#going to find it so nice

[mejomonster]

I'm absolutely obsessed with Luo wenzhou/fei du's dynamic. And the part... fei du asking when did Luo wenzhou confess? Luo wenzhou teasing him for not realizing ALL THIS FOR MONTHS has been loving fei du, openly and fully and adding in romantic too, Luo wenzhou holding his chin and meeting fei dus eyes and fei du absolutely Overwhelmed but his heart all full... then Luo wenzhou you know GIVING him his heart clearly, fully overwhelming poor oblivious fei du who only just realized, then cockblocking fei du while also making his heart absolutely overwhelmed ToT and cuddling up to him to sleep beside him but Leaving the fucking handcuffs on.

Incredible

Their dynamic is absolutely one of my favorite things

Quote, chapter 91:

Luo Wenzhou hadn’t yet straightened up when a familiar Mu Xiang scent came up from behind him. Then he was hugged from behind, one very badly behaved hand hooking around his waist, the other hand lightly brushing past his neck and pressing his lips; then there was a breath at his ear.

 

Luo Wenzhou’s ear buzzed. His body didn’t wait for instructions; without authorization, it was already half on fire. He grabbed Fei Du’s wrist, thinking his own palm was so hot it was humiliating.

 

Luo Wenzhou said, “Don’t mess around.”

 

Fei Du had discovered long ago that Luo Wenzhou couldn’t resist Mu Xiang, especially when there was only a tail-end left of it, so before leaving the hospital, he’d especially had his assistant bring over a bottle. Now, he turned a deaf ear on Luo Wenzhou’s weak resistance, obligingly letting him grab his wrist, licking the back of his neck. “Shixiong, you’re pretending to be a saint.”

 

Luo Wenzhou shivered. He was caught off guard when Fei Du pushed the backs of his knees, pushing him onto the quilt he’d just spread out.

 

Fei Du’s freshly-washed hair was wet, water droplets gathering at the ends, glittering in the dim light of the bedside lamp, dazzling. A droplet suddenly took shape and dripped down. Luo Wenzhou’s throat rolled with it.

 

Fei Du, with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile, added, “Though I like your type of ‘pretend saint’ that shows the wolf into the house. You must taste very good.”

 

“Get off.” Like a Chinese soft-shelled turtle, Luo Wenzhou was internally hot and bothered but still reached out a hand to push him. Gritting his teeth, he said, “Just out of the hospital and you’re courting death?”

 

Fei Du had seen that the enemy’s will to resist was very half-hearted. He let him push, not dodging away. As expected, Luo Wenzhou’s strength was no greater than Luo Yiguo’s. He only gave a light shove. Fei Du didn’t retreat, so Luo Wenzhou’s hand on his chest changed its meaning; it seemed he wasn’t refusing but taking advantage.

 

Luo Wenzhou felt Fei Du’s heartbeat. He’d heard that it had stopped once, so when Fei Du had just gotten out of the ICU, he’d been unable to resist listening to Fei Du’s heart, thinking that he’d have done anything to make that weak and sluggish heartbeat liven up again.

 

…now that it had livened up, Luo Wenzhou was somewhat regretful, wanting to eat his words from back then.

 

As he was lost in thought, Fei Du came close. All the muscles in Luo Wenzhou’s body suddenly tensed, and his breath caught.

 

Fei Du first faintly touched the corner of his lips. Then, with a trace of huskiness, he said like a sigh, “If I’m courting death, dying in bed with you would be a fine ending.”

 

Luo Wenzhou really didn’t want to hear the word “dying.” His countenance instantly changed. “Stop talking…”

 

The poor rebuke “stop talking nonsense” hadn’t made it out when Fei Du sealed his mouth.

 

This time there was a faint taste of lemon between the lips and teeth—the new toothpaste he’d bought.

 

Fei Du demonstrated for him on the spot the “gift of gab” that could tie a cherry stem into a knot, stirring Luo Wenzhou, who’d firmly believed himself to be “free of distracting thoughts,” into a pot of porridge, boiling away his last bit of reason. By the time Luo Wenzhou came around, he was already helplessly kissing back. He subconsciously pressed Fei Du’s back, his hands escaping the control of his brain, starting to grope around on Fei Du’s body under the direction of a different organ…until he accidentally touched the back of Fei Du’s shoulder.

