#it all depends on how much of a miserable wretch he is

[phospolipid-bilayer]

This song doesn't fit it 1:1 and could also be about the game in general but it's very Smitten/Opportunist to me.

[irkimatsu]

Husk eats his partner for breakfast (more precisely, his women's pussy and breasts~)

Let's let our man have what he wants 😉🔥

Mmmm what a delicious breakfast~

You wake up by Husk's side, both of you still nude from last night's passion. You still can't stop thinking about all the ways he touched you last night... his body pressing down on you, his fangs grazing your neck as he thrusts into you with all his power, his voice making the most delicious growls and moans every time he bottoms out... you cuddle up to his chest and close your eyes, happy to relive the memory for a while longer. Last night's cologne has mostly worn off of him, leaving you to breathe in the comforting familiarity of his natural scent.

"Mornin', babe," you hear from above you as he combs his claws through your hair. "Sleep well?"

You mumble an agreement. "Hard not to, after the way you wore me out last night."

He chuckles to himself before pressing a kiss to the top of your head. "You felt too damn good. I couldn't stop myself."

"Hey, I'm not complaining about it."

You lay in silence for a bit longer, enjoying the blanket over you, and more importantly, Husk's bare fur and skin pressed against your body. You could stay here in this peace forever...

"Mind if I have some breakfast?" he asks.

You nod as you pull away from him. It sucks to have to leave his comfort, but you know what a miserable wretch he can be if he doesn't get some coffee and food (and, regrettably, whiskey) in his system shortly after waking up. You expect him to hop out of bed, throw on some slacks, and head downstairs to see what Niffy's prepared this morning; whether or not he has a bath first depends on how loudly his stomach is protesting.

Instead, he rolls on top of you and kisses your lips until you're struggling for breath.

"Husk!" you gasp out when he finally breaks the kiss. "What are you doing?"

"Having breakfast," he says simply before kissing his way along your jaw, down to the side of your neck. "I'm in the mood for something sweet..."

You're not exactly prepared, appearance-wise. You haven't had a chance to shower yet, and you feel like you're still slick with sweat from the previous night.

Husk's purring as his rough tongue laps at your collarbone assures you that this is the opposite of a problem for him.

"If it's something sweet you want..." you say playfully as you grab his paw and drag it down your body. You press his palm against your clit, and you gasp.

"Mmm... sounds great," he says. "But you know I don't like jumping right for the main course. Gotta have a little appetizer first..."

Your breathing picks up as his mouth gently brushes the top of one of your breasts. He cups both of them in his paws and squeezes them as he circles his tongue around your nipple.

"Oh god, Husk..." You tangle your fingers in the hair between his ears and push slightly, encouraging him to feast as much as he wants. He immediately takes your offer, and you gasp in a high pitch as he starts suckling at your breast, his fangs lightly pinching the sensitive skin. After a few moments of light suckles, he gives you as hard of a suck as he can, before releasing your breast with a pop. He gives you no time to relax before his attention is on your other breast, lapping at your nipple before beginning to suckle. The cool air of the room chills the wet spot he's left behind on your now-neglected breast; as if sensing this, he presses his palm to your nipple and gently massages warm circles into it.

"You're so good to me, baby..." you moan.

He purrs and waves his tail at the compliment.

You know you won't be able to stay here with him forever; sooner or later, Charlie will be just outside the door to tell you that breakfast is ready. She'll be awkward about it, considering the time you accidentally, and very loudly, let her know exactly what was keeping you and Husk in bed so long... but not even that incident has stopped her from making sure that none of her guests miss breakfast and have to go hungry.

It can't last forever, but you'll both savor this until that interruption comes.

Your breathing calms down once he finally releases your breast from his mouth for the final time, and instead focuses his mouth's attention on your stomach. He's moving lower on your body, but slowly, so slowly, making sure the tension in your chest is agonizing before he finally grants you relief.

"Wanna make a bet with me?" he asks between kisses.

"It's always a bet with you," you say with a laugh. "What's the bet?"

You gasp and roll your head back as his tongue passes over your clit. "Fuck, you're wet..." he mutters to himself. After taking a few more tastes, he stops licking you so he can focus his eyes on you, his mouth growing into a smirk.

"Here's the bet... how many times do you think I can make you cum before Charlie shows up?"

[dramalama69]

My first 5 star read of 2025 hehe

"Schoolgirl" - Dazai Osamu. {rated 4.79/5 by me}

The quotes which hit my conscience:

"Sometimes happiness arrives one night too late."

"Tomorrow will probably be another day like today. Happiness will never come my way. I know that. But it's probably best to go to sleep believing that it will surely come, tomorrow it will come."

"Nobody in the world understood our suffering. In time, when we became adults, we might look back on this pain and loneliness as a funny thing, perfectly ordinary, but—but how were we expected to get by, to get through this interminable period of time until that point when we were adults?"

"I smiled softly at the moon. The moon pretended not to see me."

"While I am perfectly aware of what I should do, I can't even utter the words. All I do is feel wretched, and in the end I fly into a rage—I mean, really, it's as if I were crazy."

"In my heart, I worry about Mother and want to be a good daughter, but my words and actions are nothing more than that of a spoiled child."

"The body had no connection to my mind, it developed on its own accord, which was unbearable and bewildering. It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it."

"I'll be a steady and frugal daughter. Really and truly. In spite of all that. "Oh, In Spite of All That"… wasn't that the name of a song, I chuckled to myself. At some point I realized I was standing there like an idiot, both hands idly thrust into the cooking pot, my thoughts ranging from one thing to another." - Dazai was a teen girl, u can't convince me other wise.

