#i think one sibling recognizes the harm our mother caused but thinks they have a healthy relationship now

[piplupod]

absolutely fascinating (in a bad way) hearing my siblings talk about how they felt so supported growing up and how they view our mother as one of the best mothers they've ever known. it makes me feel crazy, but I think they either are deep in denial and blocked out a lot or just genuinely were better supported than I was.

the squeaky wheel gets the grease or whatever, but as a kid when you ask for help and get ignored or yelled at for asking and you see that your siblings need help too then you learn to stop asking pretty quickly. i figured out i had to fend for myself at a pretty young age bc everyone else mattered more than me and there was a 70/30 chance I'd just get in trouble for asking for help dhfjfkfl

[aoyama-division]

Tomi's Thoughts on Kōfu Division

Reiji Enjouji

Tomi looks at the photo of the idol, a deep frown on his face as he crushes the picture in his hand. "Since my brother left our family household, I've had to... hide my interactions with him less my parents find out. That is one headache I do not need to deal with at the present time. But anyway, during one of our interactions, he revealed to me about a certain idol who almost caused him and his betrothed to wind up dead. Why? ...I don't know the full story, but apparently, this peon caused some confusion at the school they were attending and used Kunio and his friend as, in my brother's words, 'the fall guys'. From the way he spoke, it almost cost him his life."

Tomi opens his hand and looks at the photo again, which is crumpled up. "Now that I take a good look at him, I think I do recognize this peasant from one of the soirees' I attended. I questioned who in their right mind invited this peon, but knowing him, he probably bribed his way onto the guest list. But that's besides the point. The point is, if this fool believes that he can get away harming a member of the Chōten family, whether they live with us or not, he is sorely mistaken. And he will pay for the mistake, I promise you that."

Kei Himeno

Tomi looks at the photo of the novelist, a crease in his eyebrows, as if remembering something. "Strange. Why does this individual look so familiar? Was it at a gala? ...No. Hmm..." Tomi continues looking at the photo, trying to remember where he recalls this young man from. He looks at his name, focusing on it, before a light goes off in his head.

"Ah. Now I recall. 'Kei Himeno'. He was one of the lesser servants who worked under Hino-san. I didn't pay him much attention, but Hino-san spoke highly of him, so I deigned to greet him when I saw him. I didn't notice immediately when he disappeared, but Hino-san stated that he was 'dismissed' by my parents."

This makes Tomi sigh and shake his head. "I can only guess what being 'dismissed' means..."

Ayame Kurokawa

"The only one from this team that I don't have any prior knowledge of. I think he works as an artist or something. My mother mentioned that she may have purchased some jewels from him, but I've never heard of him, so he is beneath my notice."

Diabolik Night

"I'd like to say this team is just another group of peons who were unfortunate enough to be dragged into this D.R.B., but considering I know 2/3 of them, I suppose that puts them on a higher scale than the others. I've nothing against Himeno, and Kurokawa, as stated, is beneath my notice. But Enjouji..."

Tomi takes the still-crumpled up photo of the idol and tosses it into a nearby fireplace, letting the flames turn it into ash.

"...I know I'm not the ideal 'big brother', but I'll play the part just this once for my younger sibling, and dish out some punishment on you for him. You'll see firsthand what happens when you mess with anything that is mine. Do you understand? ...Don't bother answering. Because I promise you, you will when we meet, you worthless peon."

[antis-hero]

do you think you're a good human being???

This is Annie Nathan Meyer and she is one of my favorite anti-suffragettes to talk about! She is most remembered as the founder of Barnard College, which is a liberal arts college in New York.

Annie did not receive the same education as her older siblings because her mother wanted to keep her home with her for company (her mother suffered from depression, which led to her drug use and eventual death). Despite this, Annie worked on educating herself and began to write, which was her passion.

She also loved music, and her involvement in a piano group was what led her to her husband: Alfred Meyer. They bonded over piano and Alfred claimed he fell in love with her at first sight. When she married him, Alfred promised to support her writing. They had a daughter, Margaret, together, but she died at age 29 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In 1885, two years before she married Alfred, she enrolled herself in the Columbia College Collegiate Course for Women. Columbia, however, didn’t recognize women enrolled in the course as official students, and she dropped out only a semester in because the course set her up to fail (exams apparently had questions that were not discussed in assigned texts and only in classes that she could not enter). After she got married, she began efforts to raise funds for a women’s college at Columbia. Her efforts were successful, and Barnard remains among the elite colleges in the U.S.

What’s less talked about is her anti-suffrage stance. When it is covered, many struggle to understand her seemingly paradoxical position: how could a woman who believed in educating women also reject suffrage? In one instance, I read a piece that labeled her a feminist, but that’s not what she would have considered herself and it’s wrong to put that on her so that we can try and reconcile her so-called flaws.

Because of the research I do into the antis, I now understand Annie’s perspective. She wrote a lot about the unrealistic promises suffragettes, including her sister, Maud, were making, and about her concerns of antagonism between the sexes. She also disagreed with suffragists on other political issues and how they wanted to handle them, which made her concerned that extending suffrage would enfranchise more of these dangerous attitudes and let them propagate (It was generally accepted that feminists never intended to stop at the vote). When suffrage was extended in 1917 in her home state of New York, she diverged from her friends and told anti-suffrage women to not vote. This, she thought, would let other states see that allowing suffragists to vote would cause harm and validate the antis’ position. She later rescinded that statement after her friend, President of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, Josephine Jewell Dodge, talked her down.

My favorite letter of hers is one from The New Republic—the one where she walks back her idea. In it, she tells her readers what she has experienced from others (suffragists) because she was a woman against suffrage: that she must believe in harems too, that she must have something wrong with her brain, and that she must also support prostitution. She also makes clear that her work for the benefit of women was known, but it seemingly didn’t matter.

Annie was a good person, but we don’t really understand her because we try to ignore a part of her that we don’t like. In reality, the people who like her today only like a vision of her—one that was molded to be more feminist and acceptable to us. We will never understand many of our grandmothers if we cut out part of who they were, and so I tap into that part of them.

[megsironthrone]

Meg's Game of Tales: Tale 15

*Familiar Characters are NEVER mine! The original story of "Rapunzel" was written by The Brothers Grimm.*

Warnings: Rapunzel AU, angst-ish, a little fluff

Pairings: Prince!Jaime Lannister x fem!reader

This hunt was not going as planned. Not at all. Not only had Jaime not caught anything, but he'd gotten hurt in the process. It just wasn't a good day. The only thing Jaime was looking forward to now was getting home, getting clean, and collapsing in bed. That was the thought that kept him pressing forward. But then? He heard it. A voice calling out.

"Y/N! Y/N! Let down your hair!" Jaime followed the sound of the voice and came upon a tower. At the bottom of a tower was an older looking woman, but that wasn't what caught Jaime's attention. it was what the old woman was climbing. It wasn't a ladder or a rope. No. It was…hair?! Jaime's gaze followed the hair up and, as expected it was attached to the head of a woman. A beautiful woman. Well, from what he could see from a distance anyway.

How had Jaime not seen this tower before? He hunted in these woods all the time. Jaime watched until the two figures disappeared from view. Jaime had always been the curious sort of man, so the need to know more welled up in his chest and it took everything in him to stay away from the tower. If the younger woman was trapped up there, it wasn't safe for him to approach while the older woman was there. So, he left, determined to come back the next day when hopefully, the younger woman would be alone and safe.

The next day, Jaime was out early, heading toward the tower. He got there quickly, hiding in the bushes until the older woman was gone. As soon as she was out of sight, Jaime ran up and called out the same phrase he'd heard her call out the day before. "Y/N! Y/N! Let down your hair!" It took a moment, but soon the voluminous length of hair came cascading out of the window of the tower.

Wasting no time, Jaime began to climb. His arms and legs burned with the effort, but his curiosity was piqued and he couldn't go back now. He had to meet the woman at the top of the tower. Who was she? Why was she there? Would she ever want to leave? Was the old woman kind to her? All these questions fueled Jaime's climb until he finally made it to the top and swung into the window.

"W-Who are you?" Jaime glanced up to see a pair of beautiful eyes staring back at him in fear and wonder. You were more beautiful up close. "I think the better question is who are you and why are you in this tower?" You arched a brow. "That's two questions. And you're the one who climbed into MY home. Now, who are you?" Jaime held his hands up in gesture of surrender.

"Jaime. My name is Jaime. I-I saw your tower yesterday and heard the old woman call out to you. I had to know more." You let out a scoff and shook your head. "Mother says the outside world is cruel and vicious. The tower keeps me safe" Jaime nodded. "She's right about that. But I mean you no harm. I swear." You regarded him with distrust. "I don't think I believe you." Jaime chuckled. You were smart. "Perhaps I could sit with you a while? We can talk and maybe then you'll trust me." After a moment of thought, you nodded slowly in agreement.

*time skip*

"Y/N! Let down your hair!" Jaime called out. He'd been coming to see you every day for weeks now. At one point, he'd nearly been caught by your mother. That day you'd been frightened and told him to stay away. He hadn't of course, but you were slowly growing to trust him. It was his favorite part of the day, getting to see you.

Despite being locked up in a door less tower your entire life, you were very intelligent. You could sniff out a lie like a bloodhound. Jaime couldn't hide the fact that he was a prince from you for very long. You were also very sweet, but had a temper that Jaime admired. You rarely showed it, but when you did, you could scare the most fierce creatures. The only thing that bothered Jaime, truly bothered him really, was that you seemed content to never leave your tower. You wanted adventure, but you didn't want to leave your mother.

As Jaime climbed your hair once more, he went through his argument in his head. He was going to try and get you to talk to your mother about leaving the tower for good. It couldn't be healthy being locked away all the time, could it? Jaime didn't expect what was going to happen.

"Hello, Y/N!" Jaime greeted as he climbed in the window. He looked up only to be met with the face of your mother. She looked livid. "Who are you?! How did you find this place?! Did he send you?!" Jaime glanced at you in confusion. "He? Who are you speaking of?" Your mother relaxed a little, but only a little.

"Does anyone know you're here?" she asked and Jaime shook his head. She smiled. "Good. Then no one will know what I'm going to do to you." A crack of lightening sounded over heard, causing Jaime's brows to furrow. It had been sunny when he climbed in a moment before. He glanced out the window to see rows and rows of thorns springing up from the ground.

"MOTHER NO!" you cried. Jaime spun around to see that your mother was about to push him from the window. "Please, Mother, don't! Jaime is my friend. I-I think I love him." Your mother whirled around and Jaime's eyes widened. "Do you even know him?" You nodded sheepishly. "He's been coming every day for many weeks now. I'm sorry I did not tell you. I didn't want to lose him. Or you."

Your mother approached you. "Y/N, darling, how can you trust him? I've told the outside world is a horrible place. I'm the only one who can protect you." Jaime's brows came together as he processed what was being said. "Protect her from what? Surely there can't be an actual threat on the life of someone so kind and lovable. Can there?" Your mother let out a sigh.

"I suppose there's no harm in telling you now. I'm not your real mother, Y/N. Your real mother charged me with caring and protecting you when you were only a child. I was to keep you safe until she reached out to me. But then she died and the threat to you grew worse."

"I ask again, threat from what?" Jaime asked. He wasn't one to draw out stories longer than necessary. That was more Tyrion's expertise. The woman rolled her eyes, but continued on, "The threat from Lord Gregor Clegane," she stated before turning back to you, "Your brother."

"M-My brother?" She nodded. "I know Gregor. He's a monster," Jaime stated, "Your mother was right to send you away. I'd forgotten there was a third sibling. After Gregor held Sandor's face over the fire, the third child was said to have disappeared. Some said she was murdered by Gregor for trying to tell people the truth about what happened instead of the story the late Lord Clegane told."

You looked between Jaime and the woman you knew as your mother in disbelief. "I'm a lady? Like…a trueborn lady?" They both nodded. "That's why I've kept you here. For your own good." You nodded, but Jaime wasn't having it anymore. You had said you thought you loved him. He wasn't sure anything would come of that love if you were stuck in the tower for the rest of your life or Gregor's.

"She doesn't have to stay in the tower. It's true Gregor is still alive, but I doubt he would recognize either of you. And even if he did, you would be safe. Your brother Sandor is still alive as well. He lives in the castle as part of the guard. You would be protected and safe anywhere you went. I swear it."

Your mother immediately began to protest while your eyes were glued to Jaime's again. For a moment, the two of you stared at each other while your mother droned on in the background. After a bit, you spoke again. "No, Mother. I won't stay here," you said, turning to her and taking her hands in yours, "I love you. Very much. I know you want to protect me, but I need to be out of this tower to discover this new part of who I am and if Jaime says he can keep me safe, I trust him. He hasn't broke a promise to me yet. Please, Mother. Let's leave this place together."

The older woman turned to Jaime and in a stern voice asked, "Can you keep your promise? Will you keep her safe?" Jaime nodded without hesitation. While he wasn't sure if he loved you romantically, he did have a love for you. He always protected those he loved. She stared into his eyes the same way you always did when you were trying to figure out if he was lying or not.

"Very well. You have my blessing. I will return to my former cottage, but you two will go to the castle and enjoy life together. If you ever have need of me, you will know where to find me." With that, she placed a kiss to your forehead and nodded to Jaime. She waved her hand to cause the thorns to disappear.

Using your hair, she left the tower to return to her cottage. Jaime followed her down and waited for you at the bottom. You gripped tight to the hair that was going to be your way to freedom. Taking a deep breath, you began lowering yourself from the tower for the first and only time, ready to start a new adventure.

(a/n: That's our 15th tale! Only 3 more to go, plus 2nd parts for "A Hound-Shaped Helm" and "Three Days".)

[therapyandcoffee]

15/03/2022; A Letter To My Parents

I have some things I need to get off my chest, so here goes the words I never said, and that you will never accept.

Dear Mom,

You stole my joy before I knew it had ever existed.

People my whole life have asked me "why don't you smile in pictures?" and I think I genuinely, to this day, I do not know how to genuinely smile.

From the moment childhood began, I had been spring-boarded right into full blown adulthood. Allowing me to be a child was too inconvenient, because you, an adult, needed a caretaker.

Nothing felt normal. I had most toys I wanted, which most people would look at from the outside and say I was a spoiled brat for being ungrateful because that is their definition of a good childhood, but I didn't have the things that mattered.

I didn't have unconditional love, it wasn't even conditional, it wasn't even love. I did not have a childhood full of warmth and hugs, or someone to tell me it was alright.

You didn't have enough love for me alone, yet another sibling came and we spent our whole lives competing for the little affection and attention you were able to give. Little did we know, we were both always losing.

Where mistakes were a teaching moment for other kids and their parents, you quickly turned to rage. Before I had even recognized I had made a mistake, I would feel a hand full force against my face. You would be screaming at the top of your lungs and instead of learning, I would just cower. This would teach me to live cautiously, and that mistakes meant physical harm.

My worst fears as an adult to this day? Saying the wrong things, making mistakes, offending someone, speaking up for myself and my needs, setting boundaries etc. Progress has been made but the damage has already been done.

You made other abusers lives easy. I was the perfect victim. I was quiet, I assumed blame easily, I was eager to please no matter the conditions, I was desperate to find love, and force it if I had to. Last but not least, abusers knew they could count on you to be cold and absent, and to look the other way. I say abusers plurally because it might surprise you, but my dad wasn't the only one. He was the first but far from the last.

My dad would abuse me in another room and I would yell for you so loudly at the top of my lungs. I knew you were close by, but when you wouldn't react I would just yell louder because I believed that you loved me and if you knew I was being hurt, you would stop it. I know now it was too inconvenient to take action because you would be forced to divorce and find a job.

My life's purpose has become finding love and approval but I am always let down because what I am looking for, only a mother could provide, except, you aren't a mother, and the world doesn't care. The world is bitter and it has bigger problems. It's not fair because this problem, this empty hole, is my whole world, or lack thereof.

When my dad finally left, you couldn't even give me what I needed so that I could completely be free of you. I learned that you don't love me but you want to own me. You wanted a caretaker after a life of not caring. You wanted someone to upkeep the house while you hoarded animals and garbage. We fought most when I was trying to grow up and be free.

I will say it is very convenient for you, that you are a narcissist, because a regular parent, let alone person, wouldn't be able to survive the shame and guilt.

I wish I could live in such ignorant bliss like you.

However, I will give credit where credit is due.

You definitely capitalized on the fact my dad was the obvious abuser and did a good job at painting yourself like a victim, so I would not hold you accountable for the life of pain you caused.

At the end of the day, you caused way more pain and damage than he had ever caused simply by just looking the other way. What a fucked up sentiment.

If you had just cared even an ounce, I would not have had to endure a life of his abuse in addition to yours and others to come. However, you didn't want to work or take accountability, and when he started abusing me, the heat was taken off of you. I am glad the living was easy for you while it lasted, and that somebody profited off all this abuse, because it sure wasn't me.

