#hoping more people write fic of them because the soil is so fertile

[jeynearrynofthevale]

bonus: even the dogs are besties!

[obsessivevoidkitten]

Getting Thrashed

Female Alpha Yandere x Male Omega Reader (CW: Noncon/dubcon, heat cycles, scent kink, pheromones, non-traditional a/b/o dynamics, NO mpreg, enslaved reader, conquered society, general yandere behavior, teasing, biting, claiming, space pirates) Word Count: 3.4k (WOW, sorry that took so long. I started off writing fast because I loved the idea then lost motivation halfway through. Hope you guys enjoy the second female yandere fic I have written and the first one I have written with smut. Also first fic I have written where the reader penetrates the yandere.)

Your day on the space colony of Nithyal started out like any other. You diligently did your assigned work of farming a wide array of essential foods for the colony.

It was pretty vigorous manual labor, but you didn't mind. You rather enjoyed the scent of fresh soil and ripe fruits.

And you were fairly compensated. Everyone was in Nithyal. After all, the colony was on the planet Solstan. And it wasn't called a paradise world for nothing. The weather was agreeable, there were few dangerous animals, and everyone lived harmoniously. No homelessness, no corruption, no hunger, no violence. You were very grateful to live in such a place.

Especially since you were an omega.

Many generations ago, human fertility was greatly diminishing. In a bid to save the species, there were numerous fertility experiments.

One of the most extreme experiments that altered human DNA and psychology the most resulted in two new variants of humans: Alphas and Omegas.

They were both given extreme fertility, but what good is being fertile if you just end up with a barren partner?

So they were both given heightened olfactory senses, with omegas being given genes to produce pheromones that alphas were attracted to and vice versa.

They were also capable of quickly forming intense bonds with their romantic/sexual interests.

But the biggest difference from unaltered humans was that alphas entered ruts and omegas had heats. These periods of ultra high libido were to make sure they were compelled to procreate.

The gene editing was not without unintended consequences.

Alphas tended to be larger, stronger, and more aggressive than normal people, and omegas had a tendency to be smaller and a bit more submissive.

Alphas also tended to be possessive and jealous, even going so far as almost always needing to mark their mate with a permanent bite.

These behavioral concerns lead to the discontinuation of the program. Specifically, concerns about omegas maintaining their agency when faced with such forceful alphas that could easily sniff them out.

Human fertility was restored through more refined gene editing later, with suppressants being developed for the humans already altered and their descendants so they could mask themselves.

Heats and ruts were only partly suppressed, though and it wasn't too hard for someone to discover who was an omega when their life was put on hold in a predictable pattern once every few months.

It wasn't ideal, since most people hated such altered humans.

But Nithyal was different. Everyone just cared about each other and didn't bother with any judgement.

There was no better place in the galaxy.

That was... until the dark day that a pirate fleet came from the deepest reaches of known space to upend everything.

They were called The Eternal Eclipse. And they certainly eclipsed any joy you found in Nithyal.

Your people tried to mount a defense, fighting bravely with the few ships and ground to air weapons that were available, but given their numbers there was no chance of victory.

Your colony was pretty isolated from the rest of civilization so once conquered there was little chance of liberation.

They quickly killed or at least maimed anyone who tried to fight back or organize a rebellion.

The colonists had become little more than slaves.

Many continued the hard labors they had before, with more demand to support the new ruling population, others were forced into personal servitude for the higher up pirates, and a decent chunk of the population became personal fuck toys.

At first, when the pirates had gathered up all of the colonists to assign them their fates, you were mercifully going to continue the work that you had already been doing.

But unfortunately you somehow caught the eye of Thrash and for some reason she had taken a liking to you. So instead of cultivating plants, you were forced to be by her side all day as a simple servant. This probably wouldn’t have been too bad if the violent leader didn’t happen to be, against all odds, an alpha.

You had never met one before but you could tell right away. Her scent, her attitude, the fact that she was larger and stronger than most adult men. She had hair like fire and an energy and attitude to match.

At first you were worried that she had pegged you for an omega, but she gave no indication that she knew. You were in constant fear that your omega nature would be discovered. It wasn't unheard of for omegas to be brutally raped, sold to far off black markets, or even just outright killed. Surely if she had known you wouldn’t just be a personal slave.

It seemed that your suppressants were enough to completely hide yourself from her, and you had a huge supply of them. Though you knew for a fact that once your heat started, your pheromones would poke through. And you’d also be rather horny. Maybe you could feign illness and cover yourself in perfume?

That was probably your best bet. Though you hoped no one would notice that you got ill like clockwork. Luckily you still had plenty of time until your next heat.

Working for Thrash wasn’t too physically demanding, you just had to clean up after her, prepare meals, and do little odd tasks like deliver a note or something to one of her subordinates. You actually got a lot of down time between tasks… though you always had to stay nearby in case Thrash needed something.

The overworked farmers would have surely enjoyed such a relatively cushy work detail, but it was absolute hell for you. It was like walking on eggshells, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Thrash hadn’t treated you poorly, never hit you. But you had no idea how an omega would be treated.

It was especially scary when she decided to tease you, just because she enjoyed watching you squirm.

When she licked your neck in the cafeteria in front of all her dining pirate crew she cackled at how your face turned red and you got as still as a statue as your brain shut down. You were terrified that she could smell or even taste the omega on your skin.

Thrash didn’t really know why but something in her made her love flustering you. She just couldn’t help it. She had always enjoyed making men uncomfortable or putting them in their place, but you were a bit different. It wasn’t like it was with her male pirate colleagues, where she strove to be the best and made them obey her. No, this was different, seeing your face turn red made her hungry for more.

One night she dismissed you with a smack on the ass and let you go to bed while she stayed up drinking with her best buddies. You felt humiliated and rushed off to your room, which was one that was in the house she had claimed for herself in case she needed you for something she wanted you close by. You were really like a live-in maid.

You tidied up a few things before washing up and going to bed, still embarrassed about having your butt touched in public. Despite that you managed to go to sleep pretty quickly.

Though a few hours later a very drunk Thrash comes stumbling in drunk. You wake up with a jolt and nearly jump out of your bed as a strong arm wraps around your waste and firmly pulls you close.

“Mmm where ya goin cutie? Ya need to stay close to yer alpha!”

She lightly grinded into you for a moment, her crotch against your ass before stopping and nuzzling into your neck.

“Thr-Thrash… uh… I think you accident-”

She shushed you by licking your neck and nibbling a bit. You went still as stone. If she broke the skin the special enzymes in her alpha saliva would cause you to have a permanent mark. Fortunately that didn’t happen, instead remaining content with sloppy kisses, sucking, and gentle nibbling.

You couldn’t help but let out a series of little whimpering moans at the sensation. You also became aware of just how nice she smelled. So dominant. Kinda… safe…

She chuckled at your noises.

“Haha, you’re practically a tiny defenseless omega!”

That made you shake the thoughts and distractions from your mind. This woman was not safe. She stole your home and turned you into a glorified slave. If she knew what you were she’d sell you to the highest bidder!

Luckily after that comment she had passed out in a drunken stupor.

You managed to extricate yourself from her grasp before scrambling to get to the restroom. You had to double check to make sure that the bites that Thrash had so kindly applied to your neck had not broken the skin, luckily they hadn’t.

But you still looked absolutely horrible. Your neck was covered in little hickeys, your hair was a mess, and you were so shaky from the rude awakening that you could barely stand.

Something about looking so debauched made your cock hard. Maybe it was because you had her alpha stink all over you or maybe it was something to do with the bites all over your neck. Maybe it was just because you weren’t used to the attention.

It didn’t matter why the result was the same, you had to do something about this almost painful arousal. And the scent that clung to you.

As you got in the shower you gave your cock the attention it was demanding, thinking filthy and shameful thoughts about Thrash. You tried to pleasure yourself to other thoughts but your mind kept drifting back to the oppressor of your people and the way she smelled as she bit and drooled all over your neck.

You couldn’t spill until you imagined her leaving a permanent claiming bite on your neck.

After your shower you felt dirtier than you had before you got in. You reminded yourself that you hated Thrash and that she and her crew had done to upend the lives of you and your people. It wasn’t your fault she made you aroused. What omega wouldn’t have been after that?

After you got dressed and left the bathroom you wrapped your spare blanket around you and slept in the chair in the corner of the room, you would have rather not been in the same room as the drunk alpha, but you had nowhere else you could go.

When Thrash woke up she found you sleeping soundly in the room and it took her a moment to realize she wasn’t in her room. She must have kicked you out of your bed. She did feel kinda bad about it, but she figured you would live. She was the one with the massive headache.

She went back to her quarters, leaving you to sleep a bit longer.

When you woke up you found her, thankfully gone, you wrapped a scarf around yourself to hide your neck, the weather was cool lately so no one should give a second thought to you wearing one. Then you left to start your day of servitude as you did everyday.

Unfortunately for you, you had to accompany her as she went on one of the landed ships to see what the problem was with it since she had originally been a mechanic and engineer. It was very hot in the engine room.

“How are you wearing that scarf? It’s so hot in here.” The heat wasn’t the only problem you were dealing with, she was sweating and only wearing a tank top, allowing her musk to practically smother you.

It didn’t really take all that long for you to get more than a bit dizzy and flustered. And once you were, it took even less time for Thrash to notice, she often kept an overprotective eye on you, though you had rarely noticed.

She came stomping over and looked down at you.

“I told you it was too hot for that! You’re gonna get sick dumbass! Take it off and let’s go outside for some fresh air.”

You fidgeted under her gaze and mumbled that you were okay.

When you didn’t take it off immediately she growled, jerked you over to her, and yanked it off of you.

She stared wide-eyed at your neck, not remembering having put the marks there herself the night before. And she was fucking livid.

“When the fuck did you hook up with someone, you fucking slut!? You belong to ME and I didn’t give you any permission for that shit!”

The enraged alpha slapped you hard across the cheek, making you yelp and stumble to the ground. You were sobbing and could scarcely manage to croak any words out.

“I-i d-d-didn’t l-let anyone d-do-”

Had one of her men defiled you against your will? Defiled HER slave?

