#how are the people gonna quickly be able to find the quote??? if they really wanna know when it's published they could just look at the

[petalsandpurity]

im gonna fight harvard referencing i think

[natelawtism]

"Authentic" | an oc x canon fic

GUESS WHO WROTE ROWNATE FANFIC BAYBEE!! Forgive any errors or mischaracterization.... It's midnight

This fic includes JB! It's a conversation between JB and Nate about Rowan. JB decides to spend the day with Nate because she doesn't get all the fuss Rowan is making over him

“Ugh. I still don't get it!”

“Get what?” Nate raised an eyebrow, giving JB a judgemental look.

The girl shrugged, “What Rowan sees in you.”

“What??” the boy's eyes widened, surprised at how casually JB spoke.

“I mean, I tried to ask him! But he wouldn't tell me. Said something about ‘not wanting to put you on my radar',” she put up air quotes while she spoke, “so I was like, whatever, I'll find out myself. But even after spending the day with you I still don't get it!”

“I'm sure you don't,” Nate rolled his eyes, “because unlike you: Rowan is nice.”

“Oh?” JB’s eyebrows raised, “do tell. I mean, I'm the nicest and hottest girl on campus.” She spoke with her usual shit-eating grin and leaned on her palm for dramatic effect, knowing she wasn't very nice at all.

“Yeah. He isn't nice to be performative or anything, he just is.” The words came to Nate pretty easily, though he had to pause to collect his thoughts. “He's kind to people without a second thought and actually cares about what I have to say. Unlike someone.” He makes a point to indicate that he was targeting JB.

“What's the fun in that?” JB was confused hearing Nate even though she had experienced these things before, “Not gonna lie, I assumed he did it with y'know… ulterior motives.”

“That's the thing. He does it like it's second nature.” Nate’s expression began to morph into something almost fond. More introspective than his earlier statements, though you could only notice it if you were really looking. “He always considers people and tries to do small acts, even when it takes out of his day. He always tries to talk to me. He's not judgy. It's like he doesn't even think about it.”

“Doesn't that just make him a try-hard?”

“I guess. But he’s trying. He's always trying, no matter what it comes to. It's hard to find someone who will listen to you like that. He ends up absorbing weird knowledge about people, just because he listens.”

“I think he might just do that because he wants to get into your pants.” JB laughed at her own joke.

Nate, however, did not find that as funny. His expression immediately broke back into his usual anger. He knew he shouldn't be surprised at the girl’s comments, but it startled him out of whatever place his mind drifted to.

“That kind of stuff is inappropriate!”

“You bet it is-” she changed the topic quickly- “So, how do you know he's not?”

“I guess I don't know for sure, but he doesn't feel like the type to. He's really… genuine. Trust me, I would've been able to see if he was just looking for something like..” Nate seemed to not want to get the words out, “like that.”

“I guess with all the time he spends hanging off of you it'd be easy to tell.” JB nodded, beginning to reach her own conclusions. Nate sure had a lot to say on this boy.

“Even if you can't be, I can say that he's very authentic. I think everyone needs more authenticity.”

“I can be authentic!” The girl argued.

The boy looked at her skeptically, “I doubt it.”

“What's so authentic about him anyway?” In truth, JB knew Rowan enough to know that was true. She just wanted to see how much she could get Nate talking about him, as this day was already past boring.

“Almost everything he does. The way he tries, his love for things, how he expresses things. He's someone who can put his whole heart into a task.” Like it was magic, Nate was back into that far-off place. JB wasn’t sure exactly where his mind was, but she knew wherever it was had a lot of Rowan in it. “Even when he's performing, it still feels like him. Just in a different way.”

JB raised her eyebrows, grinning slyly “You really like him, huh?”

Nate squinted at her, his eyebrows down turned “Of course I do. It's natural to, you know, enjoy being around your friend and notice things about them.”

She scoffed, a bit surprised he would say that, but also not surprised that Nate Lawson isn't confronting his very obvious feelings. “Yeah… your ‘friend’. Sure, bud.”

[sophaeros]

i just HAVE to talk to someone about this but what do we think about the song scared….? do you think it’s about julian? or maybe albert wrote it about himself?? either way, the way you hear julian’s voice towards the end make me go insane!

I FUCKING LOVEEEE SCARED IT'S SO GOOD IT DRIVES ME INSANE i always read it as directed towards julian but directed to himself is CRAZY.

You know that something inside of you Still plays a part in what I do Always, I'm here for you

this always reminds me of this les inrockuptibles 2020 quote

"I'll tell you something," says Fab. "When I played the first Machinegum stuff to Nick (Valensi - editor's note), he put his finger on something. He said, 'I'll never be able to listen to your music, or the music of any of us, without thinking about how I could have influenced it.'"

which makes me SICK to my STOMACH. and then this verse

I think that if we were all we had That's more than most people ever have Anyway, oh anyway, you can stay here

makes me think of this 2023 albert interview with the guardian

“Yeah, I knew very quickly,” he says. “There was something very special about all of us together, even early on. The universe moved when we were all together in a certain way. Like a Rubik’s Cube that gets unlocked. You either find it or you don’t. I always felt that was unique.”

LIKE. ok i said i read it as directed to julian but i think it could also be kinda wrapped up in the band too which makes sense bc to me their relationship is always gonna be intertwined w that of the band. if that makes sense.

anyway lyrically this song destroys me like what the fuck is "so close we played it as if we cared" LIKE WHY WOULD YOU SAY THATTTTTTT IM GONNA FALL TO MY KNEES......i wish we had official lyrics for julian's lines at the end (he sounds soo fucking gorgeous btw so sad hes so buried in the mix) it sounds to me like "don't push me away / [they'll/don't] get it wrong" (less sure about that second line) which is AGONISING. WHAT DID HE MEAN BY THIS.

also can i just say im so in love w the chorus and ending kicking in. so ethereal and perfect

ok ANYWAY tinhatting time. honestly it's soo hard to piece together any kind of timeline or characterisation of their rs bc theyre not really as blatant about it as some other rpf ships..not counting one way trigger. also im not smart enough to have a concrete analysis of this song. i kinda read it as like, something something the strokes staying together and not branching out despite them clearly being really dysfunctional?? like being afraid to break whatever kind of shaky balance they'd managed to find. and the song is kind of a love letter to them in light of that. but also this is a very shaky interpretation ok idk what im talking about

albert was the first to do solo stuff outside of the strokes and they urhh well theyve been supportive of one another's side projects but at the beginning.......rock & folk april 2011 ->

Nick: "We never made this much money as for the FIOE tour. When we were recording, Albert tried to make us listen to some of his solo project. I think he was disappointed by our reaction and he never talked about it again. Nikolai kept his secret. For Little Joy, I was with Fab in LA when they were writing and recording the album. I played the drums for them.”

theres a lot of push and pull in this song..you can also narrow your focus from the strokes generally to just albert and julian (bc tbh a lot of strokes/adjacent songs can be read both ways and in fact i think a lot of the time theyre best read as being about both the band and albert/julian's relationship simultaneously)

IDK this post is so long but idk if im saying anything. it kinda reads like a very tender song to an ex lover. something like no matter the status of our relationship you still have me and i still love you. i want you to stay close to me no matter what. i want you to realise you could be so much more than what you are now. yknow.

[smolweeblets]

Would you be willing to write either headcanons or a oneshot about working out with Yelena. My gay little brain wants scenarios to think of when exercising

Minor Injuries

Yelena AOT x Reader

Going to the gym was nice. The atmosphere was nice, not that many people at the time you usually went and everything was kept clean. The people at your gym were nice too, offering help when you seemed like you needed it, sometimes you even found the occasional sticky not stuck on some of the machines with little motivational quotes.

Yet yourself found one teensy little problem… Which was that you found yourself always being stared at by another member, a tall and lanky blonde that was always by the treadmills.

You could always catch glimpses of her, and her turning away quickly after you catch her. Honestly, you dont know why she was just… looming over you like that. Was she judging you? You really cant tell. It was very creepy.

After your initial impression, you tended to avoid her. She took the hint and left you alone for the most part but you still couldnt shake off the weird feeling when she was around.

You two never interacted, until one day you find yourself in a small accident.

It wasnt anything big really, you just accidentally dropped a weight in your foot. Yelena found you hopping on one leg like a maniac and you wanted nothing more than to melt into the ground.

“Are… you okay?” She hesitantly asks.

“Yep! Im- uh- just a small accident!” You grit through your teeth.

“Do you need help-?”

You suck in a breath before responding. “No, I swear im all good!”

“I insist, at least just sit down for now. Hopping help with the pain at all.”

Having no reason to object, you calm yourself down just enough to take a seat on the nearest bench.

The woman takes your foot and winces when she sees the area.

“Is it that bad?” You sigh.

“Its gonna bruise pretty bad. Wait there a bit, ill get some things to help with the pain.” Before you could object, she was already out the room, leaving you to your own devices.

“Here, this should be able to help. Try to bear with it for the moment yeah?”

[insert procedure on minor blunt force trauma im not knowledgeable enough to write]

“Ah- I do have to admit, I feel somewhat better, thank you” You offer a grateful smile to the woman.

“No problem, whats your name by the way? We seem to always go here at the same time, I notice you struggling sometimes.” You heat up at the mention that shes been looking at you.

“Yeah,” You chuckle awkwardly. “I see you staring at me sometimes, honestly found it a little creepy, but im glad to know youre actually nice. My name is Y/n, nice to meet you” You offer your hand to shake, she takes it but you can see shes also flustered to hear that youve noticed her staring.

“Likewise. I didnt realize that my staring could be seen as creepy, I apologize for that. I can see why youd be weirded out. My name is Yelena.” She shook your hand, and you couldnt help but notice how smooth her hand felt against your own.

~~~~~

That was the start of a peaceful little friendship between the two of you.

She helped you out and gave you tips as much as she could. And in turn you gave her a reason to do something other than run on the treadmills.

You both loved to talk about trivial topics, how your days have been going, something funny you saw, or even what you had for breakfast that morning. She was a nice company to be around, and she was around a lot.

Despite your first impression of her getting off on the wrong foot, you find yourself quite attracted to her, you push the feeling down as best as you can, but thoughts linger in the back of your head during each interaction with her.

~~~~~

“Gah, im tired. Im gonna go now, you have fun.” You sighed as you started to tidy your stuff.

“Nah, leaving soon too. You got anywhere to be later?” Yelena took a sip out of her water bottle and slumped on a nearby bench.

“Thats kinda random, but no, why do you ask?” You paused and and looked at her.

“Wanna get some drinks together? Weve been friends for a while but havent seen each other anywhere other than the gym.” Yelena smiled softly to herself.

“Sure, sounds lovely!” You grinned.

A/n: This is not my best work so I apologize for the quality, i hope you still enjoy 😭❤️

[fishiecomics]

Beastober Day 6: Devil

Another short story under cut

Prompt list Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

“Damn, that’s rough.”

Fishie’s consciousness came back to them in a flash, a rough voice filling her ears and the surrounding area engulfing her vision. Or what she assumed was the area. All she could see was nothing. A vast expanding void with no top or bottom. She looked down to see if her feet were touching the floor and was met with nothing. Not just no floor, but no feet, no legs, no torso. Nothing.

Panic started to set in. She didn’t understand what was going on. What happened to her? Where did her body go? Where was she?

“Whoa whoa, calm down there.” She heard that voice again. She looked around, desperately trying to find the source, but was met, again, by nothing.

“Oh, right. One second.”

Suddenly, a form started to shape in front of her. Her brain could hardly keep up with the way it morphed itself into something… something familiar. The creature shook themselves out like a dog that just came out of the shower, it’s fur fluffing out a bit before settling against the rest of their body.

“Ah, that’s better.” The hog creature sighed, stretching their arms out with a loud cracking sound coming from their back.

“Babayop?” The hog scratched their chin.

“I mean, technically yes. Depending on the place, I could be El Ceruto, Butamono, Schweinetier, The Hog. Love The Hog, nice and simple, really gets the point across.” Fishie just stared blankly at the hog as they rambled, overwhelmed by the situation at hand.

“Ack. Anyway, just call me Deemgo.”

“Okay. Deemgo. Uh, can I know what’s going on?”

“Welp. You died.” Deemgo stated matter-of-factly.

“O-Oh.” She stuttered. She should have probably guessed that. The last thing could remember was the pyre and it didn’t really make sense for her to have escaped it. If she still had limbs, she’d probably be feeling the burns from the flames or the ache in her lungs from inhaling all that smoke.

“You don’t seem that shocked about it.” Fishie scoffed.

“Did you see what happened? Did you see anything leading up to it? It was only a matter of time until they finally ended me. I…” She stopped suddenly, the gravity of her death starting to settle in.

“I didn’t… I tried, you know? I didn’t want much, I was fine with just keeping to myself and living out my days with my friends in my cave.” She hoped they’d be okay, they were all animals so she assumed they’d be able to find their own food, but the thought of not seeing them again made her non-existent heart ache.

“And, you know, seeing Perlah everyone in a while. I was okay with that. I know Perlah wanted more for me. But it was stupid think I was ever gonna do anything but suffer. Stupid to think I was ever gonna get that wish.”

“And that wish would be?” The hog tilted their head, curious.

“Why do you care? Not like you did much as my “God.”” She hoped Deemgo could hear the air quotes around god.

“Okay, first, gross. Don’t call me God. You think a god comes with a set of these?” She pointed to the horns on her head.

“I don’t know, how many gods do you think I’ve met?” Deemgo shrugged.

“Fair enough. Still, back to the point. Say I could do some wish granting. What would you want?”

Fishie didn’t answer for a moment, thinking back on Perlah’s final words to her. It was same message that her parents left behind before her. But only now did she really know what they meant.

“I want to live.”

She could see Deemgo about to say something and quickly cut her off.

“And I don’t mean just be alive, I mean, like. I want to actually live a life, not just try to scrape by and hide in the cracks of people’s walls. I want to meet people, make friends, have fights, fall in love, you know? I don’t want to just survive. I want to live.”

Fishie felt out of breath somehow, suddenly getting embarrassed.

“Ah, sorry for trauma dumping.”

“I literally asked.” Despite this, Fishie still felt the urge to cover her face with her non-existent hands. Deemgo sighed.

“Listen, I can’t just ‘bring out back to life’ with how things ended for you. Your soul’s mine now. But I can probably set you up with something if you want to make a deal.”

“I’m listening.” Deemgo smiled.

[kimtaegis]

I don't think I have ever hyperfixated on something this long other than bts.. I've always had interests that stayed with me for a long time but then for a few months I kind of stopped because there was no content or I got into something else... But with bangtan it has been a constant interest for years. And it really sucks that they have to go, even though Jin is coming back in 6 months.. I will be forever grateful for them for how they handled their solo era. I know lots of people simply couldn't keep up with all the content (me included, I still have a few things I need to watch when I'll have time) and/or burned out because of how much we got but at the same time, time flew by so quickly. I mean Jin left a year ago and it doesn't feel like a year? At least to me.

I'm a little bit afraid of the future though because while I know they recorded a lot of content for us, I feel like it'll be different and fewer than a solo album promo. Now I'm not trying to say that they didn't do enough for us before anyone misunderstands! I just want to say that I feel like because the content will be different and nobody here to idk randomly go live, time will feel slower than it did in the past year :( I'm also really curious if I can keep my hyperfixation throughout this period or if I'll also take a break for awhile. Bangtan has never really stopped before so it felt like there is always something to do or watch.

it’s very valid to worry about how these next few months will go; as you said yourself, both them and us fans never experienced such a period of time before. it’s so normal to be a scared of the unknown, of the future in general, in my opinion! but as I try to vehemently tell myself these days: we have no choice but to find out eventually, and however it will go, time will pass anyway (yes it’s this infamous quote that has been going around social media but it’s so true!).

maybe we as a fandom will finally be able to slow things down to actually enjoy and appreciate the content we get during that time more (I feel like everything has been incredibly fast-paced which took away a lot of my enjoyment, actually) but also the content we received so far. also what namjoon said in his letter today is something I try holding close to my heart; it really is a comfort to have something to look forward to. they won’t be back forever, this is all temporary, and life will inevitably go on. repeating this to yourself about a hundred times a day actually helps a little! ….. and it’s gonna be insane once they all come back. just imagine that pure joy. it’s worth waiting for.

if they have been such a constant in your life, this little time apart will only make your heart grow fonder, I’m sure of it. a hyperfixation isn’t the healthiest thing, pretty sure we all secretly know that (yet here we are), so hey, this could be a pretty good opportunity to dabble into various new things, or to go back to old loves of yours, or to just concentrate on something else entirely. your heart is so big, there’s more than enough space for your persistent love for bts and fresh and new beloved things that you might come across!

that comfort-giving, fondness-inducing, seven-butt imprinted corner in there (taps your chest sternly) will always be there if you want it to!! 🤍🤍🤍

[james-vi-stan-blog]

I know you talk about King James but how did people describe George to be? I feel like the show is going to make George out to be a helpless victim (we’ll be is a victim of his mother not James) or a fragile person who didn’t do anything wrong (already have seen be on Twitter do that) while King James might just be made out as a villain and not as complex.

Sorry for taking forever to answer, I was so busy I didn't even get to properly sit down with the trailer until now asdfkld;jsd, and also I'm not a George expert so the more devoted Buckingham enthusiasts might be able to give you a better answer

Some difficulty with trying to ascertain what George Villiers's true character was is gonna come from the fact that all contemporary descriptions of him are going to be heavily slanted depending on the agenda and factional relationships of the writer. I've been trying to find some good quotes for you but I'm limited by availability of books to me and so I'm quoting like third or fourth hand here.

There are a lot of accounts of Buckingham being monstrously ambitious, cunning, grasping. A lot of that is mixed up with anti-Catholic sentiment and depictions of Buckingham as a decadent, seductive "Ganymede" (an image that the anti-Catholics also associated with Catholicism). Many courtiers were resentful and jealous that James could only be accessed through the Great One—a position they'd rather have for themselves or one of their relatives. You'd have to be veiled with such accusations or you could be brought before the House of Lords.

In the 1620s the Spanish court was shocked at Buckingham's lack of decorum: sitting while Prince Charles stood, calling Charles nicknames, putting his feet up on chairs, performing "divers obscene things" and using "immodest gesticulations" and being "wont to move into the Princes Chamber with his Cloathes half on" (which probably does not mean literally half-naked, but rather that he did not properly dress in courtly raiment for an audience with a prince; but maybe I am wrong and it literally does mean half-naked). I think these quotes are from a 1624 letter to the English court.

At the same time that this report was being made of his character, Buckingham had a very brief moment of glory re: his public image in England because of the failure of the Spanish match, and he was being referred to as this martial, wise, brave defender of the Protestant faith. That fell apart quickly after his military failures.

However, you've also got people like Godfrey Goodman, who was specifically writing against Anthony Weldon. Weldon's The Court and Character of King James I was published as part of Parliamentarian anti-Stuart propaganda in the 1640s and was very negative on Buckingham. Goodman, writing The Court of King James the First in I believe in the 1650s, said, that "there never lived a better natured man than Buckingham", and attested to Buckingham's devotion to James and heartbreak at being accused of James's death. This is also the source of the Wikipedia quote about George, "the handsomest-bodied man in all of England; his limbs so well compacted, and his conversation so pleasing, and of so sweet a disposition", but I can't verify because I don't have Goodman's book in front of me. Of course, Goodman is just as much writing from Royalist perspective as Weldon was writing from a Parliamentarian/proto-Parliamentarian perspective.

I think something to consider is that basically no faction would find it useful to depict George as an innocent. He's either going to be a hero and competent who is James's indispensable secretary working for the good of England, or he's going to be The Evil Favorite, cartoonishly corrupt, possibly Catholic, etc.

I personally don't think that a "hapless innocent" characterization makes sense for George Villiers; he was really involved in politics, very aggressive, constantly riding back and forth between London and the hunting lodge to do business, overworking himself, etc. He had strong factional alignments but was way less of a puppet than Robert Carr (a Howard family puppet and very reliant on Overbury). It's not an invalid character interpretation for Villiers's early life, I think, but definitely by his late career he was making his own decisions.

You know, maybe these people who are trying to see innocent and passive George should stan Robert Carr instead...?

[gamerism]

Mr. Gamer(ism):

Would you say that you go looking for inspo or does inspiration find you?

Also umm, when you think of a gifset you're really!! proud of, what's the first that comes to mind?...This may or may not be an opportunity to show off your faves and all.

(of course, every single one is very worthy and you should be proud of them all, but still!)

tysm for the ask! (adding a readmore bcs i decided to add some of the gifs im taking abt)

Inspiration usually finds me (especially for a lot of the gifsets im abt to talk abt). But occasionally I'll go looking for things. But depending on the medium we're talking about I'm kinda hesitant. (Poetry, for instance, is hard to look for inspiration for. Where as gifsets not so much.)

I do actually have a set that always comes to mind first. It has kind of changed over the years as I continue to improve but current it's definitely this one!

I'm really happy with the colouring and the written part of this one is my own prose.

I aaaam totally gonna mention a few others. lol.

Two general honourable mentions are definitely from my pathologic blog. I've known about the tiled multi-gif thing since like, 2014, and have always thought it was so so cool, so learning how to do that for this gifset was really exciting!!

The crossfade is so fun. I gotta do this again.

And the theme of this one using quotes from the game about fate kinda just came together in my head like a webweave.

I was finally able to use some really cool and creative photoshop effects I've known abt for ages for it.

Anyways I've worked hard on getting better at text on gifs this year and both this set and this one really show that, I think!

(When I did the yakuza 3 one I immediately went "wait how did I do that, iv totally got use this again". It kinda reminds me of 80s horror movie text)

Lastly I'll just quickly mention this set as well because I still really love how colourful it is. And I've been working hard on my colouring too, since I don't use other people's psds off the internet, I just open some layers and start trying things. (also rip me never finishing this series of sets 💀)

Anyways thank u for indulging me stretching ur question out. I do think a lot about how I've improved and sets I'm proud of and such so guess I've been kinda bursting to talk about it.