(To be cont'd)

[dutchsonjaa]

I will always protect you

TW: Grief, slight manupilation.

“Brother”, the pigman pleads to his sibling’s back, once more urging him to turn around, to hear him out, to just face him-

               “Don’t call me that”, the brunette’s voice interrupts his raging thoughts, the man hugging his arms across his chest which Technoblade recognizes as a nervous gesture. Something inside of him wills him on to embrace his twin, whisper sweet promises and never let him go – but the icy tone underlining the man’s voice warns him not to.

“Broth- Will”, Technoblade tries again, desperate to reach out to his grieving sibling.

               “She was hoping you’d come, you know?”

“Heh?” The Blade’s eye widened as he didn’t want to hear what he already knew, he didn’t want the words to leave his brother’s mouth-

               “She was asked for you so many times.”

Something stung behind his eyes. “I tried, you know I tried! My people needed me!”

               “We needed you!”, Wilbur’s voice filled the air as he spun around, finally facing Technoblade so the pigman could see the lukewarm tears running over his brother’s cheek.                                            “Your mother needed you! You belong with your family, not with them!”

               “I-“, Technoblade stammers, clawing through invisible clouds of mist to find the right words, to explain himself, begging for a pardon he didn’t think he’d ever deserve.

“Just shut up”, Wilbur spoke as he strode down the few, worn down steps to meet Technoblade on the patch of grass he was standing on. As Technoblade watched his brother’s descent, he realized with a pang of guilt how much his brother had grown in these past few months. He was just about to think of something to say as he watched Wilbur close the distance between them when a pair of hands grabbed him by his collar and pulled him closer to meet his sibling’s face.

                “Do you even have the slightest idea what we’ve been through?!”, Wilbur spat, a few droplets landing on Technoblade’s face. The man didn’t even feel them touch his skin as he stared wide-eyed back at his brother.                                       “Our mother was so sure you’d come to visit, Technoblade! She wanted more than anything hold the hand of her ‘little soldier boy’ one last time, before she went. But all we got were letters, false promises!”

               “I’m so sorry”, the pigman whispers, not even sure if the words reach his brother’s ears. Tears fill his eyes at the mention of the nickname their mother had once used for him.

“I….”, Wilbur lowers his gaze to the ground as fresh tears stream down his face. Technoblade debates reaching out to squeeze his brother’s shoulder like he used to when the brunette needed comforting, as he feels the grip on his collar loosen.                                                                                                                                  “I was alone with her when she died, you know? Tommy was playing with his music box in the living room, I don’t think he even knew what was happening at the time, but we could hear the soft tunes drift down the hallway as he played. I like to think our mother found some comfort in hearing the notes. She was growing w-weaker by the minute, and I h-held her hand when she finally…”

               “Brother, I’m so-“. The Pigman doesn’t get to finish his sentence as he is shoved back harshly, barely managing to regain his footing before raising his gaze to stare back at the renewed fury in his brother’s eyes.

               “I told you to stop calling me that! You forfeited that right!”, Wilbur cried out, throwing punches aimed for his brother’s face as he went. “We’re no family. We never have been. You!”, Technoblade barely blocks another hit as he allows his brother to rage on, he reckons he can take it. “You. Are. A. Monster!”.

Time seems to slow down as the words reach Technoblade. His breathing becomes labored as he fights the surge of power running through his veins, clinging into his flesh to take control. Sweat runs down his brow and onto his lips as the Blade tries to cower away, fighting the sensation, unwilling to cause harm to his adoptive brother, willing him to run…. But it’s no use. When Wilbur throws another punch aimed for his neck, the Pigman surprises him by catching onto his wrist and pulling him closer. Wilbur’s eyes widen in shock as he stumbles forward, unable to find his balance before the breath is driven from his lungs, as Technoblade’s knee hits him in the stomach. Trembling and gasping for air, the brunette doubles over when a fist collides with his face, causing him to stumble and fall into the grass, fighting panic. Before he can even think about rolling over, the Pigman is on top of him, a rock in hand.                                             “Techno-!”, the man manages to bring out just before his brother strikes, the world growing dark as the blow leaves a soaring pain in its wake.

A sly smirk spreads over Technoblade’s face as he watches the body in front of him crumple in on itself, the desperate struggles decreasing like a dying animal in its last moments on this earth. Unsheathing his dagger, the Pigman crouches down into the grass as he readies himself for… for what exactly?      

“Oh my God”, Technoblade covers his mouth as he recognizes the familiar brown curls of his brother, and realizes what he was about to do. Releasing his white-knuckled grasp on the dagger, the man feels his muscles relax as the adrenaline wears off, whilst desperately checking for a sign of life on his brother’s body.                                                                                                   “Get off of me”, Technoblade puffs out a sigh of relief as a groan escapes the brunette’s lips. Hesitantly, he leans back as Wilbur shakily pushes himself up to a sitting position, all the while keeping a wary expression on The Blade.                                “Let me help you,”, the hand Technoblade offers his brother to steady himself as he stands up gets slapped away as the brunette seemingly prefers getting back to his feet on his own accord, gritting his teeth with the effort. The Pigman can only watch in dread as the other man steadies himself, before facing him with a stone-cold expression, some blood running down the side of his face from where the rock struck.

“Blood for the Blood God, huh?”

 Technoblade knows his pleads will fall on deaf man’s ears, so he opts to stay silent instead as he watches the man he had once called brother stride unsteadily back to the cabin, never looking back over his shoulder at him. The Pigman holds his breath till he watches the front door slam shut behind the man, before turning away himself. Lukewarm tears run over his cheeks as the gravity of the situation sets in. Wilbur had been right. He had abandoned his mother, the woman who took him in as an infant, and almost killed his adoptive brother in a fit of rage. Technoblade turns around in a swift motion, soon disappearing in the trees surrounding the place he’d called home. His mind is screaming for blood again, and his palms had started to shake. Eyes scanning the woods for the movement of a Mob, any Mob, he sought something to help him ease his mind. At the very least, he’d bring back some dinner tonight.  

The room is darkened by the drawn curtains and unlit candles and in the bed stationed in the middle of the well-decorated room, a man is huddled underneath the blankets. Feeling like his head is about to split, Wilbur lets out another whimper as he curls in on himself. The cut situated just above his brow will probably leave a scar if he doesn’t take care of it right away, he reckons, but he just can’t be bothered to ask for his father’s aid. The bruises on his stomach and abdomen could do with some ice, and a glass of water would wash away the taste of vomit from his throat, but all the while, he knew he should count himself lucky that he survived Technoblade’s assault on him. “Fucking Technoblade”, the brunette whimpered as another wave of agony ran through his body. He could still feel the surge of power emitting from the Pigman, with him as his sole target.

A knock on the door made him raise his head from the pillow, sighing in relief when it was just his father’s voice echoing from the hall.

               “Are you in there Will? Can I come in?”

Sitting up with a groan, using his headboard to support his aching body, Wilbur reluctantly threw the covers off of him and quickly adjusted his fringe to cover the wound. Phil had enough on his mind right now, Wilbur reckoned.  His old man wouldn’t need to worry about that right now.

               “Come on in!”, he yelled back, relieved when his voice sounded stronger than he felt like.

The door creaked open mere moments later, and Wilbur raised his hand against the light pouring in from the hall as Philza entered the room.                                           “I’m sorry Will, were you asleep?”.

“It’s fine. Just a headache.”

               Philza’s brow furrowed as he clearly didn’t believe his child. “Are you sure, son?”, he gently pressed on, the floorboards creaking under his sandals as he approached the bed. “You know you can talk to me if you want..”

               “I said I was fine!”, Wilbur snapped, a little bit too aggressive for his liking. Taking in a deep breath to calm himself, he met his father’s gaze steadily as he followed up with a gentle “What can I do for you?”.

Seconds that felt like hours ticked by as Wilbur held his father’s gaze as he felt his blue eyes study him. Phil always knew when something was up, but through the years, Wilbur had gotten better on deceiving his father. Nevertheless, he could feel a lump start growing in his throat, and prayed his father wouldn’t ask; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep quiet.

Philza was just about to open his mouth when a wailing sound rang through the cabin. A groan escaped from both men’s lips.                                                        “The Gremlin is awake”, Wilbur sighed, earning a playful shove from his father.               Don’t call him that!”, Philza scolded, but there was a glint of laughter in his blue eyes.                                                                                                  “What, because he isn’t a Gremlin?”                                                                                    “You were even worse as a child you know!”, Philza shot back with a smile of glee on his face.                                                                                   “Was not!”

Their playful argument was put to a halt when another of Tommy’s wails echoed through the halls. Philza sighed as he stood up from the bed, running a hand through his hair as he steadied himself. Wilbur grabbed his arm before the man could leave. He hated seeing his father like this, he could practically feel the waves off stress running off him.                                                                          “I’ll get him Dad”. Wilbur ignored his father’s protests as he swung his legs from the bed, biting back the flash of pain coming from behind his eyes. “You need your rest”.

Phil’s eyes looked at him doubtfully, darting back and forth when Wilbur put a hand on his arm.                                                                                                                  “Go to bed”, he softly reassured his father, as he met his eyes. Something softened in Philza’s gaze as he gazed back in his son’s eyes, the same eyes his son’s mother had, Wilbur knew, before dropping his gaze.            “Your mother would be proud, Will. Thank you.”

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

Entering little Tommy’s bedroom, the toddler, sat in the oaken bed Wilbur had once slept in before he had grown out of it, spared him barely once glance before starting to wail even harder.                                                                “Fuck”, Wilbur cursed under his breath before reluctantly approaching the child. He had never been good with children, he knew that; he would almost go as far as to say he hated them. Yet, as he carefully avoided stepping on any of the toys sprawled across the bedroom floor (Tommy would throw a tantrum if you put any of them away, whining that you’d ruin his decorations), Wilbur knew that he should at least try to take care of his baby brother.

 “I don’t want you!”, more salty tears ran over Tommy’s cheeks as Wilbur awkwardly sat down on the side of the bed. “I want my mother!”. Wilbur sighed, rubbing his eyes as he resisted the urge to yell at the child. He was too young to understand, Phil had explained to him. Didn’t make it easier to hear him yell for their mother though.

 “What’s wrong, Toms?”, Wilbur pressed on gently as he ruffled through the toddler’s blond hair. To his relief, the boy didn’t pull away, only pouting his lip.                        “I had a nightmare,” Tommy sniffled, looking away from Wilbur as a spot on the wall seemingly deemed very interesting. “Mommy isn’t coming back, is she?”

Something shattered in Wilbur’s chest. “Oh Tommy”, he whispered to his brother as he carefully pulled the young boy against his side, the way he had seen Phil do it when the boy needed comforting. A familiar warmth crept up to his chest as the toddler buried his face in his side, and his little body started to shake through sobs. Barely feeling his bruises ache when he did, Wilbur held his brother a little bit tighter, leaning his chin on his head as cradled the boy in his arms. Choking back his own tears as Tommy cried, Wilbur remembered that faithful night.

               “I’ll never be able to see my little Tommy grow up”, his mother had spoken to him as her last strength was fading. Wilbur had cried a lot after that night, but right then, he had managed to stay strong.  “Will you take care of him? Will you watch over for him for me, Wil? Keep him out of trouble and teach him everything you know?” And he would.

Tommy stared up at his brother with awe as a soft, familiar tune filled the room. Tears stung behind Wilbur’s eyes as he sang the lullaby their mother had once lulled them to sleep with, so many times before. So he sang, knowing that their mother’s words couldn’t reach them anymore. And he sang, knowing that his brother would cherish this moment.

 Lay down your head and I'll sing you a lullaby Back to the years of loo-li lai-lay And I'll sing you to sleep and I'll sing you tomorrow Bless you with love for the road that you go

May you sail far to the far fields of fortune With diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet And may you need never to banish misfortune May you find kindness in all that you meet

May there always be angels to watch over you To guide you each step of the way To guard you and keep you safe from all harm Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

May you bring love and may you bring happiness Be loved in return to the end of your days Now fall off to sleep, I'm not meaning to keep you I'll just sit for a while and sing loo-li, lai-lay

May there always be angels to watch over you To guide you each step of the way To guard you and keep you safe from all harm Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay, loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

 Wilbur felt a warm sensation in his chest as he watched his brother curled against his chest, sucking on his thumb as he dreamed. He would almost allow himself to drift off as well, if only he didn’t know that the reoccurring nightmares would haunt his dreams again, and he didn’t want his squirming to wake Tommy. Neither of them slept well since their mother’s death, and he gladly sacrificed another sleepless night if it helped his baby brother, and their father besides that, get some rest. They needed it, that he was sure of.

 The creaking of the bedroom door made him lift his tired head, somewhat relieved to find that his throbbing headache had subsided a little. Maybe he didn’t have a concussion after all. Furrowing his eyebrows in frustration as he made out the face of the man entering the room in the darkness, he gently moved Tommy, careful not to wake him, before getting to his feet to meet The Blade.

Wilbur Soot wouldn’t be afraid of The Blade, he promised himself over and over again as he gestured Techno to follow him, heart heavy in his chest as he was about to face the man for the second time this day. Or was that yesterday? Technoblade didn’t have a sleep pattern, so he wasn’t able to pinpoint a time to that. The Pigman shot a glance towards the sleeping toddler and for a moment, Wilbur was afraid he’d have to drag Techno outside, but to his relief, the man followed, albeit somewhat hesistant.

               “What are you doing here?” Wilbur questioned the man-he-had-once-called-brother when he had closed the door behind them. They were standing in the dark and quiet hallway, and Wilbur was almost sure the pounding of his heart was being audible.                                                                                               “Checking on my brother. Is something wrong with that?”. The Blade tried to stand strong before him, but Wilbur could easily tell by the shifting of his eyes that the man was nervous. Technoblade had never been good in social situations, he knew, the man was more like a fighter, and Wilbur knew he could play his cards exactly how he wanted to.                                                                “Don’t you think that’s a bit dangerous?”                                                                               “Heh?” Technoblade asked him, still not looking directly at him.              “You heard me. Don’t you think that’s a bit dangerous? Considering... you know”. Wilbur allowed Technoblade to fill in the rest.                                                                    “I didn’t mean to.. the voices.. I tried to protect you.”, Technoblade spoke in a soft voice. Wilbur took a small step closer. Technoblade took the bait.                           “Sure, you didn’t ‘mean to’.”. Wilbur made finger notions as he spoke, causing Technoblade to flinch.                                                                      “What’d you think Philza would say about that? How you didn’t ‘mean to’ harm me?”                                                                                                                   “You wouldn’t dare”, Technoblade growled.                                                                              “Oh, wouldn’t I?”, Wilbur put on a sly demeanor, the fear for the man now gone. “What’d you think Philza would say if I told him what happened? What’d you think he’d do if he knew you harmed his eldest, trueborn son?”.                            “Wilbur, listen to me“, Technoblade pleaded with him.                          “He’d know you’re a danger, Technoblade. He’d banish you, maybe even kill you. I might consider keeping it a secret if….”. Wilbur paused to watch Technoblade sweat his fate. He enjoyed this, he had realized. Why not keep it on a little longer?                                                                                                                         “You’re too dangerous to be around Tommy, but I’ll allow you to keep your pride. You got until tomorrow evening to tell Phil you’re going to move out. You’re going to be a stranger to Tommy. Don’t worry though”. Wilbur winked at the man. “I’ll take care of them”.                                                                                               “You think you can protect them on your own?!”, Technoblade retorted. Wilbur lifted his fringe to show Technoblade the bloodied bandage covering his injury. “I can and I will”.                                                         Reaching for the handle to enter Tommy’s bedroom once more, Wilbur met Technoblade’s gaze one more time.                                                                 “You have until tomorrow. Goodbye, Technoblade”.

 Wilbur let out a puff of air as he leant against the closed door, after he had been silently waiting to hear The Blade’s retreating down the hall. Everything had worked out like he wanted it to. He hadn’t even thought about what he’d do if it hadn’t. Everything would be okay. Relieved, Wilbur sat back on the bed, next to his sleeping baby brother. Maybe he would get some shut-eye as well.                          “Wilby?”, a small voice sounded next to him, and Wilbur turned to face Tommy, staring up at him as he was rubbing his eyes. “Where’d you go?”                       “Awwww, Tommyyyyy. Did you miss me?”, Wilbur smiled back at the blonde.                                                                                                                “N-no, I’m a big man!”. The toddler stammered, looking around frantically for something. Soon enough, he held up his stuffed cow to his older brother.                          "Henry was wondering where’d gone! I was just telling him to be tough”. Giving the stuffed animal a pat on the head, Wilbur scruffled through the toddler’s hair, ignoring Tommy’s protests.                                                                           “Wilby?”, Tommy suddenly asked when he was laying against his brother’s chest once more. “Yes Toms?”                                                                         “Promise me you won’t leave me?” The toddler’s voice suddenly seemed so small, so fragile. Wilbur knew very well that he couldn’t always be there, but as his younger brother clung to his side, he knew that sure as hell, he was going to try.                                                                                                                           “I will always be there, Tommy. I promise.”