“Tell me who did it!! I’ll cut their dick off and shove it up their own ass!”

Her eyes were like a cats, narrow slits. Your naturally submissive instincts told you to put your head down and obey anything the near feral alpha might demand of you.

“Y-you were dr-dr-drunk and b-bit me last night…”

Tears were leaking down your face. If you had not been on suppressants your scent would surely be one of fear mixed with pheromones to calm down this beast.

That’s right, she had woken up with a bad hangover in your room...

Thrash stared at you, at this tiny crying man in front of her, crying and terrified. She felt awful, and she didn’t often feel bad about her actions. She was a pirate, but for some reason she just didn’t like seeing you suffer at all. Certainly not because of her.

“Fuck… I’m… sorry…” She managed to say as she knelt down and rubbed your back.

“I really have no memory of last night...”

The large powerful woman picked you up easily, with your head nuzzled into her neck, crying into her.

“C’mon crybaby, let’s get you cooled off, I’ll deal with this engine later~”

She carried you carefully back to your room in the housing building, collecting odd looks as she did, which she quickly got rid of with a glare each time.

Thrash placed you into your bed and felt your head with the back of her hand. Despite not having the scarf, having been exposed to the cool outside air on the way over here, and now being in an air conditioned room you were hotter than ever.

Your mind was getting foggier and when she left to go get a cool rag and some medicine from the bathroom you finally realized why you were so hot. You were entering heat. The neck stimulation and all of Thrash’s dominant behavior over you must have somehow triggered an early one.

You had to leave before she came back and smelled it. It would only be a matter of moments before the smell broke through your suppressants.

Something in your brain was telling you to just stay there and let your alpha come back and take care of you, but the other much more grounded in reality part of your brain was telling you you had to hide in a utility closet somewhere and deal with the consequences of your absenteeism later. Better than being sold off or raped by every pirate who wants to try out an omega.

Right then you really wished suppressants just completely eliminated heats completely instead of just diluting them a bit.

Right after you had that thought Thrash entered the room and saw you standing by the door, you saw her hand had a bottle of pills. Though her search in your medicine cabinet yielded no fever reducers she found something else hidden away under your sink. Your suppressants.

And then your scent hit her. It was dulled by your medication, but she was an alpha unused to omega pheromones in any capacity.

She growled low and her pupils were like slits as her stare bored into you angrily.

“You’re MY property! And you’re keeping secrets from ME!?”

Before you could stumble out the door she charged at you, picked you up and slammed you down on the bed a bit harder than she had intended. You looked away, unable to meet her domineering and angry gaze. Your only response was to instinctively whimper in submission to placate her rage.

Thrash sniffed you, inhaling your scent from your underarm to your neck. You leaned your head over to give her easier access and show that you submitted to her will. You were terrified and she could certainly smell it.

Some of her drool dripped onto your neck as she hovered above it, licking you tentatively to calm you down. She was going to bite you and make you into her personal fuck toy and mate, she was mad that you had hidden your nature from her, but she would never hurt you.

Thrash sucked and nibbled at the gland in your neck, with you gracing her ears with a new whimpering gasp or moan each time she touched the sensitive spot.

Your terror evaporated quickly, replaced by heat fueled desire. And if you were honest with yourself maybe not all of the yearning was born from your heat.

The lust filled alpha couldn’t help but inhale your scent over and over, it was literally a drug for her. She had already wanted to fuck you into oblivion even before she got a whiff of you in heat, but now there was no stopping herself. Already she couldn’t wait to drink in your smell during your next heat when your suppressants were out of your system.

She made a mental note to flush them after this.

The pirate rubbed your crotch, palming at your erection, getting you even more aroused before she bit your neck. Hard. Her fangs pumping into you something that would make you smell claimed to any other alphas and leaving a large permanent hickey on that portion of your neck.

You moaned out loud in painful pleasure, arching your back and thrusting your clothed arousal into her hand.

Thrash licked your bleeding wound and then turned her attention to your cock and her own pleasure.

You could only stare and writhe in need as she pulled away from you and took off her clothes.

“Gimme a second, I just need to get our clothes off!”

It was the first time you had seen her breasts. You were in awe of this figure above you. So strong and assertive. So beautiful. A perfect partner.

To her you were the beautiful one. So sweet and pretty and perfect put in your place below her.

She practically ripped your clothing off and buried herself back in your neck as she brought herself down on you, enveloping your entire length in the warmth of her cunt. Her hands pushed down your shoulders as she rode you.

Your pleasured moans mixed with her grunts and growls as she fucked you until you saw stars. Your first orgasm was really quick, and was not nearly enough for either of you. Another perk of heats, insatiable libido.

With each of her downward movements you thrust upwards, desperate to get as deep as possible, the scent of her aroused pheromones combined with your heat making you absolutely unable to care about anything else.

You didn’t care that she had conquered your people or that she controlled them. In this state it only made her stronger in your eyes. A more suitable mate. You wanted to fill her up with so many babies.

The sex lasted hours, until the both of you were too sore to keep moving. It finally ended with you clinging to her and using her tits as a pillow with her arm wrapped around your protectively.

When the fog of pheromones and heat left your brain you were horrified by what had happened. But if you weren’t owned by her before, the new mark on your neck meant you certainly were now, and she would never let you go.

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

Hello again (or really, simply hello, as I never truly left since I last sent you a message). This is the "I die to know what happens next, I die to get to the next word" anon. It took me until now to realize what it is about your works that so utterly enthrall me. (I've read the vast majority now.) I am ace, both asexual and aromantic, and I'm not used to relating to fic much. I write and read it, and have no problems with sexually or romantically explicit works. I seek them out in fact, because I find many other types of fic, fic without a specific couple or poly group in mind, lack the emotional ties that I like to see. Your work- it is emotionally compelling first and foremost in a manner I don't find elsewhere often. Your works rest on the bedrock of the friendship that Geralt and Jaskier have, relies on a deep intimacy between two people who know one another and who love one another in whataver way that love manifests. You sow gardens in this bedrock. The romance or sex or anything else is but fhe sweetest fruit, not the garden itself. You write about their bond, the manifestations of which are simply a part of the story. It is their bond that is at the heart of each story, even if you do not say so in so many words. You place into your words the very simple want to be with another that you care for, and in return one who cares for you. It is- it grips into my heart. It takes my breath away to be seen and to be known in such a way. I shed tears even now as I write this. You have tilled this bedrock into fertile soil and you sprout humor and joy, fear and heartbreak, romance and pleasure. You take the very essence of what it means to give yourself to another and you grow flowers and thorns, as all such relationships produce. Your stories make me laugh, they make me scared, they make me hope, but they, above all else, make me feel whole. What a wonder you are, to know how to take such a nebulous thing as love in its entirety, unbroken into its subsets, and put it into words. And not even like this, like how I am writing it, with broken but specific words. You've written it with such subtlety. Weeks, perhaps months now, I have buried myself in these fields, and only now have I seen why their design has so enraptured me. Only now have I dug enough to see the bedrock, only now have I laid beneath the gentle rain long enough. Your Jaskier and Geralt are planted so deeply in this bedrock of love that no matter how your story ends, I understand it, and it makes sense. I have dug to see the roots and I can trace these stems to their fruits. I see I see I see, and I have gone so long in the dark, but I see. I must say it again, I die to know what happens next, I die to get to the next word, for the sun has never reached my eyes before this, has never revealed fields of such color to me before this. (Feel no pressure to post this, for I understand this is heavy, but I felt that you should know how your words have left me better than I was, in a world I can more fully see.)

Anon I need to give you a name, really, but I can't call you the anon who dies!! That's so sad! For now, you are Very Lovely Anon.

This is so sweet - I'm just about to go to bed as it is several hours past my bedtime, and so I'm a little sleepy and incoherent - but this is so lovely, and it means so much to me that my fic effected you like this! Some of what you mentioned resonated with me a lot, and I'm really glad you've taken so much away from my work 💖

Thank you so much for reaching out (again!), and I hope you don't mind me posting this; I wanted to make sure you knew I'd received it, and by the time I'd typed out a vague, "message received!" post I thought I may as well just reply 😅

[fandom-blackhole]

Hayloft- Ezra x Reader

AN: hahahahahahah hello.....So I know that have have shit I was supposed to write but life has taken every bit of creativity from me so I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually write those. So I am sorry if you have been waiting forever for me to post a story. I’ve also made the decision to close my requests indefinitely unless I change my mind because I just don’t do well with them, sorry. BUT, I struck gold and got the idea for this fic and before I lost the inspo I wrote like a mad man all yesterday! So I do hope you enjoy! And yes, I did get the idea while listening to Hayloft by Mother Mother

Also this is going to be a two part story, I am currently working on the second part and it should be posted tomorrow morning most likely.  And I made a playlist, if you’d like to listen to it (I am open to song suggestions to be added!)

Ao3 Link

Masterlist

Words: 3.1k (this a beast for me lol)

Warnings?: not really, AFAB reader, mentions of a stroke, Ezra’s charm (that needs a warning), bad poetry formatting (sorry tumblr destroyed how I had it in my Doc)

The itchy scratchy feeling of the hay digging through my nightwear was worth every uncomfortable second if it meant I could continue to sit here and listen to the man across from me, with his eyes that held galaxies and voice the carried the lilt of the most wonderful song, with that unplaceable accent. He was worth being tired in the morning from staying up all night up here in the loft of my family’s small barn. He was worth all the sneaking around and small meaningful glances sent each other’s way when no one else was paying attention, the brushing of hands when handing something to the other. I wouldn’t change anything about this unless it meant the small glances or the gentle brushing against each other didn’t have to be hidden from the others, if it meant that I could just be with the hypnotic man across from me with his hair as dark as the freshly tilled ground at the being of a harvest minus that one soft looking patch as white as a newly hatched chick’s down and a smile so crooked and white that it felt almost as if he was casting a spell over my very heart and soul. He was worth the pain of picking hay from my hair and clothes in the morning when I have to sneak back into the farmhouse, while already missing the touch of his rough and calloused but gentle hand. It was all worth every bit as long as he helped me forget everything just for the time being.

