#how would you wake Valter up?

[ill-skillsgard]

Definitely would love more Faust and faith!

A/N: I have been really loving this FxF renaissance and I thank everyone who sent in prompts for more Faust stuff. It's made me so happy to write them again and I hope you continue enjoying and letting me know your thoughts. Reblog and stuff if you'd like to read more!

Warning: 18+ Smut (unprotected sex/oral), alcohol consumption, mature language, one use of the r-word and some brief mentions of non-consent, violence, angst, and Faust crying.

Summary: Faust discovers something about Faith that drives him back to the brink of uncontrollable aggression. Can he continue burying his demons to stay with her, or will they overtake him once more?

- Not based on Lords of Chaos. I use Faust!Valter’s likeness only as inspiration.

Read more Faust x Faith here [x]

Faith couldn't get back to sleep the first time she woke at 6 am to Faust snoring behind her. Waking next to him again made her throat tighten with guilt. As much as she tried to move on—promised herself that even if she saw him again, she wouldn't take him back—she fell right back into his snare.

It was no small thing. The man was obsessive, impulsive, quick to anger, and selfish. Not only that, but Faust was withholding and, controlling, charming... Intoxicating. Greedy. Violent. Faust was too much. Leaving her safe boyfriend was stupid, and she could already see the problems from her comfy spot next to him, where his breath tickled her skin.

She didn't want to think of the future. All she wanted was to stare at his lips and admire how he looked without a scowl. To touch him and enjoy the way he smelled. To remember what it was like when they first met, and he was only a mystery and had no blood on his hands. Those were different times; she had changed, and Faust had not.

He woke in a daze an hour into her studying his face and said nothing as he rubbed his eyes and felt an enormous wave of lust hit him. Some of the night's recollections stirred, and he remembered who was beside him and grabbed Faith around the waist, pulling her close.

"Good morning," she said.

"Mmmph," his voice was gruff, barely above a whisper. "Kiss me."

What Faith thought would be a sweet peck to seal their rekindling quickly turned into open-mouthed, moaning, and Faust rubbing his crotch against her thigh. He could barely keep his eyes open when he whispered, "fuck me."

Faith climbed over his hips and waited for him to look up at her before sinking down on his cock. She expected a smile when he finally opened his eyes, but he choked and sat up, hands clamping around her ribs.

"What the fuck is that?"

Faith looked down at the small tattoo she had under her breast and giggled.

"Um, it's a rose."

"It's a tattoo."

"Yeah, so what?"

"Why?"

"What do you mean why? Because I got it."

"Why would you get a tattoo?"

Faith scoffed. "Who even cares? Everyone has tattoos these days."

"Yeah, but you... You don't get tattoos."

She smoothed back his hair, laying it over his shoulders before taking his face in her hands and kissing him.

"You don't get to tell me what to do."

"Faith..."

"Are you going to get mad about every little thing I did while we were broken up? You barely even know me anymore."

"People don't just change in a year."

"Yes, they do. Well, at least I did. You wouldn't know. Maybe if you asked me how I've been rather than making me have sex with you, you'd know that."

"Making you, huh?"

"You seduced me."

"You're the one who was all over my cock last night. I seem to remember you pouting over a rubber."

Faith kissed him again, giggling. "You are the one who brought me to your place and wouldn't stop saying you needed my pussy to live and how everything sucks without me, and you can't get it up for anyone else. Trust me. You were drunk."

"So you took advantage of me."

"How!?"

"By existing."

Faith smacked his shoulder. "Shut up. You're gonna have to get used to how things are now."

"Oh, yeah?" Faust asked, palms sliding up and down her thighs, lip caught between his teeth. "And how are things now?"

"First of all, I have a new place. I'm renting a room in a house with other students. So, no more sharing a dorm," said Faith.

"That's nice."

"And I got a job at a bar—"

"You fucking what?"

"Relax. It's a bar in a restaurant. Nothing like the bars you go to."

"And you got a boyfriend."

Faith's smile disappeared. "Yeah... I got a boyfriend."

"Is he gonna continue being a problem?"

"Not if you don't make it one," Faith said, glaring. "Don't even fucking start, Faust. You said you fucked other girls, and you don't see me trying to fight them."

"Fucking isn't the same as seeing someone. And I got the black eye to show for it."

"Is that so? Then what are we right now? Fucking or seeing each other?"

"Right now... We're fucking around. I just got back from tour, and you just got out of a relationship. You're working at a bar now, I guess; I'm unemployed again. You'd be an idiot to come back to me."

"What happened to saying I belonged to you last night?"

Faust clamped his hands on her hips and pulled her onto the mattress next to him. He looked into her eyes, holding back a smirk. "You said it yourself... I was drunk. Saying stupid shit."

"Faust!"

"You didn't have to break up with your boyfriend just to hop on my dick. You could have just fucked me and kept it a secret like most people would."

"You made me!"

"I didn't make you have sex with me. You wanted it. You said you wanted to fuck, and I gave you what you asked for."

"You said you loved me!"

"I do love you."

"Then what are we?"

Faust rested his hand on her shoulder. "I'm the guy whose cock you're gonna start stroking in about two seconds. And you're the little fucking slut who's gonna open her mouth and take everything I wanna put in it. Got that?"

His voice came over her like a sheet of gravel. When he darkened and his grip on her strengthened, her resistance waned. The black sparkle in his curious pale eyes charmed her all over again. But she had to remain strong. Stronger than the girl who had fallen in love with him first. With her newfound independence still intact, she had sex with him once more, showered, and told him she had to go. Faust tried hard to pretend he was okay with her leaving and stayed quiet as she grabbed her things and walked out the door, blowing a kiss as she went.

Faust fell asleep alone and awoke hours later, pining for her already.

~*~

He wasn't sure when to find her again. Faith was ever-present on his mind, but he didn't want to overwhelm her. He understood that his sudden appearance had shoved a wrench in the spokes of her life, and overdoing it could drive her away. But she had left the other guy and professed her love to him. It was enough to keep him comfortable, knowing she wasn't likely to go running back to Hunter any time soon.

Instead of showing up at her work, he did the next best thing and bought a phone and internet plan for his new place. With a connection, he could find her online and send her a message like he used to when they first started seeing each other. It was a non-threatening approach, he thought, until he stumbled upon her Instagram account and spent the better part of an hour scrolling through the posts made during their time apart. Photo after photo of Faith with Hunter... Kissing him, riding bikes together, out for dinner, Hunter standing next to her fucking dad. And they were smiling so genuinely Faust wanted to smash his new phone into the fresh drywall.

Then he saw the documentation of her tattoo appointment. Not only did Faith have a tattoo on her ribs, but Hunter had the same one in the same place. They had gone to the local tattoo shop together, and Faith posted a mirror photo of them showing off their fresh ink side by side, her bralette showing as she lifted her shirt up and stuck out her tongue.

His stomach bubbled and snapped like a boiling pot, his chest so tight he could barely breathe. He wanted to carve the little black rose out of Hunter's skin with a red hot knife and then pin that square of skin to his heart with the blade driven deep. Sweat beaded on his forehead as a curdling wave of nausea came up from his guts. It was the worst sensation he had ever felt, ten times worse than a hangover. Faust wretched in the bathroom, slamming his fist into the tile to relieve some of the blinding anger.

Faust had to keep reminding himself that Faith had, understandably, left him because of the voices hijacking his brain. They were there now, whispering and laughing and telling Faust to find Hunter, to stick something sharp through his windpipe, to organize another burning, to dispose of the other man permanently. But they had pushed him too far before, to the brink of jail time, into a room with an investigator who questioned his whereabouts on the night the Trinity Church went up in flames and a man burned alive within its smoldering walls. He had been lucky that time. Too lucky.

And though he had walked away with an alibi, Faith distanced herself. Letting her leave was a good idea at the time.

Faust waited. He waited for the photos with Hunter on her Instagram page to disappear so he could quit checking up on her, and he waited for the right time to track her down. It was an intense exercise in self-restraint, but nothing Faust hadn't done before.

He waited a week to ask if they could meet up. He expected her to reply right away, only knowing her to do so, but Faith answered him hours later at midnight. She was out at a bar with some friends from school and told Faust she wasn't leaving but that he could find her. So he did.

Faust hopped in his car and drove to a dive bar downtown where some shitty dad rock band played on a stage the size of a loading pallet. The place was barely a room, and Faust saw her right away at the end of the bar and felt all kinds of conflicting emotions. There she was, his Faith, dressed in all black, wearing fishnet tights and a form-fitting skirt that hugged her ass tightly. The skirt rode up with every step she took, and her makeup was different, and he wasn't sure he liked it. She was in the middle of a lively conversation with a blond girl he had never seen before. Instead of going straight to her, Faust sauntered to the opposite end of the bar and ordered a beer.

Finally, as the blond pulled Faith along by her bracelets, she turned and noticed him, his height unmistakable. His eyebrows shot up as she stopped and stared.

"Faust! You're here," she said.

"Yeah, I'm here. And what are you doing here? Wouldn't your dad go fucking nuts if he found out you were hanging out in a place like this?"

"What? Are you gonna tell on me?"

Faust made a mocking face and beckoned her with a casual nod. The way she looked dressed in the tight, black get-up made him want to make fun of her, but she was stunning. Too stunning. No doubt others had noticed her. He touched her back, pulled her in, and said for anyone nearby to hear, "Do you want something to drink, princess?"

Faith went stiff against him, though she giggled.

"I'll be right back. I'm going with my friend."

"Oh, yeah? Where you two going?"

"Outside."

It was then Faust noticed a particular smell on her.

"Faith...Have you been smoking?"

"No! My friend does. I just have her cigarettes on me because she doesn't have a purse."

"Bullshit."

"I'm serious!"

"Then let me come out with you."

"No, Faust. My friends don't know about... us."

"What the fuck do you mean they don't know about us? Everyone knows about us."

"Not them! I have different friends now. People you don't know. They're not metalheads."

"Ah, I gotcha. You haven't told your little friend that you broke up with what's-his-face yet."

"Please don't bring that up tonight."

Faust gave a prolonged nod, scoffed, and shook his head while her cheeks burned. He had discovered yet another facet of her that he never knew existed. A false side. One that wasn't so shiny and hid the truth. Faust couldn't help but laugh.

"Alright, princess. I like this little dirty side you have going on. Why don't you go outside with your friend, then come find me. I'll buy you both a drink."

Faith squashed a devious smile and backed away from him, biting her lip. She turned and left the bar for twenty minutes. At that time, Faust chugged two beers and ordered a shot of whiskey. By the time Faith returned with her friend in tow, he was less sober, and Faith was looking at him like she wanted to jump his bones in the bar in front of everyone.

"So, girls. What will it be?"

"We'll have a Jack and Coke," said Faith.

"And how are you two planning on getting home?"

"What does it matter?"

"I dunno. I guess it depends on where you're going after last call."

"Oh, you curious?" the blond asked.

Faust didn't answer the question. "What's your name, doll?"

"It's Kasey," she giggled. "But you can keep calling me doll if you want."

A grin unfurled over Faust's lips, and it made Faith's heart skip a beat. When she looked at Kasey looking at Faust, it was immediately clear she found him attractive. And she should have known, for she and Kasey had bonded over their similar tastes. Kasey's eyes sparkled up at him, as most would meeting one of his genuine smiles. In the low lights, Kasey watched how Faust carried himself, stiff yet confident, his side profile and striking cheekbones, pale green eyes, and lips soft and full. The long black hair, the leather jacket, the bullet belt, stark black jeans, and boots—he was something that stepped out of her bad girl dreams.

Faust had had no intention of having a good time at the bar, but the way Faith monitored Kasey's advances was too delicious for him not to encourage a little bit. He supplied them with a drink and let the night unfold with a sick sense of vengeance warming his belly. Faith now had to bathe in the water she drew from keeping secrets about them and lying by omission. They both knew it, and poor Kasey had no clue she had become Faust's instrument of the night, playing on her attraction to him to keep Faith by his side too.

The plan worked, and he found himself outside the bar as the band took a break, Faith sidling up to him as he smoked a cigarette. Kasey had gone to the washroom, and they had a free moment to talk without blaring music and loud conversations.

"So, are you gonna like... Fuck my friend?" Faith asked.

"Depends... Are you gonna keep pretending like you don't know me?"

"I'm not pretending like I don't know you! We've been hanging out all night."

"You're acting like I didn't fuck two huge loads into you last week."

"Ugh, I don't care! I just don't want her to touch your arm again. Why are you letting her?"

"We're not dating anymore, baby. Your fuckin' matching tattoo with your boyfriend says it all."

Faith paled.

"Yeah, didn't think I'd find out about that, did you?"

"You moved away! You said I should forget about you, so I tried. But now I feel like I can't live without you."

"You, can Faith. You've been doing it."

"It doesn't feel right, though, beetle. Please."

"Now who's fucking drunk? Saying dumb shit."

"I tanked my life because of you. Do you even understand how fucking pissed my dad's gonna be when he finds out I broke up with Hunter?"

"Broke up with him to get back with me?"

"I don't know! I just know that I want you."

"But we don't know each other that well. Are you sure you want to go home with me? You gonna tell your girlfriend you're leaving with the guy she wants to fuck?" 

Faith grabbed his arm, and he let her drag him away.

"Where's your fucking car? Let's go home."

Faust snickered. "My place or yours?"

"I don't fucking care. Let's go."

The thought of Kasey touching Faust drove her hand to his lap while at a stop light. He looked down briefly, smirked, and directed his attention back to the road. She leaned closer and squeezed his thigh. Every few seconds, Faust would look down at Faith's hand in a different stage of unrest, rubbing his crotch, yanking open his belt, and struggling with the button and zipper. And he didn't make it much easier besides leaning back and parting his knees. Once freed and she began stroking, Faust relaxed and chuckled.

"So desperate for cock, aren't you, slut?"

The question activated a latent urge within her. There were no more thoughts of anything but him, his voice, his body. Faust recognized this girl, how she squirmed and bit her lip, eyeing him constantly. Faith had fallen submissive, and he was happy to stoke the urges he missed so much. 

"Be a good girl, and show me what you like to do with that mouth."

"Um, should I take off my seatbelt?"

"Whatever you need to do to get those gorgeous lips around my dick, princess."

No matter how much makeup or fishnet she wore, Faith was still unsure. He liked that about her. He had never met anyone so timid yet feisty. The women he had used to replace her physically never reminded him of anything but his persistent love for the woman climbing over the seat to insert her head under his arms. The downtown streets were alive that night, and Faust pulled up beside an elevated truck, hoping the passengers didn't look down to see Faith bobbing up and down on his lap.

Faust swerved once as his eyes rolled back and he groaned, her mouth wrapped tight around his tip, humming. He drew a breath in through his teeth and shook his head as though trying to remain conscious.