 

Being touched in an injured place obviously made Fei Du give a start of pain, but he really was something; for the sake of certain unspeakable aims, he bore up without making a sound. But Luo Wenzhou’s head cleared instantly; he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

He suddenly pulled a trick, unexpectedly turning over, pressing Fei Du onto the fluffy quilt with incomparable swiftness. Before Fei Du could react, there was a chill at his wrist, and he heard a click. His left hand had been cuffed to the head of the bed.

 

Calming his wildly racing heartbeat, Luo Wenzhou, his face stern, twisted his neck, which had become stiff as a stone. “Settle down.”

 

Fei Du tilted his head and shook his wrist. The handcuffs made a crisp sound. He laughed carelessly. “Are you planning to be this intense right at the start?”

 

The taste of “pretend saint” really could be called superb; it lived up to the hype.

 

Luo Wenzhou rolled his eyes at him, irritably grabbing a handful of his own messy hair. He stood and shook out the quilt, pulling it out from under Fei Du, quickly and efficiently wrapping him up into a big cocoon. Then he tapped Fei Du’s head.

 

Fei Du: “…”

 

No, this didn’t seem to be the right direction.

 

When he’d finished tapping, Luo Wenzhou impartially and incorruptibly smacked him a few times through the quilt. “Sleep.”

 

President Fei absolutely hadn’t expected this Officer Luo, who’d said he wanted to frame a nude drawing of himself, to really be a “true saint.” As if he’d unexpectedly met one of the country’s guardian beasts in the middle of a downtown street, he stared blankly in shock for a while, pulling in disbelief at the handcuff locked on the head of the bed. “Luo Wenzhou, are you going to make me sleep like this?”

 

Of course that wasn’t what Luo Wenzhou was thinking. After a moment, he came back in carrying a blowdryer. He turned it up to its highest setting, aiming it at President Fei’s “sexily dripping” head and blowing noisily, using exactly the same movements as when he dried Luo Yiguo’s fur after giving it a bath.

 

Hearing the familiar sound, Luo Yiguo looked in through the crack at the door, discovered that the litter box attendant was carrying out the “infeline abuse” against another person, and was instantly worried, afraid that it would be its turn next. It hurriedly slipped noiselessly away on the pads of its paws.

 

Long hair in his face, unable to speak without eating hair, President Fei could only close his mouth.

 

Luo Wenzhou did this task very proficiently. In less than five minutes, he’d simply and conveniently finished dealing with President Fei’s precious head. He not very gently grabbed at it, then was about to turn off the bedside lamp. “That’s better. Go to sleep.”

 

Fei Du deftly reached out his remaining free hand and pulled Luo Wenzhou back. “Shixiong, I was wrong. Let me go, I guarantee I won’t mess around.”

 

Luo Wenzhou looked at him expressionlessly. The TV in the living room was just replaying a skit; a timely line of dialogue floated in through the crack in the door: “You thousand-year-old fox, what strange games are you playing with me!1”

 

Fei Du: “…”

 

Luo Wenzhou: “…”

 

In this strange situation, against this strange backdrop, the two of them looked at each other helplessly for a moment, then finally found the humor in this scene and simultaneously began to laugh.

 

Fei Du, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, leaned back against the pillow—the pillow was very soft, with a slightly sweet scent.

 

Perhaps Luo Wenzhou had sprinkled some sleep aid onto it, or perhaps Fei Du had been tired out by the tossing around; as soon as he touched the pillow, his eyelids began to droop. He raised his free hand against the gentle light of the bedside lamp, half screening his eyes, murkily saying, “Then what did you bring me home for?”

 

Luo Wenzhou sat silently at the side of the bed for a while. “I want to take care of you. Can’t I?”

 

Fei Du paused. His eyes, about to close, silently opened wide again. “Haven’t you been taking care of me these last couple of months?”

