#everything feels so numb

[eilinelsghost]

Thing is, it's my son's birthday tomorrow and I want to bake his cake and dance around and be silly and give him his little presents and put a party hat on the dog and all the things you do with a newly-five-year-old but just. how.

[starry-bi-sky]

on a completely separate note; shizun luo binghe with a disciple shen yuan who fell into the abyss??? *thinks about LBH canonically stealing SQQ's corpse for 5 years* he'd hallucinate i think. like, like visual and audial hallucinations.

Keeps thinking he's seeing SQQ in the corner of his eyes, or wandering between the trees, amongst a group of disciples. Thinks he hears him calling for him, but its just the wind or another disciple.

Gets Xiu Ya reforged but patently fucking refuses to make a sword mound. Because his disciple Is Not Dead :))) There was No Body. He's Not Dead. And If You keep Insisting That He Is, He's Gonna Skewer You :). He's holding onto Xiu Ya so he can return his most favored disciple's sword when he returns. It's on his hip right next to Zheng Yang where it's supposed to be.

Also this motherfucker?? does not sleep btw. He has the image of SQQ, wide eyed and hysterical and standing at the mouth of the abyss burned into his fucking eyelids. Can't use the dreamscape to escape it either because he keeps trying to save him and either he does and it's an incredibly cruel trick to wake up to, or he doesn't and he gets his heart broken in several different pieces again.

There is no convincing this man that Shen Qingqiu is dead. Absolutely nothing at all. He is buried so deep in denial that moles would be jealous of how deep he is. He keeps making tea for two in the bamboo house only to remember that it's just him. SQQ's fans are hiding everywhere, little reminders of his presence. He goes to wake up SQQ on the mornings he sleeps in-- only to find the room empty.

[yaksha-lover]

Leona never thought you would be the one to shake his miserable existence; he’s far too cynical to use the word ‘change,’ but the thought isn’t far from it.

You, who is nauseatingly sentimental and abhorrently optimistic.

You, who swept up his heart so easily, as though he were a some pathetic lovesick loser.

You, who wrapped your arms around him and dared to feed his feeble hope.

You, who cries the most pitiful and loathsome tears, sickening and utterly maddening with what your foolish feelings do to him, the sense of dread and shame which permeates him.

You, who would be better off letting him go.

It’s a balancing act; some days Leona can tell himself that you’re enough for him to get better, others he’s aware enough to know he’s stumbling towards a bitter end and dragging you down with him.

He feels nothing and everything all at once; his world is senseless until you enter his stage, but you drag along everything else with you. The love comes quick, but so does the apathy and pain and despair.

He wonders, hopes, that on some level, you understand. You just know. Everything that he’s always wanted to tell you, but never been able to push past his lips; that he loves you, that he’s sorry, that he knows and doesn’t know why he’s like this.

That you deserve better; that he doesn’t deserve to be loved how you love him.

Leona pushes you away, and still hopes you catch him when he falls.

On his worst days, another feeling looms over him. He never wants you to leave, but he can’t cause those awful tears anymore if you do. Can’t put you through anything else, further the wound he’s surely already caused.

But the tears spill and you don’t flee. You wrap your arms around him and squeeze and Leona squeezes back.

[honeypleasejustkillme]

with how life has been going this year, i’m contemplating suicide more than ever before

[vaguely-concerned]

every so often, varric will write a black fox story. not anything fancy or for publication or anything, just for fun and because he knows hawke has a soft spot for them. ("an intrepid hero getting into and out of all kinds of trouble and the merry band of misfits following inseparably in his wake? can't imagine why".) some of them are experimental, some of them are straightforward retellings; they're generally pretty short and quick to do, so he allows himself to play around with form and genre and language more than he does in his professional work. stretching over the span of almost twenty years as they do, they contain some of his favourite pieces of his own writing, and some of the most '...was I huffing lyrium fumes or drunk or both for this one, hawke? what the actual hell is this' pieces. hawke keeps every single one of them. varric speculates that this is either because they're just that sentimental, or possibly that it's for future blackmailing purposes. he usually has one ready for their birthday. they have so much blackmail material on him anyway by this point, he figures, what's one more piece of ammunition going to do one way or the other.

varric finishes one of these black fox tales a couple of nights before he brings rook with him to minrathous — the last one. it's about the very last black fox story, the one where the black fox and his friends all disappear together into the depths of arlathan forest, where those in the know say you can find them to this very day, if you know where to look, or if you ever find yourself in trouble and in need of a helping hand. they'll turn up to aid a traveller in need, and disappear back between the shaded trees again once the day is saved, squabbling all the way, seeking treasures and unlikely quests yet unfound and unimagined.

they say on some days, you can hear them as laughter and friendly bickering on the wind from a couple of clearings over. it's not the end, it's just other adventures, some other place. that's the thing about stories. they're funny that way.