The drive to Faith's house was difficult, but he made it before she could suck the life out of him. Faith stumbled out of the car, laughing, into Faust's arms. He righted her and followed the wobbling girl through the house to her apartment on the second floor. Faith struggled with her key, and when the door swung open, her scent wafted into the hallway, enveloping his senses in a warm wave of familiarity. He smiled as he looked around, her belongings taking up space and decorated to suit her tastes, but his grin faded when he saw her bump into the table and almost lose her footing, trying to take off her high heels.

"Come to the bedroom," Faith slurred.

Faust took slow steps and met her at the doorway, peering into the room as though he were gazing into a stranger's underwear drawer. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, unaware of his growing discomfort, until he made no move to kiss her back.

"What's wrong?" Faith asked.

"You're fucking wasted."

"So?"

"I'm uh... Yeah, we can't fuck."

Faith's jovial expression disintegrated, replaced with a sneer. "Are you serious? You won't fuck me, but you'll let me suck your dick the whole way here?"

"I didn't realize how drunk you were until we got out of the car."

"Faust, don't be a pussy. Come on. I know you wanna fuck me. Why else did you come over?"

"Maybe that was the plan," he said, gripping her wrists and forcing her hands away. "But, no."

"What the hell? Are you joking? I brought you all the way here, and we're not even gonna fuck?"

Faust scoffed. "I'm not fucking a drunk chick. I'm not a fucking predator."

"But I want it," she whined.

"I don't give a shit what you want. Take off your makeup, get in your pajamas, and drink some water."

"You can't fucking tell me what to do! Who are you, my dad?"

Faust captured her by the shoulders. His powerful stare brought silence over the room as Faith stared up at him, trying not to pout. Her eyes filled with tears, but Faust was insusceptible to her tactics.

"You need to sober up."

"Fuck you. Hunter would fuck me if he were you."

The rapid energy shift in the room made Faith take a step back, regretting her words instantly. The man towering over her snarled, and one hand that had been gripping her shoulder went to her neck. He didn't squeeze but supported her so she couldn't look away.

"Guess the fuck what? I'm here, and he's not. He will never be me. I suggest you never mention his name ever again. But it's good to know he'd fuck you if you were wasted."

"No, Faust, it's not like that!"

Faust backed her into the wall and diminished his height, boxing her in with his whole body, eyes drilling into her while his teeth flashed. "You are mine. That other son of a bitch will never be half a fucking thought in your head ever again, understand? You belong to me, you've always belonged to me, and I don't care how it was while I was gone. All that's done now. Don't ever call or text, or message him ever again. Delete his entire fucking existence, or I promise you, it will be a thousand times worse than last time."

Faith struggled against him. The deadpan coldness in his eyes and his persistent grip on her became claustrophobic, and she threw his hands off of her, tears rolling loose over her cheeks.

"Shut up! Don't you hear how ridiculous you sound?" Faith cried. "You're so opposed to touching me if I've had a drink or two—"

"Way more than two—"

"I said shut up, Faust! I'm not finished."

Faust withdrew and gave her some breathing room as she wiped her nose and sniffled. "You act like it's rape, but I know you've fucked other girls at parties while they were plenty more drunk. I know that for a fact because Anika told me stories about you after you left. So what's the difference between that and..." Another bout of sobs turned her mascara muddy. "You've hurt others, Faust. Really bad. So bad that it ruined what we had. And what we had seemed so perfect. It'll never be the same. When I look at you, I'm scared."

"I promised myself I'd never disrespect a woman, but I did—I used to. I have major fucking problems, Faith. But all of that went away when I met you. And then that sick fuck did what he did to you and those girls. It just took over. The thought of somebody hurting you... I can't. I fucking promised myself I'd never end up like my piece of shit father, yet here I am. Full circle. Everything I hate, I've become. No matter how hard I tried to be the opposite of him, I turned out just like the motherfucker."

Before he could say more, Faust pressed his mouth shut and backed away. Not once since they met had Faust brought up his parents. The horror on her face brought him crashing back into reality, and he shook his head, unable to meet her eyes without the salt and heat of tears stinging his. Faith followed him, hungry to witness the anguish on his face after having let go, to see him lose control and cry.

"You think I don't regret what I did? I don't want to hurt people! But it's like this entity lives with me. I can't fucking think of another man touching you without feeling like my heart will explode and kill me. I'm so full of anger, and it reminds me of last time."

"What do you mean?"

"Like I'm gonna do something horrible."

"No, you're not," Faith grabbed his elbows and shook him. "You are not going to do that again. If you love me, you won't. And I'm not saying that to protect Hunter. I'm saying it because I can't be with you if you can't get a hold of yourself. It can't happen again."

"It won't."

"Promise me, Faust. Look me in the eyes and promise me you won't do that shit ever again."

She hugged him close, panicked by his silence. He pressed her whole frame into him and looked off through the window at the moon-washed street, remembering. The calculated torture, the screams, and the flames were all there, yet so were his memories of falling in love with the girl sobbing into his chest.

"I promise," he said.

"You swear?"

"I won't do anything. Just give me another chance. I'll be different."

Faith nodded, the last of her sniffles chased away when he leaned down and kissed her. By then, Faith was too tired, and the thought of sleeping next to him again soothed her nerves. Though his lips tasted perfect, her desire was only to lie down with his body pressed around her. Faust needed no guidance, and they both stripped down to their underwear and climbed into bed, where they fell asleep, sharing each other's breath between them.

[beantothemax]

The obligations of a general were wonderful. How Selena loved her job, subduing bandits and helping those in need. But somewhere along the line, it changed with the emperor.

It had all come crashing down when prince Lyon commanded her to kill queen Ismaire.

"She doesn't need to die, we can get to the sacred stone without killing her!" Selena protested.

"Silence, or you'll meet Glen's fate," Lyon's hollow form snapped.

Gods, how she hated what Lyon had become, but her family did not deserve the pain that would follow her protest. She lead a platoon to Jehanna hall, praying that the soldiers of Jehanna might kill her. At least then, she would die an "honorable" death, charging into the territory of a people who did nothing but show them kindness.

Unfortunately, her prayers were left unanswered. The soldiers fell dying for their nation and queen, truly honorable deaths. Even in the face of an invader, even when they lost limbs or bled till their faces were pale, they would not stand down

At last, she reached the throne room. There stood only Ismaire and Carlyle. Selena had not met Carlyle herself but judging by some soldiers' accounts, he was... strange. Certainly not worse than Valter or Riev, but he didn't share Glen's attitude either.

"Please, Ismaire, we could be happy somewhere far away!" he pleaded.

"I-I cannot abandon my people!" Ismaire cried.

Carlyle seemed not to care that a Grado general watched him. He took the queen in his arms, laughing as he described the life they might have.

It lasted only for a moment. Selena tore Ismaire from his grasp, pushing him to the ground.

"Silence!" she commanded, a spell falling over him.

He did not move, speak or even cry.

"What did you do to him?" Ismaire wept.

"He's- he's okay. He'll wake up in some hours with no lasting injuries," Selena murmured.

Ismaire's eyes met Selena's. Behind them, despite everything, was a hope for the future.

"It's not right to kill someone who cannot defend themself," Selena began, "Your majesty, take my blade. I'll allow you some moments to breathe if need be."

Selena held out her dagger, which Ismaire hesitantly accepted. She examined it carefully. It was well made, sharp and glimmered in the light, unlike anything Selena could ever dream of just a decade prior.

And now, she offered it to her next victim in hopes of a fair fight.

...This fight was never fair, not even in the slightest. It was an invasion with far more military might than would ever be necessary for such a passive and peaceful country.

Selena fell to her knees at Ismaire's feet and wept.

"Pray, forgive me your majesty! I cannot bring myself to kill a queen as caring and thoughtful as you. All you have done to Grado since you became queen was aid us and we repay you with an invasion and attempt on your life!" Selena cried and cried, "Kill me if you wish, I know no torture could ever make up for how I have damaged your nation."

At the silence, Selena looked up. Ismaire had retreated some meters back, staring down at her with terror Selena could scarcely recognize.

"You're the fluospar." Ismaire muttered.

"Yes, that is true," Selena answered.

"We met once. You were so kind back then. You spoke only of how it is our duty as the privileged to help those less fortunate."

"...I still hold that belief. I am ashamed I lost myself in my adoration for Vigarde, I know not why I followed his orders to kill innocents."

"He's dead."

"Yes."

"I'll spare your life."

"...You will?"

Just then, the door burst open. All Selena could do was jump to the queen's side, tome in hand. She would have commanded her soldiers to fall back and, cease the assault had she not seen a dozen familiar faces. People of a mercenary group lead by someone she later learned was princess Eirika.

Ismaire showed her mercy, though it is doubtful her son and his companions would as well.

OUGH……. A PART OF SELENA HOPING SHE FALLS IN BATTLE TRYING TO REACH ISMAIRE SO SHE WONT HAVE TO FIGHT HER��.. and selena not being ably to bring herself to someone who has done no wrong…………………….. desperately need to finish sacred stones so I can see ephraim route and know things about her,,

@vinegar-on-main LOOKIE

[crabknight]

The obligations of a general were wonderful. How Selena loved her job, subduing bandits and helping those in need. But somewhere along the line, it changed with the emperor.

It had all come crashing down when prince Lyon commanded her to kill queen Ismaire.

"She doesn't need to die, we can get to the sacred stone without killing her!" Selena protested.

"Silence, or you'll meet Glen's fate," Lyon's hollow form snapped.

Gods, how she hated what Lyon had become, but her family did not deserve the pain that would follow her protest. She lead a platoon to Jehanna hall, praying that the soldiers of Jehanna might kill her. At least then, she would die an "honorable" death, charging into the territory of a people who did nothing but show them kindness.

Unfortunately, her prayers were left unanswered. The soldiers fell dying for their nation and queen, truly honorable deaths. Even in the face of an invader, even when they lost limbs or bled till their faces were pale, they would not stand down

At last, she reached the throne room. There stood only Ismaire and Carlyle. Selena had not met Carlyle herself but judging by some soldiers' accounts, he was... strange. Certainly not worse than Valter or Riev, but he didn't share Glen's attitude either.

"Please, Ismaire, we could be happy somewhere far away!" he pleaded.

"I-I cannot abandon my people!" Ismaire cried.

Carlyle seemed not to care that a Grado general watched him. He took the queen in his arms, laughing as he described the life they might have.

It lasted only for a moment. Selena tore Ismaire from his grasp, pushing him to the ground.

"Silence!" she commanded, a spell falling over him.

He did not move, speak or even cry.

"What did you do to him?" Ismaire wept.

"He's- he's okay. He'll wake up in some hours with no lasting injuries," Selena murmured.

Ismaire's eyes met Selena's. Behind them, despite everything, was a hope for the future.

"It's not right to kill someone who cannot defend themself," Selena began, "Your majesty, take my blade. I'll allow you some moments to breathe if need be."

Selena held out her dagger, which Ismaire hesitantly accepted. She examined it carefully. It was well made, sharp and glimmered in the light, unlike anything Selena could ever dream of just a decade prior.

And now, she offered it to her next victim in hopes of a fair fight.

...This fight was never fair, not even in the slightest. It was an invasion with far more military might than would ever be necessary for such a passive and peaceful country.

Selena fell to her knees at Ismaire's feet and wept.

"Pray, forgive me your majesty! I cannot bring myself to kill a queen as caring and thoughtful as you. All you have done to Grado since you became queen was aid us and we repay you with an invasion and attempt on your life!" Selena cried and cried, "Kill me if you wish, I know no torture could ever make up for how I have damaged your nation."

At the silence, Selena looked up. Ismaire had retreated some meters back, staring down at her with terror Selena could scarcely recognize.

"You're the fluospar." Ismaire muttered.

"Yes, that is true," Selena answered.

"We met once. You were so kind back then. You spoke only of how it is our duty as the privileged to help those less fortunate."

"...I still hold that belief. I am ashamed I lost myself in my adoration for Vigarde, I know not why I followed his orders to kill innocents."

"He's dead."

"Yes."

"I'll spare your life."

"...You will?"

Just then, the door burst open. All Selena could do was jump to the queen's side, tome in hand. She would have commanded her soldiers to fall back and, cease the assault had she not seen a dozen familiar faces. People of a mercenary group lead by someone she later learned was princess Eirika.

Ismaire showed her mercy, though it is doubtful her son and his companions would as well.

pie this is sooo goioopooifood

crying in the club rn

[princessmacedon]

If there are grand beasts who stand tall in the wake of won battles, imposing creatures who bow not to blood nor rain, then Maria is the little life that follows in their wake; she flits from branch to broken branch as a robin would, finds the parts that are still whole and new uses for the pieces, sings her little song and welcomes the coming dawn as the brave and tired lay down to rest. She is the life between the pages of history, the binding of the book, and how is she to be discontent with that?

Bright steps, hummed melodies, specklings of gentle laughter -- such things as she tucks into the pockets of her compeers helps to keep them afloat, or so she hopes. They do not always smile (rather, she would be more surprised if they did), but when the shadows beneath their eyes grow lesser, when their backs straighten by centimeters or their chins lift just a bit higher, she feels, again and again, that she is right where she should be.

And today, another friend is with her.

"Sir Valter!" The little cleric brightens in full sincerity, all gentle lines to his jagged edges, beaming the same at the moon as she might the sun. Hands clasp together, tucked beneath her chin and shining smile, and she laughs. For what is laughter if not an expression of joy? "Congratulations to you, too! Maybe even for the second time? Hee hee!" (Could it be called the end of the world? -- that ruined dream, that sleeping girl; if not the end of something, it was still an end for her.)

At that, her head tilts to one side, a touch of softness to the corners of her eyes.

"I'm so glad to see you again. I didn't see you anywhere!" Nor does faith preclude worry; to know he is capable is not to believe him infallible. (Though this, she keeps to herself.) "What are you up to? Hmm..." Lips press against her knuckles in thought. Knowing him as she does... "Oh! Are you going to go hunt some of the monsters?"

maelstrom, songbird.

post-epiphany reunion.

[reccyls]

Gilbert - Romantic Route Ch 21 - His POV story

Context and most of it under the cut. I've skipped some of the flashbacks to earlier moments in his route, but just know they're significant moments in advancing the relationship between the two.

As always I don't claim to be completely fluent, if I have mistranslated anything or made any other mistakes, please let me know!

Context:

MC has just found out that Gilbert has been suffering from a respiratory illness and has at best a few days left to live. She found out because she saw Gilbert having a fit that involved him coughing up blood

Valter is Gilbert's attendant and physician, he was the one who told the MC the details

Albert is Gilbert's older brother

Story

If I brought her to Obsidian, I knew it would only be a matter of time before she found out.

My body was already at its limit. I had accepted the announcement that I could drop dead at any moment.

If I felt a seizure coming on, I would leave the room immediately. There were times where my heart would suddenly begin to hurt, and I would find it hard to breathe just going about my life as usual.