[dollsahoy]

I'm seeing that Antique Smiling Rice Guy picture again

not gonna dig out the research, but that very probably wasn't some Country Rube who Didn't Know Any Better, as the one unsupported comment claims, that was very probably a professional studio portrait made as a joke--I mean, it very definitely was a professional studio portrait that was very definitely mass produced and sold as a novelty (this was really common around 1900, but I absolutely cannot find the article that talked about how that practice became forgotten so quickly that people instead assumed that every photograph their relatives had was a photograph that their relatives had themselves taken of an event they themselves witnessed)

I wasn't able to determine if it was a meant for the Chinese market, or if it was made to appeal to westerners visiting China, especially since trying to look it up results in so many sites quoting that unsourced Tumblr comment

All that is absolutely known about that picture is that someone went on a trip to China and brought one copy back, which is now in the American Museum of Natural History https://lbry-web-007.amnh.org/digital/index.php/items/show/29058 and another copy of it appeared in a book, on the website of the University of Bristol, called Shanghai with the caption "Good Appetite" https://hpcbristol.net/visual/bk05-12

Any other information about who he was or what he knew is pure speculation, including my deep discomfort brought on by the idea that it could have been created as a racist "joke"

[wosofanstuff]

You excited to be going back home? And what are you gonna miss the most about Australia?

That sounds good, fingers crossed that it‘ll work out for you this time🤞

You wanna hear a funny story? My next internship which starts next week, gave me a call yesterday and said something came up and I can‘t do it there😃

So now I had to find an alternative on extremely short notice, bit lucky for me, the Internship i did before my current one were pretty happy with my work there and said I could do it there if I wanted to. So I gave the Boss there a call and asked if I could do it there, and he told me he had to clear it with HR but they‘d be happy to have me again. So I sent him over the details and today I got the confirmation that I could do it there. Also happy about it because I don‘t have to introduce myself all over again and already know how they work so that’s hopefully gonna help me get settled quickly.

The first part sounds good, the second part a little crazy, but I get it😂

My current internship is, and to quote a classmate of mine: „Like a bad sitcom“

Like, the people that work there are all old, they all don‘t want to work anymore, and they all hate each other. Like none of them really give a fuck anymore besides their boss. She’s annoying and everybody hates her the most, like she takes 20 minutes to do 1 x-ray that even the 2. semesters would be able to do in 10 minutes. Like, that woman is just really aggravating. And I‘m saying that😭. I haven‘t even worked with her for more than a day and I don‘t get annoyed that easily.

I don‘t have much to do today. Probably gonna clean and wash some clothes, as well as cook. I went to the AC/DC concert last night, and while it was really cool it was kind of a fever dream.

Also my friends took a day of vacation for the concert but I couldn‘t cause we‘re not allowed to during two week internships, so I had to call in sick, what did my friends do? They were talking to one of our teachers and told her that we were going to the concert, so I really hope that doesn’t backfire and called in sick today as well to make sure it wasn‘t to suspicious🤪

What kind of question is that even?

Of course I‘m gonna be at the game, I am so freaking hyped💚🐺

Actually I‘m getting a season ticket as my birthday gift😁

Anyway, that got kind of long🤪

Have a good one

🩻

Don’t know to be honest it feels weird like all the people I meet here are few I will probs never see again and a good bunch only in a couple of years. But then obviously with moving and starting studying I’m kinda excited for that as well… so definitely mixed feelings

Dang that must have been so annoying, but definitely glad you found a solution and can save the awkward introduction part, it’s always the worst in a new place

Wait the place you go to now is not the same you as your current one right??? Because that sounds like one of those weird old doctor sitcoms

Dude not your friend 😭

But hope it did not backfire, but otherwise the concert was worth it right? 😂

Had to make sure. I’m so confused by the season ticket like they told me I paid two weeks before it actually came out of my account and like it’s gonna be a physical card I assume but when is it coming?!? 🙃

But definitely best birthday gift, did you get a good seat?

You too

[allylikethecat]

TALK SHOP TUESDAY!!!

how has your day been??

- i have no complaints my day was slow but that’s always a good thing at my job haha, i recently got on the poppi train and they’re pretty good! have you tried any?

i gasped when i saw you posted two fics today!! not taking credit for the idea but….. i did say i was feeling a double drop not too long ago didn’t i? hehe but no, thank you for doing that! i know you like letting each fic get its own moment and i still think they will this week. todays ducklings update had me “😯” im super excited to see where matty went and if he and george will properly talk. i keep wondering if it’s gonna be a girl or boy!!!! Ducklings has quickly become one of my favs and i love george povs!

talk shop tuesday!

- do you prefer reading and/or writing happy endings? or are unresolved and/or sad endings an option for you?

- also— since we know atkh matty has a blue razz vape i was wondering how that little tidbit even became a thing in the first place, do you vape? have you vaped? how did you decide the flavor???

Hello My Dearest Smoothie Anon, I got your other ask saying you forgot to sign this one lol

Happy Talk Shop Tuesday!!

I can't complain about my day - it was very hot out but I had a nice little hack with Pop, the Bruins actually won which is incredible so now my anxiety has to go through a game SIX, and work was good! My boss told me I was great and doing a good job which always makes a person feel nice lol I'm happy to hear you had a good day as well!! I'm not a huge Poppi fan even though all my friends are - give me my Diet Coke and chemicals 😂

Hehe I know I said I wasn't going to do a double drop... but the moment felt right! (Not going to lie I was worried people were going to be disappointed by the On a Friday update and I wanted to be able to whip out Ducklings and be like NEVER MIND THEN SURPRISE)

Hehe I'm also very excited for the next few Ducklings chapters... This is Fictional!Matty so he's going to make it even worse before it gets better 😈 I'm not 100% certain it's going to be a boy or a girl yet- but I am leaning towards a girl, they just have girl parent energy in my opinion lol

NOW FOR TALK SHOP TUESDAY:

I prefer to read happy endings, I hate sad endings. I was so upset after I finished the Idea of You book because of the ending. I do however enjoy writing those more open ended almost bitter sweet endings because creatively I find them more interesting to craft than just a straight up happy ending. BUT I feel bad not giving people a happy ending so I will usually be doing that lol

LOL The blue razz vape 😂 I do not vape, I am old, I am from the generation where "we smoked cigarettes like adults" <- direct quote from a friend of mine lol but even then I only really ever smoked socially while drinking in college. I have however tried various younger friend's vapes (also while drunk) and hated it every time, I'm not sure why I keep doing it and expecting a different result 😂 HOWEVER in terms of Fictional!Matty, smoking is such a thing for IRL Matty and therefore the different variations of Fictional!Matty, however, I cannot imagine that Fictional!Jack or Fictional!Jamie would allow that kind of FIRE HAZARD around the horses, like hay is already so combustable! The amount of No Smoking sighs covering our barn property is just like truly impressive. Not to say that horse people DON'T smoke, but in this fictional universe Fictional!Matty has been shamed out of it for fire hazard reasons and also because I just think the idea of him trying to hid his fucking blue raspberry vape is hilarious - fictional!George also thinks it's hilarious because what even IS a blue raspberry really?!

Thank you SO MUCH for being so wonderful and for sending me this super fun ask!! I'm so happy that you enjoyed the updates and that you were willing to indulge me in Talk Shop Tuesday! I hope you had a fantastic Tuesday and that you have a great rest of your week!

❤️Ally

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send me a ✐ for a random sentence starter from my muse (1-1500) — tw: profanity, mild nsfw, long list

generator here quotes compiled from here inspired by

feel free to change to fit your preferences as need.