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Living on K-5 was rather simple. The planet was neither big nor small and it was known for its fertile soil that could grow just about any plant whether it was native to the world or not and once one harvest season had finished the other started as the weather always was spring-like with perfect growing conditions. Not many came to stay and those who did worked their entire life in planets many fields of harvest. To the few that actually knew the name of the forgettable planet called it the bread box of the known universe. Though the planet was known to very few people throughout space, the planet’s harvests could be found on just about any other planet or moon feeding just about everyone. 

The farmers of K-5 were known to have bigger families on the premise of needing hands to work the land for food of their own and for money. The farmers also knew that most of their children would leave the planet and look for better elsewhere, and would hope beyond hope that at least one of their children would settle on the sad planet and continue working their farm. Though if luck would have it there might come a ship every so often with people willing to lend hands and work the land if they were compensated well enough. Most that came were floaters looking for something to do in between prospecting jobs, others were looking for a quiet place to finally settle after a long life. 

My father had been one of 12 brothers and he was the only one to stay and take over the meager farmer his father and his father’s father had set up on a small corner of the planet. My father never really talked about his siblings, only ever calling them stupid for leaving the haven that was K-5 for a world they had no place to be in. My mother had been brought here by her mother, who had been a floater. They had made acquaintances with a farmer a town or so over and had lived there as farmhands as that family’s children started dwindling as they left. I have been told that my mother had a fire to her that no other on the planet had, that she was a woman of grace and humility, which is rare in space these days, something I was told I inherited though I’m not so sure I believe. We were a small family, I had two older brothers, twins identical in only their looks. Joshua, a dreamer as my father put it spitefully saying he inherited that from our mother, while his brother Anthony took after our father with his pessimistic view of everything including the world outside of our farm and K-5. I always counted Joshua lucky, he was able to sneak out of our small farmhouse late one night only leaving a note on my bedside table saying goodbye as he left one of the few ships to land on our soil. Father always resented me much like he did Joshua for multiple reasons, one of them being that it was the reason mother had passed, as Anthony informed me one night when asked, another reason being that I supposedly looked like a carbon copy of her, as I was told by the few farmers that remembered her, and lastly and most importantly was my fascination with the outside world. He hated that “Joshua did nothing but fill your head with fantasies.” He hated that because of our small family we needed all the farmhands we could get and that I would always sit with them listening to anything they would tell me, though few would say much as the floaters tended to be a quiet breed, preferring to keep to themselves. 

In our town, the floaters and drifters were usually pointed to our farm when looking for work and usually met with my father before I ever had a chance to meet them, most ignoring me throughout their short stay, anyway. If we were lucky we would get one or two by the time harvesting or planting time had come around and they were always roomed in Joshua’s old room, now cramped from shoving multiple cots into the room rather than one small bed. The room was furthest from mine, which made it hard to sneak into to and talk with those who were willing to feed my curiosities. Having been caught and reprimanded enough times by both father and Anthony I had to learn how to be light-footed and sneak around unseen, though I believe that after awhile Anthony has given up on trying to ‘knock some sense’ into me and just doesn’t try anymore. 

Life was the same for me day in and day out nothing much changing other than the faces and names of the floaters staying on our humble farm. Excitement in our corner of space was far and few between, leading me to seek it out through any means possible, and more often than not it was the few books I was able to get my hands on them being rare as they were, were exceptionally hard to find new stories. Though luck would have it, I was able to get my hands on three battered books whose covers were so worn and dirtied over the years that any image or words depicted were hardly seen. Of everything on my solemn planet, these were what kept me sane, even if I had read and reread each dozens of times. Though their covers were faded, the titles were imprinted in my mind. I treasured my well-loved copies of Pride and Prejudice, The Hobbit, and Frankenstein and kept them close to my heart while also hiding them from my father for fear of how he’d react to them. Though I love every book I owned, it was the newest in my collection that meant the most to me, for it was the first thing that brought the man I long for and I together, a rather small but thick copy of a collection of poems and stories written by Edgar Allen Poe. 

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Waking up on Saturdays were the only time when I didn’t mind having to roll out of bed and deal with the early hour chill. Saturdays were the days that I got sent to town to collect groceries and odds and ends for the farm from the weekend markets. Father learned early on that I had the same touch as my mother when I came to finding the best bargains and deals, so he began sending me in his stead while he and Anthony ran other errands or helped the current farmhands do morning chores. 

This Saturday wasn’t much different, upon waking and changing into the day’s clothes, I pulled my hair out of my face before stepping out of my room to head to the kitchen to find the list of what was needed on the counter along with the money needed. As usual, I went through my Saturday routine of making a thermos of coffee before pocketing the money and grabbing my bag. I slip my thermos into the side pocket of the bag as I slip the strap over my shoulder, before grabbing the list and scanning the contents as I walked to where my boots were stored next to the door. While glancing through the list, I started to slide my boots on before stopping. In a small section at the bottom were a few items that were reserved only for the few saturdays that the supply ship stopped in our area of the planet, which was very rare if ever. The supply ships were sent to the planet every couple of months with limited supplies and it landed in certain areas to sell what ever cargo it had brought, only to leave when empty. Only the ships usually were emptied after the first two or three stops and this area was usually one of the last stops, making the ships rare and highly sought after in the area. So the fact that our area was finally getting a ship after almost a year and a half without one was a huge deal. A rather large part of me hoped that there would be floaters on the ship willing to be hired out for farm work, especially since the lack of a ship has made my small family have to tend our meager fame with only the three of us because of the lack of farmhands. 

Upon arrival, the town was already bustling with life. Quickening my pace, I went to the center of the town where the new supplies always were held, and upon arriving I made quick work of crossing off everything on the list in hopes of having time to browse for myself. Luck seemed to have shown mercy down on me today as everyone I talked to was fair in prices and after crossing the last item off the long list I still had enough money to buy something for myself and give father change without him being any wiser. Smiling I chatted with a few townspeople and other farmers as I browsed the market, and as I came to the last stall I had yet to look in the market. Having near given up and about to turn from the stall, my eye caught something that had fallen from the makeshift table. Upon picking it up I nearly cried with joy having found what I could only hope to be the next tattered book to add to my collection. Flipping the book over in my hands and flipping through the pages my smile grew as I called the seller over. We haggled the price for a couple of minutes before he accepted my offer with a murmur and taking the money and while turning to begin my journey back to the farm I heard my name being called a couple of stalls over. Looking up, I smiled politely when I noticed it was Mrs.Robertson, taking a deep breath and sighing it back out before making my way slowly over to where she stood.

Mrs.Robertson was a stout woman that had a smile that never seemed to leave her face. She was a lovely woman whose lemon pound cake was well-known amongst the area’s farmers and always had a warm cup of tea and an open ear for whoever walked through her kitchen door, even after her stroke that took all mobility in her left arm. While I have always enjoyed her company, especially as a child when I was longing for a mother figure, recently talking with her always ended with her trying to push her oldest son and I together. Her oldest and youngest sons were the only two of her five children to stay on the planet, and while her youngest had already married and had a couple of children, her oldest didn’t seem to have interest in doing the same, even if she swears that he infatuated with me. Father continuously tells me that he thinks the marriage would be a good idea, even as I tell him it wouldn’t work between the two of us. 

So as I walk over to her and give her a hug in greeting I prepare myself for another attempt at matchmaking. Instead after parting from the one-handed hug, she had given me she motioned over her shoulder to a man who was standing there with a crooked smile that seemed to hold every last bit of charm left in the universe, and Mrs. Robertson, without missing a beat spoke up, “I was just explaining to this lovely newcomer that your father is always looking for new people to help with the farm and was just about to point him in your farm’s direction when I noticed you,” as Mrs.Robertson continued to rattle on I took the chance to glance back to the man behind her, only to find that his woefully dark eyes were still watching me with more mirth than I had seen in years. Looking back to Mrs.Robertson quickly hoping that no redness would grace my cheeks, though I knew it was there anyway. She quickly stepped aside and motioned to me introducing me before the man, if at all possible, smiled wider and stuck out his hand introducing himself as Ezra. As I stuck out my hand to shake his I opened my mouth to give him a polite reply only to be shocked into silence when instead of shaking my offered hand he raised it to his shining smile and graced the back of my hand with a kiss. Now I was absolutely certain that there was red dancing across my cheeks, if not my ears as well. Not able to take returning the gaze the man, I know knew to be Ezra, seemed to be piercing my very soul with I turned to Mrs.Robertson, thanking her and wishing her well before turning to Ezra who was still watching me and giving him a shy smile and tilting my head in a motion as to say ‘follow me’. 

Ezra seemed to be quiet as we walked throughout the town head back towards the farm, though that might have been because the small talk and greetings that were being thrown my way from those from the area that I was friendly with. When we finally broke from the town and the only sound was the dwindling chatter of the market and buzzing of the local wildlife. Though I was startled to a stop from the previous silence by the man as he spoke melodically and seemingly wit purpose, 

“In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed; But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him, with a ray Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream, that holy dream, While all the world was chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro’ storm and night, So trembled from afar― What could there be more purely bright In Truth’s day-star?”

Having turned to face the man confused, but noticing he was looking towards the sky with a smile, though one smaller than the one he was sporting when you  both had made your introductions with each other, this one seeming more blissful rather than purposefully charming. It was only now though that I noticed the absence of his right arm as his left was moved to his face to shield his eyes from the ever glowing sun. Turning his head back to look at me, his smiled widened again before noticing my slight confusion.

“Sorry flower but I couldn’t help but to notice the collection of stories and poems in your hand there, and thought to quote a poem by our dear morose friend Poe. I find his works to be a tad too depressing for my likes but somethings just stick with your very person,” Ezra drawled before sticking his hand out, “May I?”

Unable to really respond as I was still in slight shock I was only able to nod and pass the book over. Where upon gracing his fingers Ezra was able to skillfully thrumb through the book, mumbling quietly to himself with a smile, “It has been quite sometime since I have been able to visit our friend Poe here or any of my other long dead friends I’m afraid,” he paused for only a moment sticking the tip of his tongue between his lips before giving a small quiet winning cry, “ Ah hah! Here you go, ‘A Dream’ by the one and only Edgar Allan Poe.”