 Soon enough, despite insisting he wasn’t tired, Tommy’s eyelids were drooping and he was drifting back to sleep. Smiling down at his brother, Wilbur knew now that, despite being a little Gremlin child, this was his little Gremlin child.                               “I’ll protect you, Tommy.  No matter what. Even if you don’t understand or don’t want me at times. I will always protect you.”

[jiskblr]

Blauprinz and his crew

My blood parents I never knew. Berliners, probably, but they left me in an anarchist-affiliated charity orphanage in Potsdam before I was six months old, so all I know for sure is that they named me Artur. I was adopted fairly late as these things go, about five, by the people who I consider my parents: Jurgen and Verena Carolingt. They could have had blood children, but chose to adopt, and frequently. When I was twelve I had five foster-sibs, but they slowed down after that; I only have two more sibs from the next decade, and they were adopted as the eldest four of us moved out. That's not counting Leo, who was their second fosterling; he was a real hellraiser and chafed at the academic's morality they tried to enforce, so he ran away to join a street gang. I got back in touch with him years later; for all that he left, he was as angry as me about - but that's getting ahead of myself.

My parents were academics, professors at Viadrina Universitat in Frankfurt-Oder, but in their more subtle way raised hell just as much as Leo. They grew up during the first partition, Da in East Germany and Ma in West Berlin, and they both hated the idea of hiding what they believed to cater to the powerful. They didn't budge in their convictions that everyone deserved a chance or that their conclusions deserved to be followed to their end. They believed in equality and metahuman rights, even when that was fairly unpopular, and they lived it. I'm a norm as were they, but my sibs are an even split of norms and orks plus one dwarf. They didn't adopt elves, who got snapped up more easily by more prejudiced parents, nor trolls, who posed logistical hurdles they didn't think they could deal with. (They felt bad about leaving out trolls, though, and donated generously to several charities for them. I do too, now, in their memory.) They budged just as little in their research, not even to stay quiet about it. When their research topics - applied sociology and economics of magic, for Da and Ma, respectively - developed from postulates to specific, inconvenient predictions and prescriptions for the practical world which got the corps to lean on their deans to quiet them down or kick them out, even so they stuck to their guns.

That pressure started to build around when I turned 18, and got worse as I went through my degree. When it all went to hell, I was a post-doc in applied modern theology - university-speak for 'shaman-ology' - and Zanne was a thesis candidate in high-energy experimental thaumics - studying when magic goes 'boom'. Gabi had given academia a serious try but it wasn't for her, so she'd become a net security wageslave in Potsdam - though honestly she'd be happier as a SINless decker. Fritz and Deb were undergrads at Viadrina, and Jost, Lotte, and Sascha were still young and at home. I don't understand what exactly was enraging the powers that be about their research; I think Mother had published something demonstrating that the publicly-known processes for producing refined orichalcite should produce a far lower market price, indicating that there was a covert cartel, and Father had models indicating that parts of the Eurowars didn't fit naturally with the known social dynamics pre-bellum, indicating deliberate provocation by some powerful force. True or not, either might have been the provocation. There had been escalating threats, but I wasn't living there, so I didn't hear about that; later, when I researched the background, I learned there’d been a fire started in the garage, broken windows, a chemical warfare agent left hissing in Dad's office after hours. But the first I heard of it was when I was back home, a week in late April, for Easter and Mother's birthday.

When some fucking Johnson carpet-firebombed the entire fucking house.

I don't know if they knew we'd be there. They had to know there were innocent children, there; Jost and Sascha weren't even ten yet. My parents died in the first few seconds, their corpses vaporized. Lotte was hugging Mother, so she was, too, and Fritz was just far enough away to leave dental records. Jost was less lucky; he roasted, but not quickly, and survived three hours before he died in agony. Deb lost a leg and an eye and as far as I know the pain's never stopped. Sascha was in the other room and got out, with severe scarring but none disabling. Zanne as well. Gabi wasn't there; the bosses wouldn't give her time off, and I'm not sure if that was a mercy or a curse. I was next to Father, and as far as the records know, I flash-fried like Lotte. But I'm a shaman of the Dragonslayer, and the fire washed over me. I tried to shield Dad with my body, but my totem isn't a protector; it preserved me, and much better than it would most of its shamans, but that didn't extend to him. I tried to help Jost when I realized he'd lived, but he told me to run and get revenge. I didn't realized Zanne or Sascha made it until much later; Zanne had hit her head and went unconscious quickly, and Sascha's response to pain always was to freeze up. But I kept it together enough to get to the basement, and there was ductwork Zanne had discovered years earlier and shown me, which connected it to three doors down. She'd also shown me the nearest part of the Berlin Underground - we snuck out through that ductwork - which had an ork gang she'd run with sometimes, so I thanked her memory about a hundred times that night. The gang leader by then, Ratbite, turned out to be one of the toughs she'd run with, and recognized me. I wasn't shy about using her memory to get a favor, and traded my shamanic skills - and some medical assistance - to get help going completely dark, wiping me from the databases so I could go truly SINless. He was pretty pissed when he found out she wasn't dead, but by then the favor was spent, and when she went dark as well she did him a couple favors and he mostly forgave me and accepted my excuse that I'd thought I was telling him the truth.

The official story was that the firebombs were thrown by a human-supremacist policlub, Nationale Aktion I believe, who objected to our outspokenly mixed-race family. This was bullshit, but plausible enough bullshit that the department heads and local politicians could easily pretend to believe it and be seen to Do Something in response, without that Something doing anything to harm corporate interests. Sascha I think believes that story, or prefers to act like he does. Deb, Gabi, and Zanne, though, didn't. And Zanne was good at causing explosions, but terrible at keeping her temper in check. She retaliated, with prejudice. Headline-making prejudice, which is how I and my temporary friend Ratbite learned she was alive. She had a big bounty for a couple years, but some anarchists gave her shelter before the corps reacted, and from there she became a runner as well. She didn't know I'd survived, though she did suspect, so I found her first, and joined the crew she ran with at the time. After that one came apart, the two of us have assembled all our future crews together. Well, mostly me, I'm the Face, but she still has better ties in anarchist and goblinoid circles; there's a lot of orks and trolls who won't trust a smoothskin, even one like me with an established rep.

Our vengeance is still a work in progress. The men who carried out the hit were deniable contractors, corp security from a minor place. They went down in an op our second year running, and the company got enough blowback from that job that it folded a year later. Finding out who gave the order is not quite done, but we've narrowed the field. I've got a solid network, and, well, my surviving siblings aren't any happier about it than me. Sascha pushed back when Zanne tried to contact him; I think he wants to put it behind him. Deb's a professor herself now, but she hasn't given up on justice, and Gabi-. She works for the corps, and counter to the ork stereotype is a very cold person in most ways; rationally, I know that gave me reasonable cause to doubt her. But after we finally made contact, we found her heart was cold, but a cold-burning hatred. A grudge aged like wine, but still so raw and deep that it feels unthinkable she could have made any other choice. Even the idea that she might have sided with her bosses over her family feels completely embarrassing to have considered. And Leo, like I said earlier, was almost as mad; he left home, but he still loved them for giving him a home to run from. (I hadn't realized, but he sent them gifts every Christmas, mostly hand-made, from the first year he'd left right through their deaths - he didn't learn about their deaths until he tried to deliver their gifts that year.) He's a complete ork stereotype, though, his anger is intense and searing. He'll let it go for months and then find something that reminds him again and smash up some corp's office, mostly at random. I try to give him more productive outlets when I can, but he refuses to go professional runner so he's probably going to end up landing in an early grave with his gang despite my best efforts. Not that we're really close, but I've lost too much family to let my crazy ex-brother join them.

[lastluvbug]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR DOING MY REQUEST since love it so much, I'm asking another one! This time it's gonna be full on angst but there will be happy ending so let's get started! =D can you do a request with a mc who had a terrible back story of abuse? She ended up losing her eye when she was four years old because her father threw a wine bottle at her and age blames herself because he killed her late older sibling and mom when she tried to cheer him up by playing a mini harp? Can be with anyone.

Very angsty, I’ll see what I can do!

Warnings: Mentioned/referenced abuse, mentioned self harm, drinking, and langauge. If sensitive, please do not read!

A Sweet Melody

Once upon a time, music had been so precious to Yuu. It had been her world, her rock, her solace when she couldn’t sleep at night.

She’d pull out her harp, and hum a tune in sync with her elegant plucking. She remembered those nights, dreamt of how free and pure the sound was, how calm she felt as the tension was poured into her song.

She remembered how much her mother and sister loved to listen—after a stressful day, before school, a nighttime lullaby.

All of it seemed so distant, like a fragmented dream that only appeared in flashes, gone so quick the only trace left was the bitterly addictive flavor of nostalgia on her tongue.

Music now was nothing more than a hatred whorled spit in her face. Music had been the thing to lead her younger sister and mother into their coffins six feet below ground. Music had driven her father insane.

It started when she was just barely out of her toddler years, when Yuu was first gifted the stringed instrument. While it overjoyed her to have something so beautiful, her father was nearly steaming with rage.

Yuu’s family was the farthest thing from rich. Her parents worked two, three jobs at a time, hardly creating a stable income as her father squandered his opportunities again and again. Over the course of her short life, Yuu often found herself to be at the receiving end of his fury, whether that mean harsh chastisment scented of alcohol on the smallest of mistakes, or a plain backhand across the cheek.

The day before, Yuu’s father had wasted yet another night at the bar, filling himself the disgustingly thin liquid until he couldn’t walk, nor speak.

“You bitch! How did you afford that? You doin’ something behind my back? Is that it?” He bellowed at her mother, Yuu standing in front of her one year old sister defensively as he stood from the rugged couch, stumbling over to the cluttered counter.

“Dear, please. It was just a gift!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me! How did you afford it?!” He grabbed her mother’s arm roughly, twisting it with his superior strength as she bit back a wince too late.

“Daddy! Don’t hurt her! She just wanted to do something nice!” Yuu interjected, latching onto his free hand.

“Get off me, brat. If it weren’t for little money suckers like you, we would’ve been dining like kings!” He slapped Yuu away, the short girl tripping over her feet and landing on her side.

From across the room, her sister began to wail, clutching her hand-me-down stuffed pet and wiping away fat tears. Yuu noticed how her father whipped his head to the child, eyes ablaze with a plan to shut her up. Acting quickly, Yuu rushed to her baby sister, pulling her out of the kitchen and up to her bed, where she tucked her in.

“Don’t get violent! Not on our daughter’s birthday!” Her mother shrieked as Yuu tramped back into the kitchen, freezing as her father slapped her mother.

“Shut up! You don’t understand what you’ve done, woman!” Just as her father raised his hand to strike her mother yet again, Yuu threw herself into him, temporarily knocking him off balance.

“No, Daddy! Leave Mom alone!” She stood in front of her mother, who fell to the ground on her knees, her arm out beside her as she tried to protect her despite only having just turned four.

A black rage darker than Yuu had ever seen laced every muscle and tendon in her father’s face, fear spiking through her heart and crumbling her resolve as the man recovered from his shock, standing to his full height. “So you think you’re better than me now? You think you can stand up to me? You’re father?” His hand trailed across the counter, searching.

“Dad...?” Yuu began trembling.

“I’ll teach you...” he mumbled, towering above his daughter, “I’ll teach you to stand up to me!”

He raised his hand, and in that split moment, his eyes were clearer than Yuu had ever seen before. He moved with such swiftness, it made her wonder why he’d never invested such concise movements into playing with her or her sister, why he sat drinking his life away on the couch instead of helping her mother work.

That was the last thought she had, before her world was sliced in two.

First, it was the immobilizing pain that made her drop to the floor. Her bones groaned in response to being dropped so unceremoniously on the tile, but was little heeded as her head blew up in flame, her scalp stinging like a thousand wasp penetrations as something warm and sticky dripped down her tear streaked cheeks.

She hardly recognized the scream that pierced the air as she looked around, hand wandering to her eye as she realized... it wasn’t working. She could only see out of her right, and the left was pure, black darkness, not even the silhouette of the room appearing in the emptiness. Yuu stared at the floor, at the blood falling from her face and onto the glass shatterer before her, encircling her like a broken cage.

Her ears rung, and she couldn’t process what happened next. Briefly, she recalled being carried, the sound of her irregular heartbeat, and the flooding of throbbing lights as she faded in and out of consciousness.

Yuu had her father’s words left in her head, imprinted in her brain like a branded cow. “Next time, learn to hold your tongue, bitch.”

All her life she carried the reminder of that day, marred upon her skin and forever labeling her as the “Outcast.” She never saw herself as beautiful from that time forward, and after the death of her mother and sister a mere two years later, never spoke unless spoken to.

<————>

Yuu awoke with a start, being shaken by someone rather roughly.

“Yuu? Wake up, class ended.”

The girl looked to the source of the sound, meeting the wide eyed and worried face of her only friend in all of Night Raven. “...My apologies, Epel...” She mumbled, lifting herself from her crossed arms.

“It’s alright, just... what was your dream about?” Epel asked, standing beside her.

“Nothing i-important, why?”

“You’ve been crying.”

“Hm?” She reach up to her cheeks, her fingers wiping something wet streaked down the plains of her face. “Ah... It really was nothing.” She waved off his inquiry, as well as her tears with her sleeve, seeing that Grim had already long since left her behind.

“If you say so... hey! Since it seems yer—ahem, you’re, not busy, did you want to come with me back to Pomefiore? All this time, and you’ve never been, right?” Epel prompted, making Yuu look up at him from her seat.

“Go with you to Pomefiore? A-Are you sure that would be fine? You guys are known for your beauty, I don’t think I would be very welcome...” Yuu shyly said, ghosting over her scarred eye.

“With the way Vil primps himself daily, I doubt anyone would notice you. Not to mention Rook—the guy’s lost one too many of his screws. He’ll probably be kissing up to our marvelous dorm head, so I’ll be off the hook.”

“What would... what would we even do?”

“We could study? I know I’ve been failing pretty terribly in some of my classes. Or... oh! Come with me!” Epel took Yuu’s hand, dragging her fragile figure down the hallways.

“What? What’re we doing?” Yuu asked, jogging to keep up with the boy.

“We’re going to the kitchens!” Epel laughed, sparking the girl’s confusion.

It was a bumpy run, the two weaving between students rather easily thanks to their short statures, and rounding corner after corner until they approached the gran cafeteria. Following their beelines, they pushed through the rows of starving students, barreling into the back kitchens pleasantly smelling of a mix of foods.

Yuu kept her mouth shut, following timidly behind Epel as she subconsciously covered her eye with a hand, glancing around nervously. Only a handful of people looked her way, that she could tell, and either smiled or laughed, both reactions causing her ears to redden.

“Okay, do me a favor, would you?” Epel broke the tension, turning to Yuu.

“S-Sure.” She answered, biting her tongue for stuttering.

“Grab the peeler and a few of the carving knives. I’ll get the stuff from the fridge!” He gestured towards the row of drawers, Yuu simply nodding.

She watched as Epel bounced to the largely oversized refrigerators, refusing conversation but smiling to himself. She’d never say, her voice hushed from years of humiliation, but she loved the way his soft purple locks fell over his shoulders, or the way his powdery blue eyes sparkled every time he laughed.

It took all of her will power to keep herself from tearing up, that light he shone reminding her too much of her forever dimmed sister’s.

Turning back to her own job, she searched through the drawers, pulling out her materials, nicking her finger on the peeler. Staring at the glimmery bead as it snaked its way down her hand, her body briefly remembered the feeling of metal slicing through her skin, long since healed over her wrists, but recorded upon it nevertheless.

Once upon a time, she’d been so broken that the only sort of release she could find was through blades. The one who’d helped her through those seemingly endless hours of struggle was none other than Epel Felmier.

When Yuu first met Epel, she was a stuttering, anxious mess, tripping over her words and avoiding eye contact like it was the plague. Epel was no better himself, holding his tongue and only making the smallest of conversations. If it weren’t for the one day he caught her stained in her own blood and sobbing in a restroom stall, Yuu believed without a doubt that there’d be no one by her side.

“Yuu! Ready to go?” Epel tore the meddling girl from her mind, who wiped the bead on her pants and carefully arranged the blades in her arms.

“Yes, let’s go.” Yuu nodded, supprssing her inner turmoil.

She’d put that behind her, and had long since forgotten her practices of old.

Epel gave her a soft smile, a bag of scarlet apples dangling from his hand as he encouraged her to go forward.

<————>

“Yuu, quick! Hide over there!”

The girl leapt back, disguising herself behind the curtains draped over a window as Epel stood in front of it, feigning ignorance.