❨1❩ ❛ They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. ❜
 ❨2❩ ❛ Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters. ❜ ❨3❩ ❛ I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. ❜ ❨4❩ ❛ Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. ❜ ❨5❩ ❛ The world's a hard place. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate you and me, but it doesn't love us, either. ❜ ❨6❩ ❛ The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. ❜ ❨7❩ ❛ Pull your act together and just go on. ❜ ❨8❩ ❛ I had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there is nothing physically wrong. I hurt all the time. ❜ ❨9❩ ❛ Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ❜ ❨10❩ ❛ Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford? ❜ ❨11❩ ❛ Truth comes out. In the end it always comes out. ❜ ❨12❩ ❛ Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are. ❜ ❨13❩ ❛ No matter where you go, the same asshole gets off the plane. ❜ ❨14❩ ❛ We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives. ❜ ❨15❩ ❛ That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. ❜ ❨16❩ ❛ Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. ❜ ❨17❩ ❛ God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you. ❜ ❨18❩ ❛ Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you. ❜ ❨19❩ ❛ How many times, over how many years, have I—a grown adult—asked for the mercy of another chance? ❜ ❨20❩ ❛ I was suddenly so sick of myself, so revolted. ❜ ❨21❩ ❛ You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. ❜ ❨22❩ ❛ But those pieces, they’ll never fit just the same way again. Never in this world. ❜ ❨23❩ ❛ Dying is a part of living. You have to keep tuning in to that if you expect to be a whole person. ❜ ❨24❩ ❛ Officious little prick. ❜ ❨25❩ ❛ I’ve been sleepwalking again, my dear. — The plants are moving under the rug. ❜ ❨26❩ ❛ How I wish you were fear. ❜ ❨27❩ ❛ But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. ❜ ❨28❩ ❛ All we have is time, you know. An eternity of time. Or shall we end it? Might as well. After all, we're missing the party. ❜ ❨29❩ ❛ We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. ❜ ❨30❩ ❛ The way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. ❜ ❨31❩ ❛ Got to be regular if you want to be happy. ❜ ❨32❩ ❛ But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. ❜ ❨33❩ ❛ He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. ❜ ❨34❩ ❛ Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. ❜ ❨35❩ ❛ It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness.  ❜ ❨36❩ ❛ If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. ❜ ❨37❩ ❛ I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. ❜ ❨38❩ ❛ I cannot bear this world a moment longer. ❜ ❨39❩ ❛ I have a better idea. I will do as I please. ❜ ❨40❩ ❛ All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. ❜ ❨41❩ ❛ You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. ❜ ❨42❩ ❛ When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. ❜ ❨43❩ ❛ When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. ❜ ❨44❩ ❛ But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. ❜ ❨45❩ ❛ I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ❜ ❨46❩ ❛ This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. ❜ ❨47❩ ❛ You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. ❜ ❨48❩ ❛ Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. ❜ ❨49❩ ❛ If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. ❜ ❨50❩ ❛ You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. ❜ ❨51❩ ❛ Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. ❜ ❨52❩ ❛ I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape I’ve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. ❜ ❨53❩ ❛ I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. ❜ ❨54❩ ❛ Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. ❜ ❨55❩ ❛ Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. ❜ ❨56❩ ❛ The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ❜ ❨57❩ ❛ My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ❜ ❨58❩ ❛ This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ❜ ❨59❩ ❛ Witches are not so delicate. ❜ ❨60❩ ❛ Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. ❜ ❨61❩ ❛ I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. ❜ ❨62❩ ❛ There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. ❜ ❨63❩ ❛ The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. ❜ ❨64❩ ❛ Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ❜ ❨65❩ ❛ Now it's a whisper from the past. ❜ ❨66❩ ❛ But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. ❜ ❨67❩ ❛ Why is it always such a surprise? The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush. ❜ ❨68❩ ❛ Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it. ❜ ❨69❩ ❛ What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?  ❜ ❨70❩ ❛ I have scars, inside me. ❜ ❨71❩ ❛ The dead are not entirely dead but are alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. ❜ ❨72❩ ❛ However dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void. ❜ ❨73❩ ❛ Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. ❜ ❨74❩ ❛ It is another way of saying tough luck. To people you aren’t going to help out. ❜ ❨75❩ ❛ I'm waiting, far off in the future. ❜ ❨76❩ ❛ The only sure camouflage is unpredictability. ❜ ❨77❩ ❛ There are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. ❜ ❨78❩ ❛ First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. ❜ ❨79❩ ❛ I long to swim in liquid moonlight. ❜ ❨80❩ ❛ That's right, I don’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. ❜ ❨81❩ ❛ The part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. ❜ ❨82❩ ❛ Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew. ❜ ❨83❩ ❛ Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. ❜ ❨84❩ ❛ At last. It's you. ❜ ❨85❩ ❛ No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish. ❜ ❨86❩ ❛ Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful. ❜ ❨87❩ ❛ How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. ❜ ❨88❩ ❛ Is it disapproval or extreme lust? With some men it’s hard to tell the difference. ❜ ❨89❩ ❛ My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died. ❜ ❨90❩ ❛ Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. ❜ ❨91❩ ❛ Everything digests, and is digested. ❜ ❨92❩ ❛ My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft. ❜ ❨93❩ ❛ You cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜ ❨94❩ ❛ I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. ❜ ❨95❩ ❛ And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living. ❜ ❨96❩ ❛ The world is a beautiful place. Don’t forget that. And don’t miss it. ❜ ❨97❩ ❛ I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. ❜ ❨98❩ ❛ Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. ❜ ❨99❩ ❛ It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ❜ ❨100❩ ❛ We’re interpreters. We’re translators. ❜ ❨101❩ ❛ You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way. ❜ ❨102❩ ❛ No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that. ❜ ❨103❩ ❛ We lived in monochrome those nights. ❜ ❨104❩ ❛ You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? ❜ ❨105❩ ❛ Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? ❜ ❨106❩ ❛ I stand here in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing. ❜ ❨107❩ ❛ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. ❜ ❨108❩ ❛ Not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye. ❜ ❨109❩ ❛ Selective emotional detachment. ❜ ❨110❩ ❛ Not for me, or at least not today. ❜ ❨111❩ ❛ Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene. ❜ ❨112❩ ❛ Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that? ❜ ❨113❩ ❛ Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon. ❜ ❨114❩ ❛ The dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone. ❜ ❨115❩ ❛ My shadow stretches along the carpet, as though trying to detach itself from me. ❜ ❨116❩ ❛ It curls away from me, like blood in water. ❜ ❨117❩ ❛ It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind. ❜ ❨118❩ ❛ But snow I never want to feel again. ❜ ❨119❩ ❛ Through adversity to the stars. ❜ ❨120❩ ❛ No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out. ❜ ❨121❩ ❛ Thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. ❜ ❨122❩ ❛ The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you. ❜ ❨123❩ ❛ Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. ❜ ❨124❩ ❛ Women get consumed. ❜ ❨125❩ ❛ Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them. ❜ ❨126❩ ❛ A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. ❜ ❨127❩ ❛ Safer to be feared than loved. ❜ ❨128❩ ❛ I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. ❜ ❨129❩ ❛ It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wish I could stop trying. ❜ ❨130❩ ❛ I always feel sad for the girl that I was. ❜ ❨131❩ ❛ Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. ❜ ❨132❩ ❛ How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. ❜ ❨133❩ ❛ See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. ❜ ❨134❩ ❛ Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ❜ ❨135❩ ❛ To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ❜ ❨136❩ ❛ I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. ❜ ❨137❩ ❛ I'm tired of dying. ❜ ❨138❩ ❛ What if you hurt because it feels so good? ❜ ❨139❩ ❛ How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. ❜ ❨140❩ ❛ Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait? ❜ ❨141❩ ❛ Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own. ❜ ❨142❩ ❛ Everyone has their own version of a memory. ❜ ❨143❩ ❛ Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon? ❜ ❨144❩ ❛ My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past. ❜ ❨145❩ ❛ Do what I want; I might like you. ❜ ❨146❩ ❛ I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been. ❜ ❨147❩ ❛ She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. ❜ ❨148❩ ❛ The sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. ❜ ❨149❩ ❛ It infects you. It ruined me. ❜ ❨150❩ ❛ Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects. ❜ ❨151❩ ❛ Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? ❜ ❨152❩ ❛ We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ❜ ❨153❩ ❛ Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. ❜ ❨154❩ ❛ The strongest of all warriors are these two — time and patience. ❜ ❨155❩ ❛ If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. ❜ ❨156❩ ❛ There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. ❜ ❨157❩ ❛ The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness. ❜ ❨158❩ ❛ Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. ❜ ❨159❩ ❛ It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. ❜ ❨160❩ ❛ You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. ❜ ❨161❩ ❛ If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. ❜ ❨162❩ ❛ We are asleep until we fall in love! ❜ ❨163❩ ❛ I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. ❜ ❨164❩ ❛ Everything I know, I know because of love. ❜ ❨165❩ ❛ Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. ❜ ❨166❩ ❛ If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ❜ ❨167❩ ❛ Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. ❜ ❨168❩ ❛ How can one be well...when one suffers morally? ❜ ❨169❩ ❛ Kings are the slaves of history. ❜ ❨170❩ ❛ God is the same everywhere. ❜ ❨171❩ ❛ Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. ❜ ❨172❩ ❛ One must be cunning and wicked in this world. ❜ ❨173❩ ❛ We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. ❜ ❨174❩ ❛ When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! ❜ ❨175❩ ❛ For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed? ❜ ❨176❩ ❛ He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. ❜ ❨177❩ ❛ Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. ❜ ❨178❩ ❛ Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. ❜ ❨179❩ ❛ The distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. ❜ ❨180❩ ❛ How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ❜ ❨181❩ ❛ The wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ❜ ❨182❩ ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜ ❨183❩ ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜ ❨184❩ ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜ ❨185❩ ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜ ❨186❩ ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜ ❨187❩ ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜ ❨188❩ ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜ ❨189❩ ❛ He died alone. It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜ ❨190❩ ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜ ❨191❩ ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜ ❨192❩ ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜ ❨193❩ ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜ ❨194❩ ❛ If not for death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜ ❨195❩ ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜ ❨196❩ ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜ ❨197❩ ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜ ❨198❩ ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜ ❨199❩ ❛ I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜ ❨200❩ ❛ You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜ ❨201❩ ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜ ❨202❩ ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜ ❨203❩ ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜ ❨204❩ ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜ ❨205❩ ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜ ❨206❩ ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜ ❨207❩ ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜ ❨208❩ ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜ ❨209❩ ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜ ❨210❩ ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜ ❨211❩ ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜ ❨212❩ ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜ ❨213❩ ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜ ❨214❩ ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜ ❨215❩ ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜ ❨216❩ ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜ ❨217❩ ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜ ❨218❩ ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜ ❨219❩ ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜ ❨220❩ ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜ ❨221❩ ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜ ❨222❩ ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜ ❨223❩ ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜ ❨224❩ ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜ ❨225❩ ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜ ❨226❩ ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜ ❨227❩ ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜ ❨228❩ ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜ ❨229❩ ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜ ❨230❩ ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜ ❨231❩ ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜ ❨232❩ ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜ ❨233❩ ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜ ❨234❩ ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜ ❨235❩ ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜ ❨236❩ ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜ ❨237❩ ❛ The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜ ❨238❩ ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜ ❨239❩ ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜ ❨240❩ ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜ ❨241❩ ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜ ❨242❩ ❛ And, oh, God . . . how frequently I weep! ❜ ❨243❩ ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜ ❨244❩ ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜ ❨245❩ ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜ ❨246❩ ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜ ❨247❩ ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜ ❨248❩ ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜ ❨249❩ ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜ ❨250❩ ❛ Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜ ❨251❩ ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜ ❨252❩ ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜ ❨253❩ ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜ ❨254❩ ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜ ❨255❩ ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right. ❜ ❨256❩ ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜ ❨257❩ ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜ ❨258❩ ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜ ❨259❩ ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜ ❨260❩ ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜ ❨261❩ ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜ ❨262❩ ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜ ❨263❩ ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜ ❨264❩ ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜ ❨265❩ ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜ ❨266❩ ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜ ❨267❩ ❛ I'm beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜ ❨268❩ ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜ ❨269❩ ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜ ❨270❩ ❛ If you see a ghost, you say "hello". ❜ ❨271❩ ❛ The war is not over. ❜ ❨272❩ ❛ You're not going. You left us once already. ❜ ❨273❩ ❛ You can’t go! ❜ ❨274❩ ❛ I loved you, but that wasn't enough, was it? ❜ ❨275❩ ❛ If you're dead, then leave me in peace. ❜ ❨276❩ ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜ ❨277❩ ❛ I won't ask for forgiveness for something I didn't do! ❜ ❨278❩ ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜ ❨279❩ ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜ ❨280❩ ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜ ❨281❩ ❛ They're everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜ ❨282❩ ❛ You're always teasing me, and telling lies. I'm sick of it. ❜ ❨283❩ ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we'll sense them. Other times, we won't. ❜ ❨284❩ ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. ❜ ❨285❩ ❛ You listen to me. I've seen them too. ❜ ❨286❩ ❛ You'll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be... changes. ❜ ❨287❩ ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn't you stay like the others did? ❜ ❨288❩ ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜ ❨289❩ ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜ ❨290❩ ❛ I wasn't expecting you so soon. ❜ ❨291❩ ❛ What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜ ❨292❩ ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜ ❨293❩ ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜ ❨294❩ ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜ ❨295❩ ❛ Whatever you do, don't open the curtains. ❜ ❨296❩ ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜ ❨297❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜ ❨298❩ ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨299❩ ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜ ❨300❩ ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨301❩ ❛ Love does not exist, it's like religion, made to control you. ❜ ❨302❩ ❛ After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. ❜ ❨303❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨304❩ ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜ ❨305❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜ ❨306❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜ ❨307❩ ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜ ❨308❩ ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜ ❨309❩ ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜ ❨310❩ ❛ It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜ ❨311❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨312❩ ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there's no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜ ❨313❩ ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜ ❨314❩ ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜ ❨315❩ ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜ ❨316❩ ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜ ❨317❩ ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜ ❨318❩ ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜ ❨319❩ ❛ We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜ ❨320❩ ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜ ❨321❩ ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜ ❨322❩ ❛ Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. ❜ ❨323❩ ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜ ❨324❩ ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜ ❨325❩ ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜ ❨326❩ ❛ Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜ ❨327❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨328❩ ❛ Maybe that's what love is: it's being pissed off. ❜ ❨329❩ ❛ You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. ❜ ❨330❩ ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜ ❨331❩ ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜ ❨332❩ ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜ ❨333❩ ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜ ❨334❩ ❛ We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜ ❨335❩ ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜ ❨336❩ ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜ ❨337❩ ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜ ❨338❩ ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜ ❨339❩ ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜ ❨340❩ ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜ ❨341❩ ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜ ❨342❩ ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜ ❨343❩ ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody -- a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜ ❨344❩ ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜ ❨345❩ ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜ ❨346❩ ❛ I'm fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜ ❨347❩ ❛ Because if you can't wish, why bother? ❜ ❨348❩ ❛ It's better to hope than mope! ��� ❨349❩ ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜ ❨350❩ ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜ ❨351❩ ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜ ❨352❩ ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜ ❨353❩ ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜ ❨354❩ ❛ ‘Why can't I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜ ❨355❩ ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜ ❨356❩ ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜ ❨357❩ ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜ ❨358❩ ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜ ❨359❩ ❛ In the end, we'll all become stories. ❜ ❨360❩ ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜ ❨361❩ ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. ❜ ❨362❩ ❛ If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜ ❨363❩ ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜ ❨364❩ ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been. ❜ ❨365❩ ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜ ❨366❩ ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜ ❨367❩ ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜ ❨368❩ ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜ ❨369❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜ ❨370❩ ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜ ❨371❩ ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜ ❨372❩ ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜ ❨373❩ ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜ ❨374❩ ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜ ❨375❩ ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜ ❨376❩ ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜ ❨377❩ ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜ ❨378❩ ❛ Isn't the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜ ❨379❩ ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. ❜ ❨380❩ ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜ ❨381❩ ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜ ❨382❩ ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜ ❨383❩ ❛ But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling. ❜ ❨384❩ ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜ ❨385❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨386❩ ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜ ❨387❩ ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜ ❨388❩ ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜ ❨389❩ ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜ ❨390❩ ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜ ❨391❩ ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜ ❨392❩ ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜ ❨393❩ ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜ ❨394❩ ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜ ❨395❩ ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜ ❨396❩ ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜ ❨397❩ ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜ ❨398❩ ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜ ❨399❩ ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜ ❨400❩ ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜ ❨401❩ ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜ ❨402❩ ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜ ❨403❩ ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜ ❨404❩ ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜ ❨405❩ ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜ ❨406❩ ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜ ❨407❩ ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜ ❨408❩ ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜ ❨409❩ ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜ ❨410❩ ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜ ❨411❩ ❛ Nevermore. ❜ ❨412❩ ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜ ❨413❩ ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜ ❨414❩ ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜ ❨415❩ ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜ ❨416❩ ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜ ❨417❩ ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜ ❨418❩ ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜ ❨419❩ ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜ ❨420❩ ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜ ❨421❩ ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜ ❨422❩ ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜ ❨423❩ ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜ ❨424❩ ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜ ❨425❩ ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜ ❨426❩ ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜ ❨427❩ ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜ ❨428❩ ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜ ❨429❩ ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜ ❨430❩ ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜ ❨431❩ ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜ ❨432❩ ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜ ❨433❩ ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜ ❨434❩ ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜ ❨435❩ ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜ ❨436❩ ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜ ❨437❩ ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜ ❨438❩ ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜ ❨439❩ ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜ ❨440❩ ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜ ❨441❩ ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜ ❨442❩ ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜ ❨443❩ ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜ ❨444❩ ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜ ❨445❩ ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜ ❨446❩ ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜ ❨447❩ ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'. ❜ ❨448❩ ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜ ❨449❩ ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜ ❨450❩ ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜ ❨451❩ ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜ ❨452❩ ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜ ❨453❩ ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜ ❨454❩ ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜ ❨455❩ ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜ ❨456❩ ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe ❨457❩ that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie ❨458❩ asleep. ❜ ❨459❩ ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜ ❨460❩ ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜ ❨461❩ ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜ ❨462❩ ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜ ❨463❩ ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜ ❨464❩ ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜ ❨465❩ ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜ ❨466❩ ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜ ❨467❩ ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜ ❨468❩ ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜ ❨469❩ ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜ ❨470❩ ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜ ❨471❩ ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜ ❨472❩ ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜ ❨473❩ ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜ ❨474❩ ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜ ❨475❩ ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜ ❨476❩ ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜ ❨477❩ ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜ ❨478❩ ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜ ❨479❩ ❛ If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged. ❜ ❨480❩ ❛ When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass. ❜ ❨481❩ ❛ Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word; - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase.  ❜ ❨482❩ ❛ Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. ❜ ❨483❩ ❛ If the world treats you well, you come to believe you are deserving of it. ❜ ❨484❩ ❛ If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go. ❜ ❨485❩ ❛ It’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ❜ ❨486❩ ❛ There is no fool like an educated fool. ❜ ❨487❩ ❛ There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ❜ ❨488❩ ❛ I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. ❜ ❨489❩ ❛ Underneath it all is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. ❜ ❨490❩ ❛ And underneath all that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.  ❜ ❨491❩ ❛ The small details of life often hide a great significance. ❜ ❨492❩ ❛ Guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you. ❜ ❨493❩ ❛ I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once? ❜ ❨494❩ ❛ It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between. ❜ ❨495❩ ❛ Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam. ❜ ❨496❩ ❛ I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. ❜ ❨497❩ ❛ I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely. ❜ ❨498❩ ❛ If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one. ❜ ❨499❩ ❛ It’s as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent. ❜ ❨500❩ ❛ Today you wear your habitual expression of strained anxiety; you smell of violets. ❜ ❨501❩ ❛ Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude. ❜ ❨502❩ ❛ I wonder what would become of me, and comfort myself that in a hundred years I will be dead and at peace. ❜ ❨503❩ ❛ For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer. ❜ ❨504❩ ❛ There is a “do this” or “do that” with God, but not any “because”. ❜ ❨505❩ ❛ If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. ❜ ❨506❩ ❛ They say, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. ❜ ❨507❩ ❛ I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out. ❜ ❨508❩ ❛ I see what you’re after. You are a collector. You think all you have to do is give me an apple, and then you can collect me. ❜ ❨509❩ ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜ ❨510❩ ❛ Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜ ❨511❩ ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜ ❨512❩ ❛ After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜ ❨513❩ ❛ There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive. ❜ ❨514❩ ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜ ❨515❩ ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜ ❨516❩ ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜ ❨517❩ ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜ ❨518❩ ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜ ❨519❩ ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜ ❨520❩ ❛ “I'll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I'll make you me.” ❜ ❨521❩ ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜ ❨522❩ ❛ Expectation isn't the same as desire. ❜ ❨523❩ ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜ ❨524❩ ❛ Maybe there aren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜ ❨525❩ ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜ ❨526❩ ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜ ❨527❩ ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜ ❨528❩ ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It's not good for you. ❜ ❨529❩ ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜ ❨530❩ ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜ ❨531❩ ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜ ❨532❩ ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜ ❨533❩ ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜ ❨534❩ ❛ Don't be so fucking sentimental. ❜ ❨535❩ ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜ ❨536❩ ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜ ❨537❩ ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜ ❨538❩ ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜ ❨539❩ ❛ You will hear thunder and remember me. ❜ ❨540❩ ❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜ ❨541❩ ❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜ ❨542❩ ❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜ ❨543❩ ❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else's mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜ ❨544❩ ❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜ ❨545❩ ❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜ ❨546❩ ❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜ ❨547❩ ❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜ ❨548❩ ❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜ ❨549❩ ❛ You do not know just what you've been forgiven. ❜ ❨550❩ ❛ I need to slaughter my memory.  ❜ ❨551❩ ❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜ ❨552❩ ❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜ ❨553❩ ❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜ ❨554❩ ❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜ ❨555❩ ❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜ ❨556❩ ❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜ ❨557❩ ❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜ ❨558❩ ❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜ ❨559❩ ❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜ ❨560❩ ❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜ ❨561❩ ❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜ ❨562❩ ❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜ ❨563❩ ❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜ ❨564❩ ❛ Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. ❜ ❨565❩ ❛ I've got no more tears or explanations. ❜ ❨566❩ ❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜ ❨567❩ ❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜ ❨568❩ ❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜ ❨569❩ ❛ I was not a lovable child, and I've grown into a deeply unlovable adult. ❜ ❨570❩ ❛ The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ❜ ❨571❩ ❛ I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark. ❜ ❨572❩ ❛ I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. ❜ ❨573❩ ❛ I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way. ❜ ❨574❩ ❛ I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen. But the meanness usually wins out. ❜ ❨575❩ ❛ I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ❜ ❨576❩ ❛ Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it. ❜ ❨577❩ ❛ Coffee goes great with sudden death. ❜ ❨578❩ ❛ I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite. ❜ ❨579❩ ❛ “Smile, it can't be that bad!” Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad. ❜ ❨580❩ ❛ Everything bad in the world already did happen. ❜ ❨581❩ ❛ You’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? ❜ ❨582❩ ❛ Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. ❜ ❨583❩ ❛ Homesick for a place I've never been. ❜ ❨584❩ ❛ Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. ❜ ❨585❩ ❛ It is always consoling to think of suicide. It's what gets one through many a bad night. ❜ ❨586❩ ❛ Do you understand this is serious? ❜ ❨587❩ ❛ Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with. ❜ ❨588❩ ❛ How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ❜ ❨589❩ ❛ Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs. ❜ ❨590❩ ❛ We have the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia. ❜ ❨591❩ ❛ I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. ❜ ❨592❩ ❛ The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it’s near. Midtongue. ❜ ❨593❩ ❛ Nothing to it but to do it. ❜ ❨594❩ ❛ There are a lot of people who deserve a lesson, deserve to really understand, that nothing comes easy, that most things are going to go sour. ❜ ❨595❩ ❛ If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas. ❜ ❨596❩ ❛ Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ❜ ❨597❩ ❛ What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? ❜ ❨598❩ ❛ That mean old bitch across the street bit it. ❜ ❨599❩ ❛ Survival is a talent. ❜ ❨600❩ ❛ Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. ❜ ❨601❩ ❛ Who has the courage to burn themselves? ❜ ❨602❩ ❛ Is insanity just a matter of dropping the act? ❜ ❨603❩ ❛ Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? ❜ ❨604❩ ❛ You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. ❜ ❨605❩ ❛ When I am supposed to be awake, I am asleep; when I am supposed to speak, I am silent. When a pleasure offers itself to me, I avoid it. ❜ ❨606❩ ❛ There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. ❜ ❨607❩ ❛ In a strange way we are free. We've reached the end of the line. We have nothing more to lose. ❜ ❨608❩ ❛ The world won’t stop because we aren’t in it anymore. ❜ ❨609❩ ❛ I can't answer the real question. All I can tell you is, it's easy. ❜ ❨610❩ ❛ I am lighter, airier than I’ve been in years. ❜ ❨611❩ ❛ I am not dead, yet something in me definitely is. ❜ ❨612❩ ❛ You meant that as an insult but I am taking it as a compliment. ❜ ❨613❩ ❛ What life can recover from that? ❜ ❨614❩ ❛ It's a fairly accurate portrait of me. It's accurate but it isn't profound. ❜ ❨615❩ ❛ Pull yourself together! There's nothing wrong with you. ❜ ❨616❩ ❛ It's quiet. It's like― I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff. ❜ ❨617❩ ❛ Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ❜ ❨618❩ ❛ I lost him. I did it on purpose. ❜ ❨619❩ ❛ It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there. ❜ ❨620❩ ❛ Reality is getting too dense. ❜ ❨621❩ ❛ I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favourite word. ❜ ❨622❩ ❛ I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions you raise. ❜ ❨623❩ ❛ A spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. ❜ ❨624❩ ❛ Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ❜ ❨625❩ ❛ A thought is a hard thing to control. ❜ ❨626❩ ❛ Life demands skills I don’t have. ❜ ❨627❩ ❛ Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful. Most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them. ❜ ❨628❩ ❛ It never stops, even at night, it’s my lullaby. ❜ ❨629❩ ❛ Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. ❜ ❨630❩ ❛ This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes. ❜ ❨631❩ ❛ I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. ❜ ❨632❩ ❛ Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. ❜ ❨633❩ ❛ Hatred is easier. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love. ❜ ❨634❩ ❛ Potential has a shelf life. ❜ ❨635❩ ❛ Don’t move. Stay like that, let me have that. ❜ ❨636❩ ❛ I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. ❜ ❨637❩ ❛ Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ❜ ❨638❩ ❛ It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. ❜ ❨639❩ ❛ We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. ❜ ❨640❩ ❛ This is what I miss, not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. ❜ ❨641❩ ❛ I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ❜ ❨642❩ ❛ You are amazing. Amazing and agonising and almost lethal. ❜ ❨643❩ ❛ In my dreams of this city I am always lost. ❜ ❨644❩ ❛ I don't know where these feelings have come from, I don’t know what I've done. ❜ ❨645❩ ❛ I am not the centre of your story, you are.  ❜ ❨646❩ ❛ I’m mad because you’re an asshole. ❜ ❨647❩ ❛ It's enormously pleasing to me, walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. ❜ ❨648❩ ❛ There is never only one of anyone. ❜ ❨649❩ ❛ I can't do this without feeling I'm acting. ❜ ❨650❩ ❛ I am prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ❜ ❨651❩ ❛ I’m losing my appetite for strangers. ❜ ❨652❩ ❛ You wear your cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. You want it all. ❜ ❨653❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people weakens you. You are forced to understand their reasons for doing things. ❜ ❨654❩ ❛ I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. ❜ ❨655❩ ❛ Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. ❜ ❨656❩ ❛ Whoever cares the most will lose. ❜ ❨657❩ ❛ Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defences.  ❜ ❨658❩ ❛ Time has gone on without you. ❜ ❨659❩ ❛ Don't let the bastards grind you down. ❜ ❨660❩ ❛ Who can remember pain, once it’s over? Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ❜ ❨661❩ ❛ Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. ❜ ❨662❩ ❛ There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. ❜ ❨663❩ ❛ Remember that forgiveness too is a power. ❜ ❨664❩ ❛ I am not your justification for existence. ❜ ❨665❩ ❛ I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. ❜ ❨666❩ ❛ If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ❜ ❨667❩ ❛ All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard. ❜ ❨668❩ ❛ Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ❜ ❨669❩ ❛ I want everything back, the way it was. ❜ ❨670❩ ❛ You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave. ❜ ❨671❩ ❛ Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. ❜ ❨672❩ ❛ To want is to have a weakness. ❜ ❨673❩ ❛ There isn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. ❜ ❨674❩ ❛ The past is a great darkness, filled with echoes. ❜ ❨675❩ ❛ Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. ❜ ❨676❩ ❛ I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light. ❜ ❨677❩ ❛ The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. ❜ ❨678❩ ❛ By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you. ❜ ❨679❩ ❛ Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard. ❜ ❨680❩ ❛ Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. ❜ ❨681❩ ❛ Keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. ❜ ❨682❩ ❛ The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. ❜ ❨683❩ ❛ The world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. ❜ ❨684❩ ❛ Nobody's heart is perfect. ❜ ❨685❩ ❛ One false move and I'm dead. ❜ ❨686❩ ❛ Watch out. I've got my eye on you. ❜ ❨687❩ ❛ Fear is a powerful stimulant. ❜ ❨688❩ ❛ I couldn't afford to lose you. ❜ ❨689❩ ❛ Name one hero who was happy. ---- You can’t. ❜ ❨690❩ ❛ I feel like I could eat the world raw. ❜ ❨691❩ ❛ We are like gods at the dawning of the world. ❜ ❨692❩ ❛ I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ❜ ❨693❩ ❛ There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. ❜ ❨694❩ ❛ You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. ❜ ❨695❩ ❛ He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. ❜ ❨696❩ ❛ Some men gain glory after they die, others fade. ❜ ❨697❩ ❛ I am made of memories. ❜ ❨698❩ ❛ Will you come with me? ❜ ❨699❩ ❛ I wish I had let you all die. ❜ ❨700❩ ❛ It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after. ❜ ❨701❩ ❛ Bury us. Let us be free. ❜ ❨702❩ ❛ Go. He waits for you. ❜ ❨703❩ ❛ Nothing could eclipse the stain of this dirty, mortal mediocrity. ❜ ❨704❩ ❛ I know I have told you of this. ❜ ❨705❩ ❛ I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me. ❜ ❨706❩ ❛ Perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. ❜ ❨707❩ ❛ I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. ❜ ❨708❩ ❛ There is no honour in betraying your friends. ❜ ❨709❩ ❛ There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. ❜ ❨710❩ ❛ Divine blood flows differently. ❜ ❨711❩ ❛ How is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. ❜ ❨712❩ ❛ This is what I will miss, I think. I will kill myself rather than miss it. ❜ ❨713❩ ❛ How long do we have? ❜ ❨714❩ ❛ Do you think we fight hopeless wars? ❜ ❨715❩ ❛ There is no law that gods must be fair. ❜ ❨716❩ ❛ I do not fear ridicule. I never have. ❜ ❨717❩ ❛ You were always better with words than I. ❜ ❨718❩ ❛ Who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? ❜ ❨719❩ ❛ When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. ❜ ❨720❩ ❛ That's how the madness of the world tries to colonise you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. ❜ ❨721❩ ❛ The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear. ❜ ❨722❩ ❛ Silence creates violence. ❜ ❨723❩ ❛ Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough. ❜ ❨724❩ ❛ There are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜ ❨725❩ ❛ Nothing that ever lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. ❜ ❨726❩ ❛ We all live in a kind of continuous dream. ❜ ❨727❩ ❛ You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you. ❜ ❨728❩ ❛ What can you do when your five senses are not enough? ❜ ❨729❩ ❛ We will neither be what we had been nor what we would become once we reach our destination. ❜ ❨730❩ ❛ Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable. ❜ ❨731❩ ❛ When you are too close to the centre of a mystery there is no way to pull back. ❜ ❨732❩ ❛ I long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. ❜ ❨733❩ ❛ I look not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I try to imagine what kind of life lives in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. ❜ ❨734❩ ❛ I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, I think. If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ❜ ❨735❩ ❛ I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. ❜ ❨736❩ ❛ All of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. ❜ ❨737❩ ❛ We don’t have real answers, because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. ❜ ❨738❩ ❛ This part I will do alone. Don’t follow. ❜ ❨739❩ ❛ People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control. ❜ ❨740❩ ❛ Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead? ❜ ❨741❩ ❛ I loved them, but I didn’t need them, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. ❜ ❨742❩ ❛ Places can impress themselves upon me, and I can become part of them with ease. ❜ ❨743❩ ❛ There is no one with me. I am all by myself. ❜ ❨744❩ ❛ Pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic. ❜ ❨745❩ ❛ I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. ❜ ❨746❩ ❛ What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months. ❜ ❨747❩ ❛ Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool. ❜ ❨748❩ ❛ I need to know what’s inside. ❜ ❨749❩ ❛ These aren't decisions. They're impulses ❜ ❨750❩ ❛ What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden pinning, looking up at the sky? ❜ ❨751❩ ❛ If I know what’s happened I can save their life. ❜ ❨752❩ ❛ They either went crazy or something in here killed them. ❜ ❨753❩ ❛ Something is coming through the fence! ❜ ❨754❩ ❛ Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny. ❜ ❨755❩ ❛ People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. ❜ ❨756❩ ❛ Happy endings are still endings. ❜ ❨757❩ ❛ We believe in all sorts of things that aren't true; -- we call it history. ❜ ❨758❩ ❛ Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? ❜ ❨759❩ ❛ In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats. ❜ ❨760❩ ❛ Girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise.  ❜ ❨761❩ ❛ Love makes hunters of us all. ❜ ❨762❩ ❛ There is much to hate in this world and way too much to love. ❜ ❨763❩ ❛ You confuse not speaking with not listening. ❜ ❨764❩ ❛ As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ❜ ❨765❩ ❛ The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say. ❜ ❨766❩ ❛ Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. ❜ ❨767❩ ❛ We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. ❜ ❨768❩ ❛ The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness. ❜ ❨769❩ ❛ I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! ❜ ❨770❩ ❛ Even at the very worst - there is always choice. ❜ ❨771❩ ❛ Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ❜ ❨772❩ ❛ Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the entire universe is changed. ❜ ❨773❩ ❛ That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness. Life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same. ❜ ❨774❩ ❛ I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without. ❜ ❨775❩ ❛ It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new. ❜ ❨776❩ ❛ Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the godfather, never the god. ❜ ❨777❩ ❛ The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew. ❜ ❨778❩ ❛ Evil is an act, not an appetite. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. ❜ ❨779❩ ❛ How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table?  ❜ ❨780❩ ❛ Even God used silence as a strategy. ❜ ❨781❩ ❛ I learned failure early and mastered it. ❜ ❨782❩ ❛ It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all. ❜ ❨783❩ ❛ This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is a very wicked distraction. ❜ ❨784❩ ❛ Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery. ❜ ❨785❩ ❛ Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ❜ ❨786❩ ❛ Such brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. ❜ ❨787❩ ❛ I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can. ❜ ❨788❩ ❛ Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss off, go on, say it, but don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. ❜ ❨789❩ ❛ The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on. ❜ ❨790❩ ❛ One can't make peace with another by force. ❜ ❨791❩ ❛ I am a forgettable leaf on a tree. ❜ ❨792❩ ❛ That's all I want; --- to do no harm. ❜ ❨793❩ ❛ I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is. ❜ ❨794❩ ❛ Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ❜ ❨795❩ ❛ You’re too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to that we manage to endure the burden of the past. ❜ ❨796❩ ❛ Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. You are either born knowing how, or you never know. ❜ ❨797❩ ❛ Whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life. ❜ ❨798❩ ❛ There is no God worth worrying about. ❜ ❨799❩ ❛ The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. ❜ ❨800❩ ❛ Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. ❜ ❨801❩ ❛ Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the very end in itself. ❜ ❨802❩ ❛ Only God knows how much I love you. ❜ ❨803❩ ❛ There is no greater glory than to die for love. ❜ ❨804❩ ❛ Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ❜ ❨805❩ ❛ Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life. ❜ ❨806❩ ❛ Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion. ❜ ❨807❩ ❛ I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century. ❜ ❨808❩ ❛ I want to be myself again, to recover all that I was obliged to give up. ❜ ❨809❩ ❛ The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name. ❜ ❨810❩ ❛ This soup tastes like windows. ❜ ❨811❩ ❛ Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist? ❜ ❨812❩ ❛ One has to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ❜ ❨813❩ ❛ No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ❜ ❨814❩ ❛ My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. ❜ ❨815❩ ❛ That may be the reason he does so many things, so that he will not have to think. ❜ ❨816❩ ❛ Love if it exists, is something separate: another life. ❜ ❨817❩ ❛ Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you. ❜ ❨818❩ ❛ There are things you do only for love. ❜ ❨819❩ ❛ I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die. ❜ ❨820❩ ❛ There is no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age. ❜ ❨821❩ ❛ You treat me as if I were just anybody. ❜ ❨822❩ ❛ The symptoms of love are the same as those of cholera. ❜ ❨823❩ ❛ There is no law, human or divine, that you have not ignored. ❜ ❨824❩ ❛ Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years? ❜ ❨825❩ ❛ Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ❜ ❨826❩ ❛ It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. ❜ ❨827❩ ❛ We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? ❜ ❨828❩ ❛ There must be something, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ❜ ❨829❩ ❛ If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ❜ ❨830❩ ❛ If you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore. ❜ ❨831❩ ❛ You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. ❜ ❨832❩ ❛ It was a pleasure to burn. ❜ ❨833❩ ❛ I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? ❜ ❨834❩ ❛ Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? ❜ ❨835❩ ❛ Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays? ❜ ❨836❩ ❛ Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ❜ ❨837❩ ❛ I don't talk things. I talk the meaning of things. ❜ ❨838❩ ❛ I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. ❜ ❨839❩ ❛ I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. ❜ ❨840❩ ❛ That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. ❜ ❨841❩ ❛ Someday we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. ❜ ❨842❩ ❛ You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. ❜ ❨843❩ ❛ You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. ❜ ❨844❩ ❛ When they give you lined paper, write the other way. ❜ ❨845❩ ❛ The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. ❜ ❨846❩ ❛ We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing. ❜ ❨847❩ ❛ I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago. ❜ ❨848❩ ❛ I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. ❜ ❨849❩ ❛ Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! ❜ ❨850❩ ❛ How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you? ❜ ❨851❩ ❛ It must be right. It seems so right. ❜ ❨852❩ ❛ To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. ❜ ❨853❩ ❛ It's my game. And no one can help me. Not even you. ❜ ❨854❩ ❛ What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. ❜ ❨855❩ ❛ Death is a long process. Your body is just the first part of you that croaks. Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. Your anger and memories must die. Your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope. ❜ ❨856❩ ❛ Help me give up my addiction to hope. ❜ ❨857❩ ❛ Life is short, death is forever. ❜ ❨858❩ ❛ Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break. ❜ ❨859❩ ❛ If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. ❜ ❨860❩ ❛ We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. ❜ ❨861❩ ❛ All the demons of hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. ❜ ❨862❩ ❛ I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful. ❜ ❨863❩ ❛ It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ❜ ❨864❩ ❛ You fucked up. Game over. So just relax. ❜ ❨865❩ ❛ The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ❜ ❨866❩ ❛ If killing you will end my existence as well, be it. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. ❜ ❨867❩ ❛ I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. ❜ ❨868❩ ❛ Dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. ❜ ❨869❩ ❛ Any concept of right versus wrong, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. ❜ ❨870❩ ❛ To prove that I exist I must kill you. ❜ ❨871❩ ❛ I'd say that my life has been a way-too-long case history of chasing rainbows. ❜ ❨872❩ ❛ The world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard. ❜ ❨873❩ ❛ Every garden looks beautiful in May. ❜ ❨874❩ ❛ When we neglect to fear such brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless. ❜ ❨875❩ ❛ My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it. ❜ ❨876❩ ❛ Such language! Why don't you just take a dump in my ears? ❜ ❨877❩ ❛ You’d be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. ❜ ❨878❩ ❛ Depending on her mood, she can be more frightening than any demon or devil you might ever run across. ❜ ❨879❩ ❛ Cross your fingers! Maybe death won't happen to you. ❜ ❨880❩ ❛ Do not die while wearing cheap shoes. ❜ ❨881❩ ❛ Old habits die hard. ❜ ❨882❩ ❛ It's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us. ❜ ❨883❩ ❛ What do I think I am? In a thousand words; I don't have a clue. ❨884❩ ❛ If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ❜ ❨885❩ ❛ All I wanted was to be loved for myself. ❜ ❨886❩ ❛ I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer. ❜ ❨887❩ ❛ Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? ❜ ❨888❩ ❛ You have a heart that can hold the entire empire of the world. ❜ ❨889❩ ❛ Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you. ❜ ❨890❩ ❛ Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. ❜ ❨891❩ ❛ You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! ❜ ❨892❩ ❛ Are people so unhappy when they love? --- Yes, when they love and are not sure of being loved. ❜ ❨893❩ ❛ Your soul is a beautiful thing. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. ❜ ❨894❩ ❛ Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! ❜ ❨895❩ ❛ Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a life like everybody else. ❜ ❨896❩ ❛ You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. ❜ ❨897❩ ❛ I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ❜ ❨898❩ ❛ I am going to die of love, I am dying of love. That's how it is. I loved you so. I still love you so. ❜ ❨899❩ ❛ I am dying of love for her, I tell you! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her. ❜ ❨900❩ ❛ He fills me with horror but I do not hate him. How can I hate him? ❜ ❨901❩ ❛ Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest. ❜ ❨902❩ ❛ Nothing is colder or more dead than my heart. ❜ ❨903❩ ❛ I had loved an angel and now I despise a woman. ❜ ❨904❩ ❛ Our lives are one masked ball. ❜ ❨905❩ ❛ Why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing? ❜ ❨906❩ ❛ He would commit murder for me. ❜ ❨907❩ ❛ If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug, she is lost. But I shall save her. ❜ ❨908❩ ❛ We will go from here together or die together. ❜ ❨909❩ ❛ Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ❜ ❨910❩ ❛ Destiny has chained you to me forever. ❜ ❨911❩ ❛ You must never ask me that. ❜ ❨912❩ ❛ Are you afraid that you will change your mind? ❜ ❨913❩ ❛ You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly. ❜ ❨914❩ ❛ The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. ❜ ❨915❩ ❛ I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. ❜ ❨916❩ ❛ There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home. ❜ ❨917❩ ❛ I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. ❜ ❨918❩ ❛ It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to even mourn for it. ❜ ❨919❩ ❛ There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. ❜ ❨920❩ ❛ When did you become so weak? ❜ ❨921❩ ❛ I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. ❜ ❨922❩ ❛ Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. ❜ ❨923❩ ❛ Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. ❜ ❨924❩ ❛ I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. ❜ ❨925❩ ❛ I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away. ❜ ❨926❩ ❛ I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move. ❜ ❨927❩ ❛ Who was it that said following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. ❜ ❨928❩ ❛ It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. ❜ ❨929❩ ❛ Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ❜ ❨930❩ ❛ I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. ❜ ❨931❩ ❛ How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn? ❜ ❨932❩ ❛ Now look -- Now look what you made me do. ❜ ❨933❩ ❛ It’s okay, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. ❜ ❨934❩ ❛ They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. ❜ ❨935❩ ❛ You broke me and I broke us. ❜ ❨936❩ ❛ I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you. ❜ ❨937❩ ❛ I’d never realised, not until now, how shameful it is to be pitied. ❜ ❨938❩ ❛ Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. ❜ ❨939❩ ❛ I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. ❜ ❨940❩ ❛ There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. ❜ ❨941❩ ❛ Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point in denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ❜ ❨942❩ ❛ I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love. ❜ ❨943❩ ❛ You don’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with. ❜ ❨944❩ ❛ The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. ❜ ❨945❩ ❛ You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it? ❜ ❨946❩ ❛ I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it. ❜ ❨947❩ ❛ If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying, he’s got another thing coming. ❜ ❨948❩ ❛ I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away. ❜ ❨949❩ ❛ I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ❜ ❨950❩ ❛ I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate it, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. ❜ ❨951❩ ❛ Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away. ❜ ❨952❩ ❛ I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. ❜ ❨953❩ ❛ Failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. ❜ ❨954❩ ❛ It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time; I don’t feel bad enough. ❜ ❨955❩ ❛ Some battles aren’t worth fighting. ❜ ❨956❩ ❛ I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to. ❜ ❨957❩ ❛ I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? ❜ ❨958❩ ❛ What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ❜ ❨959❩ ❛ A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. ❜ ❨960❩ ❛ It isn’t only wickedness and scheming that make people unhappy, it is confusion and misunderstanding. ❜ ❨961❩ ❛ Falling in love can be achieved in a single word—a glance. ❜ ❨962❩ ❛ Though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you. ❜ ❨963❩ ❛ I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. ❜ ❨964❩ ❛ It might hurt, it is horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but it is what it is to be in love. ❜ ❨965❩ ❛ It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. ❜ ❨966❩ ❛ Come back, come back to me. ❜ ❨967❩ ❛ In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. ❜ ❨968❩ ❛ The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence and I don’t think I can blame the heat. ❜ ❨969❩ ❛ Beauty occupies a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, has infinite variation. ❜ ❨970❩ ❛ Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ❜ ❨971❩ ❛ However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been. ❜ ❨972❩ ❛ Hate is a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. ❜ ❨973❩ ❛ I’m going mad. Let me not be mad. ❜ ❨974❩ ❛ Is everyone really as alive as I am? ❜ ❨975❩ ❛ Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself. ❜ ❨976❩ ❛ Something has happened, hasn’t it? ❜ ❨977❩ ❛ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. ❜ ❨978❩ ❛ Is it possible that I am, in the modern term, in denial? ❜ ❨979❩ ❛ How could anyone presume to know the world through the eyes of an insect? ❜ ❨980❩ ❛ Not everything has a cause. Some things are simply so. ❜ ❨981❩ ❛ I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. ❜ ❨982❩ ❛ How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? ❜ ❨983❩ ❛ It was never meant to be read. ❜ ❨984❩ ❛ If I fell in the river, would you save me? ❜ ❨985❩ ❛ That was an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do. ❜ ❨986❩ ❛ I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll be eternally grateful to you. ❜ ❨987❩ ❛ I’m very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused. I’m very, very sorry. ❜ ❨988❩ ❛ Don’t call me that! – Please don’t call me that. ❜ ❨989❩ ❛ It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine. ❜ ❨990❩ ❛ Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ❜ ❨991❩ ❛ No one ever really gets used to nightmares. ❜ ❨992❩ ❛ I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. ❜ ❨993❩ ❛ Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. ❜ ❨994❩ ❛ Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. ❜ ❨995❩ ❛ Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ❜ ❨996❩ ❛ The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. ❜ ❨997❩ ❛ You will fulfil a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. ❜ ❨998❩ ❛ Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. ❜ ❨999❩ ❛ I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore. ❜ ❨1000❩ ❛ What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff. ❜ ❨1001❩ ❛ Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ❜ ❨1002❩ ❛ It’s just silent, no sound at all. It’s like something’s waiting. ❜ ❨1003❩ ❛ I guess I’m hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control. ❜ ❨1004❩ ❛ Oh and something else: – Fuck you. ❜ ❨1005❩ ❛ God I’ve never been afraid like this. ❜ ❨1006❩ ❛ I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived that you can’t call your own. ❜ ❨1007❩ ❛ I’m so tired. Sleep’s been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ❜ ❨1008❩ ❛ Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the Hey-I’m-Bleeding part. ❜ ❨1009❩ ❛ These days fantasies flourish and die like summer flies. ❜ ❨1010❩ ❛ Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous. ❜ ❨1011❩ ❛ ‘Fuck’ and 'fall for’ have very different meanings. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do. ❜ ❨1012❩ ❛ It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. ❜ ❨1013❩ ❛ It’s, well…one thing in two words: fucked up…very fucked up. Okay three words, four words, who the hell cares…very very fucked up. ❜ ❨1014❩ ❛ Do you think I could spend the night at your place?  ❜ ❨1015❩ ❛ Any fool can pray. ❜ ❨1016❩ ❛ I feel like I haven’t slept in months. My neighbours are scared of me. ❜ ❨1017❩ ❛ I’ve lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m just really drunk. ❜ ❨1018❩ ❛ Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace. ❜ ❨1019❩ ❛ I should be dead. Why am I still here? ❜ ❨1020❩ ❛ Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. ❜ ❨1021❩ ❛ You are my flesh. You are my bones. I know you too well. I read you too perfectly. ❜ ❨1022❩ ❛ Not all complex problems have easy solutions. ❜ ❨1023❩ ❛ Do you believe in God? I don’t think I ever asked you that one. ❜ ❨1024❩ ❛ We all create stories to protect ourselves. ❜ ❨1025❩ ❛ Are you kidding me? This place is scary. ❜ ❨1026❩ ❛ These days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ❜ ❨1027❩ ❛ You like that crap because it reminds you of you. ❜ ❨1028❩ ❛ You may suddenly realise things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ❜ ❨1029❩ ❛ The two hardest tests are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. ❜ ❨1030❩ ❛ People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. ❜ ❨1031❩ ❛ Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different. ❜ ❨1032❩ ❛ You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. ❜ ❨1033❩ ❛ God chose you to be different. ❜ ❨1034❩ ❛ Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? ❜ ❨1035❩ ❛ You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you. ❜ ❨1036❩ ❛ Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to. ❜ ❨1037❩ ❛ Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death?  ❜ ❨1038❩ ❛ If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem. ❜ ❨1039❩ ❛ Nothing in this world happens by chance. ❜ ❨1040❩ ❛ I want to continue living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. ❜ ❨1041❩ ❛ Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. ❜ ❨1042❩ ❛ Collective madness is called sanity. ❜ ❨1043❩ ❛ Consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. ❜ ❨1044❩ ❛ You say they create their own reality, but what is reality? ❜ ❨1045❩ ❛ Many people don't allow themselves to love because there are a lot of things at risk. A lot of future and a lot of past. ❜ ❨1046❩ ❛ Death frees from the fear of dying. ❜ ❨1047❩ ❛ The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort. ❜ ❨1048❩ ❛ The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ❜ ❨1049❩ ❛ Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ❜ ❨1050❩ ❛ It's best to accept life as it really is and not as you imagined it to be. ❜ ❨1051❩ ❛ You don't seem mad at all. ❜ ❨1052❩ ❛ We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroys us. ❜ ❨1053❩ ❛ You’re what you are, not what others make of you. ❜ ❨1054❩ ❛ Am I cured? ❜ ❨1055❩ ❛ Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself. ❜ ❨1056❩ ❛ A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Is that it? ❜ ❨1057❩ ❛ They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. ❜ ❨1058❩ ❛ I didn't know that other ‘me’s existed inside me, ‘Me’s that I could love. ❜ ❨1059❩ ❛ I have no idea what's awaiting me. ❜ ❨1060❩ ❛ What will happen when this all ends? ❜ ❨1061❩ ❛ I know that you are capable of great deeds. ❜ ❨1062❩ ❛ A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ❜ ❨1063❩ ❛ The truth is that everyone is bored. ❜ ❨1064❩ ❛ I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. ❜ ❨1065❩ ❛ If there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. ❜ ❨1066❩ ❛ Who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for even a single moment's suffering? ❜ ❨1067❩ ❛ It's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. ❜ ❨1068❩ ❛ While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. ❜ ❨1069❩ ❛ People are more often bad than good. ❜ ❨1070❩ ❛ I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. ❜ ❨1071❩ ❛ What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ❜ ❨1072❩ ❛ In fact, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. ❜ ❨1073❩ ❛ Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves. ❜ ❨1074❩ ❛ Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ❜ ❨1075❩ ❛ There are more things to admire in men then to despise. ❜ ❨1076❩ ❛ It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. ❜ ❨1077❩ ❛ What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this? ❜ ❨1078❩ ❛ Your code of morals? What code, if I may ask? ❜ ❨1079❩ ❛ I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding anything. ❜ ❨1080❩ ❛ No doubt our love is still there, but quite simply it is unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. ❜ ❨1081❩ ❛ I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start. ❜ ❨1082❩ ❛ I am incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that I am incapable of anything really worth while. ❜ ❨1083❩ ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ ❨1084❩ ❛ We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. ❜ ❨1085❩ ❛ The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ❜ ❨1086❩ ❛ There are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live. ❜ ❨1087❩ ❛ The best protection against anything is a good bottle of wine. ❜ ❨1088❩ ❛ There is no peace without hope. ❜ ❨1089❩ ❛ It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. ❜ ❨1090❩ ❛ There is always something left to love. ❜ ❨1091❩ ❛ A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can. ❜ ❨1092❩ ❛ Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls. ❜ ❨1093❩ ❛ Tell me something: why are you fighting? ❜ ❨1094❩ ❛ I've come to realise only just now that I'm fighting because of pride. ❜ ❨1095❩ ❛ One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship. ❜ ❨1096❩ ❛ It's better than not knowing why you're fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ❜ ❨1097❩ ❛ Holy Mother of God! ❜ ❨1098❩ ❛ A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground. ❜ ❨1099❩ ❛ I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1100❩ ❛ Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. ❜ ❨1101❩ ❛ I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance. ❜ ❨1102❩ ❛ Get those bad thoughts out of your head. You're going to be happy. ❜ ❨1103❩ ❛ Children inherit their parents' madness. ❜ ❨1104❩ ❛ I'll turn to ashes in here but I won't give this miserable town the pleasure of seeing me weep. ❜ ❨1105❩ ❛ You would be good in a war. Where you put your eye, you put your bullet. ❜ ❨1106❩ ❛ Men demand much more than you think. ❜ ❨1107❩ ❛ Even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth. ❜ ❨1108❩ ❛ If we’re alone you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of. ❜ ❨1109❩ ❛ You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. ❜ ❨1110❩ ❛ We have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect. ❜ ❨1111❩ ❛ What worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death. ❜ ❨1112❩ ❛ What worries me is that you've ended up as bad as they are. ❜ ❨1113❩ ❛ It is characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites are satisfied. ❜ ❨1114❩ ❛ Dying is much more difficult than one imagines. ❜ ❨1115❩ ❛ If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself! ❜ ❨1116❩ ❛ We have still not had a death. ❜ ❨1117❩ ❛ How awful, the way time passes. ❜ ❨1118❩ ❛ You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house. ❜ ❨1119❩ ❛ I missed you every hour. ❜ ❨1120❩ ❛ You know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. ❜ ❨1121❩ ❛ I’ve risked my life for you. ❜ ❨1122❩ ❛ The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak. ❜ ❨1123❩ ❛ I love you, even the part of you that loved him. ❜ ❨1124❩ ❛ I’m sorry it took me so long to see you. ❜ ❨1125❩ ❛ I never really belonged anywhere. ❜ ❨1126❩ ❛ Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable.  ❜ ❨1127❩ ❛ Thanks for finding me. ❜ ❨1128❩ ❛ You and I are going to change the world. ❜ ❨1129❩ ❛ I’ve been waiting for you a long time. ❜ ❨1130❩ ❛ I’m not used to people trying to kill me. ❜ ❨1131❩ ❛ You’re shaking. ❜ ❨1132❩ ❛ There's nothing wrong with being a lizard. Unless you were born to be a hawk. ❜ ❨1133❩ ❛ Make me your villain. ❜ ❨1134❩ ❛ Just you and me. It’s always just you and me. ❜ ❨1135❩ ❛ Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every dumb thing I’ve said? ❜ ❨1136❩ ❛ Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal. ❜ ❨1137❩ ❛ Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark? ❜ ❨1138❩ ❛ Did you miss me when you were gone? ❜ ❨1139❩ ❛ What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men. ❜ ❨1140❩ ❛ You’re interfering with my plan. ❜ ❨1141❩ ❛ Too much champagne? ❜ ❨1142❩ ❛ I hope you don’t expect fairness from me. It isn’t one of my specialties. ❜ ❨1143❩ ❛ There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings. Faith. ❜ ❨1144❩ ❛ All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how. ❜ ❨1145❩ ❛ What is she? She’s everything, you dumb son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1146❩ ❛ She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned. ❜ ❨1147❩ ❛ I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ❜ ❨1148❩ ❛ It’s a great honor, to save a life. You saved many. ❜ ❨1149❩ ❛ In this world, there are things you can only do alone. ❜ ❨1150❩ ❛ What seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. ❜ ❨1151❩ ❛ If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. ❜ ❨1152❩ ❛ Why should you be interested in me? ❜ ❨1153❩ ❛ I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times. ❜ ❨1154❩ ❛ It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. ❜ ❨1155❩ ❛ I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel. ❜ ❨1156❩ ❛ The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish. ❜ ❨1157❩ ❛ The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.  ❜ ❨1158❩ ❛ So once you're dead there's just nothing? ❜ ❨1159❩ ❛ If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality. ❜ ❨1160❩ ❛ Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? ❜ ❨1161❩ ❛ Nobody can shake off their own shadow. ❜ ❨1162❩ ❛ The silence is so deep it hurts. ❜ ❨1163❩ ❛ I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. ❜ ❨1164❩ ❛ Killing time is one of my specialities. ❜ ❨1165❩ ❛ You can't fight it. ❜ ❨1166❩ ❛ Tell me something,—do you believe in reincarnation? ❜ ❨1167❩ ❛ I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it. ❜ ❨1168❩ ❛ I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner.  ❜ ❨1169❩ ❛ I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. ❜ ❨1170❩ ❛ I can't take it any more, I can't go on any more. ❜ ❨1171❩ ❛ You don't really have it together. ❜ ❨1172❩ ❛ Is it against the law for me to know it? ❜ ❨1173❩ ❛ I keep having the same dream. ❜ ❨1174❩ ❛ Are you asking because you really want an answer? ❜ ❨1175❩ ❛ I hate this! I don't want to be changed this way! ❜ ❨1176❩ ❛ No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas. ❜ ❨1177❩ ❛ Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop. ❜ ❨1178❩ ❛ If I didn’t have these memories inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. ❜ ❨1179❩ ❛ I don’t know what you’re feeling. I won’t even pretend. ❜ ❨1180❩ ❛ What are you doing here, honey? ❜ ❨1181❩ ❛ You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. ❜ ❨1182❩ ❛ You don't understand me. ❜ ❨1183❩ ❛ All wisdom ends in paradox. ❜ ❨1184❩ ❛ It is love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. ❜ ❨1185❩ ❛ I have lost my gift. ❜ ❨1186❩ ❛ Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. ❜ ❨1187❩ ❛ The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us. ❜ ❨1188❩ ❛ They're just memories now. It’s time to forget. ❜ ❨1189❩ ❛ The time has to be right and the heart willing. ❜ ❨1190❩ ❛ The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season. ❜ ❨1191❩ ❛ Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. ❜ ❨1192❩ ❛ Grief is natural, overcoming it is a matter of choice. ❜ ❨1193❩ ❛ I want out of that decorating scheme. ❜ ❨1194❩ ❛ With most people suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. ❜ ❨1195❩ ❛ You never get over it but you get where it doesn't bother you so much. ❜ ❨1196❩ ❛ Don't waste your time on life. ❜ ❨1197❩ ❛ I'm a teenager. I've got problems! ❜ ❨1198❩ ❛ Adolescents tend to seek love where they can find it. ❜ ❨1199❩ ❛ Obviously, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ❜ ❨1200❩ ❛ It was a mistake. ❜ ❨1201❩ ❛ It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever. ❜ ❨1202❩ ❛ Buffeted but not broken. ❜ ❨1203❩ ❛ Shit. What have kids got to be worried about now? ❜ ❨1204❩ ❛ If they want trouble, they should go live in Bangladesh. ❜ ❨1205❩ ❛ I can't wait until I get out of here. ❜ ❨1206❩ ❛ When she jumped she probably thought she’d fly. ❜ ❨1207❩ ❛ I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help. ❜ ❨1208❩ ❛ You're a stone fox. ❜ ❨1209❩ ❛ It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. ❜ ❨1210❩ ❛ Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. ❜ ❨1211❩ ❛ He broke my heart. You merely broke my life. ❜ ❨1212❩ ❛ I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. ❜ ❨1213❩ ❛ Words without experience are meaningless. ❜ ❨1214❩ ❛ I loved you. I was a monster, but I loved you. ❜ ❨1215❩ ❛ Come just as you are. ❜ ❨1216❩ ❛ If a violin string could ache, i would be that string. ❜ ❨1217❩ ❛ Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. ❜ ❨1218❩ ❛ What's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own. ❜ ❨1219❩ ❛ Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me. ❜ ❨1220❩ ❛ You took advantage of my disadvantage. ❜ ❨1221❩ ❛ I walk in a maze I cannot get out of. ❜ ❨1222❩ ❛ Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ❜ ❨1223❩ ❛ Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me. ❜ ❨1224❩ ❛ There is no harm in smiling. ❜ ❨1225❩ ❛ There is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere. ❜ ❨1226❩ ❛ There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. ❜ ❨1227❩ ❛ I am so tired of being cynical. ❜ ❨1228❩ ❛ Come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me. ❜ ❨1229❩ ❛ This is the only immortality that you and I may share. ❜ ❨1230❩ ❛ I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ❜ ❨1231❩ ❛ I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! ❜ ❨1232❩ ❛ Years of secret suffering has taught me superhuman self-control. ❜ ❨1233❩ ❛ Solitude is corrupting me. I need company and care. ❜ ❨1234❩ ❛ I've missed you terribly. ❜ ❨1235❩ ❛ I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. ❜ ❨1236❩ ❛ It doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. ❜ ❨1237❩ ❛ What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? ❜ ❨1238❩ ❛ Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. ❜ ❨1239❩ ❛ The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. ❜ ❨1240❩ ❛ Tell me, have you ever thought of killing me? ❜ ❨1241❩ ❛ I can not believe you are the same human being. ❜ ❨1242❩ ❛ Just how urgent is it? ❜ ❨1243❩ ❛ It is time for you to be going. ❜ ❨1244❩ ❛ How is it you know something like that? ❜ ❨1245❩ ❛ I don’t mind. Your mess is my mess. ❜ ❨1246❩ ❛ Everybody has one thing they do not want to lose. ❜ ❨1247❩ ❛ I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up for me. ❜ ❨1248❩ ❛ Nothing I’ve tried to do by myself has ever come off. ❜ ❨1249❩ ❛ I am not catching you in the middle of anything important, am I? ❜ ❨1250❩ ❛ Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. ❜ ❨1251❩ ❛ My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. ❜ ❨1252❩ ❛ To get irritated is to lose our way in life. ❜ ❨1253❩ ❛ A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. ❜ ❨1254❩ ❛ I don't really know if it's the right thing to do. ❜ ❨1255❩ ❛ Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? ❜ ❨1256❩ ❛ Most of everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. ❜ ❨1257❩ ❛ Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. ❜ ❨1258❩ ❛ You’re loads better than you think you are. ❜ ❨1259❩ ❛ You’re only half-living, the other half is still untapped somewhere. ❜ ❨1260❩ ❛ The song is over. But the melody lingers on. ❜ ❨1261❩ ❛ You are extraordinary. ❜ ❨1262❩ ❛ We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. ❜ ❨1263❩ ❛ It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. ❜ ❨1264❩ ❛ I’m forever realising things too late. ❜ ❨1265❩ ❛ I’m not complaining when I say my life is boring. ❜ ❨1266❩ ❛ Weakness is something that rots in the body. ❜ ❨1267❩ ❛ Coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them. ❜ ❨1268❩ ❛ You can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? ❜ ❨1269❩ ❛ A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat. ❜ ❨1270❩ ❛ So, kill me. Tell the others I attacked you so you killed me. ❜ ❨1271❩ ❛ Should never have come here. ❜ ❨1272❩ ❛ Hard to guess my tastes. ❜ ❨1273❩ ❛ Can’t it wait until the morning? ❜ ❨1274❩ ❛ You’ll find temper tantrums won’t help you here. ❜ ❨1275❩ ❛ It must have taken courage to return. ❜ ❨1276❩ ❛ It all sounds grimly dystopian. ❜ ❨1277❩ ❛ I am not afraid of you! ❜ ❨1278❩ ❛ All this could be avoided! ❜ ❨1279❩ ❛ You consider me a murderer? ❜ ❨1280❩ ❛ Gross way to die. ❜ ❨1281❩ ❛ What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. ❜ ❨1282❩ ❛ My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops? ❜ ❨1283❩ ❛ Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. ❜ ❨1284❩ ❛ I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. ❜ ❨1285❩ ❛ You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human. ❜ ❨1286❩ ❛ Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ❜ ❨1287❩ ❛ Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ❜ ❨1288❩ ❛ Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. ❜ ❨1289❩ ❛ Dreams are all I have ever truly owned. ❜ ❨1290❩ ❛ Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. ❜ ❨1291❩ ❛ I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. ❜ ❨1292❩ ❛ By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ❜ ❨1293❩ ❛ The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. ❜ ❨1294❩ ❛ Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right. ❜ ❨1295❩ ❛ The weak are meat the strong do eat. ❜ ❨1296❩ ❛ Do whatever you can't not do. ❜ ❨1297❩ ❛ What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. ❜ ❨1298❩ ❛ I remain thankful to God for all his mercies. ❜ ❨1299❩ ❛ You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power. ❜ ❨1300❩ ❛ Power. The ability to determine another man's luck. ❜ ❨1301❩ ❛ Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong. ❜ ❨1302❩ ❛ Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. ❜ ❨1303❩ ❛ Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions? ❜ ❨1304❩ ❛ You can’t lie to your soul. ❜ ❨1305❩ ❛ Why would I want to do a thing like that? ❜ ❨1306❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. ❜ ❨1307❩ ❛ Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨1308❩ ❛ I’m not running away, I’m moving on. ❜ ❨1309❩ ❛ The reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨1310❩ ❛ Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. ❜ ❨1311❩ ❛ Love does not exist. ❜ ❨1312❩ ❛ Fuck that ‘regrets’ bullshit. ❜ ❨1313❩ ❛ How does it make you feel? ❜ ❨1314❩ ❛ It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ❜ ❨1315❩ ❛ Choose us. Choose life. ❜ ❨1316❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨1317❩ ❛ I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. ❜ ❨1318❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. ❜ ❨1319❩ ❛ You don’t have to run away.  ❜ ❨1320❩ ❛ I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn’t. ❜ ❨1321❩ ❛ I’m not going to get crushed. ❜ ❨1322❩ ❛ I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination. ❜ ❨1323❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty. ❜ ❨1324❩ ❛ You’re a mess. ❜ ❨1325❩ ❛ I know that it’s never left you alone. ❜ ❨1326❩ ❛ Are you asking me or telling me? ❜ ❨1327❩ ❛ You just get used to all the shit. ❜ ❨1328❩ ❛ You can’t afford a conscience in this life. ❜ ❨1329❩ ❛ None of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy. ❜ ❨1330❩ ❛ Doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them. ❜ ❨1331❩ ❛ What was that? ❜ ❨1332❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨1333❩ ❛ You can’t love yourself if you want to hurt things like that. ❜ ❨1334❩ ❛ What happens when people open their hearts? ❜ ❨1335❩ ❛ Nobody likes being alone that much. ❜ ❨1336❩ ❛ I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.” ❨1337❩ ❛ Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. ❜ ❨1338❩ ❛ You need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. ❜ ❨1339❩ ❛ I want you always to remember me. ❜ ❨1340❩ ❛ Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. ❜ ❨1341❩ ❛ What stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. ❜ ❨1342❩ ❛ All I want in this world is you. ❜ ❨1343❩ ❛ I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. ❜ ❨1344❩ ❛ No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. ❜ ❨1345❩ ❛ What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. ❜ ❨1346❩ ❛ If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. ❜ ❨1347❩ ❛ I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. ❜ ❨1348❩ ❛ People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. ❜ ❨1349❩ ❛ Stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. ❜ ❨1350❩ ❛ When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble. ❜ ❨1351❩ ❛ When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. ❜ ❨1352❩ ❛ If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. ❜ ❨1353❩ ❛ Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven’t answered me. ❜ ❨1354❩ ❛ People are strange when you’re a stranger. ❜ ❨1355❩ ❛ The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. ❜ ❨1356❩ ❛ You don’t get it, do you? ❜ ❨1357❩ ❛ I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you ❨1358❩ realise. ❜ ❨1359❩ ❛ At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. ❜ ❨1360❩ ❛ All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. ❜ ❨1361❩ ❛ I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die. ❜ ❨1362❩ ❛ So I’m not crazy after all! ❜ ❨1363❩ ❛ I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. ❜ ❨1364❩ ❛ Will you wait for me forever? ❜ ❨1365❩ ❛ I don’t want our relationship to end like this. ❜ ❨1366❩ ❛ When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. ❜ ❨1367❩ ❛ It hurts not being able to see you. ❜ ❨1368❩ ❛ I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. ❜ ❨1369❩ ❛ The world is an inherently unfair place. ❜ ❨1370❩ ❛ Life frightens me sometimes. I don’t happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. ❜ ❨1371❩ ❛ I’m a real bargain, don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end up going somewhere else. ❜ ❨1372❩ ❛ We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. ❜ ❨1373❩ ❛ Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don’t know a soul? ❜ ❨1374❩ ❛ You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ❜ ❨1375❩ ❛ He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ❜ ❨1376❩ ❛ If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. ❜ ❨1377❩ ❛ We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. ❜ ❨1378❩ ❛ Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ❜ ❨1379❩ ❛ Power is not a means; it is an end. ❜ ❨1380❩ ❛ They are not interested in the good of others; they are interested solely in power, pure power. ❜ ❨1381❩ ❛ Now you begin to understand me. ❜ ❨1382❩ ❛ In the face of pain there are no heroes. ❜ ❨1383❩ ❛ Big Brother is watching you. ❜ ❨1384❩ ❛ Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. ❜ ❨1385❩ ❛ It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. ❜ ❨1386❩ ❛ The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. ❜ ❨1387❩ ❛ Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind. ❜ ❨1388❩ ❛ Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. ❜ ❨1389❩ ❛ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them. ❜ ❨1390❩ ❛ How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? ❜ ❨1391❩ ❛ You must try harder. ❜ ❨1392❩ ❛ Confession is not betrayal. ❜ ❨1393❩ ❛ What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. ❜ ❨1394❩ ❛ If they could make me stop loving you —- that would be the real betrayal. ❜ ❨1395❩ ❛ Of pain you can wish only one thing: that it should stop. ❜ ❨1396❩ ❛ To die hating them, that will be freedom. ❜ ❨1397❩ ❛ No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. ❜ ❨1398❩ ❛ What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself? ❜ ❨1399❩ ❛ To keep them in control is not difficult. ❜ ❨1400❩ ❛ So long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. ❜ ❨1401❩ ❛ The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. ❜ ❨1402❩ ❛ The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. ❜ ❨1403❩ ❛ Stupidity is as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ❜ ❨1404❩ ❛ I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ❜ ❨1405❩ ❛ The past is dead, the future is unimaginable. ❜ ❨1406❩ ❛ You know the answer already. Everyone knows it. ❜ ❨1407❩ ❛ You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ❜ ❨1408❩ ❛ It is not easy to become sane. ❜ ❨1409❩ ❛ No emotion is pure anymore, because everything is mixed up with fear and hatred. ❜ ❨1410❩ ❛ They say that time heals all things —- they say you can always forget. ❜ ❨1411❩ ❛ The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. ❜ ❨1412❩ ❛ I sold you and you sold me. ❜ ❨1413❩ ❛ You do not exist. ❜ ❨1414❩ ❛ How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. ❜ ❨1415❩ ❛ Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? ❜ ❨1416❩ ❛ Everything else we shall destroy – everything. ❜ ❨1417❩ ❛ Two and two makes five. ❜ ❨1418❩ ❛ Facts, at any rate, can not be kept hidden. ❜ ❨1419❩ ❛ The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. ❜ ❨1420❩ ❛ So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing. ❜ ❨1421❩ ❛ If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ❜ ❨1422❩ ❛ The lie became the truth. ❜ ❨1423❩ ❛ It is like swimming against a current that sweeps you backwards however hard you struggle. ❜ ❨1424❩ ❛ Turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. ❜ ❨1425❩ ❛ It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. ❜ ❨1426❩ ❛ I don’t want to die without any scars. ❜ ❨1427❩ ❛ This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time. ❜ ❨1428❩ ❛ You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. ❜ ❨1429❩ ❛ You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. ❜ ❨1430❩ ❛ You are not special. ❜ ❨1431❩ ❛ You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. ❜ ❨1432❩ ❛ The things you used to own, now they own you. ❜ ❨1433❩ ❛ Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. ❜ ❨1434❩ ❛ Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ❜ ❨1435❩ ❛ Only after disaster can we be resurrected. ❜ ❨1436❩ ❛ Everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ❜ ❨1437❩ ❛ We’ve all been raised believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. ❜ ❨1438❩ ❛ Don’t you have other things to do? ❜ ❨1439❩ ❛ Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. ❜ ❨1440❩ ❛ You have been warned. ❜ ❨1441❩ ❛ If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t. ❜ ❨1442❩ ❛ It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ❜ ❨1443❩ ❛ If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? ❜ ❨1444❩ ❛ Why did I cause so much pain? ❜ ❨1445❩ ❛ The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. ❜ ❨1446❩ ❛ Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. ❜ ❨1447❩ ❛ May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. ❜ ❨1448❩ ❛ Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. ❜ ❨1449❩ ❛ We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. ❜ ❨1450❩ ❛ The girl is infectious human waste. ❜ ❨1451❩ ❛ I want to destroy everything beautiful I’ll never have. ❜ ❨1452❩ ❛ On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❜ ❨1453❩ ❛ If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ❜ ❨1454❩ ❛ It is like you’re never really awake; but you’re never really asleep. ❜ ❨1455❩ ❛ Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. ❜ ❨1456❩ ❛ A moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. ❜ ❨1457❩ ❛ The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. ❜ ❨1458❩ ❛ You have to give up! ❜ ❨1459❩ ❛ Reject the basic assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions. ❜ ❨1460❩ ❛ Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. ❜ ❨1461❩ ❛ You have to realise that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless. ❜ ❨1462❩ ❛ A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. ❜ ❨1463❩ ❛ Lies make us evil. ❜ ❨1464❩ ❛ If you died right now, how would you feel about your life? ❜ ❨1465❩ ❛ You always kill the one you love. ❜ ❨1466❩ ❛ Maybe we should always assume the worst. ❜ ❨1467❩ ❛ Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. ❜ ❨1468❩ ❛ Which is worse? Hell or nothing? ❜ ❨1469❩ ❛ A minute of perfection is worth the effort. ❜ ❨1470❩ ❛ You’re going to die, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. ❜ ❨1471❩ ❛ Lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. ❜ ❨1472❩ ❛ I don’t give a shit. I have a gun. ❜ ❨1473❩ ❛ I know who you are. I know where you live. ❜ ❨1474❩ ❛ Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life. ❜ ❨1475❩ ❛ My philosophy of life is that I can die at any moment. And the tragedy of my life is that I do not. ❜ ❨1476❩ ❛ Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. ❜ ❨1477❩ ❛ There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love. ❜ ❨1478❩ ❛ We just had a near-life experience. ❜ ❨1479❩ ❛ If people think you are dying, they give you their full attention. They listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. ❜ ❨1480❩ ❛ I am nothing, and not even that. ❜ ❨1481❩ ❛ This isn’t really death. —- We’ll be legends. We won’t grow old. ❜ ❨1482❩ ❛ Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go. ❜ ❨1483❩ ❛ The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object. ❜ ❨1484❩ ❛ Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. ❜ ❨1485❩ ❛ I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one. ❜ ❨1486❩ ❛ Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. ❜ ❨1487❩ ❛ Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. ❜ ❨1488❩ ❛ A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger. ❜ ❨1489❩ ❛ A leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. ❜ ❨1490❩ ❛ In the end, we are alone. ❜ ❨1491❩ ❛ It is like a piece of my soul is lost, empty. ❜ ❨1492❩ ❛ If my life on Earth must end, let it end with a promise. Let it end with hope. ❜ ❨1493❩ ❛ Sorry? Sorry isn't enough. ❜ ❨1494❩ ❛ Every single thing I ever loved is beyond my reach now. Everything I ever wanted. Everything I ever was. ❜ ❨1495❩ ❛ Will you stay with me? ❜ ❨1496❩ ❛ A leader doesn't make pawns - he makes people. ❜ ❨1497❩ ❛ Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. ❜ ❨1498❩ ❛ It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. ❜ ❨1499❩ ❛ There is nothing between us but rain. There is nothing between us at all. ❜ ❨1500❩ ❛ I like a little chaos. ❜