Up until now I had been good at fooling others, but even that was growing more difficult.

(…She’s here.)

When I opened my eyes after my seizure, I saw the little rabbit sleeping beside my bed.

It would have been nice if this was a dream, but the fact that she had found out was reality.

(…If she knows about my illness, I’ll have to kill her.)

MC: Mm…

My movement almost caused her to slip off the bed.

I quickly caught her, and placed her gently in the bedsheets so as not to wake her.

Even though I wrapped her up in my blanket and hugged her like a pillow, she didn’t even stir.

She must have been very, very tired.

(…Her eyes are swollen.) (Damn that Valter…)

My hope that she hadn’t heard anything was dashed.

(When she wakes up, what should I do?)

-

Before long, dawn broke and morning light streamed through the windows of my room. And yet, I still hadn’t made my decision…

Just as I let out a huge sigh, I felt her stir in my arms.

Gilbert: Good morning, little rabbit.

MC: …

(I knew it… No matter how much I wish she didn’t, she knows.)

Gilbert: Oh dear, what a terrible look. If those bags under your eyes get any darker I might think you’ve gotten some black eyes instead.

I traced beneath her eyes with my finger. As if my touch was painful, she furrowed her brow.

MC: …Prince… Gilbert…

(…It’s for the best if she acts like she doesn’t know anything.)

She’d only just awoken, but she held onto my shirt and pressed her forehead into my chest, over my heart.

My cold body basked in her warmth.

Gilbert: From your reaction… He’s told you everything, hasn’t he.

(Now that she knows about my illness, I can’t leave her unchecked.) (It would interfere with my plans otherwise.)

Even if my body succumbs to the illness, that knowledge must be kept secret at all costs.

Rhodolite covered up the death of their king for much the same reason. In Obsidian, news of my death would have consequences.

Without the imperial family, enemy countries may see an opportunity to invade. Or the remaining noble families in Obsidian could descend further into corruption and turn Obsidian back into a country of depravity.

(Although I have my “substitute” ready, the little rabbit would realize in an instant that it’s not me.)

Even though she’d likely swear to not tell anyone, she’s a horrible liar.

There’s no guarantee she’d be able to keep it a secret.

(But, if you say that you don’t know anything…) (If you don’t push any further--)

MC: …I heard that… you don’t have long to live.

(…)

MC: I can’t… I can’t pretend that I don’t know.

Gilbert: …I see.

(So she won’t act oblivious...) (…What a stupid, foolish rabbit.)

Gilbert: Then if that is your choice—

I tore her away from my body and straddled her.

(She must have known that if she meddled, she would be killed.) (But… if she died like this, would I truly have no regrets?) (If she dies, then… I too will have no more emotions left.)

I wrapped my hands around that slender, breakable neck and began to put pressure on her trachea.

MC: …U-ugh… Ah-

Gilbert: You aren’t an exception. Gilbert: If you know, I’ll kill you.

She was struggling desperately. Her nails dug deeply into my hands.

At least for now, she had no intention of going gently into the night.

(Did you misunderstand because I’ve shown you kindness?) (Did I give you the mistaken impression that I wouldn’t kill you?)

Blood oozed down the back of my hands.

It hurt.

It hurt so much more than the times when seizures wracked my body, making it hard for me to breathe.

MC: I won’t… tell anyo-

Gilbert: I don’t trust people. Gilbert: Anyone you meet could be a beast incapable of love. Could be pretending to be your friend, then turn around and stab you in the back without a care. Gilbert: I’ve said as much before.

Though the little rabbit was the one being strangled, for some reason, I felt so much worse.

It even felt like I was the one tightening my hands around my own neck.

(When I killed people, I don’t feel anything. I discarded all those emotions a long time ago.)

But if that was the case, then what was this pain?

I didn’t understand it.

-

(Flashbacks to interactions between Gilbert and MC earlier in the route)

-

(Ah… Why now--)

-

(More flashbacks)

-

(This isn’t the first time I’ve killed… Why--)

MC: …Please… trust me…

A hoarse gasp and shallow breathing.

MC: I- I’m… MC: …your… ally.

Gilbert: …

-

(Flashback)

Albert: It’s okay, Gil. No matter what happens, I’m your ally. Albert: It’s a promise. I won’t leave you alone, alright?

-

Gilbert: …Some ally.

Without realizing it, I had loosened my grip.

I didn’t intend to let go, but my hands moved on their own.

The little rabbit was completely exhausted, her eyes shut.

When I held a slightly trembling hand over her mouth, I could feel shallow breaths.

The moment I felt it, the sigh that escaped me was one of relief.

Blood streamed from my wounds, staining her blouse.

Gilbert: He betrayed me. Gilbert: …Even you betrayed me, and yet—

(I can’t kill you.) (I couldn’t.)

This was a problem.

The emotions that I should have had burst out of me and overflowed.

It turns out that everything I thought I had discarded to become the conquering beast still lingered in my heart.

(I won’t… love anyone.) (…I had sworn not to love anyone.)

I gripped the still rabbit’s fingers and let my forehead fall against her shoulder.

-

(Flashback)

MC: …How do I turn you back into a human?

-

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts…

(I…) (I don’t want to be human again.)

[theofficersacademy]

                              Sirius   Randal   Kurthnaga   Lyon                          Leo   Forsyth   Cecilia   Deirdre  Sylvain                             Valter   Maria   Chrom   Ares   Micaiah

TEAM TAG: #KEruins2023 BASE CAMP PROGRESS: 60%

WEEK TWO: The calm before

Your skirmish with the Aukes leads to a tentative victory, though it is not won without loss. Fallen comrades are carried ‘home’ in your arms, but they are mourned preemptively - for as soon as they are lain to rest, their eyes blink awake, and they look right as rain, as though nothing had happened to them at all.

Hm.

Well... Can’t complain, right? They could be dead dead after all.

Anyroad, following your fight at the abandoned warehouse, the ruins have fallen oddly quiet, aside from the odd hum and click of passing sentries. Perhaps you’ve driven away the other scavengers, or maybe they were simply passing phantoms in the ever shifting landscape comprising the dreams you’ve so willfully invaded. One way or another, you’re alone now...

Well, with the exception of one brazen can thief and your chipper friend the Mechanic who’s seen fit to show his face again, that is.

Food consumed: 35 cans.

Places & Things of Interest

your apartments - your camp is starting to come together! No longer do you have to stare through a gaping hole in your second floor room at the dreary view outside. Instead, you can hang out with your dormmates in the privacy of your refurbished lodgings. Blankets and cots, analog early alert systems, yummy cans upon cans of beans and other delights... What’s not to love? Oh, and the Mechanic has offered to show you how to work the odd round panels in your rooms that heat up food on command. If that ain’t the height of luxury...

the crater - all remains quiet. As the new week progresses, however, it’s hard not to note the increasing number of machinery taking up residence within. They mill about aimlessly. There’s an odd hum in the air...

the crane -  the Mechanic is surprised, no, shocked that no one’s really used it for much yet. He wants to show you a fun game you can play with it...

abandoned storage - the Aukes have promptly vacated in the wake of your attack. Perhaps it will be worth revisiting soon?

the blank journal - is not completely blank, it turns out. Thumbing through the pages reveals a lone, cryptic journal entry near the middle of the book. Hm...

▊▊▊▊▊  ▊ :

          We begin moving. There is nothing left for us here. We head east towards ▊���▊▊▊▊▊▊ .          I hoped I would never have a reason to return there. But past the fog is an abundant land filled with generous people. Them sheltering us is our best chance of building our lives back. The others go along with it, thankfully. ▊▊▊▊▊▊▊▊▊and I share leadership of the group—neither of us know what to expect, but so long as we have each other, I know we will get through this. 

the Teleporter - It seems this can be used to send objects somewhere, and also to receive them... but where are they going? Who is it on the receiving end? ... Of note, every time the strange machine is used, its light appears to dim just a little bit more...

NPCs of Note

the Aukes - Where have they gone...? Perhaps it is for the better that they’ve disappeared, but one has to wonder at their sudden change in attitude when they’d been so hostile not long ago.

the Mechanic - He’s turned up out of the blue, looking frazzled but none the worse for wear. Where the heck has he been, you ask? Oh, that’s right, he never showed up for your scheduled meeting, did he... Um, well, about that... First, it started with the nasty lil bugger what stole his tool belt. Can’t well fiddle without a fiddle, right? So he had to go and get it back. And then it turned out that his venture took him a little further out than anticipated, and so, like, he got a bit lost, you see. And then-- (His tale continues on for some time.)

Aphie, the Can Thief - a sassy child who cares not for your lame jokes. She would like to take your measure, see if you are actually worth sticking around with. She’s got high standards, you see. She knows all the best vantage points in town, and all the nooks and crannies.

Tasks

Setting up base camp (continued) - every 1 post = up to 7% of progress, capping at 100% - requires an equivalent 7 planks of wood, plates of metal, dormant/live cores, or a mix of the above per post - Rumour has it reaching 100% may yield something beneficial... But as things are, you’ve adequate enough lodgings to survive the remainder of your time in this dream. (Presumably.)

The Mechanic promised you something Real Cool and he still plans to deliver! That’ll be seven live cores please.

Scavenging / Dismantling / Hunting / Foraging - see week one tasks - not necessarily a priority - up to you if you think you’ve enough!

Crafting: - Aphie and the Mechanic peer over your randomly stockpiled materials with an appraising eye.  “You could make stink bombs with these,” Aphie points to the small game and the bundles of herbs. “Or maybe a potion or two...” The Mechanic doesn’t seem particularly inclined toward plants, but does light up at your assorted metal and dormant cores. “They may be dormant but that doesn’t mean they’re devoid of life. And even the dead cores have their use... Wanna see?” - 3x bundles of herbs + 1x questionable small game = 1 vulnerary (?) - 2x bundles of herbs + 2x questionable small game = 1 stink bomb - 5x assorted metal + 2x dead cores = 1 shrapnel trap (chance of injury = 1d10, 1-3 = -2HP) - 5x assorted metal + 2x dormant cores = 1 battery, after a fashion - who knows, perhaps there’s more to come!

[jj-lynn21]

Stellan interview

"Stellan Skarsgard Is Finally Seizing the Spotlight"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stellan-skarsgard-is-finally-seizing-the-spotlight

With roles in “Dune,” the Star Wars series “Andor,” and “Hope,” the character actor par excellence has never been more popular. He talks to Marlow Stern about his stellar career.

Few if any actors have built a resume as impressive as that of Stellan Skarsgård.

After achieving teen-idol status in his native Sweden—even releasing a pop single—due to the TV series Bombi Bitt, Skarsgård transitioned to film acting. It was in the mid-’90s, with roles as a sadistic oil rig worker in Breaking the Waves, a fiery abolitionist in Amistad, and a haughty mathematician in Good Will Hunting, that the towering, stone-faced Swede would cross over into America, and establish himself as one of the finest character actors alive.

He’s since maintained a healthy diet of what he calls “experimental films,” including a total of six with Danish auteur Lars von Trier, and Hollywood studio fare, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean and Mamma Mia! films, the Thor and Avengers superhero extravaganzas, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Cinderella. And right now, at the age of 69, Skarsgård is at his most prolific. There was his Golden Globe-winning turn in HBO’s Chernobyl, the upcoming villain in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and a main role in the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor, which he’s filming right now in London. Oh, and he’s fathered eight children, including the actors Alexander, Gustaf, Bill, Sam, and Valter.

“There’s no competition, really,” the elder Skarsgård tells me of his talented brood. “There’s some joking competition at the dinner table, but I know they’re better than me, so I’ve given up.”

Skarsgård’s latest is the Norwegian drama Hope. Directed by Maria Sødahl, the wife of his frequent collaborator Hans Petter Moland, it is a heartrending autobiographical film about a long-married couple, Anja (Andrea Bræin Hovig) and her theater-director husband Tomas (Skarsgård), whose atrophying bond is put to the test when Anja develops terminal brain cancer. As they fight for Anja’s survival, the two reevaluate how their relationship went off-course, and why they fell in love in the first place. (The U.S. remake rights were quickly snapped up by Nicole Kidman and Amazon Studios.)

Anne Frank’s Stepsister: How Trump Reminds Me of HitlerNEVER AGAINMarlow Stern

In a wide-ranging conversation, Skarsgård opened up to The Daily Beast about his many great films, the controversy surrounding pal Lars von Trier, being a nudist, and much more.

How have you been passing the time during the pandemic?

In different ways. The first half of the year I was at our summer house on an island outside of Stockholm, and all my kids—who were also actors, most of them, and they weren’t working either—were all out there in two houses eating dinners together, having a good time, and seeing the spring inch-by-inch, everything grew, which you never get time to do otherwise. But this job I’m doing here now [in London], I was supposed to fly back and forth from Stockholm because I’m shooting this Star Wars series called Andor, and it would have been very convenient because it’s only a two-hour flight, but because of the quarantine I’ve been stuck here. For more than a month I’ve been alone in a hotel room staring into the wall.

Speaking of the Skarsgård household, I read a quote from your son Alexander who said that when he was a teenager, “Dad was always walking around [without clothes] with a glass of red wine in his hand.” Was that your vibe during the pandemic?

Not this time! Is it the wine that worries you? [Laughs]

Did the stress of the pandemic make you feel less… free?

No, I’m still taking off my clothes when I get home very often—and my kids also, some of them do. It’s not a big thing. We’re Swedes! And we have no God that says we can’t show our body parts.

What about it do you just find so liberating? I don’t go the full monty but when I go home, I do tend to take off my pants and let loose a little bit, because it is constricting.

If it’s warm enough you don’t need clothes, right? Unless you’re ashamed of your body—or taught to be ashamed of certain body parts. For me, it’s all upbringing. It’s cultural. Some cultures don’t care about what part of the body you show, and some cultures are very precious, and some cultures the women can’t show their faces.  

I’m curious what life was like in the Skarsgård household, because you’ve helped produce so many talented kids. Alexander described it as “bohemian,” similar to what you described during the pandemic, filled with dinner parties and a free-flowing atmosphere.

It’s always been a very open house, and the kids’ friends, it’s been easier to sometimes be in our house than their houses—especially during puberty, when conflicts arise—because we’re very relaxed and non-judgmental in our family. It’s really, truly pleasant. And my kids are more like pals to me. There’s no hierarchical relationship at all. It’s very nice. We just have fun!

It’s a very talented—and frankly, attractive—family. How did this happen?  

How did I make kids that look so good? [Laughs]

Is that something you’re particularly proud of?  

[Laughs] Well, the looks I don’t care so much about, but I’ve had two beautiful wives—and very smart wives—and that’s helped a lot. I’m not going to take much credit for anything. But what I’m proud of is, when I hear from other people in the business about Gustaf or Sam or Bill or Valter or Alexander, I hear that somebody worked with them and they were really nice on the set and totally cool with everybody, and how no matter what menial job anyone had on the set they were nice to them, then I’m proud. If they win awards it’s secondary to that, because that is a lottery anyway. Awards are sort of like reality shows.