“Ah, you runaway fiend! The great trouble you cause dear Vil! He wishes for your presence in the ballroom immediately.” An extravagantly dramatic voice cooed, and from her spot behind the curtain, Yuu could just barely make out the sight of blonde hair covered by a rather stylish hunting hat.

“Rook-san...! Lovely to see you as well. Actually, I can’t join you today, I’ve uh—I’ve come down with a terrible headache. Send Vil my apologies!” Epel not so cleverly lied.

“Is that so? Would those be get-well fruits then?”

“H-huh? Oh these? These are... well, Crowley gave them to me, said they were a gift from my hometown! I figured I’da bring ‘em to my room, y’know, n’ keep ‘em safe!” Yuu cringed to herself, knowing all too well that Epel was not selling his act.

“Oh my, Epel-kun, please. You may return to your quarters, but do something about that distasteful chatter of yours.” Rook croned, tipping his hat and heading off.

“Tch, “distasteful chatter”? Stupid beauty, what do they know anyway?” Epel grumbled, stepping away from the curtain as Rook’s figure faded away. He pried it open, the sudden flush of light causing Yuu to wince. “We’re alone, you can come out now.”

“Why don’t they like your accent, Epel? Aren’t they beauty enthusiasts?” Yuu asked, stepping into the open hall.

“Hell if I know. They only care about your face, not whatever you are on the inside. It reminds me of the poison apple the legends talk about; gorgeous to the eye, death to the soul.” Epel frowned, slinging his sack over his shoulder.

Yuu deflated, taking the words to heart. If that was true, then she was most surely not welcome in a dorm as proper as Pomefiore. “In any case, let’s just hurry to my room. They usually don’t bother me there.” Epel continued, storming down the corridor.

“Right...” Yuu followed, suddenly feeling unbearably self conscious.

Much to her surprise, the dorm looked empty as Ramshackle, not a single person lounging around or even passing by as they walked. “Where is everyone?” She thought, readjusting the dangerous items as Epel kicked a door open, allowing Yuu inside, almost gasping as she stood at the doorway.

The room was wide and quaint, with a large bay window, an intricately designed table, and a four poster bed that instantly made Yuu jealous. “Impressive, right? I honestly think it’s too much, even tried to convince Vil to give me something smaller.”

“I-I can’t believe this is your room... it’s so pretty...” Yuu marveled, setting her instruments on the table.

“Take a seat, we’re going to be here a while.” Epel instructed, laying his bag down and grinning impishly.

<————>

“I’m done! I’m done—I did it! Look Epel, look!” Yuu burst what seemed like hours later, hands flying to her mouth after she realized how loud she’d been.

“It’s a little lopsided, and it’s not symmetrical, but it looks great! Almost subpar for a rookie!” Epel clapped, looking up from his own work.

Yuu squinted, holding up what she thought was her masterpiece. The apples that Epel had brought were used to teach her how to carve delicate pictures and designs into their flawless flesh, some of which were horribly mutilated in the process, but in the end led to the beautiful fruity art before her. “I don’t see anything wrong with it... you’re such a difficult person to impress, Epel.” Yuu whined, comparing her apple to his.

“Ah relax! I’m just messin’ around!” He joked, waving his hand. He laughed at her dumbfounded face, ruffling her hair in an older-sibling like way, and for once, Yuu found herself smirking, if only in the slightest way.

“Epel Felmier! Do my ears deceive me or are you really—pardon?” Both teens froze in place as Epel’s door flew open, welcoming in a tall boy dressed in Pomefiore’s overly pompous uniform, head adorned with the same hat Yuu saw behind the curtain.

She flinched as his gaze settled on her, and she instinctually pressed a hand over her eye, concealing the horror that further proved the loss of her vision. “Rook, get out! Who do you think you are, barging in like that?” Epel complained, rushing over to the senior and attempting to push him away.

He was abrubtly dropped on the floor as Rook swerved around the boy, stalking closer to Yuu like a predator. “What have we here? Who might you be?” He asked, scrutinizing her face.

“Rook, leave her alone!” Epel demanded, pushing himself from the floor.

Too easily, the blonde pried her hand away, observing the story written in scars over the left side of her complexion. “Oh my...” Rook stared and stared, unexpressive and too close for comfort.

Tears started to brim in Yuu’s eyes, and using what little strength she had compared to the taller boy’s, she ripped herself away, running out of the room and down the hall.

Her heart raced in her veins, in her ears, as she flew down the forever twisting and turning passages, this time crowded with people. She could only dodge and weave between them, with their questioning gazes burning holes into her skull as tears dripped onto the flooring.

Yuu couldn’t seem to escape, the walls wanted to enclose around her, stretching and warping as the path swayed beneath her feet. She could do nothing but dizzily run away, mind lost in her own abyss as she leapt into a dark room, only ignited by the light from outside.

Collapsing in a heap on the hardwood floor, she wearily recognized where she was, or at least the type of place she’d ended up. On one wall, a slenderly long window stretched high above her reach, the opposite completely covered by a mirror. It was a dance room.

Sitting on her knees in front of the mirrored wall, Yuu stared at her pitiful self, tears breaking free of the dam they’d been collecting behind for days. Her hair was messy, falling around her shoulders and sticking to the sides of her face, dampened by the salty liquid. Her cheeks were rosy, nose carrying the same color.

And... her eyes.

One of them, the functional one, was puffy and tear clouded, and the other—the other was gorgeously ruined. A jagged, cracked scar trailed from her forehead to mid cheek, splitting her eyebrow and so thick that it spanned the length of her eye. The iris had lost its color and gone a milky white, the tears almost unrecognizable over the glazed sheen that glimmered over the orb.

Laying a hand on the mirror, Yuu stared into the mutilated gateway, seeing a story that had been left untold for far too long. She saw the death of her family, the heartache they bore through, her failure to preserve the things she loved most.

“Sorry—I’m sorry! I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, I’m sorry I look like this... I can’t breathe without hurting someone!” She curled her hand over the mirror, slamming her fist over it as she rested her head on the cool surface, her tears rolling down and leaving streak marks on the pristine aluminum paint.

Much to her surprise, the lights flicked on, though she did a fine job camouflaging it beneath a mask of melancholy. “So my potatoes were telling the truth. There really is a lost little sprite in my ballroom.” A new voice clucked.

Yuu ignored him, turning around and pulling her knees to her chest, burying herself in her arms. She didn’t want to be ridiculed anymore—didn’t want anyone else to resent her simply because they lacked the patience to break down her defenses.

The click of his shoes against the too cold floor reverberated off the walls, piercing her ears as they came closer, eventually stopping right in front of her.

“Look at me.” He commanded, the girl refusing with a shake, “Why not?”

“Because...I’m ugly, and everyone here is jaw droppingly gorgeous. I don’t belong here, I don’t belong anywhere...” she whispered, almost inaudibly.

“Nonsense. Look at me.” He commanded, this time not giving her an option. Tenderly prying her arms open, the mystery boy lifted her face up with the back of his hand.

Reluctantly, Yuu made eye contact with the person who struck fear into her heart like no other, either for his esteemed position in the school, or his famous physical beauty and harsh words. She stared into the amethyst eyes of Vil Schoenheit, who reflected her terrified and crippled visage in the hues of his irises.

Pushing his arms away, Yuu began weeping again, wiping the forsaken water roughly with her hands. “I’m sorry... I’m sorry for intruding. I-I’ll go.” She sniffled, in the midst of standing when Vil placed his hands over hers, plush and soft.

“Stay. Whatever would you have to be sorry for, dear?” He asked, urging her to sit.

“B-Because—Because I...I...!” Yuu’s voice became strained as she struggled to release the words that so desperately clawed at the knot in her throat. And then—

Vil opened his arms. Inviting, warm, unjudgemental.

“V-Vil...!” She dove into them, wrapping her arms around his middle as she did her best to stiffle her cries. Vil stroked her hair, his eyebrows raising in awe at how silky it was. “I-It’s my f-fault... all of it is my fault! I could’ve s-saved them, b-but I was just so scared!” She lamented, spilling the secrets that should’ve long ago been honored.

For once, Vil didn’t spit out any harsh criticisms, he just sat there silently, awaiting the end of Yuu’s bottled up pain brought to life. When it came, the girl released the boy who embodied beauty, trying to hide her swollen and scarred face. “I’m so sorry for using your time, Vil-san...” Yuu apologized, voice cracking.

“The least you could do is look at me when you speak, darling. Please, look here.” Yuu obeyed, eyes widening in confusion as her chin was rather roughly pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

Vil uncapped the top to his specially created lip gloss, “Hold still.” He said, applying the makeup over her thin lips, “There. See? You’re beautiful, we just... need a little concealer, and some contacts, and you’ll be good as new—partially.” Vil gave her a genuine smile, fooling Yuu into believing that maybe, just maybe he wasn’t going to judge her like everyone else.

“Yuu?!! Yuu?”

The two whipped to the doorway, and were greeted by a familiar lilac-haired first year, who skidded to a halt before Yuu and dropped to his knees, holding onto her shoulders. “I looked everywhere for ya, but this place is just so goddamn huge, it was like weavin’ through a maze! Rook had me runnin’ ‘round the halls like a chicken with its head cut off! Ain’t nothin’ hurt, o-or bleedin’, right?” Epel fast-talked, country accent in full affect as he tripped over his words.

“I’m fine, Epel. All good, see?” Yuu held out her arms, displaying her unharmed frame.

“A-ah, now that’s a breath’a fresh air! I see you been talkin’ with—dorm head Vil!” Epel gasped, face blanching as he sweat dropped.

“Epel. Felmier. What a pleasant surprise.” Vil growled through his teeth, bearing a deceiving smile. “Recovered from your headache, mister?”

“W-well, ya see here, I just—“

“Silence, I’ll not be listening to your excuses. And for the love of the Queen, get rid of that horrid native tongue of yours!” Vil demanded, berating Epel.

“...Yes, Vil. My humblest apologies.”

“Much better. Now! Would you like to explain our little visitor, and why she is here unannounced?”

After a long and tedious process of introducing and expounding her life, Yuu and Epel sat in edgy silence as Vil digested the information, going through a myriad of emotions as the air buzzed with electricity.

Yuu had her fingers crossed that she wouldn’t be sent away, as she’d been so used to.

“It’s decided then. Yuu, dear, follow me, and be hasty.” Vil nodded to himself, standing to his proud height enchanced by his heels as he flipped his hair, clicking off.

“I wish you the best of luck, my friend. You’ll most certainly need it.” Epel sniggered behind his hand, Yuu sending him a withering glare from over her shoulder.

“Oh just you watch. I’m about to sparkle like a million fireflies.”

<————>

Sparkle was a disgusting understatement for the transformation Vil put the poor girl through.

Though it was getting late outside, he still gave her a luxury treatment, which ultimately meant minutes upon minutes of face moisturizers, skin creams, scar healing oinments, and anything in between. Her face was stiff from all the rubbing, almost simulating numbness.

Once that had been finished, Vil wasted absolutely no time before pouncing onto makeup, his specialty. Concealers, eye accentuates, lip plumpers, blush, it made Yuu dizzy with the sheer amount of items the world of cosmetics had to offer.

It felt strange to be touched in such gentle ways, to receive the soft stroke of a brush to her eyelids instead of a slap, or to feel the way the concealer was mixed into the darkly scarred skin of her left side instead of the shattered glass tearing through flesh.

By the end of it all, Yuu didn’t sparkle, she emanated the radiance of a thousand suns, and even though she could only see half of her complexion, she knew beyond a doubt that she was more gorgeous than ever.

“There we are, darling.” Vil clapped, spinning her chair so that she could look at herself in the vanity.

Yuu’s jaw dropped to the ground, her breath hitching as she resisted the urge to cry.

Her scar was no longer visible on her face, the ugly line replaced instead by smooth, seemingly unmarked tan. The bags under her eyes were gone, making her seem at least a year younger, and a pretty blush was blended into her rather squishy cheeks, dusting over her nose. A flawless cut crease was executed over her orbs, the shimmery silver gradient backing to her elongated lashes making her eye pop.

But truly, the most spectacular of all what was lay within. Her irises were both... colored. What was once damaged and ruined was semi-fixed, a contact that matched the color of her functional eye creating the appearance that both were natural.

“V-Vil! Y-You... this...!” Yuu folded her hands in her lap, rendered wordless.

“A simple thank you will suffice, dear.” Vil chuckled, but nearly fell over when he was suffocated in a bear hug.

“Thank you! Thank you, thank you so much, Vil!” She bubbled, letting go after said blonde pushed her away.

“You’re welcome—just be careful! You’ll mess up one of our faces!” Vil snapped, rearranging his hair.

Yuu giggled, still staring at herself in the mirror, when a knock broke the calm partial quiet. “Come in!” Vil articulated, welcoming in two people, Rook Hunt and Epel.

“Yuu?!” Epel stood slack jawed, eyes nearly bursting out of his skull with how wide they were. “You’re so different, it’s amazing. You look amazing!”

“Indeed, madmoiselle! Delicate like the petals of a rose, and crystal clear as the water that rains from the sky! You are truly the sight to behold.” Rook added, earning an elbow to his side.

“Thank you, so much. I just—never thought I would look so whole again, especially after what happened to...” she trailed off, twiddling her thumbs.

“Nonsense, don’t let anyone lie to you. Never take criticism from someone you didn’t ask it from, alright?” Vil instructed, taking her by the hand.

“...Of course, Vil-san.” Yuu answered, for the first time in a long, long while settling into a comfortable laugh.

She’d been broken, far too many times to count. Torn down, crushed beneath the foot of life itself.

But, perhaps with the help of the people she used to shake in her shoes merely thinking about, perhaps she could turn that rubble into a cairn of her success. She’d have to fall to reach her peak, sometimes more than once, and sometimes she’d have to hit the bottom.

Right now, she was inching towards grabbing that first stone, that first layer to her cairn.

Soon, she just might reclaim that sweet melody lost to the tomes of time.

This took a little longer than I expected... I had to rewrite it because my first draft would... probably have gotten me flagged.

I want to say that you. Are. Beautiful. It doesn’t matter if you’re giant or mini, scarred or clean, because you. Are. Beautiful.

On that note, thanks for reading!! I hope you enjoyed!

Stay lovely!

[aroarolibrary]

Oh man so, first off: congrats to angel/dean shippers on getting your canon thing in spanish but secondly:

Man this whole thing that’s been happening with this show over the last few weeks has 100% reminded me that this show and Sherlock were the two fandoms that made be super romance repulsed because of all the internalized self-hate and trauma they caused me. Like. I was romance repulsed before but those fandoms?? Jacked it up to 100% for years in which I couldn’t interact with any romantic stories or fandoms at all.

Story time!!!

Tw for: self harm, self hatred, hypersexuality, mental health issues, child neglect.

So imagine you are me: a young person who has just graduated high school and, very suddently, went from being “single mother of your little sister” who you had essentially raised on your own for the last four years when she was 5 to 9 yo to “every day college kid that sees their sibling that they raised for the last four years maybe once a month.

Also imagine that, out of all of your high school friends, none of them are attending the same university as you and so. Well.

You’re feeling pretty lonely and depressed.

Now also imagine: you didn’t really have a chance to consume media I HS because: parent. In fact 90% of what you watched was kids cartoons for your sibling +bonus Inuyasha at 3am as a...Uh....treat.....(that’s the kind way of saying ‘setting an alarm at 3am to check to make sure the parents actually got home from wherever TF they vanished to nearly every night).

But hey! You are free now and can watch/read what you want between classes! Only, well, where to start? You go to a book store and find a Sherlock Holmes book and think “okay ya I’ve always wanted to read these!” And proceed to consume them in one week flat.

They are amazing. The relationship between Sherlock and John reminds you of your and one of your best friends/honorary cousins that you haven’t seen in a while and it brings you comfort to read, but now you are out of stories so, you do what any person this day in ages does: you find fanfiction. Now, Sherlock wasn’t a thing at this point and so nearly all the fanfics were based on the books and, of those, 80-85% you gen. No romance at all. Just relaxing stories about friends and solving mysteries.

Then Sherlock happens and, don’t get me wrong, I was definitely a fan when the show started, but suddenly fanfiction was no longer mostly gen, it was shifting, becoming more and more shipping and romance related and it became harder and harder to find non-romantic stories.

Then a person I was living with suggested supernatural. “It’s a story about brothers and it focuses on them.” They said “very little romance. You would probably like it.”

And so I watched it and, they were right, I did. And ya, that one wasn’t exactly like the early Sherlock Holmes fandom, it had a lot of shipping from the get go, but I could also really easily find gen fics that focused on siblings and familial relationships and ignore the rest since there was a pretty even 50/50 split with a slight favor on the gen side.

