#if only it was reciprocal old woman yuri

[sora-of-uranus]

There’s toxic old woman yuri in season 5 episode 4 of psych?!? Best show ever made 10/10.

[1ore]

ough. everything happens so much and i barely have the processing power to talk about the men who live in my brain that aren't real. this is unacceptable. how is a woman to work under these conditions.

byuuillggghhh i make an effort anyway.

yuri got his shit rocked in the mists. i still cant believe my dumb throwaway idea is canon. i dont think that man 'came back wrong' so much as he didn't come back at all. instead, an entity who has been transformed to the point of being unrecognizable (but still technically a continuation of the same person) came out of the mists. happy pride.  

i think the sheer need to kick balthazar's ass is what brought him back. not just his own desire, but that of everyone and everything around him. he forms around the collective suffering and vacuous emptiness left behind in his wake, and while he DOES recover some memories on the way up, all of them are of conflict and war. which. has some implications for his sense of self and how he relates with literally everyone around him.  

he is instinctively drawn to people with unresolved grief, righteous anger, or other wounds related to wartime. For a while, he's not really a person but a physical force that strongarms the cruel and powerful into paying their moral debts, whatever that means. (the Norn description of the six gods not as persons but as motive forces is bouncing around in my brain.)  

inevitably this leads him back to his old gang as they converge on Kicking Balthazar's Ass. yuri is drawn to their hurt and remembers most of them from his time with the Pact, but only in broad strokes-- the great victories and terrible losses. he remembers almost nothing of their actual day-to-day relationships. he is vaguely compelled to learn more, but he doesn't know how to be anything but a shambling wraith. so. emotional intimacy doesn't come naturally. that, and everyone else just thinks they're hallucinating him out of grief.  

idk if yuri even GETS to kill balthazar. i think it's fun if he's robbed of the chance to fulfill his purpose, and feels anchored to tyria out of this sense of unfinished business. my man is once again embodying the vacuous emptiness left behind by war.  

right now, in the aftermath, he's kind of just orbiting people and trying to be helpful in his narrow, ominous, vaguely upsetting definition of being helpful. he remembers 'Commander Atropos' and 'Marshal Trahearne' well enough to hold a stilted conversation. The Lastborn is a puzzle to him, definitely knows that guy, definitely has The Long Shadow Of War hanging over him, but cannot for the life of him pin down why or from where. hasn't met his daughter the vinetooth yet, but when he does, she Will force those memories back into his miserable brain like a square cube into a circular hole. biting him and biting him and biting him and b  

(Of all people the Lastborn is probably handling this the best. he's like oh we all have those days where we cannot continue to exist without annihilating everything that we were and everything that we could have been. you're not special. maybe if you eat some soup you'll calm down.)  

       

something something trahearne finally getting to reciprocate the patience and kindness that yuri showed to him while he was in the pits of his psychic mordremoth prison. at first he's being dragged kicking and screaming into this but then he picks himself up and dusts himself off and 180's on it, just like his wild hunt. anyway that's all thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[shinebrite97]

Welcome Back to The Devildom - Part 2

Read part 1 here

The cell was in the Demon Lord’s castle. Yuri remembered it from the tour she and the other exchange students received during their retreat earlier in the school year. Barbatos unlocked the door, standing by and letting her enter, smiling apologetically as he locked it between them. Placing his hand up to the bar, he waited until she reciprocated. 

“Don’t get this wrong, Yuri,” He said. “We are very happy to see you again...We just never imagined it would be like this.”

Yuri had a lot of time to reflect on her actions. With no knowledge of how long her case would take, and only the routine visit of a lil helper D who brought her food to keep time, She found herself keeping the hours in mind by pacing the length of her cell. Internalizing the choice she’d made, remembering each and every moment of the life she lived when she came to in the Human Realm. She’d been placed right where she’d been taken the first time. Halfway between home and work, where she’d been stopped by the handsome man asking her for directions. Her own naivete astounded her now. She had no problem offering to walk with the stranger to his destination, knowing it to be close to her job. 

She felt like she’d just woken up from a long nap, feeling a bit dizzy and disoriented. The sun was too bright, and a big void in her memory made her feel like she was forgetting something huge, but with no idea what that was, she’d chosen to go back home and call in sick. 

Her family didn’t know what to make of her. She’d been a missing persons case for a full year, after seven months without a trace, they accepted her death, holding a candle-light service for her and attempting to move on. It was bad enough that she was now back with no warning, but the fact she couldn’t tell them where she’d been or remember anything made things more dire. 

The community hated her, thinking she’d run off with someone and things fell through so she came back home with her tail between her legs. The community hated her family, expecting them to repay all the support they’d received, and judging them when they didn’t. 

No one knew how to act around her. No one recognized the version of her that returned. 

And then the dreams started. 

Glimpses of white hair, the smell of spicy sauce and dusty libraries and collagen face masks, the sound of someone’s laughter, the feel of cold buttons on stiff gray material, or the crushed velvet of a red shoulder cape. It never meant much to her, but she wrote down every detail she could. Trying in vain to remember something that was just out of her mind’s reach. 