 

Luo Wenzhou turned, propping his elbows on his knees and putting his face in his hands, looking at him. “Do you think I was taking care of you because you got in the way of a bomb for me?”

 

Before Fei Du could answer, Luo Wenzhou slapped him through the quilt. “You bastard.”

 

Fei Du moved slightly, making the handcuffs at the head of the bed rattle. With his head of messy hair blowdryed fluffy and soft by Luo Wenzhou, he looked helplessly at him, not knowing which of them was the bastard.

 

Luo Wenzhou suddenly remembered something and asked, “When we were going to grab Zheng Kaifeng, what was the ‘personal question’ you wanted to ask me in the car?”

 

Fei Du thought about it a while, lowering his hand, firmly blocking his eyes. “I forgot it at the hospital. How about I think of another one? For example…what position do you like?”

 

“That wasn’t what you wanted to ask then,” Luo Wenzhou said positively. Then, when Fei Du thought he was going to avoid the question, Luo Wenzhou unexpectedly answered in earnest.

 

He said, “I like it when you can see each other’s faces.—This sort of question you’d know the answer to at once if you tried doesn’t have any value. President Fei, are you this witless when you’re conducting business? How come your company hasn’t shut down yet? I’ll give you another chance to make a deal, all right?”

 

With Captain Luo forcing a deal, Fei Du didn’t agree or disagree. He was silent for a while under the soft bedside light. Then he said, “Xu Wenchao… The one who kidnapped and murdered those children. The place where he disposed of the bodies belonged to a project company under the banner of the Guangyao Fund. Because some formalities couldn’t be completed, the project was constantly put off, and that unused piece of land became a safe burial ground—you already knew that. I’ll tell you something you don’t know. The project plan for that project came into Fei Chengyu’s hands for him to invest capital in. Fei Chengyu didn’t, giving the reason that there was ‘no mature profit model.’”

 

Fei Chengyu was Fei Du’s father, the founder of their conglomerate.

 

“No mature profit model” didn’t sound at all unusual, but Luo Wenzhou could hear something horrifying in Fei Du’s voice. He subconsciously sat up straight. “Your dad had a connection to the Guangyao Fund?”

 

“They used to be very close cooperative partners.” Fei Du held up two fingers, indicating that this was his second question. “I investigated after I took over the company. Before, he contributed a great deal of money to a public welfare fund under Guangyao’s banner. In its early stages, the company’s management was irregular, and the accounts were very hard to look into. But judging from the few remaining materials, this Guangyao Fund is long-established, and almost none of the projects they collaborated on ever made any money—”

 

The corner of Luo Wenzhou’s eye twitched.

 

“I understand Fei Chengyu. He was very greedy, astute, and unfeeling,” Fei Du said slowly, each word seeming to stick in his throat, coming out very heavily. “There were some projects you could tell from looking at the name were ridiculous investments. I don’t believe he’d have been fooled time and time again.”

 

Luo Wenzhou pondered this silently for a moment. “Is there anything else?”

 

“No.” Fei Du shrugged. “Do you think it was easy for a ‘young master’ to get into the convoluted conglomerate he left behind? It took me nearly two years just to get access to the company’s key encrypted documents.”

 

Both openly and in secret getting rid of a whole stumbling block of reinforcement.

 

Fei Du swallowed back this last sentence and, feigning high spirits, leaned back against the head of the bed, half sitting up. “Now it’s my turn to ask you. Do you…”

 

Luo Wenzhou reached out to block his lips. “Do you want to think about it? Don’t waste another opportunity. If you really can’t remember, I can repeat everything we said in the car that day.”

 

Fei Du was silent for a long time, his originally frivolous-seeming peach blossom eye growing calm. After a while, he finally said, “This is my first time meeting such an energetic competitor in answering questions.”

 

Not letting him off, Luo Wenzhou stared into Fei Du’s eyes.

 

He’d felt that when Fei Du had made him trade personal business for information, it hadn’t been entirely a joke. He really had wanted to ask something then, but he’d quickly regretted it and hadn’t wanted to say it. Zheng Kaifeng’s truck had appeared then, giving him a chance to extricate himself—if Fei Du had only wanted to make a somewhat obscene joke, he could easily have said it while they followed; matters hadn’t reached the stage where there was no time to say a sentence.