(Keep in mind there is a LOT of other irl trauma going on in the BG of this story which I know I’ve talked about before. A lot of which is also feeding into the romance repulsion and my avoidance of romance in fandom spaces along with my “blossoming” hypersexuality)

Anyway, the familial relationship in spn was a comfort. At the point I moved from Sherlock to SPN I was in my second year on university and was doing a bit better mentally (in the “sadness” front at least) but I was still missing seeing my sister a lot and so SPN was a comfort in that sense. It was something to relax with that didn’t have romance or anything of the sort that, at that point, was only driving me further and further into hypersexuality (I was dating my first ‘official’ partner at that point and, while I can recognize it now looking back, romance in shows and movies made me feel inadequate as a partner. Like I was failing and not doing enough. Was not romantic enough. Was not showing affection enough. But physically I also couldn’t bring myself to do those things either. What I could do was sex. And, well, when that’s all you have to offer...)

ANYWAY: spn was the one show I knew of on TV that was low to no romance and that the fandom was also decently low on romance, instead focusing mostly on family and the brothers.

Cut forward a few years, I’m back into a depression, I’ve failed at a relationship again because all I can offer is sex and that’s really not enough for people that are looking for actual romance and:

And supernatural introduces an angel character to the show. It’s interesting but I’m pretty depressed and not really all that interested in the show anyway at this point-

But then the fandom happens and it’s like a flood. The romance pours in from all corners along with the absolute hate for anyone that doesn’t see anything romantic happening. It’s like watching a wild fire go through a fandom, what was once a fandom that mostly was just about siblings all of a sudden became all about this angel character and Dean. So much so that it over shadowed everything and any attempt to just enjoy the show as a gen thing or as a family-centric show became impossible.

It was also around this point that a lot of...idk what to call it really because it wasn’t exactly hate, it was like a “this is the only way to read/be in this fandom and if you aren’t we are going to harass you non-stop until you see things our way”. If you couldn’t see the romance between these two characters it was because you were homophobic. If you preferred gen it was because you were homophobic. If you focused on just the brothers and their relationship it was because you were homophobic. If you couldn’t see that Dean was better off in a romantic relationship then with his brother who he had an ‘unhealthy’ relationship with then you were homophobic.

(Keep in mind at this point I was out as bisexual and had attempted to date a woman at this point. I say attempted because, well, again: aromantic even if I didn’t know it then)

It was intense and, from the POV of an aromantic person struggling with being unable to understand even basic romance: it was traumatizing.

I tried to see it, to understand what these shippers were seeing that I couldn’t. Yes, I could see how Sam and Dean’s relationship could be viewed as unhealthy, but as someone who had lived a similar life to theirs as a kid, and to suddenly be bombarded with this idea that the “healthy” way to cope with that is a “romantic relationship” it was a lot. And by a lot I mean a death spiral.

There was...a lot of one night stands and sex and half-attempted relationships after that, in that desperate attempt to understand. There was also panic, nausea, fear that my own relationship with my sister was unhealthy. Was causing both of us harm. That the only way I could keep from hurting her further was to find a “healthy” romantic relationship instead because siblings aren’t meant to be close, not even those where one raised the other alone for years on end.

I had no context outside of fandom about what a healthy sibling relationship looked like and, hell, most TV shows at the time painted sibling relationships as antagonist 90% of the time and with them only interacting when necessary. My parents both had siblings but my dad talked to his maybe once a month and my mom faught with Hers a lot. I had never faught with my sister. We got along perfectly, mostly because from the ages on 13 - 18 I lived for her alone and so I was used to putting her first no matter what.

But this fandom, that had been a comfort for me for a while, suddenly said that was wrong. That instead romance was the way to go and I...

Well. I am conscious of myself enough now to know that I was purposely hurting myself. A lot. Punishing myself over and over and over again, not just because I couldn’t figure out how to “feel” romance like I was supposed to do but also because I was a terrible sibling. Because I had failed my sister some how and had ended up in an “unhealthy codependent” relationship with her since, if Sam and Dean’s relationship was like that according to fans, then obviously so was ours.

(God and don’t get me started on the spiral that the new Inuyasha Sequel put me into a few months ago. I’m STILL not out of that spiral yet. These last few months have not been good for the “romance isn’t important/is unnecessary” front)

I would like to say that I soon realized how terrible the fandom was for my mental health and that it was causing me to harm myself but that isn’t how this story ends. How it ends is that I Eventually I ended up not being able to watch SPN any more. Every episode was just another dagger in my side. Another failure to press my face into. Another series of interactions where I couldn’t see. Couldn’t understand. Another episode that would let to another desperate one night stand/attempt at understanding how this was better. Healthier. How this was how things were supposed to be. Another night of not talking to my family or friend and another few days of not talking to my sister because talking to her too much was wrong.

So ya. This story doesn’t end nicely. It just slowly fades to black. To a point where I hate myself so much that I can’t bring myself to interact with the fandom or internet at all. Where everything just kind of...goes away and vanished but where the trauma still exists. Where stories that start out about family and, suddenly, introduce love interests leave me nauseous and choked. Where my romance repulsion gets so strong that I can’t sleep because I just keep remembering my failures. The fact that it’s not healthy to focus or care about your family. That there must be romance. There must There must there must. Because with out it all other relationships are bad/wrong/unhealthy and you are bad/wrong/unhealthy for only having those.

Just the endless mantra. All night long.

Bad.

Wrong.

Unhealthy.

Bad.

Wrong.

Unhealthy.

Bad

Wrong.

Unhealthy.

Over and over and over again.

[atinyarmyzen]

𝓭𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓮 ~ｋｈｊ

.:*three*:.

pairing: cupid!hongjoong x mortal!reader

warnings: maybe mentions of violence?? fluffy stuff

word count: 1.7k buckle up this one’s long

a/n: when you see squiggles (~~~~) it indicates a shift to the reader’s (you) pov 

Albeit strange, her new life felt like bliss. Every day she woke with the sun shining through the towering windows, and the sea sparkled in the morning light. She dressed in the finest silks in the most beautiful colors and embroidery.  Even though she spent your life as princess wearing nothing but the best of what wealth could buy, she still had never seen anything like it. Her every whim was attended to, she had what seemed like an army of servants at her beck and call.

She spent most of her days indulging in whatever small pleasures she wanted. Reading books that had the most fantastic stories she had never heard before: histories of the gods, accounts of strange distant lands, creatures and monsters that even her wildest imagination could not conjure. She ate the most exquisite food she had ever tasted, and the wine was like sweet nectar. Everything seemed perfect-too perfect. Her mortal life was nothing like this, and the most time has passed, the less she remembered of it. All her memories began to fade, she had almost forgotten what her mother and father looked like, her sisters too. She would despair over this at times, not knowing what had become of them.

Despite not being able to see her husband, it did not seem to stop them from becoming fond of one another. She had never felt such an affection for someone she had never seen before. She found herself falling for his voice; it was sweet like honey and clear like the soft tinkling of bells. It was even more beautiful when he would sing, filling the large halls with a soft melodic musings.

~~~~~~~~~

“Are you sure you’re not actually a muse, my love?” Your husband chided lowly in your ear. “I’m starting to think that you’re not actually mortal” He feigned suspicion in his tone; you could hear the smile in his voice. You let out a breathy laugh, laying on the soft satin of your bed. You felt your husband’s fingertips glide over the skin of your upper arm, then your shoulder and up your neck until it reached your cheek, where he tucked one of your silken ringlets behind your ear.

The only time you ever actually felt your husband’s presence was when the sun fell and you would retire to bed. In the darkness with the nothing but the sound of the ocean outside. You actually felt his warmth behind you, his touch on your skin and his voice in your ear. It was what you looked forward to the most every day. Not being able to see his face was difficult and you still did you quite understand it, but you were deeply in love nonetheless.

“Is it that you feel I won’t love you if I look upon your face?” you questioned. “You have nothing to fear from me on that front, I hope you know my heart is yours.” You wanted to reassure him, but you could not help but feel unsettled with this odd condition to your marriage.

“No, my darling. Believe me, I do not want to doubt you.” Your husband reassured you, his soft, delicate hands running up and down your side. “But this must be. If I revealed myself to you, it would change everything. You may fear me, or love me as something different than I am. I want you to love me as your equal rather than as an immortal.”

You nodded and sighed. “I do miss my family though. It is possible that I may see my sisters again? At times I can’t help but feel alone.” Hongjoong felt a tug at his heartstrings, he could not stand to see her unhappy or to know she felt anything less than blissful living with him. He could not be found out by your sisters either, however.

“If you wish, I can bring them here and you may see them. I must not be here when they do come, and you must not mention that you cannot see me.” Hongjoong explained. “Oh, thank you my love. Seeing my beloved sisters again will make me so happy,” Y/n gushed. You felt him press a chaste kiss to your shoulder. His words quieted your whirring thoughts, and soon you succumbed to sleep with his honied voice singing softly in your ear.

~~~~~~~~

The next morning, y/n woke to the golden rays of the morning sun shining through the window. She turned over, only to be met with an empty bed. She wanted to so badly to be met with the eyes of her husband, but she knew it could never be. The thought always pained her.

Today would be the day her sisters would visit. She rushed our of bed and slipped out of her nightgown, and opted for a sheer pale yellow silken dress. She went to her balcony and summed the wind Zephyr to bring her sisters to the palace, on her husband’s orders. She rushed down to the front of the palace and waited their arrival.

A short while later, y/n noticed two small figures making their way across the meadow towards the palace. She recognized her older sisters and bounded towards them, they met her in a tight embrace. “Sweet sister” Eurydice said to her youngest sibling, “You have no idea how happy we are to be that you are well.” She said as she continued to hold you in her hug. Irene spoke up from behind her “We thought you have met a horrible fate, be were bereaved for months”. She said as you let go of your eldest sister to embrace her.

“I’ve been doing more than well, but I seeing my dear sisters has brought me more joy than all the treasures in the world.” Y/n replied, beaming at her older siblings. “Please” y/n said. “come with me to the palace, and indulge in any luxury you may desire”. She led them towards her new home. Eurydice and Irene were both dumbfounded at the ornate beauty of their sister’s mysterious new home. She figured they felt the same way she did when she first came here, it is quite the sight for just a mere mortal. The servants catered to their desires. Her sisters staring in awe at all of y/n treasures. They could not help but feel jealousy creep into their thoughts, they had always felt upstaged by their little sister, but her living like a god caused envy to take root in their hearts.

The three sisters sat and ate on the veranda by the sea, drinking sweet wine and eating the most delicious fruit. Her sisters bombarded her with questions. The most anticipated question being just who y/n’s husband was. Y/n told them he was a handsome young man, but that he we usually gone during the day as he enjoyed hunting and riding. This did not satisfy her sisters however, and they continued to press on the subject until y/n finally confessed that she had never actually seen her husband.

“But how can you possibly trust him if you have never seen him physically?” Irene questioned pointedly. “I have fallen for his voice and tender touch, how could someone who has given me a life like this possibly intend to harm me?” Y/n retorted. “Besides, it is forbidden for me to behold him, it would mean the end of our beautiful life together.” She said dejectedly, staring down while tracing her finger over her empty glass on the the table. Her sisters shot each other a glance from across the table, they intended to cause y/n suspicion about her husband in an attempt to ruin her all-too-perfect life.

“Surely you remember the seer’s prophecy? They said you were to marry an immortal being” Eurydice feigned concern in her voice. “Back home it is rumored that your husband is a monster that means to win your affections with all of his luxuries only to eventually devour you. You must see for yourself if he is not a monster; find a knife and a candle and hide them in a place where you can use them later. Tonight, when your husband falls asleep, light the candle and look upon him to see if he is not the monster that the prophecy says.” She proposed. Her tone then turned serious. “And if he is” she took y/n’s hand and gave her a grim look “cut off its head so you may be free.” Y/n’s eyes widened at her sister’s words. Irene nodded in agreement to Eurydice’s plan.

Y/n couldn’t help but feel some amount of anger towards her sister’s suspicion at her husband. Yet, at the same time, her own curiosity was eating away at her. She tried her best to resist their persuasions, but her willpower was too weak. Y/n wanted so badly for him to be the beautiful youth that she imagined. She figured that if she saw who her husband really was without being noticed, then there would be not harm done. She wouldn’t have to live with the constant doubt, and he would never know that she had betrayed his confidence. Y/n could not help but let doubt creep into her heart when she thought of the strange condition to her marriage. What if he was truly a monster that mean to harm her? Then she must win her freedom, her actions of killing him would her justified right? She shuddered at the thought, but was overcome by her need to face the truth.

After her sisters left and the sun began to fall on the horizon, she had reached her decision. She stole a knife from the kitchens and hid a candle under her pillow. She rested her head on the soft sheets, and pretended to be asleep. Not a moment later, she heard footsteps and felt the bed dip at what she knew was her beloved’s weight. Hongjoong smiled fondly at his wife’s sleeping figure.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dream sweetly, my muse.” You heard your husband’s heavenly voice behind you. His lips grazed the skin of your cheek, kissing you so delicately as if you were made of glass. Your felt as if your heart was being squeezed, were you able to live with the guilt of betraying him? “I must know, what if my life depends on it?”, you thought. Soon you heard his slow, even breaths; indicating his deep slumber. Your eyes opened, and you slowly slid your hand under your pillow until you felt the hilt of the knife.

❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥❥

previous chapter | four

a/n: thank you for the love on this fic!! I hope you liked this one, trying reeally hard to make the plot engaging. Anyway more to come and its about to get angsty so prepare thyself. love youu~❥

[naomisimagines]

The Broken Traveller - Chapter 1

Pairing: Leon x Reader

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2,819

Notes: Hello everyone! My name is Naomi and this is my first Pokémon fanfiction, I hope you enjoy! I hope this makes sense and is hopefully somewhat good... so let me know what you think!

‘Just give in, just walk out there y/n, if you just accept this as your fate you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again. No spontaneous quests with Nebula to try and find other islands and people. No more nagging from mother.’

‘No more freedom.’

You looked up, glancing over the crowd of people, your tribe’s people, who eagerly were waiting for you to finally drink the nectar that would sell away your soul forever. And when you looked to your right, your trusted partner Pokémon, Nebula, your Dragapult, had a stoic look on her face, and you knew she was thinking the same thing as you.

‘If we don’t escape now, we’ll never have our free will again.’

You see, the nectar you were about to drink was from a flower that had been revered in your tribe’s history. The clan of dragon Pokémon who lived on this isle before your people travelled here from a far-off land, used this flower’s nectar to mind control your people into staying here forever, underneath their rule.

Early on, it had become common rule that whoever the small population of Dragapults stuck by was the “royal” family of the tribe. 

And now here you were, the first-born daughter of these so-called leaders. But you were different from all of your ancestors and even your siblings who had been born after you.

The nectar hadn’t worked on you.

It’s tradition for every child to drink the nectar as soon as they are born. However, when they had given you some, they hadn’t even noticed that it didn’t work until it was too late. 

And now, to cover it up, your parents had created some random ceremony to “coronate” you as the new leader of the tribe, now that you were old enough, at least.

But you not being controlled by the flower’s nectar caused a lot of problems for your parents, as you always wanted to explore. And eventually, you had figured out a way to completely slip by them.

Which led you to the ocean.

When you saw the big, blue waves crashing in on the shore, you knew you wanted to know what was beyond what you could see. Nebula, who at the time was a Dreepy, tried to at least encourage you to stay in the village, but you couldn’t be swayed, you wanted to swim far, far away from it all.

Eventually Nebula was swayed to your side, as she saw exactly what you had been seeing in the village for years. The mind-controlled eyes of the citizens, the silence that resonated in the isle every day, and the dragon Pokémon who did nothing but lay about.

And now, you realized you should’ve gone through with one of your escape plans years ago. Because as you looked over the crowd of people once again, you saw exactly what you didn’t want to see.

Green, hypnotized eyes focused right on you and dragon Pokémon flying above it all, keeping a very close eye on you. You turned away quickly, walking over to Nebula. “Nebula, we have to get out of here,” you whispered to her, “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to lose my free will forever.”

Nebula nods at you, and the two of you slip back into the dressing room, where your elegant gown is waiting for you. As you look over it and the clothes you took off earlier to put on a simple summer dress, you knew probably staying in this summer dress would be the best option, considering you were about to swim across a sea.

“Go find the escape bag we packed,” you said to Nebula, and she nodded before vanishing. You sighed to yourself in relief, already knowing how easy this was going to be. Your escape route that you have had since you were little was failproof, and would take you right to the ocean.

Suddenly, Nebula appeared again, holding the bag that you and her had repacked so many times over the years. You smiled at her and said, “Alright, what are we waiting for then? It’s off to freedom!”

After carefully exiting the large hut you were currently in, you instinctually made your way to your escape path. Nebula trailed closely behind you, and soon enough, you started hearing the crashing of waves upon the beach and the swoosh of the water as it retreated back into the ocean.

As you ran out onto the beach, a cool breeze blew right past you and you exclaimed, “Alright other lands, here I come!” Nebula cried out happily as she floated next to you, and you slowly grabbed the edges of your dress, feeling inspired to take it off for some reason.