They really are a popularity contest. Let’s talk about Hope. It could have very well been called Grief.

I thought it sounded bland to begin with, but in fact the film is about hope—and about love. It’s not a normal cancer film where it’s all about beating the cancer or fighting against it, but it’s about someone who gets a death sentence in a family situation with a lot of kids, like I have, and everything that was petrified in the relationship floats up again. It’s about how they rejuvenate their relationship, and through those horrible circumstances, find love again.

There’s one very powerful scene in the film that really encapsulates many elements and themes that it explores, and it’s the sex scene between you and your wife. It manages to capture the joy of reconnecting as well as the grief you’re experiencing.

I think it’s a great scene, because it starts beautifully—very gently—and it looks like it’s going to be really nice for both of them, and then her anxiety sets in, and things start to bad. And it does go bad pretty fast.

On another level, I’m an American and we don’t see sex very often in movies. And when we do, we don’t see it in the service of such complicated emotions.

With sex in film, it’s difficult, because sex is something that feels fantastic when you do it, and it looks ridiculous when you watch. Those humping movements like a dog? It’s not sexy at all! So, you can’t do a sex scene that looks like it feels, so they always have to be about something else. The sex scenes I had with Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves, it was about her curiosity, because she discovered her first penis, she discovered sexuality, and it was totally about the relationship. The sex was just there. And in this film, the scene is not really about sex but about something else. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sex scene that looks like it feels, and that can convey that beautiful thing that sex can be.

Really, in America, we get almost no sex scenes in movies. And it’s 2021.

It’s very strange. It’s not as bad as during the Hays Code, when you couldn’t let the lips meet for more than one second.

You just had a train going into a tunnel.

[Laughs] Yes, that very subtle image. But in America, you have a strong, strong tradition of bigotry or fear of sexuality. Only two years ago, in nine states in America, it was still illegal to have sex outside of marriage, and my American friends have told me that when they were growing up, it was even regulated how they could have sex—you couldn’t have oral sex or anal sex—so it is so ingrained in American culture that people’s sexuality is not a private thing, but something that everybody should interfere with.

Hope is also an exploration of mortality. Is that something you think about often? 

I’ve never been that interested in it. I’ve always been aware of it. It’s the only thing you know in life—you’re gonna fucking die. But already many years ago, I thought I’d had such a fantastic life that it would only be fair that I died, because I’ve already lived more than most people. So, I don’t feel any injustice in death. And I’m not afraid of death because I’m not religious, so I don’t have to worry about whether I’m going to end up in hell or heaven. But I have small children still, my youngest is 8, and I’m no spring chicken anymore, so I think about how I should stick around for at least another ten years until everything is set.

I read that you’d studied a bunch of religions in the wake of 9/11 and reached the conclusion that it was all sort of bunk.

I grew up with total freedom of religion—my parents weren’t religious, though my grandmother was very religious. It was taught to me without judgment, and it was a very tolerant upbringing I had. But I hadn’t read the Bible. And after 9/11, when I saw George W. Bush standing in front of TV cameras and claiming that God had put him there, I thought maybe it was time to read what they actually believed in. So, I read the Quran and I read the Bible. There are some fantastic stories—as fiction, it’s sometimes brilliant and sometimes boring—but the God in both the Quran and the Bible, there’s only one reason to really worship them, and that is fear. It’s a power that says, “If you don’t worship, you’re going to die—and not only die, but burn in eternity.” It’s a bit autocratic and dictatorial, I would say. It’s very hard for me to worship something under threat.

And if God put George W. Bush in the White House, then God has a very cruel sense of humor.

[Laughs] Yeah, he does. And the latest president said the same thing.

But he doesn’t believe in God. He only believes in himself.

Yeah. I think that if he had more appreciation from the liberals in America, he would have just as well gone populist-liberal.

I think so too. You know, I read that your Dogville co-star Nicole Kidman already picked up the remake rights to Hope for Amazon.

She’s picked up the remake rights, yeah.

Both you and your son Alexander have shared some pretty intense scenes with Nicole. There’s that dramatic scene in Big Little Lies where Nicole hits your son in the dick, and it almost seemed to me like payback for what you put her through in Dogville.

[Laughs] Yeah, I’ve done two films with her and Alexander just finished doing The Northman with her. But she’s lovely. I really like her. She’s so cool.

At least it was a prosthetic and not Alexander’s real thing.

Yeah… coward! [Laughs]

I gotta say, between Chernobyl, Hope, Dune, a Star Wars series, and even a Simpsons cameo as yourself, how does it feel to be at your most prolific at 69?

I’m just working! I’m doing my job and having fun doing it. I’ve been lucky and a lot of good projects have emerged. It goes up and down, you know, throughout life. And I don’t think I could have a better life than I’ve had. I don’t have any regrets. And I don’t have to be the star or be in something very successful, I just have to have fun.

Nice. Do you feel you’re underrated? I think you’re someone who’s so consistently great in everything that it can almost be taken for granted how great you are. I know you won a Golden Globe recently, and that was long overdue, even if it’s mostly bullshit.

I don’t know! I can tell you: it’s much better to be underrated than overrated. So, I’m very comfortable if I am underrated. But I’m a Swede with an accent—or most of the time I have an accent—and for being a Swede with an accent, I have been extremely successful internationally, so I can’t complain. When it comes to the big studio movies, and I’ve been in four or five gigantic franchises that have paid a lot of bills for me, their concerns are financial, and I’m not a ticket-seller. I’m a solid fucking actor, and I’d rather be an actor than a star.  

It gives you the mobility.

Exactly. The freedom I have. I can easily do small, experimental films and strange stuff—films that could ruin another actor’s career—so I’m in a good position.

I wanted to ask you about Breaking the Waves, because it’s the 25th anniversary this year and I consider it a masterful film. And it was Emily Watson’s first film, which is just extraordinary. How did you two establish such strong chemistry?

She’s British, which means she comes from a rather prudish society too, and to take on a role with an obscure Danish director—who wasn’t that famous at the time—and to take on a role with such explicit sex and nudity took enormous courage, but she was fantastic. My job was to love her, and that felt easy, but I think that she felt loved, and I think that she felt secure, which is essential for being able to do anything courageous. But she’s such a brilliant, talented, wonderful woman. I finally got to work with her again in Chernobyl. I mean, you just have to look at her and everything comes.

There’s this longstanding debate over whether Breaking the Waves is misogynistic or not, and I personally find it to be a misreading of the film. I’ve always thought of it as a biblical allegory of sorts about a desperate woman navigating a deeply sexist world.

Absolutely. Lars doesn’t have that in him. Those fantastic female roles that he has written, if you want to defend women in film, you’ve really got to take care of him because he writes the best roles for them. Those roles are very much him, and he definitely doesn’t have a negative attitude toward women. He loves them. There’s a plague of labeling people—not for what they’re really saying, but for what they appear to say. He was stamped as a misogynist and then he made a bad joke about Hitler at Cannes, and everyone stamped him as a Nazi, which is the furthest thing from what he is.  

Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves

You stamp people as a “racist,” a “fascist,” a “communist,” I mean this fucking stamping is as smart as QAnon. It’s frightening. The fantastic thing about mankind is that we’re not one thing. We’re all capable of the most brutal and horrible crimes and we’re all capable of love. We do good things and we do bad things. There are nuances. The way of seeing people as “good” or “bad” guys is forcing something upon humanity that is really dangerous, because when you say someone is the “bad” guy then you’re saying you are the “good” guy, and it’s forcing you to not look at your own flaws.

I’m a huge fan of Lars’ films but I think one thing that’s really colored people’s opinion of him are the allegations that Bjork made against him on Dancer in the Dark. You didn’t have the biggest role in that film, but is it something you witnessed?

I’ve never seen him do anything like that. It’s not him. And if you talk to any of the other women who have worked with him over and over again, you will not get those kinds of accusations. But the Bjork and Lars conflict was enormous during the shoot, and it had very little to do with #MeToo. Lars, like all directors, in the end is a control freak, and Bjork has controlled everything in her career—from the music, to the costumes, to the way she sounds—and if two control freaks try to make a film, there will be conflicts. I got phone calls from Lars during the shoot where he was in tears. She left the set several times, and it had nothing to do with sexuality. She tore up her clothes. They had a very difficult relationship. But you’ve gotta pick your toxic males. You can’t put a “toxic male” label on everybody, otherwise it will be watered down, that label.

I’m so excited for Dune. What can you tell me about it? Denis Villeneuve said that your Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is different from the comics or the David Lynch film in that he’s not as much of a caricature but a calmer, more sinister presence.

The thing about it, and why I’m looking forward to this film as well, is because it’s Denis Villeneuve. Whatever he does, he creates an atmosphere that is dense, that you can touch, and you’re just sucked into it. You’re never bored—even if he does long, slow takes. The atmosphere builds up, and you’re in his universe. I think it will be the same with this one. He’s lovely to work with, and a beautiful man. I did eight or ten days on the movie, so my character doesn’t show up for too much, but his presence will be felt. He’s such a frightening presence where even if he doesn’t say anything, I think you’ll be afraid of him. And I’m extremely fat. I had eight hours in the makeup chair every day. And in some scenes, I look very tall because I levitate. You’re going to have a lot of fun with it.

The whole HBO Max day-and-date thing is weird, and I hope as many people as possible get to see the film on the big screen.  

Oh, definitely. I think they made a deal with AT&T—which owns Time Warner, which owns HBO, which owns my phone—that they cut a four-week deal where it’ll be just for the theaters, but I’m not sure. That could change.

I also feel culturally obligated to ask you about Andor, the upcoming Star Wars series you’re in. What’s that about, and who do you play in it?

As you know, they’ll shoot me if I say anything! I can’t even get a proper script. It’s printed on red paper so I can’t make any copies of it, it’s ridiculous! Of course I’ve seen all the Star Wars films, because I’ve had children in the ‘80s, and the ‘90s, and the 2000s, and the 2010s. I’ve had children in five decades, which means you’ve seen all the Star Wars films—and seen all the toys as well. But when I saw Rogue One, it had much more atmosphere and seemed a little more mature—and that was Tony Gilroy, who’s the showrunner on this one. So, hopefully this one will be a little more than little plastic people falling over.

Was a part of the motivation to do Andor to look really cool to your kids?

I do think like that sometimes! I’ll go and do a children’s movie for that reason. But also, I’m not the most mature person myself, so who doesn’t want to go and fly a spaceship?

Plus, now you can give your kids action figures of yourself and say, “Play with me.”

Fuck yeah. Go play with dad. Don’t disturb him! Go play with him! [Laughs]    

I’m not the most mature person myself, so who doesn’t want to go and fly a spaceship?

OK, this is kind of a silly question, but do you have a favorite movie death of yours? My favorite has to be in Deep Blue Sea, because in that one you get your arm ripped off by a shark, and then the shark uses your body as a battering ram to destroy this underwater facility.

I would say that is probably, in terms of inventiveness, my favorite one too. It was Renny Harlin. Yeah. I like it! Fortunately, I didn’t have to spend that much time on that stretcher—it was a doll. But it looked really cool! And the sharks weren’t CGI back then. It was mechanical sharks, and they were pretty dangerous. The little boy in me was very excited.

Another movie of yours that I love, for entirely different reasons than some of these other ones we’ve discussed, is Mamma Mia! Is it basically a vacation filming these? I imagine the cast parties are a lot of fun, because it seems like you all are having a ball.

Well, it is. I’m not a singer and I’m not a dancer so I was scared stiff, but the only way to make it work—because it’s not much of a story—is that we had fun doing it, because that joy is contagious to the audience. And we really had fun. It was very relaxed in Greece there on the beaches, and the parties we had there were very good too. It was a nice bunch of people to hang with.

When the cast of Mamma Mia! goes wild in Greece, who is the one that parties the hardest? Who’s the VIP?

It depends what you mean by partying! I usually get pretty drunk. Down there, Colin [Firth] and I were pretty good at it. And at those parties, we also had 50 dancers in their twenties, and they had much more stamina.

I have to ask: Will the gang get back together for a third one?

I don’t know! It took 10 years between number one and number two, so if it takes another ten years, I don’t know. Some of us may just be there in urns, with our ashes!

You released a pop single in the ‘60s, right?

Yes. When I was 16, I became extremely famous in Sweden. We had one TV channel back then and I did this TV series, and it was like being a rock star. But it meant also that all kinds of shady people thought they could make money off me. So, this guy calls me from Stockholm and says, “Stellan, can you sing?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, try it!” And then I hear this guitar on the other end of the line, I go, “Ahh!” and then he goes, “Perfect! Come over to Stockholm.” I went to this very shady studio in the suburbs and we recorded it, and then the guy who was running the project said, “I listened to the tape now, and I think it’s better if I sing and you speak on the record.” So, I don’t sing on the record. But there were very cruel headlines in Sweden. One paper had a headline that read, “Stellan Skarsgård, who we loved on this TV series, we don’t like anymore.”

That’s so mean! In addition to Breaking the Waves, another film that really raised your profile in the United States was Good Will Hunting—which holds up remarkably well. Some of my favorite scenes in that film are the ones where you and Robin Williams are jousting. And I know he’s a wild card, so what was it like shooting those?

He really is a wild card because anything can come out of him, and he can say anything and do anything, and he has this urge to do it because he has these three parallel brains that are constantly working on finding something funny or interesting. Sometimes, even when we would do ten takes and everybody would be happy with them, he’d say, “I have to get something out of my body,” so we would do one extra for that. You didn’t know what you’d experience when the camera would start rolling—you just had to dance with it. And it was fantastic. He was such a lovely man and had no ego. He was just a volcano of creativity and ideas.

Do you ever think about your legacy? You not only have a bunch of talented children but also have amassed such a strong body of work.

The thing is with legacy: you won’t be able to enjoy it, so just forget it. No, I don’t. And it doesn’t matter. If you’re extremely successful, it takes a decade and you’re gone from people’s minds. You can only hope that your children remember you for a couple of years, at least!

Well, they’ll have the Star Wars toys, at least.

They’ll have the toys! That’s right. [Laughs]

[justicefanged]

From one courtyard to another, though this area seems to be actively under attack? Being sacked? It's definitely burning, black smoke billowing up into the sky like a signal. Soot blackens the streets, lingers in the air -- smoke tinges the sky a strange red-orange.

Well, okay then, at least this isn't as actively horrible as that bog.

Bond and Amaterasu activate! +1hp (Bond), +1hp (Amaterasu); Linus 7/10hp.

Taking a quick glance over his allies, it was clear that none of them had made it to the end of their last battle. With how tough those things were, and how beat up they already were from the Kelpie, it wasn't a surprise but it still had Linus gritting his teeth in frustration. He hadn't been able to stop it, had hardly been able to do much of anything useful, and it was starting to chip away at his confidence. Would they have done better with someone else? Would they have been spared some of this pain, if he hadn't been dragging them down?