"It must be easier to relax when someone always told you who you are and what to do."

"If someone were to give me a particular limit to abide by—to start here and use this much effort and finish there—you have no idea how much it would assuage my mind."

""I want to love everyone," I thought, almost tearfully."

"I yearned for everything long gone."

"There is a certain satisfaction in being dragged around, as well as a separate sad feeling as I watch it happen."

"A mere smile can determine a woman's fate. It is frightening. Fascinatingly so. I have to be careful." -For a 30 year old suicidal and alcoholic man he knows better I must say.

"They scolded us for not having any real hopes or real ambitions, but if we were to pursue our true ideals, would these people watch and guide us along the way?"

"I hope for a revolution in ethics and morals."

"if my books were taken away from me, I would be utterly devastated. That's how much I depend on what's written in books. I'll read one book and be completely wild about it—I'll trust it, I'll assimilate it, I'll sympathize with it, I'll try to make it a part of my life. Then, I'll read another book and, instantly, I'll switch over to that one."

"The likable weeds and the not likable weeds looked exactly the same but were somehow clearly divided into those that seemed innocuous and those that seemed horrible."

"It felt as if the past, the present, and the future had collapsed into one single instant."

"At times like these, a strange hallucination always occurs. I would feel absolutely certain that, at some point before, under these very conditions, I've had the same conversation while, in fact, staring at the corner of the table and that what was happening now would continue to go on indefinitely, in exactly the same manner."

"When I'm eating alone in the dining room, I get this wild urge to travel. I want to get on a train."

"You couldn't see this embroidery when I put on the rest of my clothes. No one knew it was there. How brilliant." -Said all the hijabi girls ever.

"Sort of like opening a box, only to find another box inside, so you open that smaller box and again there's another box inside, and you open it, and one after another there are smaller boxes inside each other, so you keep opening them, seven or eight of them, until finally what's left is a tiny box the size of a small die, so you gently pry it open to find... nothing, it's empty—more like that feeling."

"I can't bear it. I hate it, I really do. I'm an awful sight in the morning. My legs feel so exhausted that, already, I don't want to do a thing. I wonder if it's because I don't sleep well. It's a lie when they say you feel healthy in the morning."

"Mornings are torture."

"I think the beauty of your eyes is the best thing about people. Even if they can't see your nose or if your mouth is hidden, I think that all you need are eyes—the kind of eyes that will inspire others, when they are looking into them, to live more beautifully."

"I hope I meet lots of people with lovely eyes."

"I cannot stand mornings because it seems I am always bleakly reminded of long-gone times, and people I used to know, and their presences feel eerily close, like the scent of pickled radish that you just can't get rid of."

"Good night. I'm Cinderella without her prince. Do you know where to find me in Tokyo? You won't see me again."

[ducktracy]

You know, for all the pseudo-remakes McKimson did, I'm almost surprised he never tried one for Lost and Foundling but with Foghorn and Henery instead

LOL, contrastly i am NOT SURPRISED AT ALL he never did that because the very genuine sentimentality in that short (which i highly recommend everyone scope out, it is probably one of the best Sniffles shorts out there and IMO has the best balance between blabbermouth Sniffles and cutesy Sniffles) is like. the exact antithesis of everything Bob McKimson stands for. and imagining this is really making me laugh hysterically. i love love love McKimson shorts but sentimentality was not a strong point of his at all, and that is very much often why i like McKimson cartoons. everyone is an embittered cretin who hates each other and are dying to smack the internal organs out of anyone who mildly inconveniences them

i'm SURE i'm wrong in saying this, surely there is something more sentimental that i'm not thinking of at the moment. nevertheless, this bit from Dog Collared is the most "wholesome" i can think of a McKimson cartoon getting. and i do adore this scene a TONNNN which is why i'm shilling it HAHA. Stalling's score of "My Buddy" is magical. but to quote a friend, "if you only saw this clip you'd think it's a totally heartwarming cartoon" and it is wholly dependent on that lack of context

context LITERALLY RIGHT BEFORE THIS is that the dog is about to kill himself BECAUSE OF PORKY!!!!!!!! PORKY IS SLAPPING HIM AND CALLING HIM A MONGREL AND A MUTT!!!!! and his only interest in returning the dog home is wholly due to monetary motivation.

i sincerely think this may be the most wretched Porky behaves in his entire filmography (and i personally don't buy that he's a person really easily swayed by a big price tag) and it consequently is also some of the hardest i've ever laughed at a cartoon because of just how horribly awful and mean he is in it. thankfully the Funny prevails and it's not miserable to watch (save for a very egregious and tasteless bit that very much shows this cartoon's age but is thankfully easy to skip). BUT YES, it is very telling that one of the most "wholesome" moments in a McKimson cartoon is tied to one of his most mean (and that being the joke) that i can think off the top of his head, and the motivations for this wholesome are a huge disingenuous farce

the entire opening of this short is a masterpiece though and a great look into the McKimson frame of mind. and is exactly why i could never see him doing a Lost and Foundling type short

the wholesome "father" son bonding in a Jones short

versus wholesome father son bonding in a McKimson short

BUT! it is worth mentioning that Henery was initially a Jones creation, so... there's some sort of link here somewhere

[the12thnightproject]

Chapter Nine: A Tangled Web - In which Nobunaga trolls, Hideyoshi fumes, Mitsuhide teases and Mitsunari soothes. In other words, situation ... normal?

Mitsunari x OC; Nobunaga x Mai

Previous Chapter

Logline - In order to protect a political alliance, Katusko and Mitsunari must pretend an engagement. But this “all business” arrangement is threatened by a coup against Nobunaga… and by feelings.

