mom, y/n, it's okay, just go over there.. okay?"

"Geonwoo.."

His mother started but he didn't leave us any room for resistance.

"Please.. please don't get hurt"

You knew how bad it looked... these guys are dangerous and for whatever reason they chose to torment his family tonight.

He pushed you towards the back, his mother didn't want to leave him but you held her, trying to comfort the poor woman.

Geonwoo took a protective stance, watching the grown man as he analyzed the best way to end this. The said man just stood there, waiting for Geonwoo to land the first blow. Which he did.One on his southern part and another one straight to his face. Much to his frustration, the giant didn't move.

A dangerous and angered gaze flickered across his facial features. A second, a third and a further blow followed, with no effects.

All of this just for a tiny bit of blood coming from the guys mouth. You knew your friend good enough to understand his body language by now. He stiffened, his gaze was unsure and you knew that this Gorilla of a human would cause a big damage.

His patience wore then and the said Guy lunged at Geonwoo. His mother flinched in your arms and all you could do was trying to comfort her and pray that they wouldn't hurt your friend.

Geonwoo managed to defend the first attack, using the time the other guy needed to readjust himself to fight back.

He hit every blow and you couldn't be prouder of him right now... however,his oponement wasn't just someone.A sickening blow was thrown at Geonwoos head, sending him to the other side of the destroyed coffee shop.

"Oh my God.. "

I whisper yelled as he hit the display which shattered at the sudden impact.

The attacks were restless, one blow followed after the other. Geonwoo managed to take a position just like he would during a fight. But this one was anything but fair.

His oponement wanted him dead. Two strong arms getting a grip of his hands, pulling them away from his head.The next stage followed.. the guy hit his head against Geonwoos until he lost his strength. His eyes rolled back and his knees gave up.

A loud thud echoed through the room as his body hit the floor.

His mother cried in your arms while you fought against your tears.

"Geonwoo! Geonwoo please! Wake up!!"

He was trying to stay concious, blood dripped from his nose and there were some nasty wounds shattered across his face.

The stranger gave the Giant an approving nod and everything that followed was like a blur in your memories. Geonwoo had managed to lunge an attack on his oponement but the following actions were just cruel.

He got pinned against the wall, his head hitting the mirror.An attempt of choking him followed with mercilessly placed punches and that was the moment you lost your shit.

"You fucking bastards!"

You tried to attack the Giant form behind, offering Geonwoo every help you could offer facing the sad truth that you had no idea of martial arts.

Seconds before you could reach him, someone pulled you from behind and threw you to the floor.

"You little bitch"

Was all the said man said before kicking you at your stomach. Geonwoos mother was being held back by the guy with the glasses.

"You'll regrett this"

You managed to say between gritted teeth, kicking his leg before he could land another kick on your form. The guy fell to the ground and you punched him as many times as you could before his mates pulled you away from him, restraining you from further actions.

"Let me go!"

One of them kneeled down to match your height, holding your chin to move it towards a terrifying scene.

There he laid, motionless and at the mercy of the cruel man.

"W-What.."

"Cat got your tongue?"

"This is where the fun part begins"

Their sickening comments added on the helplessness of the whole situation. Footsteps echoed through the room as their leader kicked Geonwoos body to make him face him.

He was coughing, struggling to even stay awake.

The sight broke your heart and the screams of his mother would always hunt you. Their leader kneeled down, holding eye contact with the person who never failed to light up your day.

"Hey, I appreciate people with grit"

He moved closer.

"Because guys with grit can get anything done"

A long silence followed after that.

"Do you want to work for me? I will make sure that-"

The psychos offer got shut off with Geonwoo spitting on him.

A proud smile made it's way to your face but your gut feeling said that something terrible would follow.

Their leader looked outside of the shop where his minions were waiting, they saw that action.. and he stood up again, stepping over him to sit down on him.

He pressed his weigh on Geonwoos lungs which made him struggle even more. Soon enough, a sharp sound traveled across the room and your eyes widened.

He held a knife.

He held a fucking knife.

His free hand held Geonwoos Chin, positioning him so that he'd face him.

The cruelsome act that followed after wasn't something that one could even try to describe. The knife was used to slice a clean cut across his face.

The sickening sound of the skins layer getting sliced through made his mother cry even more.

It hit you aswell, tears were falling freely now as you witnessed the torture they made your friend go through, praying that for whatever reason it'd end soon.

-

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Thank you for reading!!