At the moment, it didn't matter and he knew he shouldn't -- couldn't -- get stuck in his own head over it, or else things would be guaranteed to get worse. But he was going to have to double his usual training efforts after this. This pathetic showing? This was unacceptable for a Reed.

Linus didn't take notice of their foe until the kid was scrambling into action. A woman; lance in hand, flames licking up the weapon and leaving heat distortions in its wake. Okay then, pretty straight forward looking human, but some kind of juiced up magic weapon. That wasn't too wild on the face of it, but even someone like Linus knew there had to be a twist or a catch somewhere.

He should have the weapon advantage here, even with the fire. But charging in like he wanted to, would normally do, probably wasn't a good idea when they had no idea what their foe was capable of. And, Saints, did he want to redeem himself and charge in swinging and screaming.

But he hadn't done nearly enough to warrant that sort of leeway. If he charged forward right off the rip and fucked up? That immediately put the others at a disadvantage. He'd fucked up too much already, and though he didn't trust Valter farther than he could throw him or fully respect the quiet guy...Well, at least Quiet Guy had been managing pretty well.

"You!" Linus bellowed, singling Volke out with a jab of his finger. His other hand was firmly wrapped around the new axe in his hand, and against practically every urge and instinct in his body telling him to charge into the fray, Linus simply pumped the weapon up over his head, bringing his free hand back in to beat at his chest with a fist. "You hit that bitch fuckin' hard and fast, ya hear me?! Knock 'er on 'er ass before she has any time to think!"

Linus 7/10hp uses Rally Speed on Volke 5/10hp; +6spd!

Booming Voice activates; +3spd! Linus is now more likely to be targeted by enemies! (BARKBARKBARK)

my world's on fire, how 'bout yours? // team 14 silver round

[gustafsnightangel]

Shattered Lives Ch 40 Pt 5

“Dad took them shopping.” Valter said as he took Sildie’s bag from Gustaf.

“Ahh, that explains it.” Gustaf chuckled.

“She’s looking better.”

“Still not all the way there, but yes, better.” Gustaf said quietly.

“You want me to hang or split?”

“Hang, you’re in the middle of getting you ass handed to you again.” He grinned as he scooped Lily up for some dad dad cuddles. Damn he’d missed this, he thought, all of them, but especially his Lily bear.

“Yeah. Thanks, bro.” Valter said sarcastically as he took Sildie’s bag to the bedroom.

“Boys, take it down a notch.” He said softly. “She’s not fully well yet.” Kissing her temple he snaked an arm around her as she slumped slightly, her energy spent.

“I need to go lay down ok?” She said to the twins. “You can come see me after my nap and we can have dinner together. I’ve missed that.”

“Love you mum.” Brendan hugged her fiercely. She knew it had hit him harder, the poor kid was slightly less of a mess than Gustaf.

“I’m ok B. I’m on the mend now and in a few weeks I’ll be back to normal.” The teen nodded. “It scared you?” She murmured holding him close.

“Yep.” She could see the tears welling in his eyes.

“I’m sorry love.”

“Sok.” He shrugged. “You’re back, that’s all that matters.”

“So what are you cooking?” She asked seeing the half prepped meal on the counter.

“Chicken soup for you. Grandpa helped me go shopping.” He said quietly.

She choked up. “Yum.” Her smile made the kid grin. “I’ll take anything that’s not jelly. Thank you, especially for helping Gustaf.”

“We’re a family.” Brendan murmured.

“We sure are love.”

“Bed Sildie before you fall down.” Gustaf said gently, he didn’t want to pull her away from the kids, but she was crumpling to the floor in front of his eyes.

“Going.” She looked over at Valter, the twins already whooping his ass again. “Thanks Valter.”

“Anytime, although I’m regretting that decision now these two are wiping the floor with me.” He grinned. “Again.”

Gustaf helped her shuffle to the bedroom, Lily intent on hugging her and getting snippy with Gustaf at his lack of urgency. “Hang on a second little lady, she’ll drop you if I hand you over.” Sildie sat on the bed, her sigh turning into a coughing fit. Sitting beside her he let Lily stand on the bed and hug Sildie.

“I’ve missed them.” She choked.

“I know love, they’ve missed you too.” He toyed with a wave of copper that had escaped her braid.

“He was so scared.” She let the tears fall, better out than trying to hold them back.

“We all were.” He whispered, his own emotions getting the upper hand.

“Mum mum mum.” Lily patted her cheek softly.

“I’m ok Lily bear.” She smiled through the tears and swiped them away.

“Nap then food or food then nap?” Gustaf asked.

“Nap. I’m wiped.” She barely had the strength to bend and unlace her boots.

“Let me.” He said softly and got on his knees to undo her boots.

“I have zero energy, it’s crazy. Like someone flicked an off switch or took my batteries out.” She chuckled.

“Your body has been through hell on the inside love, it needs time to recover.” He pulled her feet free of the boots and looked up at her. “I love you.”

“I love you too sweet man, and thank you for taking care of me.” She cupped his face in her hand and he leaned into it relishing the contact. Damn he’d missed her. “Even when I’m a cranky bitch and don’t deserve you.” She snorted, snuggling Lily in.

“You were ill, I think you get a pass on being a cranky bitch. I’m not much better when I’m sick. Makes me grumpy. I’m a bear, fair warning.” His quip got the smile he was after.

“Little lady you need to go to dad dad.” She said. “I don’t have the energy to hold you up.” She said smiling and Lily giggled as Gustaf kissed her neck, scruff tickling.

“Into bed love.” He kissed her softly and helped her get under the covers. “Your phone is there, text me if you need something or need to get up. I don’t want you struggling to get to the bathroom and falling.”

“Honestly, I don’t think I could get there without you.” She slurred, her body already pulling her under.

“Sleep love.” He kissed her temple and Lily said her soft mum mum as they left her to rest. Coming out into the kitchen he found Brendan making soup, their own dinner already in the oven. “Thanks kid.” He pulled the teen in for a rough guy hug. “For the soup, dinner, and keeping your siblings safe. For helping out. I’m grateful.”

“Thanks for keeping mum safe.” He mumbled. “I was scared.”

“Me too kid, me too.” Lily gave her brother a big hug too. “Even Lily thinks you’re awesome.” He chuckled. Settling in the one seat with her he watched the twins and let his mind relax, to just have a moment to zone out and not think. She was home and safe, the kids were ok, he was beat to hell, but they’d got through the worst of it. While Valter kept the twins occupied and smooched a happy Lily in his lap, Gustaf hit the workout room an hour or so later. Mentally and emotionally he was wiped, and he knew the physical tenseness would ease once he went a round with the bag. There was no anger to work through, or issue to address, he just needed to burn off some physical energy to settle. She was out cold when he went to shower an hour later, didn’t move when he dressed and kissed her brow. Relaxed and sleeping deeply now she was home and comfortable. The kids sat for dinner wanting Sildie to join, but knowing she needed to sleep. Gustaf thought about waking her, the need for rest too important at this stage. He took the time to sit with them, to joke and laugh, get them back to a semi normal routine after a week of upheaval. Valter stayed for dinner and left once the twins were getting ready for bed. Gustaf was finishing up bathing Lily when his phone beeped.

I’m awake, need to pee.

Just getting Lily out of the bath.

No rush.

Getting Lily out of the tub he dried her off and dressed her for bed. Leaving her with Brendan he made his way into the bedroom to see Sildie sitting up on the side of the bed. “Good nap?”

“Still tired, but I’m hungry.”

“Bathroom then food. The soup is really good I had a cup before dinner.” He said helping her to the bathroom.

“Did I miss dinner?”

“Yes, but sleep is more important for you right now, they understand. No way was I waking you.” He chuckled. Stepping outside while she took care of business he smiled, she was looking better after her nap and her appetite was coming back. “All good things.” He sighed.

Helping her out to the dining table she sat as he heated up some soup and toasted some dark rye bread. The twins rushed over to her after their bath and sat while she ate telling her about everything that happened while she was in hospital.

“Sounds like I missed a lot of fun things.” She whispered.

“You did. Don’t get sick again.” Finn said grinning.

“Don’t plan on it kiddo.” She coughed. At least it didn’t sound like a death rattle anymore, Gustaf thought. “This sucks.”

“We missed you.” Liam said quietly.

“Missed you too. Come here love.” She pushed her chair out and pulled Liam into her lap, her body feeling the fatigue at the action. “Scared you huh?” He nodded and hugged her. “I’m sorry it scared you. Scared me too.”

“Are you really going to get better?” He mumbled.

“It’ll take a few weeks but yes, I’ll get better, lots of sleep and rest and food.” She smiled and bundled Finn to her. “I’ve missed you so much.” She murmured, kissing each twin on the head. “Bed time for you though.” She said and the boys groaned. “Back to a normal routine, you have school starting soon.” She chuckled and watched as they went to bed to wait for Gustaf to read to them. “Thanks for the soup B, it’s really good.”

“I made Kladdkaka as well, but dad doesn’t know yet.” He grinned, placing it on the table.

“I think he could use a slice.” She smiled at him, he was such a good kid, so much like his mother, considerate, kind.

“He was super scared.” Brendan said, getting another mug of soup for her and setting it on the table.

“I know love.”

“He hasn’t slept in a few days either.” The kid said keeping an eye on the twins door, he felt like he was ratting Gustaf out.

“We’ll have to make sure he gets a sleep in tomorrow, ok?”

“I’ll get Lily and the twins in the morning, you keep him in bed.” Brendan grinned. “As long as we can play games.”

“Oh I see how it is.” She scoffed slyly. “Sounds like a good plan, can you clean up a bit? Take the load off him a little more? I know we’re leaning on you a lot right now Brendan but...”

“It’s ok. We’re a family and we stick together, help each other out.”

“Yes we do, but I feel bad sometimes at how much I lean and depend on you.”

The teen shrugged. “You can’t do it all Mum.”

“No, I guess I can’t.”

“And you shouldn’t have to. Family, that means all of us.”

“I love you Brendan. Your parents would be so proud of you love.”

“I miss them and I want them here, but I love the family we have.” He said softly.

“Me too kiddo.” She winked as Gustaf came into the room, Brendan nodding.

“Night mum.” The teen smirked.

“Night love.”

“Night dad.” He hugged Gustaf hard.

“Night B, and thanks for the past few days.” Gustaf kissed the top of the teens head. One of those rare moments where his subconscious had taken over because he was so exhausted.

“You bet.” Gustaf slumped into the chair as the teen headed to bed.

“You need to finish your soup love.”

“You need to eat your Kladdkaka sweet man.” She tossed back. “I’m working on my second cup.” She watched him over the rim of the mug, so tired. Bone weary exhausted, the slump of his shoulders something she never wanted to see again. The smile that bloomed across his face seeing the chocolaty dessert in front of him with a fork across the top almost made her weep with joy.

“The kid doesn’t miss a thing does he?”

“Nope.”

“Like someone else I know.” He said with a tired smirk as he took a bite. “Damn that’s so good. Want some?”

“That’s all for you love. He made it just for you.”

“I feel like an ass for dumping so much stuff on him lately.” He said quietly.

“He gets it. It’s what we were just talking about. We’re a family, it’s what families do. That’s where his heads at. I’d call it progress to a year ago.”

“It sure is. I’m glad you’re home.” He smiled, it was wearily, but it was that one he only kept for her.

“I am too.” She finished off her soup and could see he was asleep on his feet, already drifting as he had another forkful, the sugar probably the only thing keeping him upright. “Would you help me to bed, come snuggle with me?”

“I need to tidy up before I go to bed.” He sighed.

She shook her head. “Leave it. There’s just a few dishes which can wait for tomorrow. Brendan said he’d get them.” And she knew the teen would.

“Let me lock up and get the dishwasher started at least.” He stood and collected her dishes, the soft kiss to her brow making her smile.

“Ok.” She wasn’t going to push, she didn’t have the energy to argue and he was too tired. Pick your battles, she thought. She watched him move around the apartment, home, this was a home, their home and damn had she missed it. He helped her with her nightly routine and took care of his own before laying beside her. “Time for me to take care of you.” She murmured and kissed him tenderly. Pulling him close she guided his head to rest in her lap, fingers stroking his scalp, soothing. “Sleep love, you’re exhausted.” His arms curled around her like a child holding onto his favorite teddy bear and she felt the shuddered sigh, knew the tears were right there. “I’m ok, sleep now.” As his silent tears fell she kissed his head, soothed and cared for him as best she could. “My sweet man, I love you so much.”

“Love you too.” He mumbled, sleep about to claim him hard.

“Rest now, your turn to sleep and rest.” She felt him go under, like every muscle in his body had released its hold on the world. Smiling down at him she let her own tears fall, relief she was home and recovering, guilt for putting that fear into him and the kids. Sleep claimed her eventually, the crushing exhaustion no match for her depleted system. She had no choice but to comply with her body’s wishes.

@hausofobsession @ill-skillsgard @grandpa-sweaters @authentic90skidd @tuckersgirl @fairlyfallacy @flowers-in-your-hayr @raewritesfiction @stinkerbelle007 @kamie-b @mrsaugustwalker @skrsgardspam @loliwrites @trippedmetaldetector @lihikainanea @fay-walden @nandadb @grimeundglow

[mypersonalrambling]

Christmas Wonders

Warnings: None. Fluff

Pairings: Valter x Reader 

Requested: Yes :)

Summary: Christmas is your favorite holiday and Valter makes it extra special

Author’s note: This was requested a long time ago. I’m so sorry for the person who requested it. But I finally finished it, I hope you like! I tried to incorporate the reading being from Wales since that’s what they wanted, but wasn’t sure exactly how to execute it so I more or less mention your accent. 

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

Christmas has always been your favorite holiday; the lights, the music, the air is cold and crisp. . This year is even more special as you have someone significant to share it with. You’ve been dating Valter for almost a year, the relationship could only be described as a fantasy. Valter and you met at a coffee shop not too long after you moved from Wales to Sweden. He fell in love with your accent immediately; he would listen to you talk for hours specifically about your childhood.  

Two months after meeting you moved into Valter’s apartment; it wasn’t a difficult decision as you were there most days anyway. Both of your friends and families were apprehensive of how quickly the relationship progressed, however, the two of you proved them wrong and lasted longer than anyone would have guessed. 

Now it’s the weekend before December 1st which only means one thing, it’s time to decorate for Christmas. You hop out of bed, attempting to not disturb Valter. Rushing to the storage room, you drag all the boxes filled with decorations to the living room. By the time Valter woke up, the living room looks as if it was meant to be in a Hallmark movie. “Wow, you really went all out.” 