From the Military Notes of Ishida Mitsunari…

Reconnaissance: to explore beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain vital information about enemy forces or features of the environment for later analysis and/or dissemination.

Personal comments: Due to an accidental reconnaissance mission, I learned that Lady Okatsu is soft, like Kitty.

The spider incident, as it was going to be called so in my mind forever, continued to reverberate throughout the halls of Genba. Both Hideyoshi and Mai had hurried to tell Nobunaga the story – Hideyoshi’s version accompanied by sputters of anger and Mai’s by giggles. Depending on whose story you listened to, I was either a wicked flirt or half of a charming love story. Neither were true, but who knew which one Nobunaga would choose to listen to.

Nobunaga looked from me to Mitsunari for a long moment. I lifted my chin, braced for a potential lecture, but determined to defend myself if necessary. I had done nothing wrong. The true antagonist was now a smear on the bottom of Lady Yone’s sandal. Finally, his face completely solemn, Nobunaga turned to Hideyoshi. “What other behavior can you expect out of … newlywebs.”

That set off a fresh round of uncontrollable giggles from Mai, but I was too surprised to laugh. Nobunaga had punned. It was out of character for anything I had known or heard about him.  Mai must be a bigger influence than I thought. In any case, his was the final word on the matter, so the five of us continued on to the main hall, where we were placed at the front end of a long table that ran the length of the room.

Throughout the meal, Mai continued to tease me, in an increasingly wild and animated fashion and until I finally asked, “Are you really this amused, or have you had too much sake?”

She paused to gaze into her cup. “Both.”

On my other side, Mitsunari played miserably with his food. Our misadventure had basically set things back to square one. Once he realized where his instinctive spider hunt had led, he’d apologized, looked at his feet, and apologized again. Those had been the last words I’d heard from him all night.

I’d have to fix that… later. Later, when I was not busy avoiding Hideyoshi’s eyes. It was obvious he hadn’t believed the spider story, even after we all watched it scuttle out from under my kimono. Maybe he thought I had put it there myself.

Across the room from us, Shohime was looking as wretched as Mitsunari – although she had a better excuse, as she was sandwiched between Lade Yone (brrrr!) and an old man who leered down the front of her kimono. If that man was anything like her father, I didn’t blame her misery. Was that man the Daimyo she was engaged to?

It was understandable that Mozumi wouldn’t want her married to Mitsunari, who though regarded as an up-and-coming strategist, hadn’t proven himself yet. But I wondered if she would have otherwise been happy as a prize in her father’s plan to gain a powerful alliance. That was how things were done in this time – in fact, that kind of marriage would probably be better than being traded into a hostage union. Shohime likely had been raised to expect and accept this as her future.

Obviously, I had not been raised that way and instinctively, I wanted to help her. Yes, my job was to make sure she stayed away from Mitsunari… but she shouldn’t be stuck with a lecherous old man like her father either. I turned to Mai. “Has Shohime mentioned anything about the man her father plans to ally her with? Is it one of those old men over there?”

“It can’t be – she said he would be arriving tomorrow. And yes, he’s old… but when I asked ‘how old’ she said he was about Nobunaga’s age. Which I guess seems old to a seventeen-year-old, but…” she patted Nobunaga’s arm. “This one is definitely in his prime.” Then she looked over at Shohime, who was making a show of brave martyrdom. “Feeling guilty? Oh, what a tangled web we weave.”

It was unprincesslike, but I had to roll my eyes. “Don’t quote poets who have yet to be born. It took me years to train the twenty-first century idioms out of my speech pattern… oh, and by the way, avoid being alone with Mozumi if you can manage it.” I explained what happened with the pillow book.

“Ew.” Then she patted Nobunaga’s arm again. “So… which shelf were those books kept on? Nobunaga and I might find something … interesting to read.”

#TMI

“Did I hear you mention my name?” The man in question turned away from his conversation with Hideyoshi and smiled down at her. Whoa… even with the prior evidence of his punmanship, it was jarring to see how much he had changed from the stern, uncompromising man I had met in Osaka earlier this summer. Not that I didn’t think his stern, uncompromising side was gone… just… no longer his default.

“Okatsu and I were just discussing some of the books she found in the library,” Mai answered him with a giggle.

“My name came up?” He brushed a lock of hair out of her face.

“What kind of book?” Hideyoshi apparently didn’t even need to hear the conversation to leap to conclusions. Ok, his conclusion that the books were a bit… naughty… was correct, but it wasn’t as if I had sought them out.

I decided to just to yeet my way out of this conversation. Otherwise, I was certain he’d find something else to blame me for. “Mai thought some of them sounded like good bedtime reading.”

She whispered something in Nobunaga’s ear, and I looked away to give them at least the illusion of privacy. Hideyoshi too, turned his face from them – but before he did, I caught the flash of pain in his eyes. It was the look of a man who wanted what he could not have and hated himself for doing so.

He loves her too.

That didn’t explain, or excuse his attitude toward me, or his micromanaging ways, but it at least made him seem a little more human. No way would he appreciate that I’d clocked his feelings though, so I directed my focus on the man who was supposed to be the love of my life…

…just in time to see Mitsunari’s elbow heading for impact with his nearly empty soup bowl. I automatically shifted it out of the danger zone. Mitsunari froze and looked at my hand on his bowl. “Lady Okatsu, you do that a lot… am I correct?”

I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Honestly, it’s instinctive at this point… but would you prefer I didn’t?”

“I’d rather I didn’t make it necessary.” He shrunk into himself, his posture a portrait of dejection. Oh boy. Aside from the fact that we were supposed to look like we were enjoying each other’s company, I felt terrible for causing his distress.