 

The corners of Fei Du’s mouth tensed involuntarily.

 

Luo Wenzhou waited for a moment. His expression somewhat dismal and his voice slow, he said, “All right, or you can tell me tomorrow…”

 

“I wanted to ask…” Fei Du started hastily, then, partway through, he smiled. “It’s a silly question. If you didn’t insist on asking, I’d have forgotten.—Didn’t you say then, that you weren’t the sort of scum who’d confess his feelings to a person and then turn around and suspect him? So I wanted to ask, when did you confess your feelings, and why don’t I know about it?”

 

“You don’t know?” Luo Wenzhou raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think I was very subtle. You’re such an expert at picking out meaning from other people’s punctuation marks, how can you say you don’t know?

 

“Do you really not understand, or are you playing dumb? Fei Du.” Luo Wenzhou sighed, reaching out to stroke Fei Du’s chin. “You’re going to say you don’t understand why my mom went to the hospital to bring you food, either, isn’t that right?”

 

Fei Du: “…”

 

Luo Wenzhou held his chin, making him look up. “Also, you came here today planning to sleep with me. You never meant to stay for long, right?”

 

Fei Du was temporarily speechless.

 

He was clearly the one who’d made provoking sexual advances first, the one who’d gone out of bounds in his attempts, but when he really was pulled in, he was at a loss and instinctively wanted to take to his heels.

 

But while his instincts wanted to run, in his heart he didn’t really want to run. The two impulses collided, throwing him into a dilemma. He could only stay where he was, stiff with panic.

 

Luo Wenzhou laughed, cutting off his other road.

 

He said, “Dream on.”

 

Then he came over carrying a quilt, threw it down next to Fei Du, put some cotton around Fei Du’s handcuff, and turned off the bedside lamp. “If you want to get up to go to the bathroom at night, wake me up so I can uncuff you. Sleep.”

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Trapped in a vicious cycle of pining? Try gay sex! (More things to learn over at Tiger Tiger!)

[nova-rpv]

a redraw of the first drawing i posted here to celebrate the fact that ive been in tumblr for more than a whole year posting my shit and havent deleted my blog in panic yippee \:D/ (mushy rant in tags)

[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.

[twilightkitkat]

Really stupid idea but can you imagine if the TVA swore Wade and Logan to secrecy and then they come back and everyone is so incredibly confused. Like? Wade, what the fuck? Who is Logan and why is he living with you and why does he look like a dead superhero?

Especially with the insinuation that the entire movie timeline spanned over a few days. So Wade goes from hopelessly pining after his ex to bringing home this buff, hairy, muscular guy to live with him without warning after disappearing from his birthday party.

Like he just randomly walked out the door after blowing out the candles, then he mysteriously reemerged with this feral look-don't-touch beast of a man. And he's calling him stupid pet names like "peanut" and "babygirl" and the guy isn't biting his head off?

When asked, Wade just responds that Logan was his best birthday gift ever. Logan's ears turn pink and he covers his mouth to hide the small smile on his face. Wade wraps an arm around his shoulder and grins. Meanwhile, everyone thinks Wade left his own party because of a hook-up call that somehow ended with him landing himself a boyfriend.

[egophiliac]

I know we're not on the Hearts chapter but, I have a feeling the SSR will be Cater? But also him having the tear animation, since I have a feeling his dream will be a bit like Ruggie's q-q

I'm leaning towards either Cater or Ace, personally! Trey and Deuce have kinda already had their character arcs -- though someone else did mention to me that they thought it might be Trey, because so far all the vices have gotten one. though that might just be coincidence. we'll find out I guess!

my red-string-on-corkboard theory is that Ace is gonna get his arc + UM during whatever goes down with Grim, so while I could be completely wrong, I think it'd be nice if it were Cater's time to shine! ...also I am VERY curious as to what his dream is gonna be. 👀 like, I don't think he's gonna be all angsty or anything, he's a pretty cheery guy even though he pretends to be more vapid than he is, but...what would he be like if he were less. y'know.