“Of course, these decorations can only be enjoyed for a month, you have to put them up as soon as possible. Usually, I put them up right after Thanksgiving, but seeing as this is the first year sharing it with someone, I didn’t want to go overboard.” You turn back to finish putting the ornaments on the tree.  Each ornament is unique and has a symbolic meaning. You have some from when you were a child, given to you by your grandmother. Some you’ve gotten in different countries after traveling. You even have one Valter picked out a couple of weeks ago; the ornament has the anniversary date of the first time you met and your favorite picture of the two of you. 

“Did you leave anything for me to help with?” He rubs his eyes attempting to rid them of sleepiness. You’ve always thought he looks most attractive after just waking up. His hair is always a mess, usually, his pants are hanging low on his hips, and his voice is at least an octave lower than it normally is. 

You can’t help but stare at his entire body before answering.“You can put the star on top. I can’t reach it.” You grab the star out of the box, stretching your arm out so he can take it. 

“Is that all I’m good for? Just reaching things you can’t?” He snarks. He loves to tease you about how he’s always having to reach things for you since his apartment is built for a person of his height and not yours. 

“Yep. I only date you because you’re tall. I’m so sorry it took this long for you to find out,” you say sarcastically. He walks up until he’s standing directly behind you and able to put it up on the tree. Once the decorations are complete, you make your famous hot chocolate so you can sit and enjoy the fruits of your labor. 

The two of you curl up on the couch to watch Christmas movies for the day. You lay so that Valter is behind you with his arms wrapping around you, with a blanket thrown on top. You never feel more at ease than when Valter is holding you. Throughout the movies, he jokes about the cheesiness of the storylines until you remind him your relationship would appear cheesy to others as well. The closer Christmas became the more stress there was. You come from a relatively small family or at least compared to Valter’s. Trying to find the perfect gift for everyone seems impossible. Valter tried to relieve the stress as best he can. He gives you a list of suggestions for his family and tells you no matter what you give them, they will enjoy it. 

It’s Christmas Eve and your nerves are through the roof.  Stellan’s party is this evening and you are running around making sure you have all the gifts packed, the dish you are bringing is prepared correctly, and the outfit you’re wearing fits. This is the first time you will meet all of his siblings. You’ve met a few of them on different occasions but never all together. Valter did his best to help calm you. The drive to the party felt like an eternity. His family has always treated you with kindness. 

You are the first to arrive. Slowly the rest of Valter’s siblings and their families trickle in. When Bill arrives he makes a beeline for you. Besides Valter, Bill was the one you are closest to. Once everyone arrives and is settled in, Stellan informs dinner is ready shortly after. Most of the food is traditional Swedish, however, Stellan being as kind as he is, made a couple of dishes from Wales.   

After everyone is done stuffing themselves, it’s decided there should be a rest period before opening presents. Most everyone convenes in the living room; some sit on the floor to stretch out while most find a comfortable place near the fire. The youngest two children can barely contain their excitement. You’ve lost count of the times they’ve asked if it’s time to open presents. By the time everyone agrees that it’s time to open, the youngest two rush over to the tree to grab their gifts. 

The tradition in Valter’s family is the youngest opens first and the oldest last, as to keep children occupied while others open their gifts. There is minimal talking while gifts are being opened. Finally, it is Valter’s turn; you hand him two packages from under the tree; one small and one of larger capacity. 

First, you hand him the little one, knowing he’ll want to use the second as soon as he opens it. He slowly peels the wrapping paper off of the small one, attempting to not destroy it. He begins to tear up when he opens the box; a couple of months prior you bought a necklace with the date the two of you met. “It’s stunning, I’m never going to take it off.”  He isn’t as cautious when tearing the paper off of the second present. His face lit up as a child that awakes early on Christmas morning. “I...how did you...they sold out in minutes,” his voice full of bewilderment. He’s been talking about the new Playstation for weeks but was unsuccessful at obtaining one. You remember him staying up waiting for the launch, making sure he had everything he would need, however so many others had the same plan. What Valter didn’t know was that you had also been online for the launch and was slightly quicker. 

“I was in the other room when you were trying to order and was faster than you.” He enveloped you in a hug whispering his thanks among all of the nasty things he planned for later to properly thank you, as he put it. 

Valter finishes opening the gifts from his family then it’s your turn. Being as you are a little nervous, you have a difficult time controlling your shaky hands. By the time you are done, you have a new phone case, new shoes, and of course Christmas decorations. You snuggle up with Valter while the rest of his family opens their presents. 

Eventually, all the gifts are open, many are sitting reveling in their new possessions. One of your traditions is to sit outside and enjoy the snow. You excuse yourself, grab your coat and head out to the backyard. It’s only just beginning to snow, sticking to the foot already on the ground. You find a chair under an awning untouched by snow. Sitting down, you block out anything that isn’t the flurries falling from the sky. 

You only move to go inside when your entire body is numb from the cold. Walking back into the living room, you notice a small gift still sitting under the tree. You inspect it unable to find a name. “We forgot one gift, but I can’t find who it belongs to.” You face them, holding it up, but not one person seems to know. 

“It’s for you,” Valter’s voice startles you from behind. 

“Why is it still under here?” You ask still focusing on the very small box. 

“Because I wanted to wait until the perfect moment.” 

“Perfect moment for what?” 

You turn towards him as he is getting down on one knee, “I have been thinking about this for months, but I didn’t want to scare you off. And with your love for Christmas, I thought tonight is a perfect time. We’ve only known each other for a year and the year has been so much better than I ever imagined.  I can’t envision my life without you in it. You’re the most kind, caring person I know. You encourage me to become a better man.  Y/N, will you marry me?” 

Shock courses throughout your entire body. You never an inkling he was going to propose. Valter isn’t the best at keeping secrets, however, he kept this secret as his life depended on it. Your entire relationship hastily runs through your mind; how picture-perfect everything seems, how Valter seems to even you out, and how you can’t envision your life without him. “Y/N?” Valter’s voice brings you out of your thoughts. You can hear the nervousness in his voice.

“Yes!Yes!Yes!” You can’t express the euphoria running through you. Tears start to form at the corner of your eyes. As Valter stands up and pulls you into a hug, Bill walks over and congratulates the two of you. The next few minutes are spent with congratulations from the family. The ring is simple, but elegant. A small heart shaped red jem with two small diamonds on either side. It’s better than anything you could have ever picked out. Eija jokes later on, she was the one who picked it out or otherwise Valter would have picked a boring ring, as she put it. You know no matter what style he picked out, you would love it. Hell He could have proposed with a ring pop and yes would have still been your answer. 

During the commotion, you don’t notice that Alexander disappears until he comes back into the room with bottles of champagne. “I think this calls for a toast!” He passes around glasses until all the adults have one. “To Valter and Y/N. May their journey be filled with bliss and laughter.” 

By midnight almost everyone has left to go home. Valter and you are some of the last ones to leave. You never in a million years thought this night would get better, however, Valter had one more surprise up his sleeve. 

When you arrive home, you see roses leading from the front door to the bedroom. The bedroom looks as if it is taken straight from a romantic comedy. Roses covered the bed spelling I Love You, candles are placed strategically, giving the room a nice glow. “When did you have time to do this?” 

“I bought all of this a couple of weeks ago. I had a friend come over and set it up while we were celebrating Christmas. I let him know when we were leaving so that he could light the candles.” 

“I can’t believe you did this. It looks like it could be out of a magazine.” You pull him into a tight hug, your arms wrapping around his waist. He rests his chin on the top of your head, his arms holding you to him as if you’ll float away if he doesn’t. Valter pops more champagne which you failed to notice sitting off to the side. He also had an arrangement of chocolate-covered fruit. 

He then hands you another box, this one slightly bigger than the one for the ring. “What’s this?” 

“Open it.” In the box is a ruby red ornament with white writing simply stating ‘engaged.’ Tears begin to well up in your eyes. Nothing seems right to say, so you simply bring him in for another hug. 

The two of you spent the night celebrating one of the most significant events in your life so far. Valter kept his promise by properly thanking you over and over again.

[beantothemax]

Did not proofread! Enjoy the horrid au that has haunted my since spring of 2021. It genuinely helped me with my mental health but it's also horrible and weird and I don't know what came over my friend and I when we came up with it <3 it was also conceived over a 4 week period, we just kept piling stuff onto it. The Caellach x Valter part of this au is just the tip of the ice berg and there's so much more bs with the other Grado generals, some antagonists from fe6, 7, 13, 14 and also Silque from fesov. She's not an antagonist even in the slightest, I just was obsessed with her for a long time. I have not played fesov.

Vital information:

The mobile spinoff (fe heroes) takes place in a country called Askr. The idea is that each fe game is a seperate world but the FEH protag, Kiran, can summon them to Askr and use them in their army. It's just the in universe explanation for how it's a gacha game.

Also I am. so very sorry. for how ooc this is.

So it starts with Caellach finding out Valter and Linus (don't look him up, you'll get spoilers) had a fling a while ago. Caellach is homophobic so he goes around telling everyone else that Valter and Linus are gross and gay. The rest of the friend group (Grado generals and some other gba villains you don't know) are all queer though so they're just like "and? Idc".

Groups starts bullying Caellach for being a homophobe and it evolves into a joke that Caellach is just jealous of Linus cause he wanted to be with Valter.

Narcian (don't google him) gets the genius idea of offering Valter large amounts of money to date Caellach. Valter explains the situation to Caellach and they agree to fake date and split the money 50/50.

As all fake dating stories go, they end up falling love and just start real dating. Caellach also really really cares about Valter so he starts actively working to improve himself as a person cause he wants to be a good bf. Remember this for later.

Skip to 5 years later. I don't remember if it was 5 or 3. Valter and Caellach are happily married with some adopted kids and a cat called Minty. You don't need to know all of them, the important one is Marianne.

Joshua gets summoned to Askr. Caellach has had time to improve and become a better person, but for Joshua, Ismaire's death was only like a week ago.

Obviously Joshua he's pissed. He knows Caellach has become better but still absolutely despises him so he starts harassing him and basically just digging up a lot of old stuff.

This goes on for a while and stuff escalates until Caellach commits suicide. Valter does not deal with this well at all and ends up neglecting his kids and becoming an alcoholic.

As the oldest, Marianne ends up having to take care of the others, which creates a big rift between her and Valter.

Sothis, who has been here the whole time sorry I didn't mention her before, gets tired of seeing Valter like this and helps him fix his life. He tries repairing his relationship with his kids but it doesn't go very well.

Anyway more time passes and Valter makes a deal with Sothis. If she makes him immortal, he'll open an orphanage.

Reason for doing this: him and Caellach both had abusive parents (not in canon, this is a hc) so they had a dream of opening an orphanage to help kids who'd been hurt.

Valter has that orphanage for 10 000 years somehow. I don't know where the number 10 000 came from. At this point, he doesn't remember Caellach at all or why he opened the orphanage, but he's found someone else he trusts to take over it when he dies (Ninian) so he asks Sothis to kill him.

She does. He wakes up in the afterlife and remembers Caellach. They reunite :3 the end :3

Other stuff:

The cat Minty. Oh my GOSH Minty. The thing about her is that she can see ghosts and Valter can talk to animals (I can't for the life of me remember where that came from) so Valter would say something then Minty would say what Caellach's ghost responded with. Absolutely horrible method of communication. Minty also hates Valter a bit so she'd sometimes lie and say Caellach said something horrible.

Full list of kids adopted by Caellach and Valter: Marianne, Hector, Reginn, Rebecca, Raigh, Lugh and Chad. Do not look up the last four, you'll get spoilers for stuff. Anyway after a while, my friend and I kinda forgot about Hector, Reginn and Rebecca so they don't even really count anymore.

I think this fic is what was lying within from the far reaches of hell that made whoever read it go mad. ive observed truly forbidden information and now must live with it

gotta say imagining a fake dating plotline with valter and caellach is extremely funny to me. imagining any kind of ship trope with these two is funny to me actually because they’re just. they’re just them. I don’t have a better way to explain this sorry

[lihikainanea]

Okay so have you seen those teeturtle reversible octopus plushies? I can see tiger and her friends going out for lunch at a pizza place and she didn’t finish hers so she brought it back to bills and left it in the fridge but she made sure to write her name on it in black marker pen so billy boy doesn’t eat it okay? But the brothers are coming round that night and as it gets later tiger gets tired and heads to bed and Billy is slightly tipsy and goes to the fridge to get more drinks but (1/3)

Anonymous said:

He gets peckish on the way and completely ignores tigers name on the pizza box and he just wolfs down all of her leftover pizza *gasp* so in the morning when everyone’s in bed tiger goes to eat HER pizza for breakfast only to find the empty box in the fridge and all of the jalapeños have been picked off because billy boy doesn’t like jalapeños so she knows who the culprit is and she grabs her lil octopus teddy and goes into their room and starts shouting at him to rouse him knowing full (2/3)

Anonymous said:

Well he’ll have one hell of a hangover and she launches her octopus at his face and stomps out of their room and gets comfy on the sofa and tall boi’s just like ‘huh? What did I do now?’ Sorry that was long 😂🥰 (3/3)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH OH GAD I love the thought in this and I love HOW MUCH THOUGHT YOU GUYS PUT INTO THIS AND JUST--oh man. When I get detailed nani asks like this I start to think maybe people really like Bill and tiger and they ain’t lyin’ and maybe people really do think about them sometimes and it all just makes sappy Lei very soff :*-))) stop dis :*-)))) stop dis right now :****-)))))

God there’s so much I want to talk about here.

First of all, let’s not get mad at Bill. Because maybe it’s just sort of a GIVEN--whenever tiger has leftovers, she brings them home. And she brings them home for Bill. Because Bill loves leftovers, because he’s somehow always hungry, and because he gets all warm and fuzzy in knowing that tiger finished her meal, thought of him, and asked for her leftovers to go just so that he can have them. And he knows this, because he knows that tiger hates leftovers. Hates them. She never eats them. He can sometimes get away with convincing her to eat them--tiger loves his roast chicken and if he makes a big thing, he might be able to get her to eat his chicken salad sandwiches the next day. Tiger pretends like it’s a whole new chicken, and Bill plays along.

That’s as far as it’ll go. Except for...pizza. But more on that later.

And he knows that when tiger goes out with her girls, she never usually eats too much because she’s usually done up to the nines and looking like a fucking goddess, and let’s face it stuffing your face in tight clothes is just like the worst feeling ever. So she nibbles a little, always brings a lot home, and if it’s the same night then it’s not leftovers (her rules) so she’ll often wake Bill up and they’ll sit in bed and devour whatever food she brought home.

Failing that, she always leaves her leftovers in the fridge for him to eat, because Bill is one of those weirdos who prefers leftovers to freshly made food.

So look, the bros are over. It’s an intense poker night. Valter has (somewhat) unknowingly created a bit of a hotbox situation. There’s a lot of liquor. A lot of good brotherly bonding. Tiger stumbles home at some point during the night--right into Bill’s apartment--and all of the brothers are a little shocked. All but Gustaf, that is. Tiger salutes them, hiccups, trips down the hallway and goes to bed.