From across the table, Hideyoshi gave me a ‘what did you do this time look.’ It was none of his business, so I ignored him and gave Mitsunari my full attention. Some people were just clumsy and there was no solution to that, but Masamune had told me that Mitsunari was an adaptive genius when it came to sword fighting. Maybe giving him a new way of thinking about things would be helpful. “Pretend your meal is a sparring match and your goal is not to come into any accidental contact with anything on the table.”

Sort of a ‘floor is lava’ thing, only with dishes.

He was quiet a moment, although I imagined the gears were whirring in his mind, then he gave me a smile of such brilliance that it made my heart hurt. “Thank you, Lady Okatsu. I will try that.”

After dinner, Hideyoshi took Mitsunari off to consult about something, leaving me with some unexpected free time. As much as I had come to like Mitsunari and the majority of the Azuchi warlords (the jury was still out on Hideyoshi and Mitsuhide), I wasn’t used to spending so much time in the company of others. So, I took a short stroll out to the stables to say hello to my horse.

I wasn’t the only one who had made the stables their destination. It looked like Hikosane had escaped his tutor or nurse or page or whoever was responsible for him most of the day. The kid was halfway to falling into the stall that housed Nobunaga’s horse.

“Careful there!” I helped Hikosane before he tipped right into the stall. Nobunaga’s horse was even-tempered, but… “No horse likes to be startled.”

Then I took a quick step back and bowed, because I had put my hands on him without permission. In this era, such an act could have resulted in a sentence of execution. Luckily, Hikosane was also even-tempered, with a rather adult like way of speaking, and he formally thanked me for my assistance. “Did you come from the banquet? Is it still going on?”

The eating was over. The drinking had barely begun. “Yes, and no, but most of the vassals and your father are still in there.”

He glanced over his shoulder to the main castle building. “That is good.” His demeanor switched back to child-like. “I don’t want to go to bed yet.”

I showed him that I had a handful of dried fruit. “Do you want to help me feed my horse? She’s not as impressive as Nobunaga’s mount, but she is sturdy and surefooted.”

Hikosane nodded, and the two of use made our way to Moonlight’s stall.

“She’s friendly.” Hikosane smiled as Moonlight, sensing the fruit, nudged him with her nose.

“Yes, usually she’s a nice horse, although she hates getting wet.” Moonlight could be a total bitch when it rained.

“I don’t like it either,” Hikosane confided. “I hate baths.”

“But… you wouldn’t get even with the person bathing you by dumping them in a mud puddle, would you?” Moonlight had done that to me on more than one occasion. “Moonlight would. And has.”

The boy laughed. He seemed like such a serious child that I was glad I had been able to provide him with a moment of amusement. “I like you, Lady Okatsu.”

“I like you too, Hikosane.” I wasn’t a huge fan of very small children, but they did tend to becoming interesting around age nine or ten.

There was a rustling from another stall – not one where there was a horse, and I caught a quick glimpse of long dark hair. Ah right. Mitsuhide had said he was sending Kyubei along. Well, I didn’t have much to report, but once Hikosane left, I’d let him know what was going on so far.

“Perhaps one day when I’m the Daimyo, I’ll marry you.” It was said with complete deadpan seriousness. Hikosane might just as easily have said, ‘maybe I’ll have fish for breakfast tomorrow.’

But.. uh, what?

“Hikosane, I’m already engaged. And by the time you’re old enough to marry, I will be too old, and you wouldn’t want me anyway.” However, I didn’t want to hurt the kid’s feelings, so I added, “And, I will be sad about that, then.”

“An engagement doesn’t mean a marriage.” Hikosane had returned to that mini-adult personality. “I believe that my father would break Shohime’s engagement if he could convince Nobunaga to take her as one of his wives. And it would be a good thing for her if that happened, because I do not like the man she is to marry.”

I filed away that last thing he said to think about later, because my brain had needle scratched on the Nobunaga part of the sentence. But before I could question him any further, a retainer came and bore Hikosane off to bed.

One…two…three…

Once I had completed a ten count, I directed my voice to the stall where Kyubei was hiding. “Did you get all that?”

His head popped up and he peered over the stable wall. “I would have had to have significant hearing loss to have missed it. Impressive accomplishment, Okatsu, to have received two marriage proposals in a month.”

The dark wig looked natural enough, but there was no disguising those amber eyes and the teasing in his voice. “Changed your mind about the situation, or were you and Kyubei always planning to switch places?” I would bet all of my money (not that I have much of it) that Hideyoshi didn’t know Mitsuhide was here.

“I needed Kyubei to be elsewhere.” He hopped out of the stall and leaned against a post. Heck, put a piece of straw between his teeth and he could easily pass as an extra in a western musical. Hm. An elegant extra.

Many questions were in my head, but those could wait. “Am I completely wrong in thinking that any overture from Mozumi advancing Shohime as a wife would receive a categorical no?” It was clear how much Nobunaga loved Mai, but that wouldn’t rule out a second wife. “I don’t see any advantage to it. Although I suppose he could offer exclusive rights to the silver mine.”

“He could. It wouldn’t be the wisest strategy.” Mitsuhide picked up a fallen piece of fruit and fed it to my horse. “I’ll investigate that further, as from what I’ve gathered from the servants, Mozumi’s not particularly intelligent, so any talk of aligning Shohime with Nobunaga is wishful thinking on his part.”

“His archives, is, as advertised, rather expansive, but I got the sense most of what is in there was collected by his father, and he only adds to it out of habit, not out of inclination or love of reading… except for a certain type of literature.” For the second time, I had to tell the story about Mozumi’s pillow books and his clumsy pass at me.