Just as you threw the dress to the ground, and explosion sounded next you, and you and Nebula jumped out of the way. As the dust from the sand cleared, you gulped in fear as you realized who it was.

The guards of the village, with your mother leading all of them. “I can’t believe you didn’t think that I wouldn’t think you’d try and escape today, y/n!,” your mother exclaims, her Dragapult soaring next to her.

You hopped into a fighting stance, Nebula roaring right next to you. “And you’re even more of a fool if you possibly think you can beat me!,” she screams, lifting one of her arms up, “Guards, Dragapult, Attack!”

All of the guards let out a battle cry, and their Pokémon, such as Haxorus, Garchomp, and Hydreigon, all charged forward at you, along with your mother’s Dragapult.

Nebula flies in front of you, and lets off a series of attacks, managing to knock down a few of the rushing Pokémon. You know there’s not much you can do, so you keep cheering on Nebula as she continues to fire off attacks.

The air is think with particles of flying sand, and it continually attacks your senses. But suddenly, you hear Nebula’s voice in your head. 

‘Y/n!,’ she exclaims, ‘Go on! Swim as fast as you can, no one can see you with all of this debris in the air! I’ll hold them off like this for as long as I can. Be safe, I love you...’

Your eyes fill with tears before you exclaim back, “I can’t just leave you here Nebula, your my partner in crime! We haven’t even gotten to do half of the things we’ve always wanted to do together!”

‘Just go y/n!,’ she yells back, ‘I’ll find you someday and we can go on all of the crazy adventures that we want... Just go and find the place you’ve been dreaming of finding! Keep your free spirit!’

You scream out in agony as Nebula keeps firing off attacks. “I love you Nebula! I’ll find you again one day, I promise!,” you yelled at her before quietly slipping under the waters of the ocean.

Due to all of the commotion, the waters were quite shaky, but you managed to swim through them. You knew that if they saw you, they would send more Pokémon your way, so you made sure that when you came up for breaths, you barely breached the water’s surface.

At some point, you started to lose track of exactly how long you had been swimming for, but you were starting to feel quite tired and dizzy. You decided it was probably safe to put your whole head above the water’s surface, and as you looked around, you realized there was no land in sight at all.

Dread and fear filled your body, as you knew your body wouldn’t be able to keep up with this much swimming for much longer. But suddenly, you started to notice all of the other creatures swimming around in the waters around you.

You recognized none of them, and you were quickly afraid that they would try and harm you. So, you immediately picked up where you left off and swam off in the direction you had been going in this entire time.

And as you continued swimming, your mind started becoming foggier and foggier, your strokes becoming slow and fatigued. But just as you breached the surface to take another breath, you finally noticed a land mass in the distance.

But when you went back underneath the water, your mind slipped from you, and you started to sink to the bottom of the sea.

Luckily... there was a Lapras nearby who had noticed your plight...

~~

Leon, somehow for the first time in years since becoming the Champion of the Galar region, had a day off. He had already arranged to have dinner with his family later that night, and he was very excited to see his little brother, Hop, who he was bringing a very special gift for tonight.

But right now, he had flown Charizard out to one of the ocean beaches of Galar. Galar’s beaches were largely unexplored, so he wasn’t surprised when he saw how overgrown most of the beaches were or when he saw the number of wild Pokémon battling it out for dominance over one another.

But him and Charizard had spotted a nice beach to relax on, and cool breezes blew past as they set up a tent and pulled out the curry pot. And just as he was about to add the berries to start cooking up one of his favorite curries, he noticed a Lapras in the distance, a figure clearly draped over its back.

“Charizard, look!,” Leon said, pointing right to the Lapras, who had clearly now seen them and was heading right towards their beach. Charizard’s eyes widened, and he flew up to go over to the Lapras, who was clearly fatigued from swimming so much with an extra weight on its back.

As the Lapras swam into the shore, Leon brought over some medicines and potions to make sure it was okay. Charizard carefully grabbed the person off of their back, clearly flinching when he felt how cold the person’s skin was.

Leon applied some of the medicines to the Lapras before asking, “Is that your trainer?” The Lapras shook its head, before turning its head as if to indicate that it needed to get back to the ocean. “I’ll make sure she’s alright,” Leon says to the Lapras, “Go back to your family, I’m sure that’s what your signaling for.”

The Lapras bows to Leon, chirping happily before elegantly swimming back into the water. Leon immediately runs back up to Charizard who has already placed the person next to the fire.

The person, who is most definitely a girl, was clad in nothing but undergarments and many small, but sharp cuts ran across her entire body. “Charizard, fetch a blanket from the tent, will you?”

Charizard grunted before reaching into the tent carefully, pulling out the fluffiest blanket they had. He stomped over to Leon, who immediately threw it over the girl. 

After a few minutes of pacing back and forth, Leon was truly unsure of what he should do with this girl. He knew he should take the girl to a hospital, but then he would be late or even miss his dinner with his family. And miss giving Hop his very own starter Pokémon!

He was immediately snapped out of his thoughts as he heard the girl groan from behind him, and as he turned back to her, he saw her eyes were starting to flutter open...

~~

As you started regaining consciousness, you felt something large and soft draped over your body, and grains of sand underneath your back. And then you felt all of the cuts that had come from the tussle on the shore.

You let out a large groan at the immense amount of pain you were in, and your eyes started fluttering open, wincing at the bright light from the sun above you. And then you heard something move next to you, and you shot up from whatever you were underneath.

As you did so, your eyes finally completely adjusted and you immediately saw a man with long, purple hair, yellow eyes, and an absurd sense of fashion standing in front of you, along with a fiery dragon type of Pokémon standing behind him. 

‘Wait, aren’t I in my...,’ you realize, your mind freezing instantly, as you duck into a ball, squeezing your eyes shut. “Don’t look at me!,” you exclaim in embarrassment, and you hear the fire Pokémon let out a puff of steam. 

Your mind wasn’t completely clear either, so squeezing your eyes shut as hard as you were made you fall over again, your mind still barely grasping onto consciousness. You heard the man run over to you, and your eyes slowly fluttered open again to see him crouching over you.

You couldn’t even hear what he was saying, as your hearing had somehow been impaired as well. But all you could see was his bright yellow eyes, reflecting different emotions in them.

And you raised your hand up to his face slowly, before saying, “Yellow... eyes? I’ve never seen anyone with yellow eyes... doesn’t everyone have green eyes?” 

The last thing you felt before your consciousness slipped away again was his soft skin against your hand.

~~

Leon was perplexed. He wasn’t sure what to think anymore. He could still feel the girl’s cold hand against his face as she spoke. She had never seen anyone with yellow eyes? Where had she been living her entire life?

He looked off into the vast ocean, but saw no sign of islands out in the distance. But he was shaken out of his thoughts by his Rotom Phone ringing. He pulled out his phone rapidly, quickly answering once he saw it was Hop.

“Lee, when are you going to be home? Even mum is fretting!,” Hop exclaims worriedly, “Did something come up? Why didn’t you call us?” 

Leon can perfectly picture Hop’s dejected face, and his heart crushes underneath all of the pressure he’s feeling. “I’ll try and make it home tonight, little brother... but something big came up and I’ve only just started dealing with it. Tell mom,” Leon says, choking on his own tears, “That I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home for dinner tonight. Be safe Hop, I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

He quickly hangs up, multiple bangs of guilt bouncing through his body. His entire family is probably upset at him for cancelling dinner plans once again, but he looks down and sees the girl, still laying almost lifelessly in the sand.

“Charizard, let’s go. We’ve got to get this girl to a hospital, quick.”

~~

When he arrived at the hospital in Hammerlocke, the nurses immediately gasped at the state she was in, and the fact that she was being brought in by the Champion himself. After he explained exactly where he found her, the nurses rushed her off to a room to look over her.

And as he sat outside of her hospital room, his head in his hands, Leon couldn’t figure out what exactly he should do. Should he wait to hear exactly what’s wrong with her, or go back home and see the disappointed looks upon his family’s faces?

He had returned Charizard to his Pokeball a while ago, so he had no one to turn to for advice or even a finger in the right direction. Soon enough, a nurse walked out of her room and asked, “Champion Leon? Would you like to know what is wrong with her?”

“Yes!,” Leon said exasperatedly. The nurse gave him a weird look for a split second before looking over her clipboard and saying, “She currently has pretty severe hypothermia, and a lot of her internal organs are having trouble functioning properly. She also has large amount of cuts in her skin, so that will slow down her recovery process as well.”

“We aren’t exactly sure how she sustained all of those cuts, but it is suspected that she was swimming in the ocean for several hours before the Lapras you were telling us about found her and swam her to shore,” the nurse finishes. 

Leon hesitates before asking, “Could you call me or something when she manages to wake up?” The nurse nods and answers, “Since we can’t find any record of her in our system, you’re her ‘family’ contact. So you’ll be made aware of anything that is happening with her.” 

Leon nods gratefully, before pulling out his Rotom Phone to dial Hop. After ringing for a minute, it goes straight to Hop’s voicemail and Leon immediately knows that Hop has already fallen asleep.

And so, he sits back down on the bench outside of the girl’s waiting room, and doesn’t even notice as he immediately dozes off, falling right into a deep sleep.

~~

Masterlist

[disaster-fruit]

@portu-cale I had to delete the post with your ask bc it was huge and for some reason the “read more” wasnt working! 

portu-cale-main asked:

“could you expand on pindorama? and maybe her relationship with brazil? i’m really intrigued by the character :o (but only if you want to ofc!!)”

alrightt, I’m gonna admit I’ve been VERY reluctant about taking about pindorama, for a few reasons, but mostly because it’s really hard to find trustworthy information that isn’t playing into the colonialist narrative that is still very present in our national identity as a whole (if you read a little abt indianismo…. That shit is still very present). And when it’s not that, is all very vague and talking about ~the natives~ as if they were just one big homogeneous group with not much of their own history.

I also don’t want to go too deep into to anything too dark or “angsty”, not to ignore those ugly parts of our history, but because I feel it would be very disrespectful to make those tragedies (which are still being carried out by our government) the center of any hetalia discussion. And well, I might fuck up and end up playing into everything I’m trying to avoid, and if this is in anyway offensive, just let me know and I’ll delete this post and go further educate myself.

This is also gonna be an even longer post than usual (its 3 pages long...), since it’s gonna need a lot of historical explanation even for my fellow Brazilians.

My main source here is chapter 6 of the book “1499: O Brasil Antes de Cabral”, by Reinaldo José Lopes.

Ok, let’s talk about the lady.

First things first, she old. She’s at least 3000 years old, probably older! She grew up in southwest Amazon (around modern Rondônia) with her nine siblings, and while some of them remained there, others started to expand their territories through the forest. All of them also had plenty of children. The way I see it, since there was no sort of political unity between the different tupi tribes, each had their own tan and were the children of ones like Pindorama and her siblings, that represented many different groups that, though politically separated, had strong cultural and linguistic similarities. It’s kinda like I see Mama Greece existing while Sparta, Athens and all those Ancient Greek cities existed too, but in a much larger scale. So Pindorama represents what would eventually be all the tupi and tupi-guarani groups in the coast, and of Pindorama’s children, most of them were also Guarani’s kids.

Pindorama and Guarani expanded to the southeast and the east coast together, always hating each other and fighting but also constantly having children together lol. Sisters? Enemy-lovers? Bitter exes? Frenemies with benefits? All of the above? I don’t know, but these two ladies had children pretty much all around the territory (what I’m referring to here is all the different Tupi-Guarani groups), and if you ask me, they otp.

Pindorama is, first and foremost, a warrior. The tupi were, in general, very belligerent groups, that had war as a major part of their culture, and that was in part what made them expand through such a wide territory even without any kind of centralized state or hierarchy. And they had a very different view of war compared the Europeans – war was not meant to completely eliminate their enemies or as means to access land and resources, but as part of a perpetual cycle of revenge that ennobled ones that participated in it - it was cultural more than material. So Pindorama was just constantly watching her children fight each other and she was like…. Good for Them. She was also constantly fighting someone (usually Guarani lol) and was really, really good at it.

Despite that, she was also inclined to trading and had a lot of good commercial relationships with many others, going as far west as the Andes! She was both a warrior and a businesswoman, so yeah, terrifying. She was a skilled river navigator – not as much as the Aruak, but still pretty good – which also helped both with the expansion and with trade. She’s an extrovert, who can talk in front of a lot of people easily and captivate whoever she met, while also scaring the shit out of them.

So yeah, that’s Pindorama. A warrior, a businesswoman, a mother, a rival-lover, she really did have it all. And when Portugal arrived, she at first assumed he was just another one to trade with – and that was it, for the first few decades. And when Brazil ~appeared~ there (in whatever way nations are born idk), she took him as another one of her many children, no really a surprise here either.

For some time, she raised Brazil, but she soon understood that kid was not like the others. First, he was not just her child or her child with Guarani, but apparently also the child of that dude that would come every once in a while from the sea (again I don’t know how nations know who are their parents or other’s parents since there’s really no biological birth going on…). And as time went by, she also started noticed more and more of her other children dying more and more every time, while Brazil kept growing stronger and healthier every day. She put two and two together – that child and his father were trouble, and not the good kind.

When it comes to her relationship with Brazil, it is complicated, to say the least. She was more present in his childhood that Portugal, she taught him her languages and stories and how to survive in that land, but she also never trusted him, and was hesitant to be around him. As the years passed, she learned it was safer for her and her other children (who are not really Brazil’s siblings btw) to just keep going deep into the forest and avoiding Brazil and Portugal whenever they could, but always fighting back when needed. When it came to the battles, she actually had advantages compared to Portugal at times – gunpowder in the 16th century was pretty shitty, while for example the tupinamba had arrows as long as 1.60m that could pierce through their armor. But fighting meant exposing the people to getting sick, and the moment they realized that, they started avoiding it more. Still, I think its plausible to say she probably tried to kill brazil and Portugal a few times.

As much as I like to joke about brazil having mommy issues, I really don’t want to blame her for being “a bad mom” when she really was just doing what she had to do to survive and resist and to protect her real family against an enemy she couldn’t defeat. Also, Brazil has a great deal of blame here. When he was a kid, it really was just Portugal who pushed Pindorama away and against him, but after independence he really failed to fix things when he had the power to. As I talked about in the last post a little bit, he tried to get close to her again, but not because he wanted to make things right, not because he was ready to listen to her and respect her, but because he wanted an identity for himself that was separated from port, and though he could find it in his mother. But he wasn’t listening to her for a moment or seeing her for who she was, he wasn’t trying to get to know her, it was all about himself (as it always was in the empire).

I think Pindorama, better than anyone, can see how Brazil and Portugal are similar in their worst traits, and she can also see through every single one of brazil’s warm smile in a way no one else really can. Not for a moment his talk of reconnecting with her fooled her. Needless to say his attempt to get close to her, completely misguided and selfish, didn’t made things any better between them.

To this day, there’s a lot of bitterness between the two. Pindorama (fairly) resents brazil for all that he and his father caused and his failing to recognize his own flaws and mistakes and works on them. Today, they still mostly avoid each other. They do have their tender moments, sometimes, but Brazil has a lot of growing up as a person to do if he ever wants to fix their relationship.

Well… this is very long. I apologize if I said anything offensive or played into any harmful stereotypes, and if I did, please let me know.