(once he wrote a book for his mother on her deathbed and read it to her through the comfortless and drawn-out hours of the troubled nights, and he burned the book the day she died and never spoke of it again.)

after he finishes the manuscript, he sits with it for a long time in the quiet and the candlelight before he wraps it up properly and sends it off back home to kirkwall. he attaches a note -- a story, to the best of all my stories, the one I'd tell forever if I could. take care of each other while I'm gone. first one to arrive saves seats at the bar, right? happy birthday, and send all my lack of love to the merchant's guild, as always. —Varric

he sends that to hawke. just in case. and then he gets up and he goes to find rook — it's time to get going.

[betterthanbatman1]

​He looks like the shell of the man he used to be

Look at his eyes. They’re completely empty. They’re not like how one would describe ‘cold, dead eyes’. No, they’re eyes devoid of life. It’s so much more than just eyes that are ‘empty and emotionless’. Every single detail on his body shows just how much emotion and turmoil this boy has been through.

Those eyes are hollow because everything he’s been through has ripped his soul-the the very essence of himself- away. The eyes aren’t completely blank, so it’s more than just emptiness. The irises were sketched but still lack colour. His eyes have been washed out not erased. It truly captures the pain he’s in and has been through.

They say ‘Eyes are the windows to the soul’. His soul has been through so much for his eyes to reflect that so painfully.

[gayleafpool]

i think a big thing people get wrong w leafpool’s character is thinking her passivity comes from like fear or insecurity or being shy or something when really it comes from like. defeat. she’s been burned so many times so now she just accepts it there’s no point in fighting back

[shannonsketches]

he's so important to me

[nsewell]

i lived bitch

[kozidraws]

.

[ronkeyroo]

I wish i could take everyones pain away, and my own too

[just-an-anxious-mess]

[wonder-worker]

"According to Howden, [Henry II] had been incredulous on hearing the first tidings of his son's [Henry the Young King's] death, until it was confirmed by the arrival of other messengers. Ordering his men to leave him, the Old King was overwhelmed by paroxysms of grief. Despite the periods of tension between them, the sources leave little doubt that Henry II loved his son deeply, and that his death was, as the History noted, ‘a bitter shock’. His grief was such that Peter of Blois felt compelled to compose a letter of consolation to the king, replete with biblical citations, urging him to moderate his sorrow and assuring him that young Henry’s deep contrition and pious death would spare him from divine punishment. Nevertheless, in this time of crisis, Henry II realized it was imperative not to show weakness: withholding his emotions from his forces, he immediately sent word to Richard, who was besieging Aixe, and ordered the siege of Limoges to be pressed home with greater vigour.  Repeated attacks finally wore down the defenders, weakened by hunger and demoralized by the realization that the chance of the rising’s success had died with the Young King. Finally, on 24 June, Viscount Aimar and the men of the Château surrendered the castle and all the defences to Henry II. The king thereupon completely demolished the fortifications, not leaving one stone upon another, and likewise ordered the destruction of other rebel castles."

— Matthew Strickland, Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

[poolboyservice]

is . AnyOne fucking awake.i feel like I'm losing it

[screaming--agony]

Dear Diary,

There isn’t enough space in the world for me to retreat to.

[neptunes-saddest-alien]

I can’t remember when I stopped caring , when it stopped feeling so intense and personal. I can’t remember when it stopped making me so angry at everything and only enraged at myself, when I stopped trying to say no, when I stopped trying to find ways out, when I stopped fighting for the grieving child inside me,when it all turned too repetitive to change, I don’t remember when exactly I stopped caring about dying in this house., I’m just tired, ready to die somewhere, and I don’t care where anymore.