Unlike Mai, Mitsuhide kept his face expressionless as I described the incident, though once I finished the story, he reverted to teasing. “Not interested in those books yourself?” He raised his eyebrow at me (which annoyed me, as the single eyebrow raise was a skill I had attempted and failed to master).

“Princess Okatsu is above such things.” Whereas Katsuko… well, love took a back seat to not-dying. “And I ensured that Mozumi thought I was too stupid or naïve to understand.”

“I didn’t anticipate that you would have to put up with that sort of behavior – the Oda name ought to have been enough to protect you. I’ll give you a standard, Hideyoshi-style be careful warning, but will step back from any insinuation that you can’t handle him.” Then he spoiled that perfectly acceptable speech by adding, “hopefully better than you can handle intruders of the eight-legged variety.”

“Do I have permission to be insubordinate and tell you to shut up?” I swear by the time I left this gig, I would be remembered as The Girl with the Spider Tit-too.

He slanted a cool glance that told me not to push him too far. “I believe you just did.”

Turning the topic to more pressing issues, I asked, “Any new instructions? Or should I just continue to stay alert?”

“The latter for now. If you see anyone spinning lies, you may feel free to catch them in your web.” He then effectively ended the conversation by disappearing into that empty stall.

I stood there for a moment trying to come up with a capper pun to that, then gave up and headed back to the room, only to be stopped in my tracks by Hideyoshi. “Okatsu.” Aware that he preferred the formalities, I bowed to him. What did he want? “You shouldn’t be wandering around a strange castle at night. It’s not safe.”

“Oh. I was just checking on my horse.” As for the rest of his statement, I could take care of myself, but knew Hideyoshi would not appreciate that being pointed out. “I’m going back to our room now.”

“See that you do.” I’d half turned to continue on my way, when he called after me. “Mitsunari told me what happened with Mozumi. I’m sorry.”

“Why? It had nothing to do with you.” Unless he was apologizing on behalf of the entire male sex.

“You should never be subjected to unwanted attention.” He paused a moment, then clarified. “No one should.”

“You’re right, Lord Hideyoshi. Thank you.” I bowed again and hurried on my way. Hideyoshi and I might be socially incompatible, but I’d never questioned that underneath that bossy exterior, he was a good person.

When I finally reached the room (after a creepy trek up that dark staircase), Mitsunari was still awake, and reading (no surprise there). He apologized again for chasing the spider down my clothes.

Enough about the spider. “It’s ok. Really. I know it was an accident.” I tried to lighten things up a bit. “Could have been worse. Could have been a snake.” I retreated behind the screen to change into my night clothing.

“Are you afraid of snakes?” Mitsunari’s voice floated over the side of the screen.

“Only if they are poisonous. It was more that I was thinking a whole snake would have been pretty annoying in my clothes.” I tightened the sash on my kimono, imagined a snake in there and shuddered. Ok. I might be slightly more squicked out by snakes than spiders. They’re so… slithery.

After emerging from the screen, I dithered a moment over where to put my futon. I didn’t want to crowd Mitsunari (or myself, for that matter) but this room did not lock, so the potential of servants walking in and catching the engaged couple sleeping on opposite sides of the room was fairly high.

Eventually, I settled for placing my futon perpendicular to his, so that the tops met at the corner. Our heads would be near, but there was no danger of one of us accidentally rolling onto the other, or, more likely, me kicking him while I tossed and turned.

Mitsunari had stopped reading to watch me. I nearly asked him if he was ok with this set up, but he’d already expressed dismay the last time I asked. If he had a problem, he would have to tell me. Instead, I told him about finding Mitsuhide in the stables.

“Did he explain why?” Mitsunari did that instant change to tactician.

Hm, he hadn’t. He’d only explained why Kyubei was not there. “No. Simply that he’d originally planned to send Kyubei, but that he needed Kyubei to go somewhere else.”

“It is always a good idea to have an undisclosed agent in reserve if you are unsure of your territory.” He watched as I arranged my blanket and crawled into my futon. “Are you going to sleep now? Should I blow out the lantern?”

“If you want to keep reading, go ahead. It likely won’t make any difference.” Insomnia is an evil bitch. I got as comfortable as I could.

Mitsunari elected to blow out the light and the room was instantly pitch black. It was cloudy outside, but even if it had been a bright moonlit night, very little light would come through the tiny slitted windows. In the dark, it seemed like every noise was multiplied tenfold. I could hear Mitsunari settling in his bedding, the soft inhale and exhale of his breathing, as well as other further away, household noises, like the building settling into the ground, and the padding of footsteps outside. I listened to those steps, as they went past our door without slowing or pause, so, likely a servant or someone heading to their own room.

As the night lengthened, Mitsunari’s breathing became slow and even and I used its metronomic quality to relax into my own slumber…

How much time has passed? It was as dark as ever … my knees and elbows bumped against the side of the crate. My nose was centimeters from the lid. Yeah, I really needed to move around. I grabbed the latch and –

The lid didn’t budge.

I tried the latch again, and again. No, it was unlatched, but the lid wasn’t moving. It was like there was something on top of the… another crate maybe? I pushed on the lid harder, but I couldn’t move it. That’s when I started kicking.

Nothing.

My breath started to come out in sobs – was I trapped in here? How many crates was my crate under? How long would it be before someone came to get them? If I screamed, would anyone hear me?