[fussymeanie999]

first time - loki laufeyson x plus-size reader

WARNING: this is going to be around 90% dirty smut. you have been warned. mentions of: cunnilingus, deepthroat, facefucking, unprotected sex, breeding, first time

synopsis: reader feels extremely insecure about her figure, loki finds her being absolutely destroyed, he decides to show her how beautiful she is.

a/n: also, i like used a scene from my mad fat diary for one of the dialogues (another one of my favourite shows), so all creds to them! i also used a monologue called "corsets and courtship" for some of loki's quotes by @tomhiddlestonsoundalike on tumblr so all credz to him and whoever wrote the text!

enjoy, my plussize queens (or whoever's reading this lol)

+++

you stood in front of your mirror, in your undergarments, looking at your own reflexion, your fingers grazing your own skin, cringing at every bump or texture you felt. your skin wasn't as soft as you'd want it to be. it wore many marks, wether from your skin stretching or plain old cellulite. you had some pimples, some scarring... you hated it. all of it. you just wished you were perfect. you weren't skinny, that was for sure. you weren't even mid-size. you were a big girl. and as much as you'd want to pretend you weren't, there were times where that was impossible. you didn't fit in any "regular sizes" and not every store had a plus-size section. you were afraid to eat in front of people. you couldn't even be intimate with your boyfriend.

ah. your boyfriend. your boyfriend's name was loki. and he was probably the most beautiful man you had ever laid eyes upon. well, not a man. technically he was an alien. or a god? he came from asgard. a different planet and it honestly baffled you that a literal god would go for someone like you, when he could get anyone he ever wanted. you couldn't believe what you were hearing when he revealed his feelings for you. of course you were hopelessly in love with him but you just couldn't believe he felt the same way. fat girls never get the hot guys. at least not in any story you ever heard, especially not in your life. you never had a boyfriend. no one had really shown any interest in you and you didn't either. mostly because you didn't think anyone would feel the same.  you didn't feel as though you deserved to be with anyone, you were too big, too unattractive, too insecure. so you never really tried. until loki came around.

he became part of your life almost a year ago to this day. he was your first kiss, first date, first everything. the only first that was missing was... your first time. yes. you were a virgin. a fat virgin at that. you didn't even let loki see you without a shirt on. the mere thought made you burst into tears, imagining different improbable scenarios where he'd be so disgusted by your figure he'd leave you. but you wanted to. you wanted him to see you and you wanted him to touch you. you wanted him in every sense of the term, but you couldn't bring yourself to reveal your body to him when the time came. he was always understanding, listening to your wishes and never made you feel like you had to do anything you didn't want to do. but you could feel how much it made him ache to not be able to be with you the ways he wanted to. it made you ache as well.

you grabbed at your fat, your jiggly rolls, covered in purple stripes and you couldn't help the tears that threatened to fall, roll down your cheek. your small cries suddenly became sobs, and they became louder and louder, as your brain was flooded with images of loki's face, disgusted in your figure. you let yourself fall onto the bed, feeling your stomach touch your thighs, making your sobs grow even louder. you held your stomach in one of your hands and and the other directed itself on your face, massaging your temple, feeling your heart beat inside your head.

you thought you were alone. you really did.

you heard the door of your bedroom creak. your head immediately jolted up as your glistening eyes met with familiar blue-ish green orbs. you grabbed the nearest blanket and covered your almost naked body, your sobs completely stopping but your tears still melted away on your round cheeks.

your raven-haired lover walked in the room, carefully.

"oh my sweet girl, what has happened?" the god said softly, carefully kneeling in front of you.

he slowly held out his hand to meet yours with confusion, worry and a hint of sadness in his eyes, but you quickly dodged it and got up, covering your entire front side with the blanket and quickly turning around so he couldn't see the back of you.

"nothing" you struggled to say, in between cries, still backing away from him.

you continued walking backwards until your lower back hit the dresser. you looked down, for a few quick seconds and when you looked back up, your lover was only a mere 2 inches away from your face. he cupped your visage with his hands and softly wiped your dried tears with the back of his thumb.

" you know how much i trust you my darling..." he started. " ... but this doesn't look like nothing."

he started slowly stroking your hair and brushing it with his fingers. you tried avoiding his stare but it was useless, as he was grabbing your face and lifted your chin up to make you look at him straight in the eyes.

as his stare felt as though it was piercing through your soul, you couldn't contain your cries anymore.

" be honest with me... i beg of you... it pains me to see you like this" he pleaded.

you started to contain your sobs a bit better, but you still felt so much pain.

" why... why are you with me loki...?" you were able to blurt out.

confusion. confusion was all that was written over his face. he also looked a bit hurt.

his stare started going around the room, trying to find an answer to your question. his hands, that previously were cupping your face, slid down to your throat and rested on your collarbone, his thumb drawing circles over your thyroid.

"what kind of question is that?" he said, annoyance in his voice. you were afraid you made him angry.

"loki... you can have anyone you want, alright? you're a god..." you said, tears still brimming the sides of your eyes.

loki looked at you with so much hurt, it was hard to keep eye contact.

" you're an 11, and i'm a two at best..." you proceeded. "most people, when they see us, out in public, or on social media, they must be thinking; "oh he must be absolutely mad going out with that..." you stopped yourself when you saw loki's facial expression go from hurt to raging.

"that what?" he asked firmly.

you didn't answer.

"THAT WHAT?" he screamed, making you jump.

he put a hand over his mouth, trying to calm himself down.

"how many times do i have to tell you, y/n?" he started. "you are my person. my woman. my everything. you are the most magnificent being my eyes ever laid upon. the most beautiful creature in all of the nine realms. can't you see? can't you? because i can. i see it everyday. i don't have to see you bare to know. never say that to me again, you understand? do you? do you understand?" he said, starting softly and becoming more firm.

his hands were still hanging by your collarbone, but you felt them grip at your skin, desperate for your understanding, for your touch, for you.

"... i" you started. "i d-do..." you stuttered through sniffles.

he looked at you directly in the eyes. you knew he loved you.

'but not enough.' you thought to yourself.

your love carefully placed his lips upon yours. his lips that you were familiar with. lips you kissed thousands of times. lips you loved. lips you longed for. you needed. the kiss he planted was one of the most delicate kisses he'd ever given you, but at the same time, one of the most passionate. it felt like all of the love he felt for you he poured out into you and in that moment, you felt like nothing could come between you two.