Handing the book back with it open on a specific page and there it was, the poem in which he had just quoted in full. Smiling down at the page, before looking back at him with a somewhat astonished look I dog eared the page before sliding it into the bottom of my bag, “No one else around here really reads anymore. At this point I thought I was the last one in the universe to do so. It….it would be nice to actually talk about reading with someone, though regretfully I just met Poe today so we are not quite as well acquainted as you two seem to be,” looking back up with a smirk and remembering my thermos I grab it out of my bag before lifting it up in offering. “Coffee? Its not quite hot anymore but it is probably still warm.”

With his ever wide smile, Ezra stepped up next to me as I slid my bag back into place and gave a small polite nod, “I would love to do nothing more than share what I am sure is the perfect brew with you, darling flower.”

(If you want to be tagged in part two, let me know in my inbox! Also if enough people are interested I am thinking about opening my inbox to talk and expand on this world I’ve created? Anyways I hope you enjoyed! Likes, Reblogs, and Comments are always appreciated!! Much love and Happy 2021!)

(Also if you figured out what I based the planet I created off of please tell me, I’d like to see obvious I made it lol. And if you’d like a hint it’s in the USA)

[aprito]

hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog 

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me) 

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please) 

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since. 

so finally we can move to the first question 

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic. 

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara. 

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol 

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.  

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

[jokerownsmysoul]

I had a bad day

Summary: Arthur is walking his way home after visiting Arkham State Hospital and being aware of his tragic childhood.

A/N: there’s no reader this time, I didn’t know where or how to put her in; I just got inspired by this pic and went with the flow; to be honest I don’t like this fic (nothing new) and I had other expectations before writing it, but I’m used to it lmaoo.

Content: angst

Warnings: mention of past trauma and mental illness, allusion to childhood abuse and suicide (just one sentence and the precise term is not used)

Word count: 3056

tag list: @arthurflecksgirl​

A/N: english is not my first language so I apologize for any typos, I’m still learning.

How can the entire life of a human being be written on a sheet of paper?

The memories she had left in those who were part of her life, the wounds she had suffered from and the pain she had faced, the consequences her actions have spread throughout the world and extended in her own son, allowing them to be born as fruits of a fertile soil that cannot be totally controlled.

How can his own pain be summarized by writing it in sheets of paper and then leaving them in a basement as if his pain were something to be erased, as if it had never existed? That’s what Arthur was wondering as he walked the streets of a city he couldn’t recognize anymore.

Maybe it would have been better this way, maybe Arthur should have let those sheets of paper stay in that basement and let them be read only by the dust in the room that held them from a city he couldn’t see, in a world to which he had been forced to bend, his hurt knees and a prayer in his mind that screamed in silence to be heard.

In a city that sucked him up, but still, it had kept those sheets of paper for more than thirty years anyway, in a basement mixed among streets that he didn’t know and for a second, moved by a vain hope dead before actually coming to light inside him, he liked to think that maybe, just maybe, those sheets of paper were deliberately set aside in that basement to protect him from not looking at his past life in the face; a life that he couldn’t recognize as his own but of which he bore the wounds that it had left inside him.

step step step step step step step step step step step

His feet felt so heavy as he walked through the streets of the city that at every step his ankles burned and his legs gave the impression of lifting with difficulty, as if he had heavy lead in his skin that had surrounded his muscles and didn’t allow him to move, let alone dance; while he felt his leaden feet pressing on the asphalt Arthur even thought that it was a city’s attempt to protect him from those papers that he would never have known if he had not decided that day to go to Arkham State Hospital in search of a truth he never thought would be so different from his hopes and convictions.

How had the words to be written on those sheets been chosen? Deciding which word matched in the best way with his mother’s pain, choosing the words that best could correspond to the wounds that had been inflicted through this pain and that most of the others deserved to have a place on those sheets of paper.

Was his life really so worthless that it could be described by a simple word? Was his life really so irrelevant that it could be enclosed in a single sheet of paper and let it be written by hands of someone who didn’t even experience that pain and would never feel it?

Yet those sheets of paper seemed to be the only way through which people, perhaps, he hoped, could have understood him. They could have found the strength to no longer be frightened by his condition and suffering, they could have accepted his mental illness without expecting him to behave in a different way from the ill person he was and choose him, with his behavior and his broken soul, choose him for who he was entirely. Those sheets of papers described his condition more than his card could ever have done, yet, and perhaps for this very reason, as his emaciated body was swallowed up by that dark and gloomy city, he thought that nothing had ever hurt him more than those sheets of paper had done and he couldn’t see a way to save himself. No, not anymore.

When he was required to give his card to those who attended his laughter he perfectly noticed how they read it, so quickly that he would have sworn they didn't read it at all and pretended to do so only to get away from him as soon as possible or keep ignoring him. Most of the time they were even annoyed by his painful laughter because it forced them to notice him and give him the attention that, really, they didn’t want to give him.

He felt responsible during these times and even obliged to apologize continuously for having drawn their attention against their will; as if having to apologize for feeling pain by always carrying that card with him wasn’t hard enough to bear for a single person, more than humanly unfair could possibly be.

And yet, every time he gave his card to some stranger, his hopes and desires remained within him and he hoped that that time it would have been different than the others. Maybe this time it will be different, maybe this time the card will be read for real, maybe they will return it back, maybe...

He wanted to catch in them the concern Arthur really wanted to read in their faces when they turned towards him, he wanted them to feel empathy or a bit of understanding, he wanted to see the look of someone who had truly read those words and understood that behind his card it wasn’t hiding a clown thing, but a burden that weighed more on his life than they might think, perhaps they would have even told him little nothing of comfort.

That never happened.

Very often he thought he was so invisible that not even his card could be read with the attention Arthur deserved and that he would want to receive; he thought he was lucky when people were willing to interact with him enough to return the card and not throw it on the ground like it was garbage to be disposed.

As if his own pain was garbage to be disposed.

Just like anyone who decided to left those sheets of paper in a basement and let them rot in the dust of a life that had been torn from him and couldn’t go back to, left in a box where no one could ever read them and know his story.

By now he had become accustomed to seeing pieces of paper in which his pain was written being treated like garbage and perhaps his own pain deserved nothing more than to be buried in the desolation of a basement where no one would ever look at those papers and understand how much pain his soul had to carry on its own, or thrown to the ground ready to be trampled as his card.

How words needed to describe the pain and suffering of a person, that should bring comfort and make sure that they do not bring further pain to anyone who reads them, may hurt so badly? Those words were enough to destroy Arthur’s soul and make it waver on a plane that was already unstable and very fragile and had nothing to support him, he felt like as if a huge papercut had cut his soul in two parts.

Arthur was walking his way home, and all he could think about was what destroyed him that day. Whenever he thought he could no longer be broken and suffering much more than he was already, life put itself between him and the others, between everything he wanted but wasn’t allowed to have.

That day he had hoped that all the informations about his mother he had been told weren’t true as much as the attentions of those who kept their eyes on his card, pretending to read every word of his pain but not read them at all.

He hoped that the words he had been told about his mother’s mental illness would be full of all the neglect he had met during his life, he hoped that people had once again mocked him; yet, the only words he wanted were careless and devoid of truth, the only words he hoped would not describe his mother’s suffering which he didn’t want to accept but that followed him everywhere, were the only true words that had ever been told to him, the same words he had read in those pieces of paper.

Until then he had dreamed of the version of himself he wanted to be, and once he read those words, this dream in which he had lived all his life had now been broken, forcing him to look at a childhood he couldn’t recognize as his own and read words of memories he didn’t really remember or want to, to look at a reality he no longer knew and in which he couldn’t even recognize himself, so small and fragile was he in a world too cruel for him to face it just by himself and surrounded by buildings so imposing they hid the sky, which was the only thing that at that moment could have reminded him that something other than this cruel city where he had lived until then existed, that there was another world beyond those skyscrapers too high that he could reach.

He wondered what happens to the memories kept repressed in his subconscious once life forces them to emerge, once he was forced to read them ink on paper and look at them clearly, holding them in his hands as if they were objects with a shape and a weight.

He felt wrapped up in an illusion that he thought it didn’t belong to him as he walked alone through a labyrinth of spectral and rusty roads, totally surrounded by imposing buildings and roads that he couldn’t recognize as the same roads that every day he walked to come back home.

He hoped that that moment was the beginning of his own end, he wanted all this to end, but he knew that it wasn’t at all so and that at home he would have faced the life from which he had always escaped unknowingly but had always waited for him.

He never thought that to hurt him the most, more than those who pretending to read his card, more than those who attacking him daily and more than those who didn’t want to see him, had been the only person he had ever defended and cared for all his life. Penny.

He would never have thought that in all those memories so destructive and frightening that his mind had voluntarily wanted them to forget it was hiding the only person who more than anyone should have protected the child he had been and with whom he had shared his life; that the only place where he thought he could never be attacked, which he returned to every day after work, was precisely the place that had marked him more than the others, and more than anything had left its mark on his soul and his exhausted mind.

It was on the streets of this ghost town that he had realized the meaning of his life. He was a solitary soul. 

He was a lonely heart that at that moment was wandering in a city that didn’t want him, and in a world too cruel to allow him to live without having to apologize all the time for feeling something different than the happiness everyone had told him to feel.

The buildings were so big and imposing in front of him that they seemed to want to hide him completely, as if he were one of those super rats that invaded Gotham, that no longer deserved to live and protected themselves behind the garbage placed in the darkest alleys of the city.

He walked among the inhabitants of Gotham while the rain was surrounding him entirely and not even in the most excruciating pain he had ever experienced they seemed to notice him.

How far should his pain have gone for him to be noticed? How much suffering enough he had to be to be seen as he wanted?

He would have wanted to be seen, he would have wanted someone to turn to him and see the invisible tears on his face that he had never been able to shed, but at that moment they were so desperately desired by him that he was feeling them under his skin, hidden in silence behind his face upset by a suffering that he didn’t yet know how he would handle it; those tears were so highly desired but at the same time so denied by his own body that the only thing allowed to him was to perceive them within himself as if they were a ghost reminding him that his pain existed, yet it didn’t matter enough even for Arthur who wouldn’t let himself cry, not even laugh.