My throat constricted…

Time passed – I lost track. I phased in an out of nightmare filled dreams and dreams of rescues that became living nightmares when I woke up again and faced the emptiness and the dark and the walls. I could sense the weight of the other crates pushing on the top and the sides of this one, shrinking it… in moments, it would collapse in upon itself, upon me and-

I woke myself up with a gasp of choked air, that followed the receding nightmare. The same one. The crate. The dark. The walls pressing in. It regularly visited me and loved taking advantage of nights when I was in an unfamiliar room. Reflexively, I reached out to reassure myself that I was surrounded by air, not walls.

“Okatsu? Is anything wrong?” Mitsunari’s half-awake question floated to me like a fresh breeze.

You are not alone.

“I’m fine. Sorry. Did I wake you up?” Hopefully I hadn’t talked, or worse, screamed in my sleep. That would be humiliating.

“Yes, but I don’t mind. Did you have a nightmare?” There was a rustle of fabric, then his voice sounded closer. He must have rolled onto his side to face me. “This is why you don’t sleep?”

How can he be so absentminded, and yet forget nothing?

Well, I was awake, and I don’t know, something about the soft darkness, and the sense of his gentle presence by my head made it easier to talk about things I’d normally deflect. “A few years ago, I got trapped in a crate for a day and I still have nightmares about that.” Not that I hadn’t already been a terrible sleeper, but that experience had made it worse.

Another rustle from Mitsunari then I felt his hand on the top of my head, patting me as if I were his cat. It was weird for a moment, then soothing, and I scooted closer and went with it.

“I’m sad that happened to you.” Mitsunari took a breath, then added, in his typical mix of curiosity and ignorance of conventional conversational boundaries. “Why were you stuck in a crate? Was it too small? I once got my hand stuck in Nobunaga’s candy jar.”

The image of Mitsunari blundering around with a jar stuck to his hand was a momentary distraction. “Was he upset?” I’d barely spent any time with the man, and even I knew how much he loved konpieto.

“No. Hideyoshi started using bigger jars, which resulted in more candy, so Nobunaga said he was pleased with my strategy.” Those fingers, no longer stuck in a jar, were still rhythmically stroking my hair, and the tension began to unravel and seep out of my limbs. “Why were you stuck in the crate?”

Right. I hadn’t answered him the first time. “It’s kind of a long story. It was part of a plan to rescue my brother, but things went wrong.” Horribly wrong. “Or I thought it was part of a plan to rescue my brother, but apparently it was actually a plan to get me out of the way, or even kill me… and no I don’t know why, but if I ever find the person who shut me in there, that’s one of the questions I plan to ask him.” Prior to killing him.

“This is why you like being outside or near windows, isn’t it?” Once again, he surprised me by making an unusually (for him) perceptive observation. I’d tried not to be obvious about my preference for the outdoors and being near windows, but I suppose Mitsunari had been paying more attention to me. For the sake of the masquerade, of course.

“Yes. That’s-” My response was interrupted by a yawn.

“Maybe you can sleep better now?” His voice was soft and kind – a security blanket in the night.

“I’ll try.” I closed my eyes again, this time not seeing the walls of the crate, but the memory of Mitsunari’s calm amethyst gaze. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome Okatsu.” Mitsunari had kept his hand in my hair, and the last sensation I remember before drifting off was that peaceful, gentle touch on my scalp.

@lorei-writes @bestbryn @lyds323 @katriniac @briars7

[virginiaisforvampires]

Hi Virginia! I love that Loustat is endgame, and I hope the show gets there. However, do you think there are times where Lestat can be a little condescending toward Louis in the books? He has several proclaims of love, but from what I can recall from the books he makes statements like "Louis in all his staggering dependence" or how Louis "came to him in wretch anxiety begging him to stay with him." Is this just bitterness talking just like Louis name called Lestat in IWTV? Or is it Lestat just lacking self-awareness for what he is saying?

Hi!

So those particular examples:

Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had. Even in his cruelest moments, Louis touched the tenderness in me, seducing me with his staggering dependence, his infatuation with my every gesture and every spoken word. And his naiveté conquered me always, his strange bourgeois faith that God was still God even if he turned his back on us, that damnation and salvation established the boundaries of a small and hopeless world.

Lestat places a lot of his self-worth on his ability to take care of those he loves. That’s always been his role. He was the caretaker and provider for his human family, and he becomes that for Louis and Claudia too, even though Louis doesn’t want to acknowledge it. In Lestat’s mind, if he’s not able to provide for or care for Louis, he must be worthless to him. That “staggering dependence” is Louis relying on Lestat to take care of him and protect him, and Lestat values that, because that means he’s valuable to Louis. Lestat goes more into this aspect of their relationship in Tale Of The Body Thief when he talks about Louis wanting Lestat to provide for him and take care of him, sweep Louis up into heady luxuries like Lestat had always done in the past, but he’d never admit it to Lestat.

And why should I bother to tell you of the times he came to me in wretched anxiety, begging me never to leave him, of the times we walked together and talked together, acted Shakespeare together for Claudia’s amusement, or went arm in arm to hunt the riverfront taverns or to waltz with the dark-skinned beauties of the celebrated quadroon balls? Read between the lines.

Lestat is letting everyone know that his relationship with Louis was not how Louis tried to portray it. He’s saying here that Louis felt just as strongly as Lestat did, but he’d never admit it. This passage sets the precedent for their relationship in that Lestat will say a couple of sentences about Louis, while also protecting their relationship, but you know everything just by the carefully chosen words Lestat uses. “….wretched anxiety, begging me never to leave him….” says everything about how deeply Louis felt for Lestat and how deeply they were bonded. It’s just that Louis never revealed those deep feelings until much later after stuff happens.

Having said that, Lestat can be condescending and cruel towards Louis. These examples immediately popped into my mind:

“Ah, that makes you out to be the perfect liar,” I said furiously. “You described my weeping in your miserable memoir in a scene which we both know did not take place!”