"p-please don't leave me, loki..." you cried out after the kiss.

"my love, my love, my love... never. i love you." he reassured you, stroking your hair.

he planted kisses all over your face, your cheeks, your nose, your forehead, your eyelids, and then back to your lips, this time with more hunger. it was like all of the times he had to restrain himself, when you felt like you weren't ready, completely melted into that kiss. all of his passion, his love, his hunger, his despair, and more importantly his lust, he finally let it all out and you let it all in.

"loki..." you panted in between kisses.

"mmh... yes my love?" he said, intensifying and deepening his kisses more and more.

you hesitated. but you knew. you knew you were ready.

"i-...mmh... i want you." you said, desperation tinting your voice, sounding almost like a plea.

loki slowed down. he took a minute to look at you in the eyes. he wasn't sure what to say. he wasn't even sure what you were saying.

"what?" was all he could muster up to say.

you looked at him with a little more confidence and nodded slowly.

the look on his face was priceless. he would finally be able to be with you.

"a-are you sure about this, love?" he said, sounding like he had just won the lottery.

you nodded again.

he grabbed the sides of your head firmly and leaned in to kiss you once more. his hands trailed down the sides of your body and started playing with the blanket that you were still holding firmly in your hands. you were scared to let go. to be completely bare to him.

"i'm afraid you're gonna have to let this go, my darling." he whispered in you ear, taking the chance to leave a wet kiss on your lobe, slightly biting down on it.

he grabbed your shaking hands in his, drawing circles with his thumb softly against yours.

"give yourself to me, little one... let me see you, touch you, feel you, taste you. i beg... i beg of you." he whispered again, pressing his forehead against yours.

you breathed heavily. you wanted him to see you. to touch you, feel you...

the wall you had built had always seemed so hard to knock down... but in this moment though, that wall seemed to be made of silk. all you had to do was let it go.

"okay..." you said, in the softest voice you ever spoke.

you backed away from loki and walked backwards a few feet. you were now standing the back of your knees faced towards the end of the bed. loki was staring at you proufoundly, awaiting your reveal impatiently.

your hands were trembling. you had nightmares about this moment. you had panic attacks for this moment. this moment was everything. but something about loki... was it the way he stood? the way he spoke? was it his stare? something about him made you feel safe. safer than you had ever felt before tonight.

so you let go.

you felt the blanket reach your toes. you cringed. so you closed your eyes, not wanting to witness loki's disappointment. you awaited any second now a hurl, a disgusted sound or a hurtful comment. but none of that.

you carefully opened your eyes, only to find loki with a gaping mouth, having the most amazing look on his face. a look of pure love, of endless attraction and mesmerising lust.

he approached you slowly, making each of his step count. when he finally reached you, he immediately pressed his forehead against yours. though your eyes were staring down at your feet, you could feel his stare devouring you.

he carefully placed his hand upon yours and let it trail up your arm. then back down again, giving you chills.

he didn't say anything. not a word. what was he thinking?

"i... i look disgusting i know, i'm so sorry. i know i disappoint..." you said, starting to regret the blanket had reached the floor.

you heard loki sigh so heavily.

"you... have got to be joking, love..." were the first words he spoke after seeing your figure. you heard the smile through his voice.

"in all of my..." he started. you heard him swallow before continuing. "in all of my 1056 years of living... never... and i mean never... have i ever witnessed such beauty before this night. my sweet, sweet girl, i simply do not understand why you felt the need to hide."

his hand reached your face and kissed you so passionately, you felt a sort of... heat at the bottom of your stomach. it was an unfamiliar feeling.

that same hand made its way to your neck, then to your shoulder and started playing with one of your bra straps. eventually, he completely took it off and did the same with the other strap.

"you have no idea what you are doing to me right now..." the god said, in a lower, hungrier voice.

"what am i doing to you?" you asked, innocently.

in between kisses, you could feel loki smirk against your lips.

his hand went from your shoulder, trailed down your arm and grabbed your hand in his. he took it and before you knew it he pressed it upon himself. his black, silky, suit pants were showing a bulge in between his legs and that's exactly where he put your hand.

he was hard.

when you first touched it, you heard a whimper come from your lover. god, he needed you.

"this... this is what you are doing to me, darling."

you couldn't believe the words he was saying to you. you felt as though you were in a sort of dream. loki wanted you. he was... quite literally hard for you.

loki grabbed your hair and pulled your head back so you were looking at him. his eyes went extremely dark.

"lay down. on the bed. now." he demanded firmly.

you obeyed his commands in the blink of an eye. you were ready.

you laid down on the bed, on your backside, carefully. when you got comfortable you looked up at loki and saw him looking at you, with hungrier eyes. eyes that were darker and more lustful than ever. he was devouring you with his eyes and he made sure to capture every square inch of skin of your body.

with only a smirk and the flick of a hand on your partner's part, your bra disappeared in a light green magic, leaving your breasts uncovered and nipples starting to harden.

loki obviously couldn't contain himself any longer and almost jumped on top of you, kissing you savagely, making his way down your neck, leaving all sorts of love marks, some darker than others. some of them were painful but the pain only reminded you that this was real. when he got to your breasts, you could almost see his mouth water.

he carefully grabbed one with his hand, keeping eye contact with you the whole time.

"so soft, so plump... for me. oh god, sweetheart you're giving me such a delight"

and with no warning he started giving you small licks, around your nipple, carefully approaching your most sensitive part, which he enthusiastically started to flick with his tongue. the sudden pleasure rose your voice as you let out a small whimper, begging for more.

"yes... yes my sweet girl... let it out... show me how much you want this" he said in a raspier voice.

you found your fingers playing with his raven-black locks, as his mouth played with your brown-ish pink buttons.

he did so for some while, until he felt your hand grasp at his vest. you wanted him to reveal himself to you as well. he got the message pretty quickly.

he looked up from his meal, giving you the same amount of eye contact, as he took off his black blazer, black tie and black vest. all he had on were his bottoms but you were too worried about his beautiful torso to notice. you let your hands wonder on his pale chest, feeling the softness of his skin, some of his hair, up to his pecs, you couldn't believe it. how can this man become even more beautiful?

"like the view, my love?" he asked. you enthusiastically nodded.

he bent down to leave more love bites over your torso and your breasts. he started to slowly go down your body leaving kisses under your breast, going even nearer to the most insecure part of your body. you cringed and whimpered again, but this time in a less of a pleasurable manner, remembering all of your stretch marks and cellulite, knowing he'll be disappointed.

"i... couldn't... be... more... in... love..." he breathed out between his wet kisses. he was now definitely directly on your tummy.

he looked up, knowing you wouldn't like this part. he met your eyes and definitely noticed your hesitation.

he got back up, towering over you. he bent back down, catching your lips in his.

he carefully started stroking your hair, in the most loving manner you could ever imagine. he looked at you straight in the eyes, seeming like he was trying to deliver a message directly to your soul.

"what have i done to deserve you?" he asked, his voice choking in between his words.

those words completely melted your aching heart.

it was your turn to touch him. you said nothing as you slowly stroked his cheek with the back of your hand, giving him your approval by a shake of the head.

he smiled and his head disappeared to your stomach again.

you could feel his hands rome around your entire body and his mouth leaving wet kisses over your stomach. his long raven hair still trailed around higher up on your torso, nearer to your breasts.

he finally got to the place his own body longed for the most.

at this point you were completely damp and you awaited his reaction to your wetness impatiently.

he quickly gave you one of the hungrier and most impatient look you'd ever seen him give you.

he got up in front of the bed, looking you up and down like a predator looks at its prey and with the flick of hand, yet again, loki made your panties disappear in a light shimmering green magic, leaving you completely bare. all that was covering you up were your legs, still pressed firmly together.

loki carefully placed his hands over your bare knees. he could feel you trembling. was it from excitement? nervousness? or desire?

"open up for me, my love... let me in" he said in a demanding, pleading voice.

you slowly started to comply and let your legs go loose. your lover took it upon himself and slowly spread your thighs apart. he couldn't believe his eyes.

he was letting himself finally see your aching core. he could see it glistening, it was calling to him, begging for his touch. he was the one the one responsible and he'd never felt prouder. he admired every fold, every forgotten hair you missed while shaving, everything about it was inviting.

"oh my sweet sweet girl... look at the state of you. don't you understand how long i've been waiting? to see you in this position, completely at my mercy, legs spread, only for me..."

he gulped and whimpered at the sight of you, as you spread you legs even further. he could feel the tightness in his pants become almost unbearable. he'd never been this aroused before in his entire life. but first, he needed a taste of you.

he slowly started leaving wet kisses over your thighs, getting closer and closer to your velvet folds. his hands traveled your entire body. your body, that felt as though it had been set on fire. he once again cupped one of your breasts and started flicking your nipples with his fingertips. you let yet another whimper escape your lips, needing him more than you've ever needed anyone.

you felt his hot breath against your wet love box and that was all it took to make you go insane.

"p-please..." you pleaded to the god.

he took your scent in, smelling the most mouth-watering aroma he ever got the chance to smell in all of his 1000 years.

"you don't have to ask me twice, my sweetness..." were his last words before delving in.

he placed his fingers upon your aching core, exploring all of your folds, he couldn't believe how wet you were.

"darling... you are dripping..."

he let his fingers trail for a few seconds, until they reached your entrance. he circled it with the tip of his finger as he finally placed his lips right on top of your sensitive button.

the sudden, unfamiliar sense of pleasure, completely took you by surprise as you yelped.

his tongue peaked through after a few kisses planted on your clitoris. it circled in the same motions his finger was making to your entrance. he was so soft, so cautious. but you could feel the heat in the bottom of your stomach growing darker, more demanding so you placed you hands on the top of your lover's head, brushing your fingers through his hair and slightly pushing his head down on your core.

loki got the message, as his circles became more passionate and as he started flicking his tongue aggressively at your core.

you felt your entire body tremble in desire as loki's finger plunged itself in between your folds, exploring your insides.

you were now moaning deliberately, wanting him to add digits. you thought you'd be more resistant, you thought it'd be a little painful, even but all you could feel was pleasure.

"more..." you pleaded.

as the words were still hanging from your lips, loki plunged yet another finger in, and this time, you did feel a little resistance but you didn't care. you wanted him. you wanted him so much.

his tongue was working wonders on your clit. you would think the man hadn't eaten in days at the sight of him. he was completely devouring you and you could feel the pleasure build up inside of you.

the mixture of his fingers pumping in and out of you, and his tongue flicking at your sensitive button, all of it was too much for you to handle. you felt something was coming.

"loki... l-loki... something... something's happening." you panted, in between moans.

he didn't stop. he knew what he was doing. he went harder, his tongue completely destroying you.

"i can feel it as well... your heat... your wetness... let yourself come undone, my sweet... for me" he whispered, panting, in between licks.

'come undone?' you thought. but before you knew it, you felt it. the highest peak of pleasure your body had ever felt in its life. you felt your thighs squeeze around the god's head, squashing him a little. you didn't want to hurt him but you couldn't contain yourself, as you screamed his name, not believing that amount of pleasure was even possible. it was electrifying. your whole body reacted, you were sweating. you put your hand over your mouth and bit down your finger to stop yourself from becoming a screaming mess, but it was already too late, as you rode your orgasm out to the last bit of pleasure you could conquer up.

"you taste even sweeter than i thought you would, sweet girl" he said, giving the nickname a whole different meaning.

you let out a huge sigh, slowly coming back to your senses. you looked up as loki got up from between your legs, his hand still caressing your folds slowly and placed a delicate kiss on your lips. you tasted what you thought was yourself. oddly enough, you didn't cringe, you hadn't found yourself to taste disgusting. it was... kind of erotic actually.

"loki i..." you started. you didn't know how to ask. "i want to..." you sighed out.

"say it, darling" he said, stroking your hair, still caressing in between your legs.

"i want to taste you... too" you finally let out.

you wanted to make him feel as good as he made you feel. you wanted to thank him in a way.

he was surprised. he didn't think you were ready.

"you made me feel so good today... i want to reciprocate the feeling... y'know..." you said, shyly.

loki's hand pulled at your hair to make you look at him.

"is that what you want?" he asked, firmly. he grabbed your hand and slowly pressed it yet again on his throbbing member, through his tightening pants.

he sighed heavily, still looking at you straight in the eyes.

you nodded, slowly. he smirked.

"then, get on your knees."

you obeyed.

you liked how he commanded you and guided you through all of your movements. you were nervous he wasn't going to enjoy, but the anticipated look on his face told you otherwise. also, the throbbing length in his pants.

you were now on your knees, on the floor, at the end of the bed and loki was sitting, his still clothed legs spread, inviting you in.

you started to slowly stroke his thigh, rubbing your hand up and down, each time getting closer to his private. you did the same thing with his other thigh, feeling the god getting impatient with your teasing.

you finally placed your hand over his member, giving it a small squeeze. you heard your lover grunt, at only your touch.

"you're eager" you stated, looking up at him. he gave you a smirk.

"less talking." he said, darkly.

you complied, massaging his bulge through his pants.

when you finally unzipped them, you heard your lover let out a sigh of relief. you wanted to bring them down to his ankles, but loki, being impatient, made them disappear in his green magic.

"hey. let me work." you said, in more of a joking way.

"i said... less talking" he repeated.

you noticed a small wet spot on his grey boxers. you bent down, without touching it, smelling it.

you felt the god squirm under you, eager to feel you around him.

you carefully, and slowly took his boxers down, letting his member spring free of its shackles, finally revealing itself to you.

he was huge. it was veiny, its tip was a dark pink, almost red, it was pale like the rest of his body. but most importantly, it was enormous.

"like the view, my love?" he asked for the second time that night.

you nodded your head enthusiastically. all you wanted was to get a taste.

you carefully approached your hand to the hot spot. the second your fingers reached his skin, loki whimpered. it was burning up, but it was so soft. you felt the veins under your fingertips, and suddenly it was like you knew exactly what to do. you carefully started stroking him and ran your thumb over the most sensitive part of his shaft, his frenulum, and heard him whimper once again.

"please" he pleaded, imitating your pleas from earlier.

"you don't have to tell me twice" you imitated as well.

you approched his tip to your lips and delicately gave him a soft kiss. his skin was so warm.

you continued giving him small pecks but you felt him get, yet again, impatient with your teasing.

"oh come on..." he pleaded.

you looked at him. sweat was dripping down his forehead.

you then flipped his cock over, back to his stomach to give yourself full access to the base of his member. you placed your tongue directly in between his balls and shaft and worked your way up to his tip, making sure you passed by his sensitive junction between his red bulb and the rest of his penis. directly after, you put his tip in your mouth and started bobbing your head back and forth, tasting the drops of pre-cum he deposited on your tongue.

you heard him moan, some cusses flew out of his mouth, he moaned mainly your name, or called you by all sorts of nicknames.

"oh my, oh my... you're doing so good... mmh... g-good girl..." he moaned out.

his words were able to bring back that heat at the bottom of your stomach. you slowly directed your hand in between your thighs and started stroking your own bundle of nerves. loki didn't seem to notice, too lost in the waves of pleasure you were giving him.

he was now moaning deliberately. he tried... he really tried, but he couldn't contain himself anymore, he grabbed your head, pulled you by your hair and pushed your head down to take more of his shaft. you awaited a gag or any sort of resistance on your part, really, but nothing came.

loki got up from where he was sitting, your head still enveloping his shaft and started moving back and forth, you being completely at his mercy. he was deliberately fucking your face, and you let him.

he moaned your name so many times you'd lost count. he became more and more agressive with each thrust until all of his shaft was buried down your throat. he held your head down for a few seconds, gripping at your hair, letting his cock sit in your mouth, until he finally pulled out, a strand of saliva escaping your lips. he was out of breath, but not as much as you.

"you feel so good, my love. you're doing amazing" he said, panting.

you gave him a few kitten licks, asking for more. he buried his cock again down your throat, pumping in and out. he was fucking your face as though it was a cunt, using your throat as a mere hole that was made to mold his shaft perfectly.

you weren't gagging which surprised you. you'd never tested your gag reflex, but obviously you didn't have any.

you felt him go faster and faster until he once again, suddenly stopped as your head was completely enveloping his shaft. but this time, he started grunting and moaning, louder, in more of an animalistic way, holding your head down, hard, as deep as he could go.

"i- i'm cumming, love" he grunted out.

suddenly, you could taste bitterness, saltiness explode in your mouth, and run down your throat. your first instinct was to spit it out, but your god kept your head in place, making you swallow. it felt never ending. he kept cumming and cumming. you thought the taste would repulse you, from what you had heard from friends and the internet, but you honestly didn't find it to be that disgusting.

he stayed in that same position, holding your head in place, for another ten to fifteen seconds after he came. you felt his cock twitch in your mouth and he finally removed himself.

you took a deep breath, considering you could finally breathe properly.

loki knelt down to your level. he looked at your face. fortunately, you weren't wearing makeup, so no makeup to ruin. your eyes were red, tears had run down your face, you had spit all over the sides of your face, and some of loki's cum had fallen out of the corners of your mouth. he wiped it with his thumb and took it up to your mouth.

you sucked his thumb dry, tasting him yet again.

he gave you a loving smile.

"mine." he simply said, in a soft manner.

he then kissed you in the most loving way he could, tasting himself on your lips.

he then backed away, looking you up and down, noticing your hand still wondering around in between your thighs. he smirked and locked eyes with you.

"i think we're gonna have to take care of that." he said, as he got up. he was now standing up while you were still on your knees. you noticed his cock was hard again, once it got to your eye level. how was that even possible? how could he be hard again this quick? you had to remind yourself he did have the stamina of a god. he handed you his hand for you to take, which you did.

he got you up and carefully placed his hands on the sides of your head and started stroking your hair.

"are you still sure you want to do this my love?" he asked.

you chuckled.

"after what we've done? i'm pretty sure there's no backing up now?"

he gave you a confused look.

"of course there is. i'm not gonna do anything you're not comfortable doing, sweetheart." he said.

you sighed at your poor choice of words.

"and i know that." you started. "but i'm ready. i want you... loki."

he smiled yet again. he didn't say a word. he just kissed you. it was a passionate kiss, like all of your others that night. his hands roamed around your body as if it was discovering it again for the first time.

taking you by surprise, he lifted you up, flipped you around and threw you on the bed. never had you been picked up before. you always thought you'd break the person's spine. but loki lifted you up so easily, you felt like a feather.

"you're mine" the god grunted, as he plunged on top of you. he spread your legs open, as far as he could and positioned himself right between them.

he reached down to your bundle of nerves and drew circles with his fingers like he did earlier. he wound up plunging his fingers inside you yet again, prepping you for what was about to replace them. you could feel his length harden even more against your thigh, as he did so.

you started whimpering, wanting more than just his digits to fill you.

your whimpers were like music to loki's ears. he loved hearing how much you longed for him. he loved seeing you squirm under him. he enjoyed feeling all powerful, having that much control over you.

"take me" you sighed out, looking at your lover straight in the eyes. you couldn't hold it in anymore. you needed him. you needed him inside you. now.

he smirked as he bent down, to leave a soft kiss on your forehead.

"tell me when you want to stop, my darling. use your words." he asked of you.

you nodded, agreeing to his words, whilst trying to spread your legs even further.

his fingers left your core, leaving you needy and wanting to feel him once more, but they were quickly replaced by what you knew was his tip. he started slowly moving back in forth in between your folds, teasing at your entrance.

he gave you a look, pleading for approval.

you slowly nodded, ready to take him in.

you felt his his bulb starting to peak inside of you. you winced, feeling a slight resistance.

he stopped. but you nodded again, asking for him to continue.

as he buried his shaft deeper in you, it started to really hurt. for real this time.

"ow, ow. stop." you asked. "but stay inside. just stay... stay like this. let me- let me adjust."

he listened to you.

"are you okay, my love?" he asked, still halfway inside of you.

you nodded again, breathing heavily. you knew you could do it. you wanted to.

"p-... proceed." you said.

he listened to you again, burying himself entirely in you. he let out a loud grunt. your walls had adjusted to the size of his member and it felt less painful.

your lover moaned again.

"you.. are so tight, oh my. you feel so good." he panted.

you smiled. you loved seeing him in this much pleasure. you loved the passionate, lustful look on his face, all of it was for you.

he started moving back and forth, slowly, being really careful of each and every one of your movements, analyzing if you wanted to continue or not.

the first few thrusts were painful but eventually the pain left and absolute ecstasy took its place.

loki noticed the change in you and decided to give his thrusts more power, barely able to contain himself. he pumped in and out of your aching core at a medium rate. he wanted to go faster, harder but he stayed careful.

but you... you wanted more. you started clawing at loki's back, bringing him closer to you and leaving red scratches all over his back. you kissed his neck, his torso, leaving him the same bruises he left you earlier, though yours weren't as agressive as his. yours were small, red, but his eventually became huge purple bruises. and you had them all over your body. he started leaving you some more, on your neck, your collarbone, imitating your movements.

"more..." you pleaded.

he smirked against your skin, left you yet another passionate kiss on your lips and with that, his thrusts became harder, more agressive, much faster. you felt as if he was trying to crawl inside of you.

you both started moaning and screaming each other's names at the top of your lungs. your lover got up, detaching his torso from yours, trying to find an angle where he could go deeper inside of you. you wanted him back, missing the heat of his body. you reached out to him with your arm, but he firmly grabbed it, stopping you in your tracks. you were surprised. he looked down at you, staring at you straight in the eyes. his eyes went dark. his hand that had stopped your movement, trailed up from your hand, to you elbow and up your arm, until it reached the crook between your shoulder and your neck. his thumb drew circles over your cheek, then your chin and finally on your throat. you didn't even have the time to realise but his hand had completely wrapped itself around your throat, choking you slightly. you could still breathe completely fine, but his hand held your head in space, as his thrusts became even harder, if that was even possible.

he started panting, completely losing himself in the moment.

he bent down again, still holding your throat in his hand. he grabbed you and forced your face to be centimetres from his.

"mine." he said in a deep, grunting voice.

that word was the one that completely sent you over the edge. you could feel your walls clench around his member, your were close. you needed your release.

"loki... i'm close." you tried sighing out.

he understood you perfectly. the hand he wasn't using to choke you found its way down between your legs and started playing agressively at your clit.