Bill’s bed.

But it’s fine. The brother are drunk. In Sweden, tiger sleeps in Bill’s bed. The bros--they know, but they don’t call it out. All is well.

And listen, they’re all crashing over so eventually when Gustaf wins his 8th straight hand at poker--they call it a night. And Bill hangs back for a minute or two, riddled with the munchies, devouring the pizza that tiger brought for him.

Except tiger didn’t bring it for him. And if Bill was of sound mind, then he would remember that the ONLY leftovers tiger eats is cold pizza, and it’s because it just happens to be her favourite breakfast.

So Bill--big, drunk, wall-eyed Bill--is just standing there in the kitchen, wobbling subtly, his eyes unfocused and totally going in different directions, the fridge door still open as he just demolishes the pizza in romantic fridge-light. The box is open in the fridge there, and Bill wrinkles his nose and flicks the jalapeños off.

“Ew,” he says to himself, “Ew. You. Are. So. Gross.”

Every word is punctuated by a small plunk, a slice of jalapeño plopping back on to the cardboard box. He chews loud and uncoordinated, his stupid jaw flapping open because he’s drunk and high by contact and it’s just a mess. But eventually he licks his fingers, humming in satisfaction and closing the fridge door. Tiger will get head first thing tomorrow morning for that, he decides. She’s always looking after him like this, bringing him food--tiger deserves morning head. It’s settled.

But like, listen. Bill flops into bed. Tiger curls into him. He puts a hand on her ass, pats softly--and then both of them are knocked out. She might climb on top of him in her sleep like she sometimes does, but both these idiots are dead to the world.

Until the next morning.

Maybe tiger wakes up on his chest right, and her Big Dude is just snoring under her. She wiggles, groans a little, pokes him for coffee. He stirs a bit--snorts loudly--but then he’s snoring again.

She bites his chest.

“Mmmmfph,” is his muffled, angry response.

“Coffee,” she mutters. And Bill just like, rolls over--which makes her fall off of him. And she thinks he might be getting up--but a second later, he’s snoring again. She takes pity on her Good Dude, gives him a little head scritchie--he’s always so good to her, you know? She can get him his coffee this one time, when he’s hungover and too tired to get up. He’s so cute there, his lips all puffy and soft, his cheek smushed into the pillow, that cute nose, his hair all in disarray. She laughs, kisses his nose, and gets up to start the coffee.

And as she’s opening the fridge for some milk while the pot brews--she drinks it black but Bill is a delicate flower and needs to ~soften~ it--she sees her pizza box, and she gets real happy. She picks it up to put it on the counter because everybody knows that room temperature pizza is the best for breakfast (cold pizza can GTFO) but like...it feels oddly....light. Her immediate thought goes to Valter, that fucking slimy bastard stealing her leftovers, and she’s already at Mach 7 levels of rage when she opens the box.

And then she sees it.

Jalapeños. Jalapeños everywhere. Scattered haphazardly--and this? This has Bill written all over it. Bill loves spice but hates jalapeños, and she has never quite figured out why but that’s neither here nor there.

And tiger? Listen, it’s all tiger can do to stop the battle cry from leaving her throat. Tiger had dreams about this pizza, which she planned on eating with Gustaf’s scrambled eggs this very morning. Tiger purposely SAVED a few pieces of her pizza for this exact purpose.

And that wall-eyed, knock-kneed, bow-legged motherfucking ski-hill-nosed ASSHAT CLOWN thinks he can just eat it?

Tiger is livid.

And she calmly makes her way back to Bill’s room, closes the door quietly and observes the asshole sleeping soundly. On his back, stretched out, no doubt comfy and still with a full belly--from her pizza. She can’t control it anymore.

And with a mighty cry she grabs her pillow, and proceeds to whack him with it.

Multiple times.

“You dick,” she shrieks, and Bill is waking up to a full on assault and he’s very confused, “How fucking dare you. You know--YOU KNOW HOW MUCH--”

Bill shrieks, tries to block the blows with his arms, but he’s groggy and hungover and uncoordinated.

“Tiger what the--”

“You know what you clown ass motherfucker,” she snaps, “You know exactly what. I should take those jalapeños and shove them right up--”

Bill manages to grab the pillow, but tiger is crafty and all of a sudden she has a table lamp in her hands. Bill holds his arms out, trying to come to a truce.

“I thought it was for me!” he exclaims, and tiger looks at him incredulously.

“You always bring me your leftovers,” he mumbles. And look--Bill is big, and he’s all rumpled, and he’s so sleepy, and he’s so confused, and tiger almost takes pity on him. He’s just so cute.

Until another vision of those abandoned jalapeños, of her most perfect brick oven pizza, flashes through her eyes.

She calmly puts the lamp down.

“You’re right baby,” she says, and it’s sickeningly sweet and oh so fake, “I think that deserves head start, at least.”

Bill’s eyes widen, and tiger just glares. He’s standing stock still.

“5....4....” she starts to count, and suddenly Bill is all limbs and legs, tripping over himself as he makes a beeline for the door and down the hallway.

[theopentable]

The Wisdom of the Desert (Part 1)

THE WISDOM OF FLIGHT

‘It was said of Abba Theodore of Pherme that the three things he believed to be basic for everything were poverty, asceticism and flight.’[1]

In the fourth century many Christians fled from Rome to the deserts of Egypt. These Christians would come to be known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers.

Why did they flee? Had Rome become too dangerous? One way of answering that is to say that quite the opposite is true - Christians had rarely, if ever, had it so good. Christianity had always been a minority movement on the fringe of respectable society. Being a Christian was a dangerous and tumultuous affair. Persecution was par for the course. Martyrdom in Rome was commonplace in a world where emperors stood as gods.

Christianity, however, changed forever following the Emperor Constantine’s conversion and the Edict of Milan in 313 as Christianity ultimately became the official religion of the Empire.

‘When Constantine declared tolerance for the Christian religion in 313 after his conversion at the battle of Milvian Bridge and subsequently supported the outcome of the Council of Nicaea in 325, the number of practicing Christians rose in the following decades from 3 to 30 million. It became quite advantageous to be a Christian, as Constantine was constantly pouring money into building churches and supporting the bishops financially, a fact that changed the whole character of the early Church.’ [2]

Christians were now faced by the temptation of becoming too comfortable and settled in a world in which they had become the most fashionable, respectable and employable of citizens virtually overnight. Important Early Church Father St John Chrysostom wrote,

“Plagues teeming with untold mischief have come upon the churches. The primary offices have become marketable. Excessive wealth, enormous power, and luxury are destroying the integrity of the Church.”

As Christianity began to be shaped more and more by empire Christians turned their back on society and went out into the desert. This was the real danger of Rome. Society, Thomas Merton wrote, “was regarded by the Desert Fathers as a shipwreck from which each individual man had to swim for his life.” [3]

The Desert Fathers and Mothers drew upon the traditions of those going out into the desert – Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus. They embraced a way of going deeper and intensifying spiritual practice. They took St Paul’s exhortation especially seriously:

“Do not model yourself on the behaviour of the world around you, but let you behaviour change, modelled by your new mind.” (Romans 12:2)

The Desert Monks fled from a number of things that were at odds with their sense of the sacredness of life:

From the social systems of their day

From conformity to religious mediocrity

From the misuse of power, privilege, status and dignity

From speech [4]

From thoughts (‘logismoi’ – a technical Greek term in monastic literature for the chains of obsessional fantasy that can take over our inner life [5])

From women and bishops (you might end up getting ordained!)

From possessions, property and conventional family life.

We would be gravely mistaken, however, if we presumed that these desert monks and nuns were running away from responsibility or from relationships. All of this flight is for a greater purpose. Rowan Williams writes how rather than any form of avoidance these desert parents were instead ‘entering into a more serious level of responsibility for themselves and others and that relationships are essential to the understanding of their vocation.’[6]

The wisdom of flight that the Desert Parents embodied was for the sake of a deeper, rigorous form of engagement.

‘Numbers of those baptised rose dramatically; standards dropped dramatically. The Church began to compromise between “the things of God and the things of Caesar” (cf. Luke 20:25). The voice of the desert’s heart replaced the voice of the martyr’s blood. And the Desert Father’s and Mother’s became witnesses of another way, another age, another kingdom.’ [7]

While there was much that they chose to let go of, to flee from, they became given instead to prayer, work, to sharing the faith and what they saw as a new form of martyrdom – not the red martyrdom embodied by followers of Jesus prior to Christianity becoming the religion of the Empire, but rather the white martyrdom of complete dependence upon God as they faced up to the demons within. The new battleground for these Christians was the human heart.

‘What they fled with greatest fear was not the external world, but the world they carried inside themselves: an ego-centredness, needing constant approval, driven by compulsive behaviour, frantic in its efforts to attend to a self-image that always required mending.’ [8]

Christine Valters Paintner expresses the way that the desert is a place of deep encounter rather than being a place of superficial escape. The desert strips us down to the sacred essentials:

‘The word for “desert” in Greek is eremos and means “abandonment.” It is the term from which we derive the word “hermit.” The desert was a place to come face-to-face with loneliness and death. Nothing grows in the desert. Your very existence is, therefore, threatened. In the desert, you are forced to face up to yourself and to the temptations in life that distract you from a wide-hearted focus on the presence of the sacred in the world.’ [9]

Here, in the desert, normal securities are relinquished. You are confronted by your own morality, aloneness, limitations and vulnerability. And yet this is precisely the context for transformation, a way of being broken open, ‘a doorway to an encounter with a God who was much more expansive than anything believers imagined.’ [10]

In the uncompromising stillness of the desert they sought to undo internal knots and to allow Divine Light into the shadows of the human heart through poverty and detachment, chastity, conversion of life, obedience, stability, silence, solitude, attention, humility and compassion.

Struggle and toil is a touchstone of life in the desert:

One of the Fathers asked Abba John the Dwarf: “What is a Monk?”

He replied: A monk is toil. The monk toils in everything. That is what a monk is.” [11]

The concern of the desert elders, Paintner identifies, was what poet John Keats called the ancient task of “soul-making”: the challenge of waking up to the true nature of life and remembering who we really are, the divine inheritance of human beings. 

This was the quest of the desert elders. This was the wisdom of their flight. The journey into the desert was ultimately a journey into the heart; to learn the ways in which human lives lose connection with themselves, with Divine Love and how they might return to love and truth. 

This is the great struggle and quest all human beings know: the struggle to live a meaningful, loving, and authentic life. This is what we all want. We won’t all go to the desert and yet the wilderness will still come to us in the various human forms of loss, change, searching, uncertainty, deprivation, struggle, loneliness, and vulnerability. Brene Brown reminds us that the wilderness can often feel unholy because we can't control it, or what people think about our choice to venture into the heart of it. And yet she also says that it turns out to be the place of true belonging, ‘the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.’ [12]

Perhaps then we can be guided the grace and experience of these unusual desert hermits, by the spark of their lived-wisdom that might lead us into greater courage, insight, compassion, into encounters with God, and perhaps even our own ‘transformation into the fire of Love.’ [13]

But here is a final, and critical point by Thomas Merton. Merton explains the these desert elders didn’t go out into the desert in order to be extraordinary. Rather, they fashioned lives among the rocks and sands into the be themselves, their ordinary selves, forgetting the things that divided them from themselves:

‘There can be no other valid reason for seeking solitude or for leaving the world. And thus to leave the world, is, in fact, to help save it in saving oneself..The Coptic hermits who left the world as though escaping from a wreck, did not merely intend to save themselves. They knew they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.’ [14]

The wisdom of the desert is that we might become our ordinary selves in order to pull the whole world to safety.

[1] Theodore of Pherme 5.

[2] Kim Nataraja, “The Desert Tradition” in Journey to the Heart: Christian Contemplation Through the Centuries (Nataraja, editor, 2011), p.92

[3] Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

[4] ‘One day, as Abba Macarius was dismissing the gathering, he said to the brothers at Scetis, ‘Flee, brethren!’ One of the old men asked him, ‘Where could we feel to that is further away than this desert?’ Macarius put his finger to his lips and said, ‘Flee that.’ And off he went to his cell, shut the door and sat down.’ (Macarius 16)

[5] Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert (2003), p.63

[6] Williams, p.62

[7] John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Father’s and Mother’s (Treasures of the World’s Religions) (2008), p.16

[8] Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes

[9] Christine Valters Paintner, Desert Fathers and Mothers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated and Explained (2012), p.vi

[10] Ibid., p.ix

[11] John the Dwarf 37

[12] Brene Brown, Braving the Wilderness (2017), kindle loc.430

[13] Nataraja., p.106

[14] Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

[dingopaws]

8, 26, 40, 46, 52, 66 for MODIGA, 24 and 55 for Adhikari and please give me a piece of forbidden Harlowe lore as a treat....(pick one of 1-9)

MODIGA

1) What is something they cannot resist?

A silly challenge, honestly. I don’t think Modiga is able to say know to a dumb contest, not once. She’s not so arrogant as to place wagers on important shit, as dumb luck is dumb luck. But if someone tells her “I can hold my arms up longer than you can” or “I can drink more wine than you” or “I bet I can get to the top of the tree before you can” Then game on. Its that goliath competitive streak. 

26) What would they want for their funeral? 

Honestly I think that depends? If Modiga died before the team’s goal was accomplished, she wouldn’t want a funeral. She’d want them all to keep going, to keep fighting. She wouldn’t want them to slow down to mourn her, the ultimate way to honor her would be to accomplish what they were trying to do. 

But if she were to die after the world was “saved” I think she’d want her body to be returned back home, to the North, if possible. If the world had healed enough by then, climb to one of the fingers of Eos and lay her down on a funeral Pyre. Let her ashes find whoever had left before her, her dear friends, her parents, her allies and old kinsmen. She’d want her remaining family and friends to tell her stories, her legend, sing songs that she liked, laugh, drink, eat, and leave in the morning knowing she’s no longer there, but with them always. 

40) Describe a corruption/redemption arc version of your character.

HOOOOOO BOY, I know instantly where this one would go. If she lost Silas and Valter in the same breath, it could break her. It would make her cold, distant, volatile. She’d start giving in to the beast within her again, and she’d become an any means necessary kind of woman to defeat the evil who killed her beloveds. Mercy would not be in her vocabulary. She would team up with anyone it took, kill anyone it took, and leave a path of destruction in her wake. 

But I think honestly the most poignant way for her to turn around would be if her team faced her, challenged her, defeated her, and brought her back down to earth, getting her to admit to the pain. After spending some time sobbing, utterly bereft. Slowly, they made her remember what she is, who she is, and she spends her time trying to make amends. Ultimately, sacrificing herself for the final mission. That kind of thing. 

46) How does your character feel about growing old?