(also I kind of want him to get the focus just because I think it'd be a shame if all he got was a super-quick 'oh his dream is to have a billion followers or whatever, now let's go on to the next person'. c'mon Twst. give him some love.)

[the-nothing-maker]

Holy blemishes

(Mel is my main D&D guy from @luposlipaphobya's campaign, Val Cardinal !)

[little-pondhead]

DP x DC Prompt

…

There are no more heroes.

Well, okay. Rewind a bit.

Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)

The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.

And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.

Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?

Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.

So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.

There are no more heroes.

Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.

Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.

Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)

In other words:

Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.

Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.

(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)

[always-a-king-or-queen]

The ache will go away, eventually. 

That was what the Professor told them, the day they got back. When they tumbled from the wardrobe in a heap of tangled limbs, and found that the world had been torn from under their feet with all the kindness of a serpent. 

They picked themselves off of the floorboards with smiles plastered on child faces, and sat with the Professor in his study drinking cup after cup of tea. 

But the smiles were fake. The tea was like ash on their tongues. And when they went to bed that night, none of them could sleep in beds that were too foreign, in bodies that had not been their own for years. Instead they grouped into one room and sat on the floor and whispered, late into the night. 

When morning came, Mrs. Macready discovered the four of them asleep in Peter and Edmund’s bedroom, tangled in a heap of pillows and blankets with their arms looped across one another. They woke a few moments after her entry and seemed confused, lost even, staring around the room with pale faces, eyes raking over each framed painting on the wall and across every bit of furniture as if it was foreign to them. “Come to breakfast,” Mrs. Macready said as she turned to go, but inside she wondered. 

For the children’s faces had held the same sadness that she saw sometimes in the Professor’s. A yearning, a shock, a numbness, as if their very hearts had been ripped from their chests.

At breakfast Lucy sat huddled between her brothers, wrapped in a shawl that was much too big for her as she warmed her hands around a mug of hot chocolate. Edmund fidgeted in his seat and kept reaching up to his hair as if to feel for something that was no longer there. Susan pushed her food idly around on her plate with her fork and hummed a strange melody under her breath. And Peter folded his hands beneath his chin and stared at the wall with eyes that seemed much too old for his face. 

It chilled Mrs. Macready to see their silence, their strangeness, when only yesterday they had been running all over the house, pounding through the halls, shouting and laughing in the bedrooms. It was as if something, something terrible and mysterious and lengthy, had occurred yesterday, but surely that could not be. 

She remarked upon it to the Professor, but he only smiled sadly at her and shook his head. “They’ll be all right,” he said, but she wasn’t so sure. 

They seemed so lost. 

Lucy disappeared into one of the rooms later that day, a room that Mrs. Macready knew was bare save for an old wardrobe of the professor’s. She couldn’t imagine what the child would want to go in there for, but children were strange and perhaps she was just playing some game. When Lucy came out again a few minutes later, sobbing and stumbling back down the hall with her hair askew, Mrs. Macready tried to console her, but Lucy found no comfort in her arms. “It wasn’t there,” she kept saying, inconsolable, and wouldn’t stop crying until her siblings came and gathered her in their arms and said in soothing voices, “Perhaps we’ll go back someday, Lu.” 

Go back where, Mrs. Macready wondered? She stepped into the room Lucy had been in later on in the evening and looked around, but there was nothing but dust and an empty space where coats used to hang in the wardrobe. The children must have taken them recently and forgotten to return them, not that it really mattered. They were so old and musty and the Professor had probably forgotten them long ago. But what could have made the child cry so? Try as she might, Mrs. Macready could find no answer, and she left the room dissatisfied and covered in dust. 

Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Susan took tea in the Professor’s room again that night, and the next, and the next, and the next. They slept in Peter and Edmund’s room, then Susan and Lucy’s, then Peter and Edmund’s again and so on, swapping every night till Mrs. Macready wondered how they could possibly get any sleep. The floor couldn’t be comfortable, but it was where she found them, morning after morning. 