"let go, baby... let go" he panted.

you couldn't hold it in anymore. you let your orgasm take control of your entire body. your legs were shaking, your hips started grinding against loki's, your hands scratched at his back even deeper, your eyes were rolling back inside your head, and your mouth gaped wide open, letting all sorts of cusses fly out of your mouth.

as you rode out your orgasm, you knew loki was close as well. seeing you in this intense state, all because of him, sent him over the edge and he knew he couldn't hold on much longer.

you started grinding your hips even more agressively, trying to meet his.

"come on, baby..." you whispered in his ear, leaving all sorts of wet kisses and hickey's all over his body.

you ran your finger through his curls, pulling at his hair.

and that's when you knew. you felt his hand grasped at your throat even tighter, making you gasp for air. he stopped moving, buried deep inside of you.

"oh my fu..." he started, moaning loudly.

you had made some research about how it would be like to have someone cum inside of you. you found out most people couldn't feel it. but you did. you felt all of it. you felt a warmth completely invade your insides, it kept coming and coming, just like earlier but this time inside of you.

loki's hand was still wrapped around your throat, holding it firmly, but as his orgasm ended, he eventually loosened his grasp.

when he finally stopped coming, as he was still buried inside you, he finally looked up at you and left a wet kiss your lips.

"i love you" he said, out of breath.

"i love you too."

loki looked down and smirked, taking his hand off your throat.

"no... don't say it like that... don't say "too"... it sounds like you're just agreeing with me. say it for real..."

you scoffed a little, thinking his request to be a little ridiculous. but you understood. you ran your fingers through his raven locks, held his head between both your hands, making him look at you.

"i love you, loki... i love you." you said softly, staring into his ocean blue eyes.

he gave you a wide smile and kissed you once more. he gave you a kiss full of love and passion.

after your kiss, he slowly pulled out of you. you felt so full, a second ago, the absence of his shaft between your legs contrasted so much with the empiness you now felt.

loki bent down again between your thighs to watch his seed run out of you. it felt yet again, never ending, but loki watched attentively.

"what a beautiful sight... may i snap a picture?" he said, jokingly.

"shut up..." you said in the same tone.

he gave you one last lick to your core and licked his lips, not minding his cum, plastered over your folds.

"i'll get a towel..." he said, leaving one last peck on your lips.

"thank you, honey..." you thanked him softly.

as you layed, completely naked on your bed, you thought.

you no longer felt restrained in your own skin, not around him at least. he made you feel seen, loved, desirable. you hated your body a little bit less, now. you might even try eating in front of people! maybe... you and loki didn't just have sex that night. you made love. he didn't just take your virginity, he made you into a better, improved version of yourself.

you were never more in love with him than in that moment.

loki came back with a light pink towel. he rose your hips up in the air and deposited it under you. he used the other end of the towel to wipe his seed off you.

once you were clean, loki got back off the bed and put the towel back in the bathroom.

he joined you in bed and wrapped his arms around you.

you felt so good. better than you had in years. with him. you felt so loved.

you didn't want to move, but you remembered you had to pee after a sexual intercourse... you read it in a blog.

you nudged loki, trying to get off the bed, but loki held you back, making it impossible for you to move.

"don't... even think about it." he said firmly under his breath.

you chuckled.

"i'm gonna get a urinary tract infection... and it's gonna be on you." you said in an accusing manner.

"darling, i'm a god... i have super powers, you're not gonna get a... whatever sort of infection you're talking about."

you scoffed, nuzzling your nose in the crook of his neck, sighing heavily.

loki left a loving kiss on the top of your head and held you tighter.

"you're mine... all mine."

+++

word count: 7395.... comment if you liked it loveys!! what was your favourite part?

[cjsinkythoughts]

Inner Conflict

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Reader

Word Count: 3586

Warnings: !FATWS SPOILERS!, Cursing, Some Angst, Some Fluff, Sam and Bucky being idiots, Mentions of PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression

A/N: Here’s Part Three to my FATWS Series, which I’m making a masterlist for that you can find Here. 

Uh…it’s a little long, and I apologize for that. It doesn’t even encompass the whole second episode, only the first half, so a Part 3.5 will be coming out later today probably (it’s my day off work so I have all day to relax and write!) I tried not doing a line for line rewrite of the episode, but there are quotes from the show in here. Mostly it’s Reader’s thoughts and feelings towards what’s happening while conversations are going on around. Reader’s backstory is a bit more unfurled. It’s more action packed and more scene-for-scene of the episode than the previous two. Less emotions shared and less hurt/comfort type of thing, but that’ll be back in the next part probably along with more scenes not in the show. The next part I’m planning won’t be as long, it’ll mainly just be the Couples Therapy scene and a bit more angst with her and Sam and her and Bucky.

Because there’s four more episodes and I don’t know what’s going to happen in them, I’m kinda hesitant on spilling out exactly what is going on with the Reader and what her role was on the original team, but we’ll get there. Also, I wasn’t expecting to be writing multiple pieces for one episode, but if the other episodes are as packed as this one, prepare yourself for more parts than anticipated. We’re already on Part 3 and I’ve got Part 3.5 coming. Just bare with me as I don’t know what’s going to happen in future episodes! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it! 

(Not beta’d so excuse any mistakes.)

!SPOILERS UNDER CUT!

Walking out of the shower, ruffling a towel through your hair to dry it off, you froze at the sound of the TV. A sigh left your lips. It’s all he’d been doing the last few days - watching the news. Keeping up with the tour for the new Captain America.

You peeked out of the small bedroom to find Bucky sitting on the floor, brow creased as he watched John Walker talk to the Good Morning America hostess.

“You shouldn’t be watching that.” You spoke up, leaning on the doorway, still patting your hair dry. He glanced over to you, taking in the towel wrapped around you, before looking back at the TV. Seeing you like that wasn’t anything new. “Buck, I’m serious. Brooding over it won’t make anything better.”

“What do you want me to do?”

You let out a sigh, shifting your feet and biting your lip as you thought about how to respond. “I-I haven’t figured it out yet. But obsessing over the new guy-”

“Aren’t you mad?”

You frowned at his question, his eyes meeting yours once more. “I told you already that I am.”

He tilted his head, which he did when he was confused, his eyes narrowing. “Why don’t you show it? Why aren’t you screaming or cursing or crying or something? You, of all people-”

“Because it won’t help anything, Buck.” You shook your head, pushing off the wall. “I want to. But if I let myself go down that road…” Dropping your gaze to the floor, you take a breath, collecting your thoughts. “This is such a complicated situation, James. I’m being contacted left and right for a statement on the new Captain. People trying to see my reaction. Senators trying to get me to meet with him. I can’t let myself snap. I can’t.”

He scowled. “They’re still bothering you?”

A dry chuckle escaped your lips and you nodded. “Makes me miss the days when no one knew who I was; when I was the behind-the-scenes seventh Avenger. But I made that choice to come out, and I have to deal with the consequences now. Blowing up will only-”

“Even though I never met him…he feels like a brother.”

That one statement stopped you in your tracks. Bucky’s head whipped back to the TV, his jaw ticking, his nose scrunching up.

“Did he really just say that?”

Bucky merely nodded, his chest heaving as he tried getting his breathing under control. “Feel like snapping now?”

You purse your lips as you held in the tears stinging your eyes. After composing yourself, you moved over and grabbed the remote, letting out a tiny sniffle as you did so. You tentatively touched Bucky’s shoulder, silently asking him if he needed anything from you. His response was to open his arms, so you quickly got down besides him to hold him.

“He is my brother, doll.”

“I know, Buck.” You pressed a soft kiss to his head, which rested against your bare shoulder.

Your bare knees are pressed harshly against the wooden panels of the floor, and you’re twisted awkwardly, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. As long as he was comfortable, you would take the uncomfortable position. As long as he was being held, you would take the soreness it would leave. As long as you could help him be some sort of okay, you would take not being okay in this position.

 You two sat like that for a few more moments before your phone buzzed. You gave a sigh, pulling back and holding his cheeks in either hand. He wasn’t crying, although he was on the verge of doing so. You’d seen him cry before, so you knew he didn’t mind. For you it was a different story.

Bucky had maybe seen you cry twice since the whole Blip thing went down. And one of them was over the phone, so he didn’t see it so much as he heard it. You didn’t let yourself cry in front of him. Or anyone, for that matter. It was a part of you. The only person you ever felt comfortable enough around to cry in front of…wasn’t there. And you couldn’t change that.

“We’ll figure it out.” You told him, nodding gently and letting a small, sad smile quirk the corners of your lips up. “Okay? We’ll figure it out.”

The clench in his jaw loosened as your fingers worked circles into the hinge, making him relax and nod back. You pressed a tender kiss to his forehead before standing up, moving across the room to where your phone was on the counter. You assumed it’d be another government official or news reporter, so you were slightly shocked to see ‘Sammy’ flashing up at you.

Your eyebrows furrowed as you read his message, a slight pout forming on your face. 

“Doll?” Toned arms wrapped around you, warm and cool, his chin setting on your shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Sam. He needs my help with something.”

“I’m coming with you.”

You turned in his arms, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Why?”

He shrugged, licking his lips. “You might need help.”

“Bucky, you can’t go if you’re just going to yell at him.”

“I won’t.”

You studied his features. He was lying, you knew that. Of course he was going to snap at Sam for giving up the shield. He was mad and they got on each others’ nerves every chance they could find, so of course he was going to.

But you still found yourself saying yes and telling him to go pack a bag. You were never able to say no to Steve and it seemed that got passed on. What a nuisance it was.

****************

And you were so right. It was the first thing he said once Sam came into view coming down the stairs.

“You shouldn’t have given up the shield, Sam.”

“James.” You squeezed the hand he was holding, voice pleading for him not to do this right now. He huffed, stepping back to let you greet Sam properly, giving the man a hug. “Hi, Sammy.”

“It’s been a while.” Sam commented, pulling back and holding you by the shoulders. “You look good. Not that you’ve ever looked otherwise.”

You gave him a small smile. “You do too.”

“Thanks for coming. I know it’s short notice, but-”

“It’s fine, Sam. Really.” You insist.

Sam nodded, before eyeing Bucky. “Did you have to bring him?”

“Samuel-”

“This is wrong.” Bucky cut in, staring Sam down, falling into step besides him as the man started heading outside.

“James-”

“Hey, hey. Look. I’m working, all right?”

You rolled your eyes as the two started arguing, stopping your stride to take a breather. You used to joke about babysitting them, but it didn’t feel like a joke anymore and you were getting tired of it. All the bickering for no reason. The contempt they held for one another. Steve made you promise that you would look out for them, and you were trying, but they weren’t making it easy.

When you joined them again, you raised an eyebrow at the direction the conversation turned. How the hell did they get from arguing about the shield to what a wizard is?

“Ahh! Haha! A sorcerer is a wizard without a hat!”

You gave Sam a look as he babbled about how he was right. “Sorcerer Mickey has a hat. Isn’t that, like, how he gets his powers and everything?”

Bucky grinned at you. “Thank you!”

“Excuse you!” Sam scoffed, pointing an accusing finger at you. “We were having a conversation!”

“Yeah. A stupid conversation I just ended. Now I’m gonna be in the plane. Feel free to join me when you’re done being idiots.”

They both spluttered, but you were already walking away, leaving no room for arguments. As you loaded onto the plane, you spotted the Lieutenant whom Sam mentioned who had been helping him out with missions. Torres, you thought, remembering his name from a previous phone call with your friend.

“You Lieutenant Torres?” You asked, walking up to him.

He blinked, before his eyes widened, a grin appearing on his face. He seemed young, which you were perfectly okay with considering you’ve been working alongside old men for the past decade. It was always nice to work with a fresh face, which you found after you started working with Wanda and Peter.

The thought of the two youngest members made you falter, not having heard from either of them since Christmas almost six months prior, but you quickly recovered yourself, shaking away the worries you had for them.

“You’re Y/N Y/L/N! I’m a huge fan! I’ve read all your files!”

Chuckling a little, you held out your hand. “Most of those are heavily classified.”

He ducked his head with a little blush, rubbing the back of his neck after shaking your hand. “I, uh, I might’ve…used connections.”

“It’s okay.” You reassured him, throwing him a wink. “I won’t tell. Can you tell me what’s going on? Sam didn’t exactly explain the situation.”

He nodded, getting into ‘work mode’, something you’ve seen in most military men, informing you of their recent missions and the group known as the Flag-Smashers and giving you a file on them. He was in the middle of telling you about his solo mission in Germany when your two fellas came in, sending each other small glares, but remaining quiet.

Bucky caught your eye and sent an apologetic look your way, to which you just smiled at before turning back to Torres.

“Well I’m glad you’re okay.” You told him once he was done.

“Oh yeah. It wasn’t that bad.”

You laughed and nodded. “I’m sure. You seem like a tough kid.”

He smiled, before looking around and jabbing his thumb behind his shoulder. “I-I’ve gotta go, but-”

“We can talk later.” You promised with a grin.

“Really?!”

“Of course! I have a feeling we’ll be working together more, and I like getting to know who’s gonna have my back.”

He beamed and nodded, walking backwards. “That’d be awesome! Talk to you later then!”

You giggled as he turned around and jogged off, pumping his fist in the air. You turned to a grinning Sam and nodded towards where Torres left. “I like him. Seems like a nice kid.”

“He is. Very energetic. A little reckless, but he’s got a good heart.”

You hummed, the smile falling from your face as you flipped through the file Torres gave you. “So…Munich?”

“Yeah. Listen, I’m sorry again for taking you away from the search, but-”

“Search is off.” You informed him quickly, not looking up. “Until further notice.”

The plane went quiet, before Sam cleared his throat. “So…no sign of Wanda yet, then?”

You shut the file, looking up at the men whose features were laced with concern. “I’m gonna go talk to the pilot. Behave while I’m gone. No pushing each other off the plane.”

“Doll?”

You were stopped by the hand that grabbed your wrist as you passed Bucky. You shot him another smile, knowing it wasn’t convincing enough for him, but it being the best one you had. “I’m okay. I’ve just gotta ask him some questions.”

************

Opening your mouth to stop him, you groaned when Bucky jumped out of the plane before you could speak. First Sam jumps without sharing the plan, then Bucky jumps without having a plan. Or a parachute. Or wings. Or anything.

Torres looked at you, but all you could do was shrug. “I dunno what to tell you, kid.”

“You’re not gonna do that, are you?”

“No.” You reassured him, shaking your head. “I’m gonna wait ‘til we land like a normal person and take my bike. I just have to pray that they’ll wait to do anything stupid until I get there.”

They didn’t wait. You’re pretty sure they didn’t even think about waiting. By the time you got to them, they were fighting - and losing, might you add - to six really strong people on top of two semi trucks.

Because why wouldn’t they?

Oh, oh. And on top of that, the fake was there, throwing the shield. The shield that didn’t belong to him. The shield that meant so much more than he would ever know.

“Hi, doll! Sorry we started the party without you!” Bucky shouted from where he was hanging off the edge, that close to the street and getting his head torn off by the tire.

“I’m so tired of babysitting you two, you know that?!”

“Oh! Sorry we’re such an inconvenience for you! Blame him! He jumped the gun!” Sam shouted, coming to fly next to you as you rolled up your sleeves, standing on your bike, using one hand to steer.

“Can I get a little help already?!”

“Sam-!”

“On it!”

Knowing that no matter how much they pissed each other off, Sam would make sure Bucky was okay and vice versa, you focused on getting to the top, where Walker and a buddy of his were struggling a little bit.

You climbed up to the roof of the semi no one was on, wincing when you heard your bike skidding across the pavement. There goes half your salary.

You couldn’t dwell on it for very long, considering one of the guys appeared in front of you. You recognized the fighting - the strength - and faltered, a memory resurfacing at a very bad time.

~

“C’mon, honey. You can do better than that.” Steve grinned at you, holding out a hand to help you up.

“Excuse me for not having super strength, Rogers.” You huffed out, taking it and letting him pull you up.

“You don’t need to be stronger than me. You just need to be smarter.”

“That’ll be easy.” You teased, stretching your arms before getting into your stance again. “You’re a dumbass sometimes.”

“Yeah, well, who chose to be friends with this dumbass?”

“Everyone needs a dumbass for a friend.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “So I’m your dumbass?”

“If you want.”

The grin he shot you made your heart skip a beat. “If you’ll have me.”

~

You blinked, but Steve wasn’t in front of you anymore and you weren’t in the gym in DC. 

The guy caught the punch you distractedly threw and twisted your arm, making you cry out, kicking him in the back of the knee and flipping him over your shoulder.

You went to kick him again, but he caught your leg and threw you against the side of the other semi. You were able to grab onto where Bucky had ripped through the side, but you winced as the metal cut through your palm. Sam had just flown under the trucks, taking Buck with him, and you knew when a fight wasn’t worth it, so you quickly moved around the truck, letting Walker and his pal distract the Flag-Smashers, before letting yourself fall onto the side where the grass was.

You wanted to lay there, to catch your breath and curse yourself for getting distracted. You hadn’t had a flashback like that in a while. But you didn’t let yourself. You had to make sure the guys were okay.

Standing up made you cringe; you could feel the throbbing in your shoulder from where it was no doubt dislocated and your leg was aching, the muscle probably pulled when the guy threw you.

“Doll!” You turned, seeing Bucky and Sam sprinting towards you a few yards down the road. “Hey, hey.” Bucky immediately had his hands hovering over you, scanning your body. “Are you okay?”

You nodded, shoving his hands away. “I’m fine.”

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

“I think I dislocated it.”

Sam frowned. “What the hell happened?”

You gave him a weird look, starting to limp across the field to where you noticed a side road earlier. “They were super soldiers, Sam. And we got our asses kicked.”

“Yeah, but you know how to fight a super soldier-”

“It’s been a while.”

“Bullshit.” Sam side stepped in front of you, making you stop. “What happened?”

“I-I just got distracted, okay?”

“Y/N. Look at me.” Bucky took your face between his palms, eyes worried. “Are you okay?”

You nodded. A tired sigh left your lips and you looked anywhere but his eyes. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just hurting. My leg, I think I pulled it or something-”

“C’mere.” Bucky turned and crouched down, making you blink.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t be walking. We don’t wanna make it worse.”

“But it’s just a strain, it won’t-”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Just get on the man’s back, Y/N.”

You bit your lip before sighing and carefully climbing on his back. He shifted you gently, making sure to hold your leg with caution, leaning his head into yours when you hooked your chin on his shoulder. “You-you don’t have to talk about what happened. Just-just know that when you do…I’ll be here, okay?”

You nodded, moving to press your nose against the column of his throat. “Okay.”

But you could never tell them. How could you? How could you tell the world’s longest POW that you were having nightmares? How could you complain to an Air Force vet who served two tours in Afghanistan and watched his best friend get blown out of the air that you were having flashbacks?

You weren’t sure if it was PTSD or anxiety or depression. Maybe all three. It didn’t matter, though, because you didn’t want to admit it. You wouldn’t admit it. No one thought the Blip messed you up that badly. No one thought Steve leaving did that much damage. And you were okay with that. You were okay with them thinking you were healing - that you were fine - because they needed to see that it could be done. That they could be fine, too. Especially the men walking, Sam teasing Bucky per usual.

It wasn’t until a horn honked that you allowed yourself to be pulled out of your thoughts. A scoff left you when you realized who it was, switching the side you were laying on so your cheek pressed up against the cool metal of his left shoulder, facing away from the jeep.

You tried ignoring the guy as he talked about working together and shit, taking a shuddering breath, making Bucky squeeze your uninjured thigh. There was no way you were working with him. You couldn’t. It’d be like betraying Steve and you didn’t need that on top of all the other things you were dealing with.

You couldn’t deny the need for a ride though. The airport was 20 miles away and you were hurting pretty bad. You suspected that was the reason the guys relented, Bucky tenderly setting you down in the jeep between him and Sam, careful of your injuries.

You stared at your lap as Walker and Sam talked shop. You understood where they were coming from, you were always able to see both sides of the coin, but it didn’t mean you were going to willingly work with him.

“I got mad respect for all of y’all, but you were kind of getting your asses kicked till we showed up.”

You scoffed at that, finally raising your eyes to meet Walker’s friend’s. “Like you were doing any better?”

Bucky reached over to grab her hand that was resting on her lap. “You know, I’ve been trying to get in contact with you.” Walker faced you, eyes raking down your form. Bucky shifted in his spot, but you ran your thumb over his knuckles before he could do or say anything stupid.

“Yeah. I know. My phone hasn’t stopped blowing up for a week. Thanks for that, by the way.”

Walker frowned. “If you just answered-”

“I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you’ve done. I’ve been a little busy doing my job to blow smoke up your ass on national television. Sorry if my saving people’s lives has been an inconvenience for you, but some wannabe playing dress up isn’t my top priority.”

Walker’s brows furrowed and he was about to say something, when Bucky cut in, asking his friend who he was. You were already that close to jumping out of the jeep, when the guy, Hoskins, told you three that he went by ‘Battlestar’.

If the situation wasn’t so aggravating, you would’ve laughed when Bucky immediately told the driver to stop, opening the door before the car even stopped. “C’mere, doll.” He murmured, lifting you up into his arms bridal style, before walking off, tuning out Walker as he shouted after you two.

You pouted a little when you saw Sam still talking to the guy. “What’re they talking about, Buck?”

“Some nonsense about him not replacing Steve. Just trying to be the best Captain America he can.”

You laid your head against Bucky’s chest. “The best Captain America is Steve. He can never be Steve.”

“I know, doll.”

“Steve told me once that all he was trying to do was be a good man…it’ll always amaze me that he didn’t see he was the best.”

You missed the distraught look Bucky shot towards you, the look in his eyes almost heartbroken while you talked fondly about his best friend. The tortured scrunch to his features seemed to melt away at your next words, though, and he held you tighter as you curled into his hold.

“Just like it amazes me that you don’t know how important you are to me too, Buckaroo.”

[m0chaminx]

Druig | Problem

*•.¸♡Request: Hi, can you write a fluff with light smut Druig oneshot with the reader being Tony Stark’s younger sister and the quote “The problem is,'' she said as she leant in, ''if I kissed you, I don't think id be able to stop ''?