And then she started drawing pentagrams. 

Her parents came to the conclusion that she’d been taken by a cult and brainwashed or tortured. They put her in therapy and took her to church, but none of their efforts stopped her. 

It was the night her mother found her tome on demonology and threatened her with psychiatric lockdown that Yuri knew she had to leave.

She’d stolen a car, drove it to the border of town, and left it in favor of walking into the next one. Between busses and trains, she ended up in the next state, stealing money where she could to afford some room for rent close to a strip club, the easiest job a woman her age could get, and made a life for herself in three months. 

In some cynical way, she was proud of herself. Once she came to terms with the truth that she had, quite literally, made it to hell and back, she did her best to make good on her promise to them. To commit enough sins to return a legend. 

All she could do now was hope. 

                                            *    *    *   *    *

It was a lil D of Greed who brought her dinner after what she estimated to be three days, she smiled and asked about their day. Maintaining eye contact with the void of their face, and listening intently to the chilling rasp of their voice, a sound so inhuman that it still sent a warning through her mind, despite knowing that they were basically the same now. 

“Milord has made a decision, Milady.” They said. “You will be released tonight.” 

“Really?” They set the tray of food on the shelf of her cell and bowed their head. 

“Enjoy…” They replied. Yuri was about to ask another question, when the Lil D snapped their spindly fingers and dissipated in a mass of murky smoke, filtering through the air vent at the top of the catacomb. 

Yuri sat back against the stone wall behind her, taking a bit of the bread that went with the slice of shadow hog and the poison-marinated bat wings. 

To think I used to eat hot dogs and fries for dinner. 

Yuri stayed in the corner, taking the lil D at their word and basked in her last moments of solitude before she was released. She hummed, she sang, she thought, and she dozed following the rich meal. She wondered if Diavolo had dined on the same thing. She remembered how much he enjoyed Shadow hog, considering it wasn’t a very fancy cut of meat. 

As her mind continued to wander, she wondered about the things that hadn’t come back. Any memories that hadn’t flooded in after the first batch. 

It took her time to connect the dots. From the strange voices in her dreams, these strange, mostly featureless figures who seemed to know her, to the strange aromatics that wafted over her in the dream-world. Lavender, roses, cologne, and brimstone.

Then the names popped into her head. 

While she was in church, she’d frequently hear the name Satan, and would immediately wonder if he’d read any good books recently. When she’d read the name Leviathan in a book or online, she’d immediately think of anime, and hear the bubbling throaty chuckle of someone who wasn’t used to making such a sound.

The old copy of Lord Of The Flies that she read in high school sat on her bookshelf collecting dust, and while she skimmed the back cover one evening, she suddenly felt ridiculously hungry.

And to top it all off, the incessant pecking of a crow’s beak on her window often disrupted her normal routine, but she never really minded. 

All of these small things added up, and once the floodgates of memory opened, she cried. Saddened that she’d forgotten such an unforgettable year, with so many unforgettable people.

It wasn’t long after that she ran away.

In the three days she’d been in the Devildom, she’d have moments where she regretted her choices, wondering how her parents and brother were holding up now. Wondering if they understood why she did what she did. She felt sad, until she remembered the sound of her fathers voice blaming her for all their immediate problems. Rising medical and therapy bills, constant whispers from the neighbors and no more invitations to community events. No one wanted to be around Yuri the zombie, Yuri the cultist, Yuri the weirdo. 

In moments like that she’d instead reflect on the good times she’d had here. Shopping after class with Asmo and Satan. Napping with Mammon or Belphie in her room after a long week. Hanging out during break periods with Solomon and his Angel housemates. 

Maybe Hell won’t be so bad.

[ageofwrathrpg]

Name: Wonda Lazlovna Repina Age: 35 Ability: Intangibility Faction: CITIZEN as a LAWYER Faceclaim: Elodie Yung Availability: OPEN

THE STORY || CW: Alcohol, Divorce, Transphobia

Before Wonda had the chance to be a child, she was an academic. In her earliest years, she was already studying as quickly as the wheels in her underdeveloped brain could turn. With the same determination as the alphabet, Wonda studied her father’s words – all bitter and ugly like the omnipresent stench of alcohol on his tongue. She studied the perpetual furrow in her mother’s brow, which aged her features and publicized her grief. She didn’t have to explain to Wonda what the word ‘divorce’ meant, nor did she have to explain the why. When her parents split, Wonda understood it wasn’t the ‘right’ option; it was the only one. Not even a year passed before her mother began dating a new man, married him, and had a child with him. Considering their love miraculous was a grand overstatement that everyone seemed to be making aside from Wonda, who recognized it for what it was: desperation born of loneliness. Although she hesitated to revel in her mother’s new relationship, loving her new sibling was immediate and inevitable. Yuri was their name, and since the very beginning, they held Wonda’s heart in their tiny palm.