[charmedtheselfproclaimedking]

Charmed Children

Warnings: I do not own or claim to own any rights to the television show “Charmed” or the characters created within said show, this is purely fanfiction written from a devoted fan of the series. 15+ Mild to strong language, moderate to strong violence, witchcraft, sexual innuendos, and scenes of a sexual nature. F/F, F/M, M/M, Gen, Other +

CHAPTER ONE HERE

Chapter 3 - Legacy

PJ Thorne and her newly found, long lost, half sister Peyton Price were in the main foyer of the Halliwell Manor, each of them sorting through a separate pile of unopened mail address to the likes of Phoebe Halliwell, Piper Halliwell, Leo Wyatt, Wyatt Halliwell, Chris Halliwell, Melinda Halliwell, Paige Mitchell, etc.…both of them snooping in a bid to learn more about their birth mother when suddenly the grand Victorian chandelier placed right above them both, which hang from the ceiling, began to shake viciously before omitting a strange blue light that almost blinded the two women but as soon as they had noticed it, it was gone just like that. “I am going to put that one down to some old school dodgy electrics which makes complete sense given the age of this house.” Peyton guessed, trying not to let on that she was slightly spooked. “I have never seen any kind of messed up wiring cause a chandelier to omit that kind of strange light…then again it is not like I see fancy chandelier’s every day in my line of work.” PJ replied to her sister, as the two began looking towards the stairs, wondering why Percy had been upstairs for so long. “I should check on Mr Ford in case he’s found himself electrocuted or something…” “I’ll check on Percy with you,” Peyton said happily, as the two sisters made their way for the stairs. “Nothing like a creepy old house to make strangers who happen to be siblings get to the bonding.” “Look you seem nice enough and everything, but I am not looking for a sister.” PJ told Peyton, making it clear where she stood with her, as the two of them began walking up the stairs of the Halliwell Manor. “I’m down to get answers about the woman who gave us up, but I am not looking for long lost family…” “Oh, okay!” Peyton responded, attempting to hide her disappointment. “Well lucky for you I already have a family whom I love so yep, just wanting answers too and pending on how haunted this place is I may potentially want to live here…” “This place is too big for one person I say we sell it and share the money three ways, that way you can get yourself a nice little flat, Percy can have walking around money and I can put some money aside for a rainy day.” PJ advised Peyton, as they continued walking upstairs until they walked into the upstairs hallway. “I mean some money is the least we can get out of all this!” “Well actually, I am not big on the idea of selling our family home especially since it has been in our family for generations.” Peyton disagreed with Peyton, as Percy walked down the attic stairs to meet them in the hallway. “I think we should keep it in the family.” “You are talking about strangers who threw us out of this very house who gives a damn about their traditions!” PJ argued with her half-sister, making her fury towards her birth mother abundantly clear. “Oh, calm down detective dastardly if you need the cash so badly, I’ll buy your share of this place.” Percy interrupted, attempting to stop a potential argument, before turning to Peyton. “Then I will give you both of our shares and you can live your perfect family home lifestyle…that is if you still want to live here considering it could be haunted by the ghosts of real life witches!” “Witches? Really? Did you get electrocuted by any chance?” PJ responded to Percy. “We should get you checked out at the hospital maybe a psychiatric one…” “Trust me I am no believer in hocus pocus although I did love the movie,” Percy began to explain to both PJ and Peyton. “However, it seems like our birth mother sure believed in witchcraft considering the grimoire in the attic full of spells and potions.” “Wait, so our mother was a witch?” Peyton asked her half-brother, with a sense of excitement in her voice. “That is so cool!” “Well I guess that explains you and your whole attitude,” PJ told Peyton. “Clearly our mother was somewhat unhinged…in which case she did the right thing by giving us up.” “Or maybe our mum was a witch.” Peyton continued to argue with PJ. “You cannot tell me you do not want to see this spell book?” “It is a pretty cool book to be fair…way more convincing than the kind you buy online that is for sure!” Percy chimed in, tempting to entice PJ’s curiosity at the same time. “And the spells are so well written like poetry for wiccans.” “Are you listening to yourself? You are one of this city’s most eligible bachelors and you are up in a stranger’s attic reading spells!” PJ snapped at Percy, before taking a deep sigh, trying to calm herself. “This day just keeps getting crazier!” “When you read said spell…did you read it with your head’s voice or did you read it out aloud because everyone knows when you read a spell out loud you’re casting said spell whereas when you read it in your mind it is just reading.” Peyton wondered, revealing some knowledge of witchcraft. “No, I do not think everybody knows that Peyton!” PJ told her sister. “I bet you read up all about UFO’s, ghost sightings and truly believe there are actual witches out there.” “Stevie Nicks is a witch!” Percy argued with the cynical detective. “She said so on American Horror Story…” “I love American Horror Story, what is your favorite season?” Peyton asked her brother. “Okay I am getting out of this madhouse right now!” PJ declared, as she began walking back towards the stairs. “Sell it, do not sell it, burn it to the ground for all I care!” Despite PJ’s urge to not admit it, these three newly found siblings’ lives had changed forever that day because not only were they no longer strangers but as they were yet to discover they were fully active witches now, with powers just waiting to be discovered.

A few hours had passed since PJ’s abrupt exit from the Halliwell Manor and yet for some reason neither Peyton or Percy could bring themselves to leave their biological family’s home, as Peyton had migrated upstairs to the attic, eager to examine the book of shadows and all its contents, Percy decided to give the home a second look over, as he stripped the kitchen cupboards to find all kinds of ingredients which he believed was used to make potions, although most of it was just store bought food he did not recognize. Percy’s strip search of the family kitchen was cut short when he heard the doorbell ringing and decided to walk out of the kitchen, through the dining room and towards the front door eager to find out who would be knocking, as he wondered if they could be a friend or neighbor of the mother who gave him up for adoption. “Holy moly this neighborhood just got a whole lot better.” Percy mumbled in shock after opening the front door to find Luke Star stood on the front porch, a tall dark haired man with a Californian tan and a smart buzzcut wearing a suit that looked almost as expensive as Percy’s. “I live next door and I could not help but notice people coming in and out, so I thought I’d introduce myself to the new neighbors…you are my new neighbor, right?” Luke stated to Percy, as the socialite found himself lost in Luke’s mesmerizing smile. “Well me and my…sisters just inherited the place and we’re not quite sure what we are going to do with it yet…” Percy attempted to explain the situation, before holding his hand out. “Hi, I am Percy Ford.” “Of the Ford dynasty?” Luke asked as he shook Percy’s hand. “Your family is very well known in this city…I am Luke Star, I’m a senior partner at Murphy and Star Law.” “A lawyer,” Percy responded as he broke off their handshake. “I am actually looking for some new representation, mostly because my parents’ lawyers are as old as dirt and I am looking to expand the family empire in new directions.” “Well I’d truly be honored to represent you anytime!” Luke confessed, as he pulled out his business card and handed it to Percy. “I’d also be truly honored to have you as a neighbor.” “I guess I’ll have to give this place a seriously contemplation then.” Percy flirted with Luke, before hearing a loud screaming noise coming from within the house, a scream that sounded like Peyton’s. “I should probably go check on my…sister!” “I am more than willing to come with you, it sounded pretty serious.” Luke suggested. “It is probably just a spider or something knowing her,” Percy lied, trying to get rid of the lawyer in case Peyton had found something even more peculiar about their biological family. “I’ll give you a call some time…” “If your sure,” Luke replied. “Feel free to call me anytime.”

Peyton was stood behind the bookstand within the attic of the Halliwell Manor, flicking through the pages of the book of shadows taking it the entirety of what the book had inside its pages: name of ancestors who were also witches, family trees, names of demons with information about them and how to defeat them, spells, potions, information on other magical beings like elves, fairies, nymphs and most importantly the charmed ones. As Peyton continued reading from the pages of the book of shadows she quickly learned that her birth mother Phoebe Halliwell was one of the charmed ones, an all powerful power of three which somehow consisted of four not three sisters and as she continued to read about the charmed legacy she quickly learned just how important they were, believing every word to be true and relieved to finally understand the world in which her birth mother lived, knowing that she was not given up over not being wanted. “That thing has not been touched by a Halliwell’s hands in far too long!” Gareth revealed, after orbing into the attic, leaving Peyton horrified, as she let out a scream of shock. “Do not worry I mean you no harm Peyton…” “Yeah I bet you say that to all your victim’s demon.” Peyton replied as she quickly picked up a nearby antique vase from a cabinet not far from her and threw it in Gareth’s direction, only for him to orb out of dodge, to then reappear in front of Gareth, to which a further shocked Peyton responded to him by punching him across the face, causing Gareth to fall to the floor in pain. “Not today, Satan, not today!” “What the bloody hell are you doing assaulting my butler?” Percy asked, as he walked into the attic, stunned by what he saw. “You have a butler, just how rich are you…wait never mind your butler is a demon!” Peyton replied to Percy, only to be met by a laugh from her half-brother. “I think someone has been reading too much from the family grimoire and not remember the reality in which we live in.” Percy dismissed his sister, as he walked over to Gareth and helped him back to his feet. “The only thing magical about my butler is the fact he manages to put up with me all the time.” “Yeah well your butler who is also my neighbor just appeared here from out of nowhere like some teleportative magic was used.” Peyton explained herself. “Do not be ridiculous.” Percy laughed once again. “How can he be your neighbor when he lives in the Ford Manor?” “Peyton’s not being ridiculous Mr. Ford,” Gareth confessed to Percy, before turning to Peyton. “But I am not a demon…I am a white lighter…specifically yours, your brother’s, and your sister’s.” “Okay now I am completely and utterly confused.” Percy admitted to them both. “A white lighter is a guardian to witches, their bodyguard so to speak as well as being their mediator to the elders.” Peyton revealed to Percy. “I kind of got carried away with the reading a little bit.” “I was all for the possibility of witches, heck even ghosts but this is just too much!” Percy confessed, struggling to take it all in. “I mean I just came here to look at an old house and now I am just supposed to take this all in…” “I know that it is a lot to get your head around but the sooner the do the safer you will be.” Gareth tried to explain to the wealthy socialite. “Everything in the book of shadows is real especially the demons and now that you’ve unbound yours and your sisters’ powers, they are going to start coming for you all.”

[yourcoolfriendwithallthecandy]

The Willow Maid Part 2

Thank you to @waiting4inspiration​ for hosting another challenge where we take myths and legends and do fun things with them, like what I’m trying to do here. @inforapound​ wanted to be tagged too. Those who read the Bible, will find references that I honestly am not trying to be sacreligious or offensive or anything, I’m trying to have some harmless fun here and provide entertainment as I mash so many things into one and connect dots here. 

Ha. Anyway, enjoy. 

The Willow Maid

Part 2

When Floki woke up again, the willow maid had returned with a bowl of stew, some bread and some more tea for him to drink. 

“Thank you Rayth.” He thanked her graciously, as he took the wooden platter and settled it over his lap before he dug into the spread as he couldn’t help but stare at her. She was so beautiful and eerily perfect, which he mused a goddess should be, it was a little unnerving to look at her but the more he did, the more he felt at peace because he could sense that she meant him no harm, only good. 

“So what are you a goddess of?” Floki asked. “Protection?” He guessed. 

“I suppose, if you say so.” Rayth nodded in agreement. 

“How would you like to be worshiped?” Floki asked and Rayth had to think about that for a moment. 

“By being kind and respectful to the women and children in your life.” Rayth answered. 

“Are there more like you?” Floki asked. 

“Yes, when I agreed to look after you, my sisters who have shown themselves to you told me that you were special and worth saving.” Rayth answered. 

“The bee woman and the raven woman?” Floki remembered. 

“Yes, among others.” Rayth nodded. 

“Is this the World Tree?” Floki asked. 

“It is, and you are the first son of Adam to be welcomed into it since the great flood, it is connected to all the other trees in the world, any fruits that can be found on trees, even bushes and shrubs can be found in it. And in some areas, we bring other plants like root vegetables and vines and grains and of course some animals get left at other trees as offerings, so I keep them, the chickens eat the bugs in the tree, that's where we get the eggs, the goats eat the excess foliage so I get my milk and cheese from them. 

“So no meat other than the eggs?” Floki asked. 

“No, men have only ever wanted meat after the great flood, neither I or my sisters crave it, but if you do, I can check the other alters for an animal sacrifice.” Rayth answered. 

“Do you not take pleasure in them?” He asked. 

“Me personally? No, some of my brothers and sisters do though, I personally think animals are more useful alive than dead but my siblings would argue that there is nothing like life blood because it’s been set as sacred since the beginning of time and they take pleasure in it, but I do not. I think there has been too much death in the world already, no use in adding to it.” Rayth shook her head no. 

“You keep calling me a son of Adam, who is Adam?” Floki questioned. 

“Who do you call the father to all?” Rayth returned. 

“Odin.” Floki answered. 

“Ah, then, you are Floki- son of Odin then. I realize that names change with time as do languages. I remember when there was only one language in the whole world, but my own grandfather put a stop to that.” Rayth recalled. 

“Who is your grandfather?” Floki asked. 

“You would not know his name, since he has banished my own father and erased my father’s own name so that no one may know it, not even my mother or myself know my father’s real name. So I will not speak of my grandfather’s name.” Rayth insisted. 

“What is your mother’s name then?” Floki asked. 

“Lilith.” Rayth smiled proudly. “Once you’ve eaten, you should rest some more Floki son of Odin and I will bring you back to your people, well, what’s left of them.” Rayth said. 

“My people?” Floki repeated. 

“Yes, the people you brought to the land of the gods. The volcano that erupted that caved you in- my sisters spitefully threw burning boulders at your opposers, only believers are left. And the soil is now very fertile and you’ll be able to grow whatever you want to now, they couldn’t bless the treacherous with the good.” Rayth informed him before she took the tray back, once she saw that he had eaten and drank his fill. 

“Also, feel free to eat whatever your eyes desire and if you need help, just call and I’ll come.” Rayth told him as his bed laid down again before the leaves opened up to reveal the cosmos above his bed as Floki gazed in awed wonder at it all as his hands reached out and grabbed a bunch of grapes that were growing near his head, marveling at how sweet they were- like candy and giggled to himself, tickled that he had so many of the gods favor- to the point that it was the goddesses who took care of him now. He only wished everyone else could see the truth. 

The next day, he felt better than he ever had, like his heart, mind and soul were whole and his sleep was the most restful he had ever had in his life, he almost didn’t want to leave as he eagerly got out of bed and investigated every centimeter of his “room” and got to try and taste fruits he had never seen before, let alone tasted. 

“Want some help?” Rayth asked as she came in with his breakfast, more bread with berries mixed in, fried scrambled eggs and fried potatoes with onions. 

“Yes please,” Floki said as she got a stone knife from her belt and opened up kiwi for him and handed him a spoon before she opened up some oranges and other citrus fruits and even some dragon fruit, sliced some star fruit, opened up mangos, papaya, pineapple and other exotic tropical fruits, even coconuts and had him drink the milk from those. 

“What are these hairy ones?” Floki asked. 

“Rambutan,” Rayth said as she peeled it and ate one for demonstration as he imitated her as she showed him so many fruits, he lost track of which ones were which and from where but he ate until his stomach was sure to burst and his face had streaks of sweet sticky juice to his his neck.  

“You need to bathe,” Rayth insisted as she took his hand and led him down the seeming maze of hallways and rooms made out of this tree before he came to a room where there was a tub in the wood itself that had an ever flowing spring in it, the water warm like from a sulfur spring but there was no sulfur. “Here, I have all the kinds of soap I make here to choose from, this one is best for your face, this one is  better for your body however for your private regions, this one is best and of course your hair and even your beard should be washed with this one.” She specified as she pointed them out before he put his hand up to his head and realized he had a full head of hair again. Which was odd. 

“You get in and I’ll return with a clean garment for you when you’re done.” She excused herself and left him to take care of himself before he got out of his tunic and got in the water with the soaps, watching as practically years of dirt and grime and oil came off of him in an instant as he washed everything with the soaps she told him to before she came back several moment later with a fresh clean garment, made out of a silk and cotton blend of cloth and some trousers.  

“Stay in the water as long as you like, I’m in the next room making soap.” Rayth said as she caught herself trying to sneak a peek at what the creator gave him and forced her eyes away as her cheeks stained cherry and even the tips of her pretty pointed ears got dark as Floki tilted his head as he realized...she was attracted to him. 

He got out of the natural tub and the water drained itself before it refilled itself anew as he put the clothes she provided on himself before he looked in the mirror, he looked...younger and healthier, he had never seen himself look so clean before as he wandered out of the room and listened for sounds of his host until he heard faint singing and followed that sound to find Rayth sitting down, pouring different colored liquid soaps into molds with different things like dried flowers as she mixed them in before she set the molds aside. The song she sang was peculiar, like he had heard it before but he couldn’t place where. The language the song was in- he didn’t recognize, but it sounded beautiful nonetheless, like his soul was being uplifted while his heart became happy and he had peace in his being. 

“You have a lovely voice Rayth.” Floki praised which caused her to jump a little in surprise before she put her hand over her heart and smiled in relief at him. 

“Thank you, I thought you’d be in the bath a little longer, you surprised me.” She explained. 

“What language was that? That you were singing in just now?” Floki asked as he leaned against the door “frame” that was huge branches growing vertically. 

“The original language my grandfather spoke to humans after he created them. It is the language he speaks to his own kind in the spirit world. All spirit beings know this language as our mother tongue, it’s humans who have deviated from the true tongue.” She answered. 

“So..it’s the language Odin speaks?” Floki realized. 

“Sure.” Rayth smiled politely. 

“So your grandfather is Odin, does that make Loki your father? Or Thor?” He asked. 

“Not exactly but my father is very much like Loki so for your sake and simplicity’s sake, sure, because otherwise, you couldn’t understand.” Rayth nodded in agreement. 

“When was the last time a son of Odin was in this tree?” He asked. 

“Never, you are the first.” Rayth said as she popped other soaps out of their molds and began to slice them with wire. 

When was the last time a son of Adam was in this tree?” Floki inquired as Rayth took a deep breath and a measured exhale. 

“A very long time.” Rayth answered as her face grew somber. 

“What was their name?” Floki asked. 

“His name was Abel and I don’t like to keep track of how long it’s been since he has died.” Rayth answered as tears began to well in her eyes as she tried to distract herself and will her tears away before they could fall. 