Each morning they looked sadder than before, and breakfast was silent. Each afternoon Lucy went into the room with the wardrobe, carrying a little lion figurine Edmund had carved her, and came out crying a little while later. And then one day she didn’t, and went wandering in the woods and fields around the Professor’s house instead. She came back with grassy fingers and a scratch on one cheek and a crown of flowers on her head, but she seemed content. Happy, even. Mrs. Macready heard her singing to herself in a language she’d never heard before as Lucy skipped past her in the hall, leaving flower petals on the floor in her wake. Mrs. Macready couldn’t bring herself to tell the child to pick them up, and instead just left them where they were. 

More days and nights went by. One day it was Peter who went into the room with the wardrobe, bringing with him an old cloak of the Professor’s, and he was gone for quite a while. Thirty or forty minutes, Mrs. Macready would guess. When he came out, his shoulders were straighter and his chin lifted higher, but tears were dried upon his cheeks and his eyes were frightening. Noble and fierce, like the eyes of a king. The cloak still hung about his shoulders and made him seem almost like an adult. 

Peter never went into the wardrobe room again, but Susan did, a few weeks later. She took a dried flower crown inside with her and sat in there at least an hour, and when she came out her hair was so elaborately braided that Mrs. Macready wondered where on earth she had learned it. The flower crown was perched atop her head as she went back down the hall, and she walked so gracefully that she seemed to be floating on the air itself. In spite of her red eyes, she smiled, and seemed content to wander the mansion afterwards, reading or sketching or making delicate jewelry out of little pebbles and dried flowers Lucy brought her from the woods. 

More weeks went by. The children still took tea in the Professor’s study on occasion, but not as often as before. Lucy now went on her daily walks outdoors, and sometimes Peter or Susan, or both of them at once, accompanied her. Edmund stayed upstairs for the most part, reading or writing, keeping quiet and looking paler and sadder by the day. 

Finally he, too, went into the wardrobe room. 

He stayed for hours, hours upon hours. He took nothing in save for a wooden sword he had carved from a stick Lucy brought him from outside, and he didn’t come out again. The shadows lengthened across the hall and the sun sank lower in the sky and finally Mrs. Macready made herself speak quietly to Peter as the boy came out of the Professor’s study. “Your brother has been gone for hours,” she told him crisply, but she was privately alarmed, because Peter’s face shifted into panic and he disappeared upstairs without a word. 

Mrs. Macready followed him silently after around thirty minutes and pressed an ear to the door of the wardrobe room. Voices drifted from beyond. Edmund’s and Peter’s, yes, but she could also hear the soft tones of Lucy and Susan. 

“Why did he send us back?” Edmund was saying. It sounded as if he had been crying.  

Mrs. Macready couldn’t catch the answer, but when the siblings trickled out of the room an hour later, Edmund’s wooden sword was missing, and the flower crown Susan had been wearing lately was gone, and Peter no longer had his old cloak, and Lucy wasn’t carrying her lion figurine, and the four of them had clasped hands and sad, but smiling, faces. 

Mrs. Macready slipped into the room once they were gone and opened the wardrobe, and there at the bottom were the sword and the crown and the cloak and the lion. An offering of sorts, almost, or perhaps just items left there for future use, for whenever they next went into the wardrobe room.  

But they never did, and one day they were gone for good, off home, and the mansion was silent again. And it had been a long time since that morning that Mrs. Macready had found them all piled together in one bedroom, but ever since then they hadn’t quite been children, and she wanted to know why.

She climbed the steps again to the floor of the house where the old wardrobe was, and then went into the room and crossed the floor to the opposite wall. 

When she pulled the wardrobe door open, the four items the Pevensie children had left inside of it were missing. 

And just for a moment, it seemed to her that a cool gust of air brushed her face, coming from the darkness beyond where the missing coats used to hang.

[wigglebox]

Suptober - Day 12 | Harvest Festival

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Kiss Kiss Fallen Tree!

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[calitsnow]

{La princesse de La Manchaland}

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[joshuamj]

Been enjoying EoW so far!!

Redraw of this:

[rasangan-raspberry]

I'm gonna post the pages that I have finished, this comic is going to end up being pretty long i think.

Next page >

[canisalbus]

gothic lolita machete came to me in a dream

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