Even a single person holding his card in their hands as if it were something that matter would have been enough to him.

The rain that was accompanying him on his way home seemed to be the only element of the world he lived in to have truly seen him, so drenched and messy was he at that moment. His hair was long liquid strands glued to his face, his clothes attached to his skin followed the sharp forms of his lean body making him look skeletal and weighing down the weight he was already carrying with difficulty on his shoulders.

He wondered if he was so drenched  at that moment because the rain was offering him its very self and he wondered if, knowing that though at such a painful moment even his painful laughter wasn’t enough, these rainy tears were crying on his behalf by falling from the sky to his body as if they were tears of his own eyes.

Perhaps the rain was cleaning from his body the traces of all the words written in those sheets of paper that he hadn’t recognized by reading them, perhaps it was purifying him from a life that wasn’t fitting him, as if it were a dress of a smaller size. Maybe the world was apologizing and teaching him how to fall without getting hurt through the rain which falling to the ground never breaks but mixes and blends itself with the asphalt, disappearing completely.

And yet, as the rain hit him and he felt the raindrops crushing against his hair and worn out clothes, he also wondered if those tears could be a punishment.

The punishment of being in the world, the punishment of existing in the wrong way and not the way people expected, the punishment for being so shattered at that moment that not even his painful laughter could escape from his lungs with such power it scratched his throat and held it in a grip so strong that it suffocated him.

At that moment not even his laughter’s pain could come out of his mouth and he felt the skin of his face completely numb by a pain that couldn’t emerge in any way, because there are sorrows so strong that lead to feel nothing.

At that moment he was underwater, totally immersed in his own pain. Under the water of a rain he couldn’t understand whether it was a purification that was weeping on his behalf or a punishment for his existence, under the water of his thoughts that were eating its already wounded soul making him suffocate. His body was a cage that was draining him from within and kept him from having any chance of experiencing his emotions in the way every human seemed to succeed, except for him. 

He had reached the elevator of the building where he lived and the closer he got to his apartment, the more in his mind Sophie’s image grew. Perhaps seeing his pain at its height when it was stronger and more overwhelming than ever would have allowed Sophie to understand him on that night, maybe she would have been the warmth he sought so much in the world and that, ironically, all this time had lived right next to him without him being aware of it.

He went right to his apartment and although he still felt his feet wrapped in lead and was struggling to walk his steps were firm and solid as they had never been since he woke up that morning, imagining that through Sophie he would understand whether the rain that poured on him was really purifying as he had hoped until then, or a punishment as he had feared.

He wondered if she would hold him in her arms even though his clothes were wet, he wondered if she had recognized upon him this purifying rain which had decided he deserved some salvation; he wondered if embracing him by letting herself soak in his clothes she would have also welcomed his pain and said words of comfort to take off from him the signs of that bad day.

He was afraid that, like all the bystanders he’d come across on his way home, Sophie would not have been able to recognize in him the man worthy of love who was hiding behind that expression contracted in unacceptable pain as he crossed the threshold of her apartment; he feared that in the rainy drops that were falling from his hair on his already soaked clothes she wouldn't see the purification as he hoped, but the punishment the sky had inflicted on him and a man who didn’t deserve to be accepted even in his worst, when he was more fragile and in need of someone by his side.

He explored with his fingers things and furniture belonging to a life he wanted to be his completely alone, submerged in his loneliness from which he wanted to escape and, despite his fears and his soaking clothes, he hoped that he could really have the life he was looking for.

Would Sophie have welcomed his soul as drenched, worn and messy as his clothes were by embracing him and letting not only his clothes but also his sorrowful soul drench her, too, welcoming him and his sorrows?

Would she have seen him, accepted him, loved him?

[fineillsignup]

Hey! Sorry for bothering you... I just wanted ask you... how do you overcome "writer block"? I never got "hype" for my stories and somehow this period it hit me more that I might just really suck at writing and out of nowhere, now, I barely have any idea or inspiration for writing... how do you overcome this? :((

Now this answer will be half to you, and half to myself, because I’m also going through a period of writer’s block right now.

Here is what is and has been true for me. I can’t say whether this metaphor applies to the creative process of others, but if it does, maybe it can help someone.

The metaphor I like to use is that the creative imagination is like a field. In real life, when you repeatedly harvest from the same field, the field becomes depleted. The crops that grow will be no good, or they may not grow at all. Throwing more seeds or trying to work the soil more won’t help.

There are two things that do help:

1. Leaving the field to fallow. This is maybe the most ancient method of all. You just leave that field alone and come back to it later. In time, the earth will replenish itself. Things will naturally restore. And you’ll be able to grow the same harvest wonderfully again. Just be patient.

2. Adding fertilizers. This is almost as old. People have been adding manure, fish guts, and other kinds of nutrient-restoring matter to soil for thousands of years. We now understand that there are many kinds of nutrients that might be missing—nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, etc. Likewise, I think sometimes it’s a key “nutrient” that’s missing from the creative imagination—motivation, a sense of progress, hope, problem solving, language ability, boredom.

So with writer’s block, your “field” is worn out. It’s not growing any more.

There are many kinds of “fertilizers” that can help. Comments and feedback from friends and readers can help with motivation. Reviewing your old works and comparing them to newer works can help with sense of accomplishment and progress and hope. Reading books, reading other fics, watching movies, playing games—all of these can recharge your language ability and problem solving. Working on a different project can help with boredom. And so on.

But fallowing—just letting yourself not write—is its own method. Just give yourself permission not to create. For however long you need. It’s a kind of wuwei 無為 -- action through inaction.

[elliemarchetti]

Red Queen Soulmate AU (Diana and Shade)

Although @elane-in-the-shadows is the queen of the Fade fandom I also wanted to contribute by writing something about one of my favorite couples in the series and what could be better than putting them in a soulmate AU?

(Mare’s POV)

Other Red Queen fics:

A Rebel’s Song (part 2)

A Wonderful Mistake (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

Words: 1955

"There’s a storm coming," said the Colonel to fill the silence. He had the good eye pressed on a crack in the compartment wall, fixed on the horizon. The other eye stares, though it can hardly see through a film of scarlet blood, but it was nothing new: his left eye has been like that for years. Diana followed his gaze, peering through slats in the rattling wood. Black clouds approached rapidly, barely hidden by the thickly covered hills and the lush vegetation. In the distance, thunder rolled, but it didn't bother her, as long as the storm didn’t slowed the train down, forcing her to spend more time hidden here, beneath the cargo car’s false floor. She couldn't really complain about the means of transport: on the trip to leave Solmary they had spent half the time on a barge shipping fruit with most of the cargo rotten that had forced her to spent the entire first week of operations trying to wash the stink away from her clothes, and she would never forget the disaster at Detraon; three days in a cattle car only to find the Lakelander capital utterly beyond reach, too close to the Choke and the warfront to have shoddy defenses. But she wasn’t officer back then, and it wasn’t her decision to try to infiltrate a Silver capital without adequate intelligence and support, but her father’s, who was only a captain with too much to prove and too much to fight for, and she little more than an oathed soldier with things to prove too. Bad blood or not, they had always been a good team and that’s why they kept getting sent out together. Detraon was their only misstep in an endless march for the cause, for which they put aside their differences each and every time.

“Any idea where we go next?” she asked, like the Colonel, unable to bear the heavy silence. After all, he was her father and they had once been very close. But he turned away from the wall, frowning, reminding her again that nothing was left of her parent and that only her superior was in front of her.

“You know that’s not how it works.”

She obviously knew, she had been an officer for two years and passed  two others as an oathed soldier, not to mention that she had spent a lifetime in the shadow of the Guard: no one knows more than they must, no one is told anything beyond their operation, their squadron and their immediate superiors because information was the most dangerous of their weapons. They learned that after decades of failed uprising, all laid low by one captured Red in the hands of a Silver whisperer. Even the best trained soldier cannot resist an assault of the mind. Every once in a while she wondered what they would find in hers, though she really didn't want to know. Surely her family, as it was before the flood, and then dates, names and operations, enough to cripple the last two years of work in the Lakelands but not enough to destroy it. They would also find King Orrec’s name, if only she hadn't had it tattooed on her left wrist. The names of those who you will hate and love the most, another divine condemnation, although many within the Scarlet Guard suspect it was just another way to control the masses. Diana also thought so, but wasn’t convinced that it was completely Silvers’ work but more than they had benefited from something they couldn’t control, just as they did with their powers.

“Captain Farley.”

Diana turned. It had been years since he last called her with her real name but it was fine, for various reasons.

“Colonel” she replied, and he finally looked at her, his good eye still a familiar shade of blue, filled for a brief moment with regret. She wasn't ready for another discussion, she didn't have the strength to deal with it, therefore she kept still under his quiet, quick observation. Everything was a test with him, it had always been, although to a lesser extent. At first, when she was just a little girl, she liked the feeling and did everything to make him proud and happy, but now he was getting old and his demands were increasingly difficult to achieve.

“What do you know about Norta?”

She grinned harshly. So they’ve finally decided to expand out. It was now clear for some time that the Lakelands were not fertile ground for the kind of rebellion they wanted to lead: too many cultivated areas, too many uninhabited spaces, too many memories for many of them. Norta was a breath of fresh air, with its coasts and immense capital. Moreover, the alliance with Piedmont must have intrigued the Command: once they conquered two kingdoms like these, breaking down the Cygnet monarchy would have been much easier.

"Another monarchy where the Reds must work or conscript to perpetrate the war that has been going on with the Lakelands for almost a century. Their king is Tiberias Calore the Sixth, a burner, fitting opposite to the nymph kings of the Lakelands. They should be easier to infiltrate since it’s half the size of the Lakelands with comparable population but we will have to be careful: a more advanced basis of infrastructures also involves many more controls.”

Outside, the thunder rumbled again, closer than before. So they would go to Norta to do exactly what someone long before them had started in the Lakelands. Her body already buzzed with anticipation: she had been waiting for that occasion for a long time and she wouldn’t let it escape.