“I never expected this from you,” I said, crestfallen. “I expected some long philosophical diatribe, like the trash you wrote in your memoir, but this?”

He seemed tormented in some deep way, as if my words had caused him pain. Certainly it wasn’t my insult to his writing. I insulted his writing all the time. That was a joke. Well, sort of a joke.

“I won’t let him harm you, Louis,” I said. I turned and threw an evil glance at him. “I would never ever have let anyone harm you.” And with this I left. Of course, this was an accusation, and he felt the keen edge of it, I’d seen that to my satisfaction, before I turned again and went out. The night Claudia rose up against me, he had stood there, the helpless witness, abhorring but not thinking to interfere, even as I called his name….He had grieved for me, I’ll give him that much. But then he is so good at grieving! He wears woe as others wear velvet; sorrow flatters him like the light of candles; tears become him like jewels. Well, none of that trash works with me.

“Don’t ask me where I’ve been or what I’ve done,” I said. I walked towards him, brushed him aside, and went into the room….”I know where you’ve been,” he said, “and I know what you’ve done.” “Oh? And what’s to follow? Some stultifying and endless lecture? Tell me now. So I can go to sleep.”

It only penetrated to me slowly that Louis had dressed for this little occasion, and for once, in clothes which did not look as if they’d come from an attic trunk.

For as much as Lestat constantly waxes poetic with beautiful love sentiments for Louis, he can also roast the shit out of him too. It’s true love.

🥰🤣♥️✨

[crush3dmary]

Fic meme. Stolen, sorry.

Rules: post the first lines of your last 10 fics posted to ao3. if you have less than 10 fics posted, post the first lines of all your fics.

I'll put it under a cut because I feel like it will get long.

Making of life a forged painting (YGO) I put the lyrics to Sprig by Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton at the beginning, but here's the first few lines otherwise.

Malik knew grief; after all, he'd spent a lifetime in its throes. 

He grieved a life lost to the chains of his lineage, he grieved family who wanted more than he could give. It was a shroud that enveloped him like the darkness of the tombs, but in perfect congruence, it had the familiarity of a lover all the same. 

Fitting, then, that he'd end up grieving the only one he ever desired. 

2. Dreamcrusher (Tales of Crestoria)

You’ve always been a strong kind of weak, and it’s a contradiction of a metaphor that fits your personality. Your family is poor and meagre, an endless toil through mud and dirt on the farms, but it’s all you’ve ever known as your hands fall into place with the motions of labour and strain. When night falls fast, you hold your siblings close, as being the youngest of three means you seek protection, affirmation, sanctity. You find yourself wishing for more, for a life that isn’t chosen for you, and deep down a part of you hates. The hatred is personal, but you will never let it show.

3. [solipsist] (YGO) from C0NTAGI0N

Bakura could no longer remember his first death. He knew it was the hands of a bestial Pharaoh, and the moments prior were etched into his memory like the carvings of a tomb. An incineration like a supernova, the rupturing of his skin's topography. But, of course, how many times he died following would depend on how one defined death to begin with. 

4. A Generation of Ghosts (Tales of Symphonia)

Zelos could still remember the first day she came to the manor. It was the day of his fifth birthday—the twenty-eighth day of the second month of the Tethe’allan calendar, and hardly a moment past two in the afternoon. The priests woke him early for a ceremonial brunch in the city’s heart and lungs to celebrate—his meal took longer to arrive than most for reasons he’d only find out years later, when a guard’s body dropped to the ground following the obligatory taste-test, normally performed out of his sight—but really, those kinds of events were never held for him, anyways. That much he knew, even at his tender age.

5. [saudade] (YGO) from C0NTAGI0N

Dear Amane , 

Things have been very strange lately…  

6. a violent history of benevolence (Tales of Crestoria)

Sometimes half-hearted kindness is crueler than nothing at all. Aegis stood at attention with a fist draped over his heart, guarding his station by Rebecca’s chambers just as he had been assigned. He wasn’t quite facing her at his post by the open door, choosing instead to spare her glances from the limits of his vision while she stared through the stained-glass windows into the night sky.

7. Glass houses, and all. (Tales of Symphonia)

When all was said and done, Zelos always knew he'd end up unhappy. 

Well, it wasn't quite the end, he supposed. Not yet. But he knew the game and how to play it, the same song and dance that left him embarrassingly close to self-consciousness on the best of days, and strange, sad, and utterly alone at worst. He knew he'd end up unhappy because he'd always been unhappy. The pipeline from a child who'd grown up in a hurry to an adult who killed the only part of him that feels.

8. chiaroscuro (Tales of Crestoria)

misellus (feminine misella, neuter misellum); first/second-declension adjective

Diminutive of miser (“poor, wretched”)

9. Morningstar (Tales of Crestoria)

When Aegis met Vicious, he learned to dance with the devil. “Find the Great Transgressor,” the King had told him, “and don’t come back until you bring me his head.” When he heard those words, he expected to meet a monster, someone barely human and only beast, ready to bare his claws and rend flesh from bone. He pictured a pointed tongue and sharpened teeth, something that spewed venom and poisoned to the touch. He pictured monster. He pictured beast.

Surely, that was the last thing he found.

10. Absurdities and Echoes (Tales of Symphonia) - this will be updated very soon. Very very very soon. Please sit tight.

“For how could I help you? I’ve no cure for happiness.”

- Anna Akhmatova

[tyrantisterror]

How would you rank ever Ghidorah Design, from worst to best? Or in a tier format, if you'd prefer.

Alright, let's go in order of worst to best.