“You loved this Abel.” Floki realized. 

“I did, he was my first love, and my last.” Rayth answered with a sad smile. 

“Come, I think we were left some meat at one of the alters today. I know you must be hungry for it.” Rayth changed the subject and walked down a different hallway as she checked hollow stumps like they were cupboards, secretly wiping at her eyes as Floki could feel her sadness like it was his own. It had been eons of time since her heart was broken and her own heart had never truly healed. Time had only made her loss bearable. 

“Ah, a piglet, the poor thing.” Rayth took it and cradled it in her arms and wiped off the dirt before she presented it to him. 

“Should this be enough?” She asked. 

“More than enough.” Floki nodded before she led the way back to her kitchen. 

“You can cook it here,” Rayth said as she pointed to the fire as she worked on getting more bread dough made and a delicious rice and vegetable dish for them as Floki picked some herbs and onions and garlic for his dead piglet as he patiently roasted it with all of that inside of it. 

“So is it only you and your sisters in this tree?” He asked. 

“It’s been just me and my animals as of late, this tree was overflowing with my family before the great flood, but after...not so much. I was spared because I can disappear into the tree itself, some of my family wasn’t so lucky. Of course since then my parents made more siblings for me, but...they like to be elsewhere among the other sons of men. So, unless they come to visit, it’s usually just me.” Rayth answered. 

“So you’re lonely.” Floki realized. 

“Yes and no, I like living by myself and not having to answer to anyone. I like cultivating this tree and taking care of it and I like my animals and what they provide for me, I like the vast variety of foods I have at my fingertips at all times and I like not having to depend on anyone. And since the tree is connected to all the others, I can travel all over the world without ever leaving home. And when I do get lonely, I can always leave for short periods of time and blend in with anyone else and attend parties and festivals. People leave coins and other goods at the other alters so I have no shortage of coins or trinkets or jewelry or anything else I could ever want.” Rayth shrugged her shoulders. 

“So they leave gifts at your alters for blessings? Answered prayers?” Floki inquired curiously. 

“Usually. My other sisters usually take care of that. I only have access to alters that are in the hollow bases of great trees, my other brothers and sisters watch over the others and take care of their chosen people.” Rayth answered. 

“But you don’t have a chosen people?” Floki gathered. 

“No, I never preferred one race or tribe over another. I think they are all wonderful in their own ways. It was only because I can travel like I do that my sisters and your daughter and your wife asked me to save you. I am very partial to children myself, I love their innocence and imagination and sense of wonder. It seems that the more time goes on- children lose all of that sooner and sooner in their lives. But you are an exception- you never did lose yours. That’s why you were able to see my siblings. That’s why you’re able to see me.” Rayth smiled fondly at him as she turned from kneading her dough before she turned back to it and once she was done she washed her hands before Floki left the pig to roast as he came up behind her and gently hugged her from behind. 

“What are you doing?” Rayth asked. 

“Hugging you, it’s been a long time since you got a hug, everyone needs a hug every now and then.” Floki answered and Rayth was touched by how pure this gesture was and how gentle his soul had become in his relatively mature age before she turned and hugged him back. 

“Thank you Floki.” She whispered before the pig began to burn which broke them up before they returned to their tasks of making a meal together. 

“So you’re able to see them then? To talk to those who have passed on?” Floki asked as they ate their meal together. Rayth graciously taking a bite of the roasted pig but not wanting any more than that. 

“Yes, even though you are spiritual, you are still mortal. You can see spirit beings when they choose to be seen by you. But otherwise, this is as close to the spirit realm that you can ever be in your living state.” Rayth explained as she looked up to the light filtering through the leaves in the ceiling for emphasis. 

“Wait, the spirit world, is just right up there?” Floki realized. 

“Yes, but again, you can try to look but it will blind your eyes, you can try to touch but it will deaden any limbs you put through the leaves. You can try to hear- but you’ll go deaf. But there is a way to sense them, come.” Rayth invited as she took his hand again and brought him to a room that was clearly an alter of some kind where there was a stump, carved with living and moving designs that were almost hypnotic.  

“Come,” Rayth invited as she had him stand on the stump with her before she took his hands and hand him reach up simply place his hands on the leaves, pushing up into them ever so gently but not pushing through the canopy at all before Rayth seemed to call and whisper- her mouth moving but his ears could barely hear what she said but he felt what she was saying in his body- in his bones like the sounds she was making were moving through him before he felt a little hand press against his in the foliage- like feeling it through a cloth. 

‘Hi Daddy,’ came a message directly into his brain- in his daughter’s perfect little voice before his other hand felt another hand touch it, this one bigger, it was Helga. 

‘Floki’ came his wife’s voice, she was laughing yet crying and so happy to be so close to him again, yet so far. 

“There, the connection is stable, take as long as you need.” Rayth told him before she had vines grow down from the canopy to help support his body and his arms so his body didn’t strain to stay as connected as possible before she left to give him privacy. 

[demon-slayer-imagines]

25 with Tanjirou pls

Heck ya! A tanjiro, lemme put on my good boy pants cause this is gonna be precious (or I’m gonna try and make it precious lol!)

“ You are my home”

“ tanjiro! Slow down please!” A child like voice whined out as pants could be heard when the fluffy haired boy came to a stop, turning around to look at his best friend behind him. “ you run too fast! I can’t keep up!” They whined, trying to catch their breath while tanjiro didn’t show an ounce of sweat or wear to him. “ how are you not tired?” “ I dunno, I just enjoy being out all the time. I do this every day! Traveling up and down the mountains with papa and mama helps a lot.” Hearing the voice of his mother up the hill call out for him and his friend to hurry on inside with the sun setting caused him to hurriedly take their hand and place them on his back. “ t-tanjiro! I can walk just fine!” “ I know, but we gotta hurry inside, I know your scared of the dark so I don’t want you out here when it gets dark. Your light anyway, you and Nezuko fit on my back perfectly!” Seeing you blush a bit made him blush as well, a small giggle leaving him. “ hang on tight, I’m gonna go fast!” “ ok!” And just like the boy said, he went racing up the mountain towards his home, without worry or a care in the world.

After that, you had left him and his family. Your family had moved away without telling him, and he felt broken without you. Who wouldn’t when it was your best friend leaving without a word to be said or at least a note, letter, SOMETHING! His parents never spoke of the reason why you left, simply saying ‘ they thought it best to see what else was out there,’ but he didn’t believe that tale for a minute. He knew you wouldn’t just up and leave for no reason, to see the world as they said, there had to be something else, some deep meaning to why you left that they refused to tell him. Even so he nodded his head and let it be left on that reasoning, until his family had been killed by a demon. After that, he knew deep down the reason you left had to be something had happened concerning some kind of demon. It was kami’s grace that the two of you found each other again, him a demon slayer and you a medic for the pillars. At first he didn’t recognize your face, but the smell, he remembered all too clearly.

The scent of honey with fresh laundry and a hint of cinnamon, he wondered if you had cooked recently, but he knew for a fact it was you. And you remembered him, you couldn’t forget that cute fluffy reddish black hair with that scar on his big forehead, not to mention the earrings he wore, you remembered those belonged to his father. Seeing each other again was a moment of shock and happiness. You never thought you’d see each other again, but there you all were, running and jumping into each other’s arms, crying and laughing about how much you missed one another and to never leave each other’s side again.

That was in the past, and now, here you were patching Tanjiro up for the hundredth time that week. The boy certainly doesn’t know the phrase “take it easy” and even if he did, he certainly didn’t abide by it. You were wondering how long it would be before you’d have to stop at another town to regather supplies for him and the others. Zenitsu and Inosuke weren’t any better either at keeping out of harm’s way, but that’s why the pillars appointed you to joining them on their adventures. “ there, all done.” Placing the last stitch through his skin, you quickly placed ointment on him and bandaged him up. “ arigato,” tanjiro give you a smile before waving his arm around, already feeling great after you patched him up. “ you know you truly are something else Tanji-san.” “ oh, thanks!” He thought it a compliment but it was more so a worried statement. “ it wasn’t a compliment! I know your a hard worker and wanna be helping others out but do me and yourself a favor and help yourself out by relaxing ya?”

The boy shrunk beneath his friends words, understanding where they were coming from and feeling bad for each time they had to patch him up for being reckless, but it came with being a demon slayer after all. “ what about zenitsu and Inosuke?” “ what about them?” You questioned as the boy looked around. They weren’t anywhere to be seen and you all were currently sitting outside of a hotel building in a busy town. “ don’t you think we should go looking for them? It’s so busy around her I’m afraid they’ll get lost...” “ they’ll be fine, I asked them to go pick some more medical supplies up for me before we leave tomorrow morning. Anyways, if they get lost I’m sure it won’t be hard to find them.” Helping him up and inside the hotel, they headed to the back where their room was, Seeing Nezuko was out and about looking out the window at the bright city lights that flashed every few seconds.

“ don’t forget to not sleep on it. If you do it’ll put pressure on your wound and you can reopen the stitches.” “ right!” “ also, make sure zenitsu puts a bit more ointment on you before you go to sleep!” “ right!” “ And-“ it was like a mother talking to her baby, but sometimes that’s just how yours and Tanjiro’s relationship was. Tanjiro was a kind and gentle boy, but jeez did he have a thick head, but you knew it wasn’t out of spite but more so carelessness and forgetfulness. He was truly a kind soul and everyone deserved a person like him in their lives. “ ok, don’t forget any of what I just told you.” Seeing him nod with small flowers float around him, you couldn’t help but sigh in defeat. He was way too cute for his own good, and you hated it. “ Nezuko, make sure your brother doesn’t do anything reckless tonight, ok?” Seeing her also nod with flowers floating around her, there was no doubt these two were indeed siblings. Both too good and too precious for this evil world.

“ even though you say you understand I don’t trust you...” you mumbled, bending down to set up Tanjiro’s bed for him, “ Ne, ne, you don’t need to do all that, I can do it!” Slapping his hand away, you pointed at him harshly as he stepped away while sweating. “ Gomen...” Watching you finish making the bed for him and grabbing his night clothes from the closet, you began helping him undress as he became frantic. “ I can dress myself ya know!” “ I know you can but, just... let... me..” Nezuko stood by and watched as the two of you became tangeled in each other’s limbs, falling down and hitting the floor roughly, Tanjiro under you as you gasped. “ tanjiro! Are you alright!” Sitting up, he looked up at you with a small blush on his face, your face just inches away from his. “ I-I’m fine.... are you alright?” “ yes, I’m alright... what did I just tell you huh? You could have hurt yourself again.” “ that’s fine, as long as you don’t get hurt.”

Your face flushed as he smiled up at you with his face bursting into red himself. Rolling off of him, you laid beside him as the two of you stayed quiet and just relished in the quiet of the night, the sounds of people outside and the city wavering in and out. You looked over when Nezuko laid down and scooted herself on the other side of Tanjiro. Yea, she was extremely cute. “ Tanjiro.... you really need to start being more careful. There are some injuries I just can’t fix.” “ I know.” “ And I don’t know what I’d do if you got seriously hurt.” “ I know.” “ Do you know tanjiro?” You glanced over to him as he looked up at the ceiling, nodding slowly. “ yea, cause... I would feel the same way about you if I was in your position.... even now I worry about you traveling with us.” “ how come? I can easily handle myself you know.”

It stayed silent for a moment, Nezuko shuffling around on the floor around them as Tanjiro thought about what to say. “ because, you and Nezuko... are my home.” Your eyes widened as your processed that, turning on your side to look at tanjiro. “ you and Nezuko are my everything. You all remind me of home, so when you all are around, I feel content and that nothing bad could happen, just like in our younger years. All I can do is feel happy and just cherish the memories we make with every passing second.” He smiled softly, his earrings ringing softly as he turned to look at you, placing himself on his side. Looking you in the eyes, he gently placed his head against your own, snuggling against you. “ without you, I’m never home. You are my home, my place I wanna be forever.” You couldn’t help but feel a burst of love flow through you, snuggling back against him and thanking him for his love and kindness. “ same goes for me, promise you’ll never leave ya?” Feeling him nod they couldn’t be more happy. “ ya, promise.”

[mental-health-blog-serious]

Venting

TW: abuse, anxiety, depression, self harm, suicidal thoughts, swearing

I hate being here with you.  You make my life miserable.  I’ve learned to listen for your footsteps when someone comes up to my door.  You never knock; you always barge into my room.  It doesn’t matter what I am doing.  I’ve trained myself to immediately raise my voice in a panic when I’m getting dressed so you don’t walk in on me.

Every time I am happy, you take it away.  It’s always when a big event is coming up that I’m looking forward to.  I get suspicious when I’ve been happy for too long.  You always have something to complain about.  Normally, it’s the first thing you say to me in the mornings.  You try to control me.  You try to control my body by demanding that I shave my underarms and my legs.  I have to change out of my tank tops because people in the house are perverted.  I can’t wear shorts that are “too short” in or outside of the house.  If you can’t handle me wearing a tank top and shorts or seeing body hair, I don’t have a problem, you do.  I’m not allowed to NOT wear a bra in the house because people are perverted; it makes them uncomfortable.  I have to deal with them doing and saying way worse.

And you wonder why I am always pissed with you.  Because you do NOTHING wrong; it’s always me.  I always have to fuck things up with you.  I can’t do anything right.  It doesn’t matter what I say or do, nothing is good enough for you.  I can’t ever say how I truly feel because I would get in trouble with you.  You both always ask me what’s wrong.  I always say “nothing,” “I don’t know,” or “leave me alone,” or “I don’t care.”  You force me to speak, to tell you what’s wrong, even if I don’t want to.  Stop making me promise to tell you what’s wrong with me.  Stop guilt-tripping me.  I don’t like our ‘conversations’.  I hate it when you both yell at me.

How come you’re allowed to swear, but we’re not?  You both swear all the time, yet get onto us when we say a minor swear word?

Stop guilt-tripping me into talking and thinking about my mother.  I don’t want ANYTHING to do with her.  

You take away my happiness in any form.  You take away my phone and my electronics and sometimes even my drawing books when I do something you don’t like.  You’ve even taken away my car before.  You banned me from YouTube, DeviantArt, and chat sites.  You banned me from watching My Little Pony and from playing Five Nights at Freddy’s.  You’ve had me stop taking one of my friends to school before, even though they did not have a ride.  You both have threatened to make me quit my job before.  You both have called me into work, saying that I would not be available that day.  I WANTED TO LEAVE EARLY TO AVOID DEALING WITH MY MOTHER.

You act like I can’t hear you talking behind my back.  When my friends are over, they can hear you both yelling at my siblings.  I have to tell them to not bring anything up that they hear.  I have to tell them to pretend like nothing is happening.  You both tell us that we’re lucky that we have what we do, that most kids aren’t this fortunate.  Yeah?  Is it fortunate for us that we’re fucked up with mental illnesses?

You have invaded my privacy on multiple occasions.  You added yourself to my close friends list on Instagram, took screenshots of my vents and sent those to my therapist behind my back.  You both have eavesdropped my online therapy sessions, hearing the conversations word for word for months and refused to tell me.  I had no idea you, nor the entire house could hear my therapy sessions.  That was not any of your business.  You should have told me the first damn time.  You look through my emails.  You monitor my screen time on my electronics.  You can see what app I am on on my phone and my TV.  You look through my Internet history.  You made me download a tracker app so you could see where the entire damn house is at any given time.  You can see where I am, how fast I am going when travelling, what route I took, how long it took me to get there, what time I left, what time I got there, and how long I’ve been at my destination.  You’ve torn my relationships with my online friends.  I’ve been gone for TWO YEARS because of you.  I have panic and anxiety attacks because I’m so afraid that anything I do will be monitored and bitched about by you.  I was so afraid of coming back onto my social media platforms because I kept having anxiety attacks.  I was afraid I would get caught on my accounts.

If I don’t get up on time, or forget to take my medicine, or come home late from work, you yell at me.  If I forget to do my chores, you get onto me and make a big dramatic scene of it in front of everybody in the house.  I hate your condescending “I love you’s” and “Have a nice day’s” when you’re pissed at me.  You act like nothing’s wrong after we have an argument and try to appease me with sweets, snacks, or movies.  Like, what??????  I’m still pissed and you’re acting like nothing happened?!?!?!  Fuck you.  

I cry myself to sleep nearly every night.  I cut myself to distract myself from the pain you cause me.  I’m depressed because of you.  I’m suicidal because of you and the environment that you brought here.  I can’t look at a knife or a fork, or anything sharp because I think about hurting myself with it.  I lay in bed wishing I was dead because of all the pain I’ve been through.  I think to myself that I don’t deserve anything, that I’m a little bitch for wanting some happiness.  Ha..ha..ha.. what did I expect?  It’s always the same.  I feel like a fool for not recognizing the pattern before it happens.

I dream of leaving this hellhole.  But I’m scared to.  I have no real-world skills.  I have nowhere to go.  If I left, I would have nothing.