                         ------------------------------------------------------

The Chokes had a smell, a set of ash, smoke and corpses that remained on the soldiers like a sticky lover, sometimes even when they came back home. The veterans used to say that it enters your nose, but Shade was more convinced that it penetrated your skin and went down to your bones, becoming an integral part of you: you could be convinced that you got rid of it, but that smell of burnt carrion always came back when you least expected it, it didn’t matter how often you washed yourself or how hard you rubbed, because it was something intangible, more a memory than something physical. Some went crazy because of this feeling, he had seen them. In the beginning they behave as if they were well, maybe a little down, but when you are at war you are never too happy and usually no one notices it until the irritability and the unprovoked anger came, which usually resulted in severe paranoia and hallucinations, and this was what happened to those who were lucky. Even Shade’s skin began to be sticky, but that could be sweat, soil or blood: sometimes at the front it was difficult to distinguish them, either on someone’s clothes or on the ground, or at least this was what he repeated himself until exhaustion. That's why he had missed the monthly reading of the names, although he still hoped to meet his Diana, to live a normal and never completely satisfying, life, and why he was walking in the middle of the woods, risking death penalty, careful to put his feet right where three people before him put theirs, wearing his uniform turned upside down: to not go crazy, to have a chance to live a life worthy of being called such and above all to allow his family and all those who came after to do so. Wasn't that a worthy reason to fight, compared to earning a few miles of land on which even the grass would never grow again, by how much it was soaked in blood and dust? He hoped so, or he would have ended up just like all those poor souls who had lost their reason in the trenches.

"Here they are," Corporal Eastree hissed, snatching him from his dark thoughts. Shade leaned forward to study the three Lakelanders. The first to attract his attention was a girl nearly his age, tall and so pale she could be mistaken for a Silver, with thin straight blond hair and eyes colder than ice. She seemed annoyed, although Shade couldn't understand from what, but he also saw that this was all a facade: certainly she was a tough woman, but she had to maintain that forced detachment and that tough expression to enforce her rank. Thus in the Scarlet Guard there was no place for humanity and the feelings it entailed. Next to her was a boy nearly the same age, tall and thin as well, partly hidden behind the large rifle he was aiming at them. He seemed tense, as if he were about to shoot, be he remained incredibly still, as if he were used to being ready to kill someone for hours. He had to be a sniper, just as Corporal Eastree had been before the Lakelanders captured her and cut off both her trigger finger. The other woman was older and it was evident that, unlike the two younger elements that formed the small group, she had served in the trenches. She had lost an ear to a frostbite but she doesn’t hid the deformity, her blond hair pulled back tightly. Corporal Eastree must have made her own assessments too, as she came out of the bush with her hands up, to show that they had no intention of harming them, imitated by her subordinates.

“We’re the ones.” she said, but the younger girl didn’t seem convinced and asked for further confirmation, with which she didn’t appear particularly satisfied, perhaps because of the blatant anger in Corporal Eastree speech, although the woman had every right to be angry, considering that the war had taken everything away from her. Moreover, everyone would have had the nerves on edge to have a sniper, used to shoot from far greater distances, with a precision weapon pointed at their head. As if she had read his mind, the girl nodded to her companion, who relaxed his finger on the trigger just a little, but not enough to prevent Shade from throwing himself into the conversation and answering the next question instead of his superior, earning a grin from the girl.

“We best make this quick,” Eastree interrupted them, aware that no one would have won an argument against him armed with sarcasm and a title borrowed by the military. “Your lot might protect your names, but we have no use for such things since they have our blood and our faces. This is private Florins.” she started, pointing to the girl behind her. For anyone who didn't know, the two could have been mistaken for relatives, but Florins still had a family at home while Eastree had nothing but her subordinates, for whom she would have sacrificed anything.

“Private Reese” she continued, pointing to the next boy. They had been recruited together, he and Shade, but Reese had managed to convince the sorting officers that he would be more useful as supply soldier, so he was carried cases of ammunition and food all day instead of being in the open field.

“And…” she tried to end, but Shade interrupted her and closed the distance that separated him from those who would be his new allies and if all went the right way, maybe even a good escape from that hell.

“Barrow, Shade Barrow.”

Without seeming particularly impressed, their leader settled her right sleeve better and then went on to talk about what their tasks would be but their eyes no longer met, and Shade promised himself to find out what dark secrets that girl tried so hard to hide.

[pengiesama]

Five of Coins, Reversed (Fic, TGCF, HC/XL)

Title: Five of Coins, Reversed Series: Heavenly Official’s Blessing (Tian Guan Ci Fu) Pairing: Hua Cheng/Xie Lian

Summary:

It gets better, but first, it’s going to get a whole lot worse.

Written for the the TGCF Tarot Zine project: Third Path. @tgcftarot

Link: AO3

Read on Tumblr!

If thoughts were coins, he wouldn’t have to busk on street corners and sleep in alleyways.

Xie Lian was rich in time to himself, if nothing else. And that left him with a surplus of resources to contemplate his life. He hoped no one would begrudge an old man his wistful daydreams.

(Ah, if only there was anyone left who cared enough to begrudge him.)

Xie Lian heaved a breath, wiped his forehead, and surveyed his work. It’d taken him months, but the field was finally cleared and ready to be used for next year’s planting season.

It had originally been nothing but an abandoned waste, filled with accumulated trash, and a haunting ground for a collection of monsters. The monsters were simple enough to clear out – once Xie Lian had the largest one in several pieces, the rest lost their ferocity and nerve in short order. The trash and scrap were next to go, and any money Xie Lian got from them unfortunately had to be funneled into fixing the soil quality with various fertilizer concoctions. But now the soil was healthy, the land was cleared. Xie Lian hoped the nearby villages would be able to share in its use – eking out a life in these rough mountain lands wasn’t easy.

Today was an especially nostalgic day – perhaps it was something in the waning warmth of summer, the shortening of the days, the leaves on the trees showing the first hints of their autumn blush, that brought out these feelings. It made one’s thoughts turn inward, and backward. And for Xie Lian, there was quite a lot of “backward”…

He had eight hundred years’ worth of life to reflect on. Eight hundred years’ worth of rises, falls, stumbles, tumbles, freefalls down sheer cliffsides into pits of even further misfortune. All as literal as they were metaphorical. Still, even with this huge catalog, Xie Lian always found himself wandering to the memories of his early days.

He recalled the dim memories of his mother, his father. He recalled those carefree days at the temple, in the company of Feng Xin and Mu Qing, under the protection of his teacher. He recalled the cheering crowds, the adoring worshippers, the blooming gardens and scent of incense; the desperate grip of small hands at the collar of his robes in the midst of a freefall, the fathomlessly dark eye staring up at him. He recalled how he failed them all, through ignorance, and arrogance, and cruelty. He recalled how he nearly brought about the ruin of another kingdom on top of that – as if one wasn’t enough – and was only stopped by the timely intervention of a hat and a sacrifice to bring about the chance of a salvation that he hardly deserved. And what would have become of all of them if Jun Wu had not descended to clean up the lingering mess? Xie Lian couldn’t accomplish anything, in the end. He talked a big game about saving the common people, then dooming them, but he wasn’t skilled enough to follow through in either instance.

(More the better, anyway. Xie Lian was already embarrassed enough when he remembered his time willingly spent wearing that pretentious mask; he couldn’t imagine having to live with it still being associated with him. He was, if nothing else, spared that indignity.)

Xie Lian wiped at his forehead and squinted at the sky, allowing himself to pause for breath before setting back to work with his plow. It’d circled back to this, again…he thought about that nameless ghost so often, lately. Perhaps this too was simply part of his dotage.

It wasn’t as though he would ever allow himself to forget – if Xie Lian didn’t remember him, who would? There was simply no one else left, certainly by now. It was enough to make Xie Lian thankful for this immortal, deathless body of his. He’d always be here, through the years, to keep his memory alive.

But even back then…did that nameless ghost have anyone to mourn him, to remember him? What kind of life, what kind of death, could he have possibly endured to have made him swear to help Xie Lian bring pestilence and ruin upon the world? Ghosts remained tethered to the world by lingering sentiment, by emotion felt too keenly and terribly to cease with the beating of their heart. Hatred, love, despair, fury. The chains of one or more of these had tied that nameless ghost to this world, had made him pledge his loyalty to Xie Lian’s horrible cause. And yet he threw it all away without a word of complaint, in the end.

Xie Lian had been too preoccupied with himself to bother trying to understand the ghost’s actions back then. Had been too preoccupied with his own pain, had repaid the ghost’s loyalty with cruelty. And now, well. That ship had long since sailed.

He could not ever hope to measure up to such altruism, such selflessness, such compassion for someone so undeserving. Xie Lian knew by now that he was simply not someone worth that kind of trouble. So, this is the least he could do: he would never allow himself to forget the sight of that masked ghost, ever smiling, being consumed by the rage and sorrow of a million resentful spirits in Xie Lian’s place.

And while he’d never be able to accomplish such a selfless feat – knowing himself to be selfish – nor could he make himself useful as a teacher – or a general – or a day laborer – he’d found himself a niche in scrap collecting. It kept him busy, and kept him fed on good days. And it came with a certain sense of accomplishment in itself, sometimes.

“This is…”

“…impossible…this land…”

A group of villagers huddled at the edge of the field Xie Lian had made, staring at it in shock. Finally, they spotted the white speck that was Xie Lian, toiling away, tied to the plow with Ruoye like one would an ox.

“S-sir! Daozhang! W-were you, perhaps, the one to…clear this cursed place of the beasts that plagued our poor village for so many decades?”

Xie Lian waved to them, nodding in the affirmative. “Yes! The soil, though, the soil was the problem! You’ll need to make sure to rotate your crops, you see, because—”

The villagers all dropped to their hands and knees, kowtowing to Xie Lian and crying out their thanks.

“Daozhang, honored cultivator, please, tell us your name, and our village will write it in our songs, will keep it on our lips for centuries and more!”

And then, there came the sound of bells, rudely interrupting the villagers’ kind words. It was a heavy, gonging sound, rippling through the clouds from one end of the sky to the other. It was a sound that Xie Lian had heard twice before.

Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! You have felled the fearsome Mountain-Shattering Beastly Fist and his Beastly Fist Boys, a vile monster gang of much renown! For your accomplishment, The Heavens™ send their most heartfelt regards to you, and welcome you to join their ranks! Please input your name on the screen in front of you!

Once while asleep, once after thoroughly failing at everything, and now, for having cleared a field of trash. Xie Lian had truly experienced the full range of humiliating ways to ascend, but…

Xie Lian sighed and poked his name in on that strange glowing screen.

…it wasn’t like he had anything else to do, these days.

Welcome, Xie Lian! Your merit score is currently: ZERO. Collect heavenly merits to exchange them at the in-game store for unlockable outfits and furniture items for your palace!

“What?” Xie Lian asked. They’d changed this thing a lot since he’d last interacted with it – he’d previously just signed with a brush like a civilized person, instead of pecking with his finger like a bird with seed.

Please keep your arms and legs inside the heavenly array at all times while we depart.

As Xie Lian was propelled at blinding speed onward and upward, he reasoned that this would at least be a good change of pace.

[bilbos]

The COTA-an excerpt

So I was randomly inspired to write this scene and I thought I’d post it here! And for those of you who don’t know, The COTA is my Nano fic for this year <3

~ ~ ~

“I just can’t seem to keep my plants alive,” Chris complains. “No matter what I do, they’re always dying on me.”

“Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be,” Pavel says solemnly. “Get some fake plants instead.”

“But those aren’t the same,” Chris whines. “There’s just something different about real plants.”

“Like the fact that they smell?” Pavel jokes.

Chris shoves Pavel, careful to make sure he doesn’t hit any other people waiting in line at the café. Chris has never been to this café before, but Pavel seems sold on it. He said that there’s something magical about this place, but that has yet to be seen. In all honesty, Chris hopes that the magical part is just a figure of speech and not literal. Magic users aren’t bad people by any means, but Chris would rather not get caught up in all of that.

Finally, it’s their time to order. Chris decides to get a latte this time around because he doesn’t trust any places black coffee any more. If he’s going to spend $4 on a coffee, he’s going to enjoy it. As they go to wait for their coffees, one of the baristas catches his attention.

“I know a really good plant shop near here if you need some more plants,” she says. “Her plants never seem to die and everything is super good quality there.”

“Oh, um, that would actually be really nice,” Chris replies.

“She gives good instructions as well,” she says. “And if a plant starts to die, she’ll nurse it back to health for you as well.”

“That’s, uh, wow,” Chris says. “Where is it at?”

The barista quickly gives him an address before finishing off their coffees. Pavel has an excited look on his face, which is odd, because he has never shown any excitement for plants before. Chris just brushes it off though and tells himself it’s because Pavel is weird.

“This place is going to be great,” Pavel says excitedly.

“And how would you know that?” Chris asks.

“Well, I know the area pretty well and the people are fantastic,” Pavel answers. “I’ve also heard about this shop before and everything has been super positive.”

“I would have never taken you for a guy to pay attention to a flower shop,” Chris remarks.

“It’s a plant shop, not a flower shop,” Pavel corrects. “She sells a lot of different things, at least from what I’ve heard.”

“Let’s hope what the barista said is true,” Chris replies. “I would like to stop murdering my plants.”

Pavel just laughs and continues to walk to the shop. It takes them a little while to get there, but when they do, Chris is a little taken aback. The shop takes up the whole bottom floor of an apartment complex, or at least that’s what it looks like from the outside. So many different plants are filling up the display windows and it takes Pavel shoving Chris for him to snap back.

“Oh wow,” Chris whispers. “This…is not what I was expecting.”

“It’s definitely big,” Pavel says. “Are we gonna go in or not?”

“Uh, yeah, let’s go,” Chris replies

A small bell goes off when they walk in and that’s the only greeting they get for a few moments. Then a young woman, probably in her early twenties, comes running up to the front, looking a little frazzled.

“Hello! Welcome to the shop. Sorry for the wait, a couple of these plants are giving me a hard time,” she says enthusiastically. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Just something that won’t die on me,” Chris says. “I’m gone a lot for work, though.”

“Air plants might be the best thing to start off with,” she says decisively. “They don’t need a lot of watering and they don’t require soil either, so it’ll be easiest to see how these react to your home. I’m y/n, by the way.”

“I’m Chris,” Chris says. “Um, where are they?”

“I’ll go with you because the plants can be picky sometimes and not everyone knows how to read them if they’re just starting off,” y/n explains.

“You’re making them sound like they’re sentient,” Chris jokes.

“Most aren’t,” she replies. “But they still like to be able to pick out their owners.”

“So, plants are your thing, huh?” Pavel asks.

“Obviously,” she retorts. “Both of my parents dealt with plants so it’s not like I could get away from it. I love it, though. Most plants are really great to be around.”

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” Chris says. “Am I missing something?”

“I don’t think so?” y/n replies, looking over at Pavel in confusion.

Pavel just shrugs and continues to follow y/n. She takes them to a small wooden table near one of the large display windows. It’s covered in different plants in different pots and glasses. All of it looks a bit haphazard to Chris, but he supposes that she knows what she’s doing. Y/n is the one with the plant shop, not him.

“How many do you want?” y/n asks. “I would suggest at least 3 or 4 so that they don’t get lonely.”

“Plants can get lonely?” Chris asks.

“This is probably why all your plants died,” Pavel jokes.

“That probably didn’t help matters,” she says. “Plants can get very lonely.”

“Well, I guess we’re going with four then,” Chris replies. “Which ones should I get?”

“The capitata peach add a decent amount of color and they seem to like you,” y/n answers. “I’ll grab four of those and a larger pot so that they can all be together. They’ll do good on your kitchen table if it happens to be by a window. If not, just put them on any large table by a window, okay?”

“Um, okay,” Chris replies. “How much should I water them?”

“Mist them three times a week, but it should be fine if you only mist it only once or twice occasionally. Then once or twice a month, soak them in water for about twenty minutes,” y/n explains. “And make sure that when you soak it, the water has some fertilizer in it. Or you can soak it in water from a natural source, like a stream or lake. That would be preferable, but I understand that’s a little bit inconvenient.”

“Oh, that’s…not too bad,” Chris says. “Anything else I should know?”

“So, don’t freak out if the plant starts to die after it blooms,” y/n says. “It’s supposed to do that. But it’ll produce offsets, which will just grow where you keep the plant. So just keep caring for it like normal and the offsets will be healthy. Also make sure they get plenty of sunlight. They prefer kitchen tables that are near a window, but any sunlight will be good.”

“Okay, I think I can manage that,” Chris says.

“Let’s hope so,” Pavel jokes.

“Alright, I’ll grab some of the plants really quick and meet you over at the cash register,” y/n says.

Chris nods and walks back to the front of the shop and pulls out his wallet. This isn’t where he was expecting his day to go, but it isn’t bad. If these plants don’t die when they’re not supposed to, he’ll be coming back pretty soon.

“Okay, so these are the ones that seemed pretty enthusiastic about coming home with you,” y/n says, walking over to the cash register. “With the pots, that’ll be $25.”

“Sounds good,” Chris says, handing over his debit card.

Y/n swipes his card and has him sign the receipt. Finally, he and Pavel are walking out the door with four new plants.

“So, did you like it?” Pavel asks excitedly.

“Well, as long as these don’t die when they’re not supposed to, I think we’ll be good,” Chris answers.

“Oh, I doubt they will,” Pavel says. “She knows what she’s doing.”

“But she’s not the one taking care of them,” Chris replies, confused.

Pavel just shakes his head. “You’re a work of art, Chris. But I think you’ll be back.”

“Really now?” Chris says.

Pavel smirks and says, “I know you think y/n is cute.”

“No, I don’t,” Chris replies quickly.

Pavel laughs and shoves him to the side. “I know you dude. It’s okay to admit it.”

[ryntaia]

Indifference Impossibility

“Hey Ryn, why are you behind on prompts?” 

“BECAUSE I’M AN ASSHOLE WHO WRITES FICS NO ONE ASKED FOR”

Title: Indifference Impossibility

Fandom: Persona 5

Rating: T

Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Friendship

Pairing: None

Summary: The feelings of a Velvet Room Attendant could be a confusing thing indeed--for how is a doll to comprehend the emotions of a human being? Sometimes, it is pain that can bring understanding. Akechi survival fic, Lavenza centric.

Status: Complete (?) 

Read on Ao3!

Read on FF.net!

Or read below the cut! 

Indifference Impossibility

“So, you know that we’re out there, swatting lies in the making. You cannot move fast without breaking…you can’t hold on or life won’t change.”

           In the silence of the prison, now devoid of the children led on by Yaldabaoth, the sound of her book closing echoed off the walls. Slim fingers ran over the cover as she stood aside her recovering Master. The damage that the God, the Beast, had done to Igor had been substantial. Lavenza could still see his eyes droops every once in a while, his thin limbs seeming even more fragile than usual. It almost send a pang of guilt through her. She had been hurt by the attack on the Velvet Room and torn apart but at the same time, she could not give way to ignorance of what ‘she’ had done.

           What ‘they’ had done.

           Justine and Caroline had assisted Yaldabaoth in tricking the children, keeping the truth of the Velvet Room locked up, and piloting the world to what the beast would have them believe to be the final end. It had only been by the virtue of the Hero that the Beast had not used what was left of the golden haired girl to sail humanity to his biased conclusion. With Igor safely out of sight, the now fallen God had expertly weaved her and her abilities into his plan so that he could manipulate fate. The manipulator, using her to manipulate them.

           Still, guilt was not something that Lavenza was used to feeling. Igor had once told her that the Velvet Room had a responsibility to those blessed enough to cut through the veil and grasp the skill of the Wild Card. Perhaps, she mused, this was why she so constantly found herself thinking about what had happened. Perhaps this was why she felt this unfamiliar tug at her heart when Yaldabaoth manifested himself in her memories. He had hijacked their dedication to these special people and used it for his own destructive purposes.

           They could’ve been saved. All of these children, these Persona users, they all could’ve been saved. None of them had to suffer like this…her grip on her book tightened as her brow furrowed. From day one, the Beast had been controlling their destiny and driving them down the path of their own destruction. She had helped him do so. She had taken a baton in each of her new hands to slam violently towards the kings in Yaldabaoth’s chess game, instructing these misled user down a path that she internally was screaming to avoid.