Together, Wonda and Yuri took the world by storm. They rebelled against bedtime. They stole biscuits from the kitchen. They played along to their parents’ strict conservatism, but secretly made faces at one another in the church pews. In their awkward adolescence, Wonda was the first person Yuri came out to as genderfluid. Her love for them never faltered, and she protected them from their classmates’ intolerance with maternal ferocity. She was completely devoted to her sibling. Only when she left for university did she part from Yuri’s side. And the apocalypse that followed hardly came as a surprise.

Sudden and sharp, Yuri vanished. To see her young sibling’s face on missing person signs was the most surreal and devastating experience of Wonda’s life. Worse than death was the not-knowing. Were they safe? Were they hurt? Her parents threatened to disown her if she abandoned her studies to search for Yuri. And so Wonda worked. She read her school books until her eyes burned. She stuffed her brain with information until it threatened to overflow. Studying law became her escapism. There was something attractive about rules separating man from monster, about carving optimism out of a badness. When she attended law school, she graduated at the top of her class and was immediately offered positions in firms across Russia. Everywhere but Moscow, where she was born, raised, and where she knew the answer to Yuri’s location was somewhere hidden. She begrudgingly accepted a position in Samara, where she was recognized for her excellence as a lawyer and was offered client after client. She officially made a name for herself when she successfully defended the innocence of a war criminal at 30-years old. Having garnered enough prestige, she relocated herself to Moscow by founding her own law firm. For 6 years, she’s been working there – defending her clients with the same ferocity that she defended Yuri – and she’s been scouring news articles and the streets for any clue to her sibling’s location.

THE CHARACTER

Wonda daydreams of another world where order prevails and pain is imprisoned. She knows it’s not realistic, but that doesn’t stop her hopefulness. Hope is all she has. Her friends and family have all instructed her to stop searching for Yuri. But Wonda can’t bring herself to give up; defeat was never her style. Wonda lives her life with unashamed confidence, and perennial tenacity. She loves what she does and she knows she’s good at it. When given a case, Wonda spends hours inventing intelligent one-liners and toiling over logistics. She takes great pride in fixing the lives of strangers. She puts them back together to disguise her own damage.

CONNECTIONS

Yuri Lazlovich Repin - It goes without saying, but losing Yuri was like slitting a throat. Just as fast. Just as finite. There are times that Wonda doesn’t ache so badly; these are the days where she feels Yuri’s presence at the nape of her neck, whispering encouragement, spurring her on. But there are also times that Wonda’s yearning is as large as the world. These times, she can either drown in work, alcohol, or sorrow.

Abram Petrovche Sharapov - When she moved back to Moscow, she discovered an up-and-coming Kafe Pushkin, which she visited out of curiosity, then began to frequent daily. 5 years later, and it’s still her favorite cafe, and Abram’s her favorite barista. Each time she visits, they greet her with a warm smile and confirms with a subtle nod that she wants her regular order: a cardamom coffee with extra cinnamon. Sometimes if she looks particularly stressed, Abram will throw in a generous slab of chocolate cake free of charge.  

Foma Alexandrovich Zharkov//Project M - More recently, Foma started becoming a popular client at Pushkin’s. It didn’t take long before – in his blindness – he accidentally joined her at a table. She introduced herself, and he reciprocated and apologized for his obliviousness. Neither of them were particularly busy, so they sat in each other’s company and became quick friends. Now whenever she visits Pushkin’s, she looks for Foma and joins him if he’s present.

Erik 'Prizrak' Volkhovovich Nechayev - She knew she was renowned in Samara for her prowess as a lawyer, but was unaware that her fame extended as far as Moscow. She came with the assumption that she would be sacrificing her fame for the location, but her notoriety was more universal than she’d anticipated and Erik was the final proof. Within the first week of her relocation, he contacted her and offered any sum of money to know that she would represent him when needed. His glaring use of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ perturbed her, but she accepted in the reassurance that she would be guaranteed business in Moscow.

Rashid Javed Bashir - It was a bad night and she was exhausted. Rashid was helping a woman cross the street and against herself, Wonda became furious. Her delirious mind reasoned that while people like Yuri were missing, police officers were busy helping women across streets – like boy scouts! She resolved immediately that she hated Rashid, and has ever since. Sometimes she sees him in public and can’t help but to scowl.

[[ More Connections ]]

ETC

In law, Wonda was taught that history repeats itself and that it’s her duty to memorize the patterns. Every breath of information is considered equally important, and the extreme emphasis on documentation spurred her obsession with journals. She has dozens scattered around her home brimming with photographs, quotes, and musings.  

She’s fluent in Latin.  

Despite the fact that she dislikes her father and he doesn’t keep in touch, Wonda is still interested in her Cambodian roots. She has a black krama in Bokator, which she learned for self-defense and a means to study her culture.

Wonda’s work has made her quite wealthy, but you wouldn’t guess it by looking at her. She opts for simple clothes and a humble standard of living. She sees no need for fancy furniture.

She has terrible vision and needs glasses or contact lenses to see 5 feet in front of her.