Modiga used to think she’d die in battle, die obtaining her legend, but now all she wants to do is just fucking grow old one day. She wants to have a life surrounded by family and friends and spend as much time with them as possible. Secretly, as un-goliath as it is, she hopes for a softer ending.

52)  If your character was under quarantine, what type of quarantine person would they be? (Productive? Hobbyist? Lazy?)

A mixture of depressed/hobbyist. She’d try and find things to fill her time but ultimately be pissed off and stressed out because she cant DO anything, she cant SEE anyone. She doesn’t do well with extended indoor stays. She’s a very active and social girl. 

66)  Outward Passion or Quiet Rebellion?

This is tricky, actually. I would usually say Outward Passion, but over the course of playing her she’s come to value a lot of traits that she’s not one to have. I think she admires quiet rebellion for the advantages is can bring, for the work done in the shadows. It’s almost magical to her in that way, especially since she is one who faces life with an Outward Passion towards most things. 

ADHIKARI

24) What’s a controversial food opinion they would have?

She would eat ribs with a fork and knife. She’s not getting her hands that sticky, she’s not going to look dumb, ruin her clothes. Its so tender it falls off the bone ANYWAYS, So no, you absolutely CAN eat ribs with a fork and knife, no reason to be a Neanderthal. 

55) How has your character’s mental health been recently?

Well honestly, after finishing her story its been... great. She started off as an aggressive, repressed mess. Took a trip down paranoia and regret town, but as of right now She’s happy, she’s in love which is something she never really considered for herself. She’s got some great friends, and two boyfriends that she’d do anything for. She’s her own master now, practically, and is looking forward to changing the Empire for better. She’s just.. got optimism, hope.. it’s good.

HARLOW

RNG SAID 1) What does your character typically keep in their pockets? An old costume jewelry necklace, peppermint Chapstick no matter the season, a wallet that’s made out of old Capri suns, a keychain with a sewn lucky rabbits foot, and some tic tacs. 

[granills]

I'm always ready to read your wonderful fics. please can you do something fun? maybe with a hint of smut. like somebody caught them on set or his family caught them while on vacation in Sweden. thank you in advance and have a good day ❤

I love love LOVE these little requests of yours😩 thank you. I hope you enjoy it, it turned out a little longer tho❤

Without awareness of the road or the rain, Bill was driving the car on the highway, lights on full beam. You woke up to Bill's gentle rubbing on your thigh. You've been on the road all day; it must've been you fell asleep after your thoughts of the following day had drifted away.  You found it adorable feeling his touch on your skin as the lazy wind pushed against the window, waking you up completely.

"Y/n, we're almost there," he spoke quietly.

Bill's family invited you to spend the weekend at their place and, of course, you couldn't say no. Bill has finished filming, the premiere is in less than a month, so he wanted to spend more time with you. And when their family had asked you to come to Sweden, it was a great opportunity for both of you. You've always admired his family, loved how they were supportive of each other. And that was mutual. They didn't just love you, they adored you. The way they welcomed you into their family with open arms showed just how much they valued family. And family traditions? You got used to them immediately. It is always so good to gather together on those cold days and to enjoy an apple pie with ice-cream while someone would make a hot chocolate for everyone, but the best part is simply being with them, chatting and laughing with them.

"Did I sleep all the way here?" You asked, rubbing your eyes.

"All the way from the airport to here." He smiled, taking his eyes off the road and glancing at you.

"Ugh, I'm still sleepy."

"Not surprised, sleeping beauty."

By the time you arrived, you'd gotten some sleep and you were pretty sure Bill's family wouldn't wait for your arrival because it was too late and that they would go to sleep instead. But you were pleasantly surprised when they appeared at the front door, already waving at you when your car turned into their driveway.

It was past midnight, but that didn't matter because everyone was excited to see you after a long absence. Just like when you gathered in the kitchen lately when everyone had suddenly become hungry, it didn't matter. You took a bite of the pizza, cheesy with two toppings. You smiled, "Eija, that's so good."

"I'm pretty sure she ordered that pizza." Bill sat next to you, licking his lips.

"Actually," his sister held a wooden platter towards him, "I made it." You laughed right when the boys joined - Valter and Alex walked into the kitchen, holding a big white box.

"What's that?" You wondered.

"I'm glad you asked. We ordered a cake, a giant one." Alex answered and plucked a cake from the box. "Good thing the kids didn't find it earlier."

"Wow. You spoil us, Alex." You fought the urge to stick a finger in the beautiful cake they ordered. A coconut cake, iced with coconut frosting, covered with a handful of coconut shavings.

"We are just happy to see you two, it's been a long time." Stellan stepped in, standing between you two and hugging you and Bill.

"Aww." You put your hand over his that rested on your shoulder.

"Love you, dad." Bill put his arm around his father.

"Alright, Alex, I need your help. I have a nice bottle of wine back in the storage." Stellan smiled, stepping out from the counter and patting Alex's shoulder.

Valter and Eija went to wake the others up, though you said it wasn't necessary. That left you alone with Bill.

You came closer to him, putting your hand around his neck. "Go get some sleep. You're tired." You said, curling your fingers into the hair at the base of his neck.

He leaned forward, eyes stayed trained on you, just slightly narrowed. "I don't recall kissing you today."

He always managed to make you feel like the center of his universe. You felt your heart give a couple fluttering half beats. "It's true, you didn't kiss me today."

"Shame on me..." He murmured, moving his large hands up to your face and closing the distance between you. His hands were roaming over your body clumsily but tenderly, sliding up your sides, over your back, then cupping your face and pulling you up so your lips could meet again.

You sighed into his mouth, letting your hands ghost up his abdomen, clutching onto his shirt. It always attracted you how big he was compared to you. It always made you want to fight him.. only to fail, so deliciously to have him hold you down and-

He pulled away from the kiss, both of you were panting heavily. His eyes scanning over your face, the way he was looking at you was making you feel warm.

"I know how you love cakes." He turned and reached his hand out to stick his finger in the cake. "I noticed how you wanted to taste the cake as soon as you saw it."

He brought his finger closer to your lips. "Here, taste it."

You chewed on your bottom lip and when you looked up at him, you noticed heavy eyed, sideways smirk that made you feel some type of way. You parted your lips and he dipped his finger into your mouth. You licked the icing out of his finger, savoring the taste. Your eyes fluttered shut as you started sucking on his finger.

"Fuck," he muttered as he watched you like it was the most exciting thing he's ever witnessed.

You felt a kind of stirring in your lower stomach as you took in his heavy lidded eyes and flushed cheeks.

"Guys?" Valter stood at the door, wanting to enter the kitchen, but he quickly changed his mind.

You were taken aback by his voice, immediately opening your eyes as Bill pulled his finger out of your mouth, facing his brother.

"What's-"

"I-I cut my finger." Bill said, interrupting his brother. You wished you'd become invisible to hide a deep blush in your cheeks.

"Doing what?" Valter looked at the table, but didn't find anything that could possibly explain the situation.

"Cutting.. watermelons," Bill answered, realising after a while what he'd said and regretting it already.

"Well, where are they?"

"Where what?"

"Watermelons."

Bill knew he sounded ridiculous and you didn't know how to act in this ridiculous situation. You hesitated for a moment, meeting his eyes.

"Well, he couldn't cut them because he'd cut his finger and I helped him to- to stop the bleeding." You wanted to sound confident, but it sounded even more preposterous. The only thing you wanted was to change the subject and get out of the kitchen.

"Anyway, where are the others? I can't wait to taste this cake already." You said, slowly making your way out of the kitchen. When you stood behind Valter, you motioned to Bill to follow you.

[jj-lynn21]

Holiday with the Skarsgard Gentlemen: Valter and his Babe

Notes:  This has a little bit of everything for my readers. It is about friends  on holiday that end up running into Alex, Gustaf, Bill and Valter at a  bar they stop at in Stockholm. I got the info about Sweden from google so I hope it is not to unreliable. I shouldn’t need to say but it is  AU. Pure fantasy folks. It is subdivided into what kind of night You  have with your favorite guy. Flirting, giddiness, sex,  dancing, ice skating, and fireworks. “It will be a great adventure.” I say in  character as one of your friends on this adventure with you. 

Read from the beginning click Holiday with the Skarsgard Gentlemen

Mood board by: flowers-in-your-hayr

Valter runs his hand over the back of his neck as he made his way over to the table with the hot chicks. He was not sure what to do with his hands and didn't know where to sit. His hand accidentally brushed through your hair. You glanced up at him.

“Oh sorry.” He rubbed your one shoulder as you beamed up at him.  

“Sit down baby brother.” Gustof told him.  “Don’t be so creepy.” Most of your friends giggled even you. But one rolled her eyes and got up to go to the bar.  

Valter sat his tallness down next to you and looked around the table a moment. Then he looked at you like a lost puppy in need of Mothering. “Hey, Babe. How’s it going?”

Your hand reached over to his knees as you got close to his ear. “I’m very fine. No reason to feel nervous.”  

He gulped. “I’m cool.”

His knee jumped as your hand cheeped a little higher. “You sure baby Boy?”  

He took a big draw on his beer. “Can I buy you another drink?”

“I could have another.” You finish off your drink. “What were you up to before meeting up with us.’

“Stuff, Things.” He whispered in your ear like it was a huge secret. “You wanna join in that?”

You snickered. “stuff and things sounds so much fun.”  

“Hey Valter, you cool with getting home tonight if I take off in the SUV?” Gustaf glanced over to Bill, but he knew he could take care of himself. He wanted confirmation from Valter he would be okay.

“I think we can figure out something.” He grinned as you giggled.  

“Be mindful.” Gustaf reminded him. “You do represent this family. What one does, we all did.”

Valter rolls his eyes and mocks him in your ear. You laugh even though the mocking is quite childish. You are more than willing to take care of this baby boy for the night if he cannot be trusted to take care of himself. Gustaf and your friend take off. You glance to your friend with Bill and realize she is making fine work of her prey with her feminine wilds.  

“Take me away to do um stuff and things beautiful boy.”

He got up. “How about a boat ride? The fireworks should be starting in an hour or so.”  

You swipe your hands across his chest. “I like things that explode into the deep, dark...sky.”

Valter sucked in his breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah?”

“Yep.” You popped the ‘P’. “Now how do we get to that ride, boat ride?”

“Right this way.” He offered his hand. You took it. He  took you out to catch a taxi.  

When the Taxi driver said it would take a half hour to get to the destination you grinned. “Good.: Your hand drifted to undo his pants.

“I don’t think...”

You shushed him. “You don’t have to. Just enjoy.” You stroked his length. He widened his legs and his head fell back.  

You had him just about to pop when the driver stopped. “We have arrived.’”

Valter groaned as you got him together quickly without a finish. He wrapped his knee length coat around him before stepping out of the cab. You stepped out next as he was paying the driver.  

“The family Boat is this way, Babe.” He escorted you to the boat. “Once we anchor you can finish what you started. Possibly with more than your hand?” He winked.

You laughed. “I could properly apply some oral skills when we are alone.”

He sat down in the captain’s chair like he owned it. You sat beside him wrapped up in a blanket you found on deck. You knew the wind would be colder once he was zooming over the water. The water sprayed up the sides of the boat as he sped off. Valter turned the motor off dropping anchor in a perfect spot to see the fireworks when they started.

You both went to the bow where he grabbed a beer from the small cold box. “We always keep cold brew on here. You want one?” He settled down on the seating area.  

“Maybe in a few minutes.” You pulled the blanket around you, over his lap as you sank to your knees in front of him. You had his family jewels in hand within seconds fondling.  

You could barely hear his murmur of, “Oh, God yes.” as you stoked his fires once more. This time your tongue worked his growing length until your mouth finished him off. You took him to the back of your throat until his balls tightened. You only pull back enough to swallow all he had to give. It was an intoxicating moment. Your head popped up from under the blanket seeing him with his head basking in the moment. His tongue hung out the corner of his mouth. He kept one hand holding his beer as the other was grasping at the safety bar around the baot.

“Better?” You studied him as he broke his trance to look at you.  

“Perfect, Babe.” He took your face in his hand tilting it up a bit. “Just perfect.” He patted his knee. “Come sit right here.”

The blanket wrapped around you both as you kissed. The fireworks started to explode in dazzling displays lighting up the night.  You look to the firework in awe. Your eyes lit up like a child. He holds you close as you watch cheek to cheek.

“Oooo, ahhh, so beautiful.” You exclaimed.

He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it is all pretty up there.”  

You clap enthusiastically as the finale sets the sky on fire with light. “That was great. This whole night is great.” You stand spinning. “I’m falling.” You landed back into his arms.

“I’m falling to.” He murmured on your lips kiss you again. “You want to see the island cottage?”

“Tomorrow.” You brushed your hand over his cheek. “I should check on my friends. I want to see who made it back to apartment. Besides you don’t want me this tied. I assure you.”

He pouted his bottom lip out as if it would get you to change your mind. “I’m sure your friends are fine. We would not want to walk in on anything.”

“Oh, we have walked in on each other and friends many times.” You laughed. “I will make it up to you if you make time for me tomorrow.”

“All right.” Valter made his way back to the captain’s chair with you beside him. He hit a button to bring up the anchor and stared the boat riding back towards the shores of Stockholm.

end

Gustaf and Princess are getting in from there excursion. She giggles as she opens the door. He sees Alex and Kitten fast asleep and hushes Princess. She snickers with her hand over her mouth as she grabs some bottled waters from the refrigerator.  

“I guess we were not the only ones to find something fun to do.” Princess whispered.  

“I’m not surprised whatsoever.” He took a big swig of his water. “I should probably take him home since I can’t take you home.” His eyebrow raised in a gesture that said he would rather take her home.

“Not so fast.” Princess grinned. “You want to see the bedroom?”

He nodded yes. Just then Valter and his girl came in the door laughing at a dirty joke he had told her seconds before. Gustaf tried to hush them, but Alex woke with a grumble.

“What time is it?” He gently slid his arm from under his girl. She stayed fast asleep somehow. “You good to drive us home Goos? He scrubbed his face.

“You're not going to wake her to say you are leaving?” Gustaf shook his head.  

“I’ll call tomorrow.” Alex shrugged. “We can hangout some more if they all want to.”

“Do you know where Bill went off to?” Gustaf asked.  

Bill came out of the bedroom. His girl wrapped around him. His thumb in her mouth as she laid on his shoulder. “I’m here. Let me tuck in this little sweetheart and we can head home. As Alex said we can hang out tomorrow.” His girl whined. “It’s okay Sweetheart.” He kissed her forehead as he carried her back in the room tucking her under the sheet and blanket snugly. “I’ll call you in the afternoon to make a day plan.  you are a sweet, amazing women.” He kissed her lips softly before getting dressed. He had just his boxer briefs on when he came out to greet the others.

The brother’s left. You and your friends slept amazingly well. The adventures with your new tour guides lasted throughout your trip.