           Lavenza’s eyes squeezed shut. She wasn’t used to feeling these rushes of emotion. She wasn’t made like Morgana, existing from the pure emotion of hope. Lavenza existed like her brothers and sisters did, brought into existence by Igor to serve a purpose of assistance. Just like those before her, she was created as a doll with a personality and great power. But a doll with an external personality did not necessarily entail the kind of emotions she now felt…emotions so strong and conflicting that she had always been so sure were exclusive to human beings.

           “Lavenza.”

           She jerked to attention, turning to her thoughtful master. Igor was still pale and ill from the encounters with Yaldabaoth yet somewhere retained his sharp posture and mysterious aura. Quickly she curtsied to the elderly man, who simply chuckled in response and waved off her actions with one gloved hand. Confused, the young attendant held her book close to her heart—lately, it had been oddly comforting.

           “Do you remember your sisters and your brother?” He asked. Her eyes widened slightly; what an odd question. But she knew the master always had a direction he was going so she nodded compliantly. “Ah yes…Elizabeth, Margaret, Theodore…previous attendants who did me so well in times of need. Lavenza, could you solve the riddle that I have for you?”

           “I can only try to the extent of my power, Master.” Lavenza replied immediately. Igor chuckled, almost knowingly, and placed his gloved hands underneath his elongated nose and closed his eyes.

           “Why do I have so many attendants, Lavenza?”

           “Because we are needed to assist you, Master.”

           “That is not quite the right answer, Lavenza. After all, just one of you can handle all the tasks of the Velvet Room. Why would I need four of you when I would only need one?” Lavenza paused; her master raised a good point. It was not as if a single attendant did not have the power to cover the position. “Four of you I have made, yet only one of you is here. Why do you think that is?”

           “I…I can only assume you have tasked them to elsewhere, Master.” Lavenza replied, voice breaking for the first time. The direction of this conversation was unfamiliar, almost intimidating. Igor had never spoken to her like this before. “There are, doubtlessly, dilemmas of our concern to be addressed elsewhere than in this room alone.”

           Igor chuckled; the sound was almost affectionate. “Dear, dear Lavenza. Every time I make a new one of you, they start off with this same kind of confusion. Dolls with personalities and powers drawn from the sea of the human consciousness, born at the age they are and unable to be anything else…or so I thought, when I originally made the first. Yet dear little Elizabeth is no longer with us.”

           “Elizabeth is deceased?”

           “Elizabeth is elsewhere. She found something out about herself.” Igor closed his eyes, as if remembering memories of decades past. “Lavenza, with my first doll, I learned something interesting. You are a personality as I craft you, but once you are born you will inevitably run into the real world. You will run into those who you guide, and you will inevitably begin to experience emotion that you previously could’ve never known. Fear, anger, love, even…guilt.”

           “…Master.” Lavenza looked away shamefully.

           “Why do you look away from me, child? I’ve come to realize that all of my creations will eventually begin to experience such things.” Igor sighed. “In a way you are all like my children, really. And I am the weary parent who must watch you all experience new things and try to make your new sense of it. Even when to make sense of these experiences and emotions, you must run through a complex maze.”

           “I don’t know how to stop feeling it, Master.” Lavenza said quietly. It was no use hiding it anymore. “I get this sensation of my heart squeezing in on itself, only to remember I do not truly have a heart. I feel this nausea in my stomach, yet it cannot be since I do not truly have a stomach. I can feel the blood pounding in my veins as I watch the Hero rise to the challenge, and yet that cannot be for I do not have veins. I am a doll, Master, and I exist to serve a purpose to others. Yet I have these dark emotions that I cannot comprehend the source of.”

           Igor was silent for a moment, hand descending to tap carefully against the table in a rhythmic pattern. In the back of her mind Lavenza considered the man’s words. Elizabeth had ‘learned’ something about herself and she had left. Goosebumps crawled over her skin; would this be the final guillotine? Would she be cast out of the Velvet Room for these usual thoughts? She had not seen her sisters and brother for a long time. Perhaps they…

           “Please do not be ridiculous, Lavenza. You will always be welcome in the Velvet Room. You are a resident here. As are all your siblings.” Igor said absentmindedly. “But you are so confused right now. We don’t have any guests at the moment, so perhaps I could give you an assignment to take your mind off this…”

           “An assignment?” Relief flooded into the blonde girl.

           “Yes. To fix the mistakes of the Velvet Room.” Igor shook his head. “Our run in with this Yaldabaoth character was significantly damaging to our purpose. The fact that we allowed not one, but two guests to be manipulated by imitations of ourselves is simply not acceptable. It is our purpose to help these humans work against such forces, not to help external forces manipulate them. They are simply too valuable to be given away with such ease.”

           “What shall we do then, Master?”

           Igor raised his hands, clapping twice. The feel of a presence hit Lavenza like a ton of bricks. Her hair flung back and forth as she looked around with wide, confused yellow eyes. It was an unusual power—extraordinarily powerful, yet dull and unmotivated. Like a dead man walking. Turning on her heels to face the door once behind her, the answer to Lavenza’s questions were answered with shimmering blue prison bars.

           He hadn’t been there before, that was for certain. Light brown hair lay against brick wall, looking erratic and unwashed—untrimmed bangs blocked out dark and empty eyes. The teenager’s body was limp in the ripped up uniform. With the levels of dirt and blood that had accumulated on the surface, it was almost impossible to tell that the uniform had once been a crisp white. The gold baubles across the breast seemed to be almost rusted over to a red color. In the far back of the cell, Lavenza could see a dark red mask with a long beak. It had been broken in half.

           “Master, this is…”

           “Goro Akechi.”

           “But Master, he…” Lavenza paused to try and tie her thoughts together. Sometimes it was hard to piece together all the memories from when she had been two. “…he was killed. In Masayoshi Shido’s Palace by….himself. More precisely, by Shido’s cognition of him.”

           “Lavenza, when one dies, where do they go?”

           She was thrown off by the question. “When they die? Their spirit dies out and becomes part of the world around them. Becomes part of the soil, grows the grass, fertilizes the hope for a new life.”

           “And how does a spirit do this when they are not in that world?”

           Lavenza paused.

           “When one physically dies in that world, they either come here or they drop out into the reality beyond the Velvet Room.” Igor said. Lavenza felt that squeezing sensation at that not-quite-there heart again. “It is rare for people to die in that world, at least physically. It is a land of Shadows and Cognitions. The sea of the human consciousness is not equipped to deal with actual physical death so it sends the living to back where they can die…or to us.”

            “Why to us?” Lavenza voice was quiet, as if she was almost afraid of her question. Igor extended a hand out to the brunette in the cage; Akechi flinched violently in response. “M-Master?”

           “They will come to us…” Igor said slowly. “…when the Velvet Room has made a serious miscalculation. They will come to us when they still have a service from us that that they need, or a service that we need from them. And I believe that in this case it may very well be both. I’ve always wondered if we could make use of a contract with someone who resides both outside of and within the Velvet Room…”

           Lavenza stood uncertainly in front of the cage, its prisoner now hissing in pain and beginning to writhe like a wounded animal. Reaching out to touch her hands against the bars, she was surprised to see them dissolve in front of her eyes. Igor watched the girl carefully from behind as she approached the bleeding and confused boy. He snapped his eyes up to stare at her—a dark red gaze from a face that she now realized was covered in blood. Still she did not flinch; she was an attendant of the Velvet Room. She had no time for indecision. Only to guide, only to learn.

           She offered her hand. He stared at it like he didn’t comprehend it.

           “Goro Akechi.” She stated, her voice clear and confident. Somehow she couldn’t help but feel that this was the right path; her words flowed out of her like smooth butter. “I am Lavenza of the Velvet Room. I seek your hand of assistance. You, the child misled, can still go down the path of rehabilitation if you contract yourself with us. Become one with us, and prevent this from happening again.”

           “Contract…?” His voice was hoarse, out of use.

           “Yes. Swear your temporary allegiance to us and help us against those who would misuse the Velvet Room.” Igor interrupted. Lavenza still had her hand withheld. “In exchange, we can grant you the right to continue living and rectify that which you have been misled to do.”

           “Living…has done nothing for me…” Akechi spat, blood splattering out with a cough. “Why would I want to…”

           “For them.”

           Lavenza was surprised for a moment to hear the words coming out of her mouth. For them. She had not even intended it, but once she had said it, she realized it was exactly what she had wanted. To protect them. Those people who had fought so hard to keep life from dying out, those people who had surprised the world so much, those people that had saved her and unlatched the bonds on the boy before them. She could feel that squeezing sensation at her heart—her guilt. She could feel that nausea in her stomach—her uncertainty. She could even feel that sensation of blood pounding through her veins and in her ears—her exhilaration for the rectification of both her mistakes and the mistakes of the boy in front of her.

           The boy whose bloody, dirty hand clasped into hers.

           “The contract is sealed. Lavenza shall be your guide.”

           Blue flame ran down from her fingers across his. Whorls of thick blue curved over the white fabric, previously red cuffs bleeding into a dark black color to match the new color. Previously white pants darkened into formal black slacks. The red mask behind Akechi burst into flames and faded away just as quickly; across his face burned the shape of a blue butterfly, settling across his cheekbones and curving over his light brown hair and dark red eyes. The base of the abdomen curved elegantly over his nose, sharp metal antennae curving down against the wing in a U pattern.

           He stood, far taller than the young girl, gazing down at her with some modicum of distaste. Lavenza realized that, to some amount, she shared that distaste. That she was sharing a feeling that she had thought exclusive to human beings, that was not the domain or business of a doll. She closed her eyes—maybe, in some way, Yaldabaoth hadn’t entirely wronged her.

           If he had, then she wouldn’t be able to share the exhilaration and hope that reflected under the ex-detective’s expression of distaste.

           She closed her eyes with a smile.

           “This place is tightly bound to your fate. Nothing here happens without a reason, no feeling is felt meaninglessly….welcome to the Velvet Room. I…am Lavenza.”