*•.¸♡Prompt: “The problem is,'' she said as she leant in, ''if I kissed you, I don't think id be able to stop '' I changed the prompt slightly, but it conveys the same kinda thing

*•.¸♡𝙒𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨: Violence, sexual implications

*•.¸♡Paring : Druig x F!reader

*•.¸♡𝙎𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮 : your mission to find a mind controller spiraled into something completely different

*•.¸♡Words : 682

When Tony had requested that you go on a secret mission to find a lost village, you had no idea it meant trudging through the amazon for nearly two days, special Iron armor or not. Your brother, Tony, had said there had been word of a mind controller that kept a village hostage.

You kept the armor at the ready, carefully hooked on your belt. You pushed your way through the trees walking into a small Spanish village, most of the children playing in the trees, or helping move small sticks.

"What are you doing all the way out here?" A deep Irish voice sounded behind you. You slowly turned around, a man, no older than twenty in looks, stood behind you. His dark brown hair was brushed to the side and he had his hands clasped behind him, and his height made you need to look up slightly. "A pretty thing like you, alone."

"I'm looking for someone, if you must know," You said sternly, moving to walk away from him.

"Miss Stark, I take care of this village so if you have questions," The man held out his arms as if presenting himself properly. "You may ask me."

You gripped the man's arm, pulling him away from the village and tossed him on the ground. You summoned the armor onto your arm, charging the firepower and aiming at his head. "Tell me your name, then how you know mine," You ordered. "And make it quick, I can be very trigger happy."

2 months later

A quick message to Tony and the amazon was left alone. And you stayed with Druig. You listened, something a lot of people didn't do before. You helped people around with their homes, Druig taught you enough Spanish to communicate with everyone, but something always felt different, like something was missing.

"Look I know I don't really ask you personal questions," Druig started making you look up from the book he gifted you. "Are you feeling okay?" You quirked an eyebrow at his question. "Don't look at me as if I'm insane."

You scoffed tossing the book to the side. "What makes you think I'm not okay?" You asked leaning back on Druig's bed, it sat under the window so it was the best place to read. "Couldn't you dig around my mind anyway?"

Druig shook his head, pushing himself off the wall. "I told you, I'm not gonna mess with your mind," Druig reiterated. "You literally left your billionaire brother to live in the amazon with a mind controller, you know you can talk to me."

You simply shrugged your shoulders reaching for your book again, but Druig quickly took it first. "Hey Dru, what the hell?" You shouted jumping up to grab it but Druig pulled his arm back and higher than you could reach.

"You'll get it back after you tell me what your problem is," Druig argued watching your face mold into anger.

"I don't have a problem," You defended, trying to jump for the book.

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"My problem is I want to kiss you!" You finally yelled. You paused not expecting to actually yell that in Druig's face. Druig stilled, dropping his arm to his side. You tore the book out of Druig's hand, moving back to sit on Druig's bed.

"What?"

"The problem is,'' You said taking a breath, "I want to kiss you and if I kissed you, I don't think id be able to stop." You looked up Druig and he still hadn't moved. "Druig?"

Druig finally moved, taking a step towards you. Druig put his fingers under your chin and lifted your face up. Druig took a final look at your face before leaning down and kissing you. You gasped and Druig slid his tongue inside your mouth. Your hands shot up to his hair, tugging at it.

Druig pulled back, your breathing heavy in sync. "Do you want to keep going?" Druig asked brushing your hair back.

"Please," You whined, moving to tug on his dark green shirt.

ﾟ°☆Page navigation

[bebepac]

A Piece of Heaven on Earth: Part 5

The Book:  TRR (no royals)  Series: A Piece of Heaven on Earth Pairing: Liam x Riley  Word Count: 3485 Warnings and Ratings: Profanity, punching, character death: Teen Summary:  Liam heads to the hospital with reinforcements to get Riley out before life support is terminated.  Song Inspiration 1: I Try by Macy Gray Song Inspiration 2:  Don’t you Remember by Adele Movie Inspiration: Just Like Heaven

Original Post: 04/16/22 at 11:31PM EST.

A/N:   Here I go again,  This chapter 5 was over 4800  words and I was still not done, so I decided to cut it into two chapters so it wasn’t so much. So now, there will be six parts + a epilogue  This really does seem to write itself for me.

A/N:  This is very special to me.  So please be kind.  I’m writing this as a tribute story to my Riley FC, the late Cheslie Kryst, in a way to deal with my grief which has almost been consuming my life.  I started following her in 2019 when I was watching the Miss USA pageant.  I rooted for her immediately.  Not only was she from my home state, but she was just this bright twinkling light on stage, she was a minority, like me. So when I came to the fandom in January 2020 and started writing stories for TRR I picked her as my Riley FC because she embodied what I wanted my “Riley” character to be.  Even in her untimely passing, I am still finding out more about her life and I have written her pretty accurately, even down to having depression.  So I will say it again.  If you need help please reach out.

"Are you guys sure you want to do this for me?"

"I'm sure Riley."

"No Liam, ask him again. You could get arrested or go to jail for what we are about to try to do. And he is your brother, he doesn't even know me."

Liam turned to Leo.

"Are you sure you want to help me with this?"

"Is she making you ask me again?"

“You can understand why, right? If things go wrong…”  Liam started.

"Look Ghost Chick, I get it, and I'm calling you Ghost Chick so you know, that no one is the boss of me. I've made some stupid mistakes in my life that wound me up in jail overnight and arrested before over something meaningless. If I'm going down now, I want it to mean something. To be for something important. Do you understand that? And you really mean something to my brother. I haven't seen him so invested in someone's well being…since….. 

It's just been a long time. And I want to help him fight for that. So don't worry, I got my big boy underoos on today. I’m going into this with my eyes wide open!!! GC are you with me?”

“Why does everyone feel like they can make up nicknames for me?”  Riley laughed. “But I get it and tell him Thank you.”  

"She says thank you Leo.  I also told her about Olivia."

"Well! Alrighty then! Guess we should get this party started?"

Liam locked the apartment and they all headed out front to Drake’s van.

"Wow…. No wonder you called his van  a serial killer murder van. It really is, complete with a person-sized dent on the side."

Liam laughed.

"What did she say?" Leo asked.

"She's talking about how Drake's van looks like something a serial killer would drive."

"Man…Riley let me tell you, Drake is harmless, the most serial that guy is gonna get is the corn flakes he eats in the morning." Leo did air quotes when he said the word “serial.”

"Okay that's not helping his case, and that is not real cereal. Nobody eats corn flakes willingly for breakfast. 

Somebody was definitely murdered in this van, multiple someones!  You can’t convince me, that dude isn’t hiding people in the floorboards at his house, and at least one person has not been hit by this van."

Liam told Leo what Riley had said and Leo laughed even harder.

"God I love you Riley. You're a really funny chick."

Riley instructed them where to park; It was the easiest place they would be able to get to.

"First, we'll need to get you guys in scrubs and lab coats so you blend in. I know where to go."

Riley led Liam and Leo to the intern lockers where there were always extra scrubs.

Both quickly got dressed.

"Leo take your sunglasses off."

"Actually no, you look like interns; they will think you're trying to be cool. But just Leo."

"Okay how do we look?"

"Like you fit in."

"It's a beautiful day for saving lives, here at Seattle Grace."

“Did you really just pull out a Grey’s Anatomy reference? Shut up Leo, this is serious."

Liam’s nerves were definitely getting the best of him.  

"No, cockiness is working for Leo. Liam you have got to relax. You have to look like you belong here Liam or security will be all over you."

Liam took a few deep breaths.

"I'm okay. What do we need to do next?"

"We need supplies and a travel gurney. Let’s go.”

Riley took them to the supply room and picked up all the supplies Riley specified that they would need to sustain her health while she was in the coma.

"Anything else we need? Liam asked.

"Just me. It's time to go get me."

"We can do this. You're not going to die today Riley."

"I believe you."  Riley's eyes teared up.

"Let's go Leo."

They walked down the hall of the hospital. Leo smiled at a couple of the nurses tipping his glasses, looking a few of them over.

"Leo… stop.."

"No, it's working! Let him be him."

As they neared Riley's room, they heard a bark.  Liam looked up seeing Taylor walk out of a small waiting room, with Chance in tow. Chance jumped in Riley's direction.

"ZIP IT Chance! SIT!"

Chance immediately obeyed sitting at Taylor's feet.

Taylor glanced down at Chance and back up at him, her eyes widened when she realized it was Liam. Both their eyes landed on  the empty gurney Liam was pushing and the hospital scrubs Liam was wearing. Liam put his finger to his lips.  Taylor nodded her eyes welling with tears.

 Wordless at that moment, Taylor knew Liam was trying to save Riley’s life.  

“Save her please.”  Taylor whispered.

Someone behind her got her attention. Taylor quickly whirled around, blocking them from leaving the room.  

"Dad! Can you just stay with me a few more minutes before we go say goodbye?"

Taylor pulled her father back in the room with her and Chance closing the door.

All sighed in relief continuing on to Riley's hospital room.  

"I'll go in first to make sure I'm alone."

Riley peeked in the room first and called for Liam.

"Are you sure about this Leo?"

"Kind of too late to turn back now, don't you think?"

They walked into the room. Riley quickly instructed Liam how to switch her to the portable respirator.  Though Liam was incredibly nervous and had no medical training, he followed instructions perfectly.

"You would make a good doctor Liam."

"Thank you, but I am doing this for you Riley."

Leo finally had the chance to take a glimpse at the woman who had his brother on the verge of risking prison for her. He was stunned.

“Wow. Liam, she’s so beautiful.”  

“She is, but there is so much more to her than physical beauty.  She is everything, that’s why we have to get her out of here.”

“Let’s roll out then!”

Liam and Leo gently transferred Riley over to the travel gurney. Liam gently touched her cheek, which she felt.

The door opened, and a doctor walked in, who looked surprised at the scene.

Riley groaned.  

“Of course they would send Dr. Olsen to do this.  No one else wanted to, I'm sure.  I hate him.  Of course he’d be the one to be preparing to pull the plug on me.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Dr. Olsen….”  Liam stammered.

Leo jumped into action with every lie he could think of starting with their names. Leo flashed his pearly whites at Dr. Olsen and laid on the professional charm.

“Good morning Dr. Olsen, I’m Doctor Alex Shepherd,  

my associate  here, Doctor Dre….. Flowerman and we’re here to take the patient for one last scan to make sure there are no changes to Dr. Brooks brain activity, before heroic measures are discontinued for her.”

“I wasn’t aware this was supposed to be done.”

“Well you apparently haven’t been keeping up with her chart. And for legal reasons, as Dr. Brooks was an integral staff member at this very hospital, we want to be certain this is the right course of action for her.  Everyone is watching how we handle this, and it needs to be handled with kid gloves, wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Olsen?”

When Liam glanced at Riley, she was flabbergasted at  Leo.  Liam knew though that Leo had always been great at thinking on his feet in a tight spot.  Utter chaos was when Leo shined brightest.

“That makes perfect sense, Dr. Shepherd.  I will still need to confirm with Dr. Ramsey though.”

“You can’t let him make that call.”  Riley said softly.  “He’ll call security when he finds out it’s not legit.”  

Liam walked up to Dr. Olsen.

“Dr. Flowerman?”  

“We don’t have time for this.”  

He punched Dr. Olsen square in the face, and he fell to the floor unconscious.

“Damn Liam, I mean Doctor Dre.”

“I’ve always wanted to do that to him.”  Riley said.  

“Can we talk about the names you come up with on the fly Leo?”  

“There’s no time for that, We got to go now.”

When they got out the door, they followed Riley’s directions.  

“Make a left up here, try to keep me as still as you can Liam.  Now another right.”

It was clear sailing at first.  Liam actually thought for a moment they would get out unscaved.  

“What the hell is going on?!?!?!?! Someone call security now, he has my daughter!!!!!”

Liam and Leo picked up the pace, trying to maneuver the gurney at the accelerated speed, but keeping Riley as still as possible.

The first two security guards started chasing them.  

Liam followed Riley’s commands, and Leo followed Liam. 

“Make a right and then immediately another left!!!!” Riley screamed.

They were seamlessly working their way towards the elevator that would get them to the van.

As they passed by the door another security came running down the hall.  

“I got him!  When you get out, just keep going Liam.”

The security guard made a grab for Riley.  

Leo charged that security guard, tackling him, the two of them falling through the open patient room door.  Liam kept running pushing the gurney with Riley in it,  Riley kept pace at his side.  

“Oh no…..Liam….”

He immediately stopped. The sound of Riley's voice scared him.

"What's wrong?"

“One of them  grabbed my breathing tube by accident.”  

“Riley, what do I do?”

“There’s nothing you can do.  I'm dying. I can feel it happening.”

“Fight it please… Don’t leave me.”  

Liam’s attention fell to the heart monitor, as Riley’s heartbeat slowed, the appearance of her spirit was also fading before his eyes.

Riley felt herself slipping away.   She could see it finally.  That white light everyone talked about at the moment of death. Riley wasn't afraid of it anymore. She was almost entranced  by it, and it was the most soothing thing she had ever known, but she felt bad for Liam. Moments flooded her heart of the two of them together and what they could have been. 

“I can’t… It's too strong.  I’m sorry….”

“I’ll breathe for you!!!!” Liam screamed.

Liam rushed forward, to gently touch her face, trying to breathe life back into Riley’s lungs.

But it was too late. Riley’s heart stopped beating and the monitor flatlined.  

Liam was tackled to the floor by security guards.

Riley was touching her lips as her spirit faded away.

"RILEY!!!!!!! SOMEBODY HELP HER!!!! PLEASE HELP HER!!!!"

Leo came running down the hallway with the security guard on his heels still carrying the breathing tube.  He stopped in his tracks realizing there was nothing but silence in the hallway and the sound of a flat lined monitor.  The security guard dropped the breathing tube in shock when he realized his part in what had just happened.

Leo looked down at his brother still being held by security guards.   “Liam…..”

Taylor began to cry, "She's really gone?"

Taylor picked up Chance and put him on the gurney with  Riley.  

"You didn't get a chance to say goodbye to her either boy. I waited, because I didn't think we'd have to."

Chance  gingerly licked Riley's fingers, and  tried to nuzzle his nose under her hand so that it cupped his snout. He rested his body in the empty space on the gurney wedged next to her whimpering softly.

“I shouldn’t have waited.”  Taylor began to cry harder.  No one moved for what felt like an eternity.

Suddenly, Chance sat up in attention, his tail starting to wag, looking at Riley.  

"What is it, Chance?"

There was a beep on the monitor.  Followed by another, and another.

"That's impossible." Dr. Ramsey said.

“What’s happening?”  Jason asked as he neared the gurney to stand by Taylor’s side.

Riley's heartbeat began to strengthen  on the monitor.  Jaiden gasped as Riley began to cough and opened her eyes. 

 Riley's family crowded her hugging her and crying but Liam was still being held on the floor by two security guards.

"Let him go. This wouldn't be happening without him." Taylor responded.

"I'm so glad you're okay, Rye. I would be lost without you here. Don't EVER scare me like this ever again."

Liam jumped up to rush to Riley's side.

"Hey Riley."

"Hello."

Riley looked away from him back to Taylor.

"Riley, it's Liam. You know Liam."

Riley looked at him again. Liam reached out his hand to take Riley's but instead, she immediately pulled  away from him.

Taylor glanced at Liam, he was beginning to see she didn’t know him.

"Riley it's Liam! You don't remember him?"

Riley looked at Liam for a third time. His eyes were almost begging for some kind of recollection of their time together. Her obnoxious singing, their flirting. The smiles, even the emotional moments in tears.

"Riley…." Liam whispered.

But there was nothing inviting in her eyes for him anymore; he was indeed a stranger to her now.

Whatever had happened in the process of putting her back together, made her forget the last several weeks that she and Liam had spent together. She actually forgot him, and how much they meant to each other.

Riley shook her head no again. "I don't remember you. Are we friends?"

Liam’s heart broke. 

 He wanted so much more from her than friendship, and he felt that she had wanted more too, before.

Taylor looked at Liam staring at Riley, and it was painstakingly clear to her that he loved her; In the short amount of time the two had spent together Liam had fallen desperately in love with her older sister.  His actions proved it.  He had acted like a madman trying to save her that day.  And he succeeded.  

"Liam, I'm so sorry."

"I'm just glad she's alright."

Liam took a step back away from her.  

“Are you alright Riley?”

“Just a little confused, and my head hurts a little.  I think I bumped it.”  

Nico came running up the hall.

"RB1! You're okay!!!!"

Her attention left Liam and she focused on Nico.  She smiled at him.

"You know I hate you calling me that."

"You can hate me all you want because you're still here."

"You were here… everyday. I heard you talking to me."

When Nico took Riley's hand, she didn't pull away.

"I was, because I care about you. More than I knew how to express before the accident, and I want to make my intentions clear for you.”

He kissed Riley in front of all of them, and she responded to him.

"Riley no…." Taylor whispered. Taylor regretted looking to see Liam’s response. The look on his face made her heart hurt. Liam was devastated.

“Let’s go Leo.” 

"But Liam…the way you…."

"She doesn't remember me! Let's just go."

"She will though. You have to give her the chance. She'll remember. It can't end like this Liam. It can't."

Riley was smiling at Nico while he talked to her.

"Please let's go."

Liam and Leo headed back to the apartment.

"I can stay, if you want me to stay, Li."

"I'd rather be alone right now."

That night, Liam laid wide awake that night in bed waiting, looking at Riley's picture he had taken from the hospital.

It was all he had left of her.  His alarm went off exactly at 2:24am. Twenty four hours ago to the second he had promised Riley, he would do everything he could to ensure that she would still be alive at this time today. Liam had kept his promise to her. Riley was still alive.

Liam and Taylor

Liam had started to pack his things up. The Brooks' family was honoring the month to month lease by letting him stay in the apartment until the current months' end.  Earlier in the day he had gone by the Bodega and picked up several Tahitian Treats.

He wasn't just humoring Riley when he said he liked the robust drink. Liam really did enjoy the bold fruitiness of the fruit punch flavored soda.  Not to mention it reminded him of Riley. He had put two bottles in the freezer chilling as he waited for his pizza delivery. He knew it was silly, but it almost made him feel like Riley was there with him waiting on the delivery too. She did say pizza was one of her favorite foods.

There was a knock to the door, thinking it was the pizza guy, instead it was Taylor and Chance.

"Hi Liam."

"Taylor! Come in!"

Chance walked up to Liam then collapsed rolling at his feet. Liam crouched down to scratch Chance's belly. Chance wagged his tail.

"He likes you Liam. He knows you."

"He's a good boy."

“I think he understands what you did for her, and he’s grateful too. Just like me.” 

There was an uncomfortable  silence between them.

"You should have stayed Liam. You should come visit her in the hospital."

"She doesn't remember me, Taylor. It's like the price to be paid for her still being here. It hurts, but it's so much better than the alternative. Seeing her not knowing me hurts Taylor."

"That's why you need to be around her, Liam, to give her the chance to remember you.  Her soul hasn't forgotten about you. I look at her and I know. She knows something…someone is missing from her life, but she doesn’t know it’s you."

There was another knock on the door.

"Hold on a sec  Taylor, that's the pizza guy."

Liam came back with a piping hot pizza.

"Taylor, have you eaten? Would you like some pizza?"

"Um, you are asking a pregnant woman if she wants food? The heartburn is so going to be worth it. Hell  yes I could eat!!!"

Before he could even start in that direction, Taylor was already in the kitchen grabbing plates from the cabinet.

"I'm sorry,  I just know where everything is. I'm kind of used to just coming in and making myself at home."

"It's alright, I don't mind.  Would you grab my drink out of the freezer?"

"Sure."

She opened the freezer and giggled.

"She got you too with them?"

"She did."

"Mind if I have the other one then?"

"Sure you can."

Now he was glad he put two bottles in the freezer.

"It's been a while since I have had one of these. We would have burping contests, me and Riley."  Taylor admitted.

"Who won?"

"Riley always, though I think I could give her a run for her money now. This kid has all my bodily functions amped!"

Liam smiled. He had to ask, he couldn't wait any longer.

"So how is Riley?"

"She's up on her feet walking around, talking a lot. Her energy level is really coming back.  They are talking about discharging her soon. She is going to stay with me and Max until….."

"Until I move out. I'm looking for a new place now.  Going by a few properties tomorrow."

"You should come by to see her, Liam."

"He'll be there, and I can’t see what I saw him do the last time, knowing that should be me.” 

"He's not you. If it makes you feel any better, Chance hates Nico. But look at him with you. He loves you."

Liam glanced down at the floor, and Chance was sitting at his feet, looking up at him.

"Don't let him fool you, he's begging for a slice of pizza. Chance loves everyone momentarily when food is involved. Go ahead Liam, I know you want to."

Liam  gave Chance a few of the meatballs off of his pizza which he gobbled up quickly.

“Will you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”  

“About  the weeks you spent with Riley.  That made you willing to risk going to jail in an attempt to save her life?”

Liam nodded and recounted the weeks Riley had been a part of his life, and how he thought they felt about each other.  When Liam was done, Taylor was in tears.

“You love her, and it sounds like she loves you. Go see her Liam, you have to.”  

“Okay Taylor, I’ll go.”

What he had been willing to do for Riley to save her life, didn’t make him as scared as what he was about to do.   Liam  had finally gotten the courage to go see Riley.  He got a small bouquet of  wildflowers for her and  her favorite drink.  Hana saw him walk down the hall towards Riley’s room and she followed him.

Liam was crestfallen when he saw the empty bed, and all of Riley’s things gone.  He felt like it was that night all over again, now almost five months ago, standing out in the rain, ironically still holding a bouquet of flowers for someone he hoped might mean something to him, and he missed his chance again.  He had missed HER yet again.

“We discharged her about two hours ago.”  

“Oh.”  

“I’m sorry she doesn’t remember you.  But you really don’t know how she was with Nico.  I think she should explore this with him.  They could be more than just friends, and he really cares about her.”

‘He’ wasn’t the only one.  Liam handed the flowers to Hana.

“Can you give these to someone that might need them to brighten their day?”

Hana nodded.  She noticed he was carrying a bag, and the color red of the bottles in the bag was unmistakable.

“Thanks.”  Liam walked away.

He had to have known her pretty well, Hana thought.  He had brought Riley her favorite drink.  Even though she wanted Riley to give things a go with Nico as she always secretly shipped them together, now she understood there was truly something about Liam that felt different.

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