Keiser Ghidorah is the worst Ghidorah. I am of the firm opinion that Ghidorah needs to be Beautiful and Awe-Inspiring first and foremost, because it's part of how he works as a foil to not only Godzilla, but really ALL of the heroic monsters in Toho's pantheon, and what makes him such an iconic villain as a result. Ghidorah is magnificent, splendorous, and everything humans find laudable on the surface level. He's the color of gold, he has large and lustrous wings, he's got a crown of horns and a voice like a bell, and all these things make him prettier and more pleasing to the average human than monsters like Godzilla and Rodan - which makes how fucking nasty he is all the more striking.

Keiser Ghidorah fucks that all up. He's got these stunted wings, this pathetic thin little rat tails, and this lumpy, misshapen body with nasty little heads. He looks uglier and more stunted than Godzilla, which makes the fact that he's nastier, well, pretty expected. He's big, but he has no majesty. He's not a heraldic beast, his a stunted miserable wretch, which makes him getting his ass handed to him by a different stunted miserable wretch a lot less interesting. Just a shit Ghidorah.

The plus side is that pretty much every other Ghidorah design is a fuckin' banger. GMK Ghidorah is technically my second least favorite and it's still a damn good design. GMK is such an oddball in terms of the mythos of these characters, with its explicitly evil Godzilla and benevolent Ghidorah, but even with the very different takes on characterization they manage to make the pair's relationship as foils meaningful, just in a different context - a heroic and heraldic Japanese dragon from the country's history is literally dwarfed by a far more modern manifestation of monstrosity, and, though he is outgunned, the mythological figure stands tall and shines bright as it defends Japan against an unstoppable force.

I don't know whether I should include Death Ghidorah here since he's really his own character, but fuck it, I'm going to do it anyway. Even with his more explicitly evil color scheme, he does what all the King Ghidorahs should, looking regal, magnificent, and awe-inspiring while being an evil bastard beneath the draconic splendor. Just because he's a goth where most Ghidorahs are preps doesn't mean he can't be just as fabulous.

Cretaceous Ghidorah is in a similar boat - he's technically aiming for something different than the standard Ghidorah vibe, but he still manages to accomplish what a Ghidorah should. Yes, he's not quite as regal as a King Ghidorah would be, but you can still see the splendor there - it's just subdued, because this is young Ghidorah, a Ghidorah who hasn't quite come into his Kingdom of Terror. A Prince Ghidorah, if you will, and he pulls off that princely look quite well.

Mecha-King Ghidorah is basically what he needs to be to live up to his character concept. I like/prefer the fact that he's visibly a cyborg rather than a pure robot - that Ghidorah's malevolent power could not be fully replicated with machinery, but instead simply restrained by it, albeit in an extreme fashion. The character himself isn't used particularly well in his movie, but design-wise it's a solid concept.

Planet Eater's Ghidorah was one of the few things in the shitty anime movie trilogy that was good in both concept AND execution. My personal stance is that turning Ghidorah into an eldritch abomination is an unnecessary change but not a bad one - a lateral move, really, depending on how it's executed. But for the anime movie trilogy, a creative choice that's a lateral move is WAY higher than average. I like the serpentine necks, the shining and almost angelic glow on Ghidorah's golden form, and how our space monster appears from black holes to really hammer its unnatural nature in. The only thing I don't like about it is the ugly face they gave it - I reassert my stance that Ghidorah should be pretty, and that gnarled twisted mouth and cluster of pustule eyes mars the pretty factor. But the golden glow makes it pretty unnoticeable, and the fact that Ghidorah's arrival finally made this series watchable makes me forgive that slight flaw.

The original Ghidorah is beautiful and nearly perfect, being the one who established the criteria by which I judge all other Ghidorahs. Love his furry manes, crescent moon-shaped head spikes, and his very non-European dragon faces.

...but I like the crown of horns that the Heisei Ghidorah sports just slightly more. Ghidorah's a king, and the crown look is just so perfect.

Rebirth of Mothra III's Grand King Ghidorah takes the Heisei design and blends in those crescent moon horns from the Showa design. If his lesser horns were a bit longer and he had Showa's manes he'd be pretty much perfect! Look at his grandeur!

As it stands, my favorite Ghidorah is the 2019 take. The regal splendor is on full display, he's got his crowns, and he goes hard on the mythology angle of the original Ghidorah that so many people seem keen to ignore. I miss the fan wings a bit, but the fact that this Ghidorah's wing structure is based on those of William Blake's depiction of Satan goes a long way in my devil-loving heart. If he just had some lustrous manes, he'd be pretty much perfect.

[fandom-imagines-stories]

Evermore

Simon Basset x Reader

Words: 2319

Summary: While residing in the same house, Simon and his wife could not be further apart. His resistance to love may cost him the only thing he holds dear while he can merely stand and watch it fade. 

Notes: I love Simon waaaaaaay too much. I have been dying to write for him, so please please let me know what you think! 

More period dramas: HERE

-

I never needed anybody in my life

I learned the truth too late

From this spot, he had a view of the entire garden. He watched as you strolled between the flowers, pausing occasionally to smell a particular bloom. You used to walk together, but now, he could hardly bear to even look at the gardens. Seeing you there sent a feeling through his heart that he could not rid himself of. It was better this way. The happiness that you had felt in your first few months of marriage was an illusion. Simon knew that he could never truly make you happy, no matter how badly he wanted to. Still, these days of silence ate at his soul. 

You felt his gaze upon you before you spotted him in a second-story window. Looking up from the rose in your hand, you held his stare with your own, as if daring him to come out from behind his closed doors. This was the first time you’d seen your husband in two days and even when you had seen each other, it was in passing, shrouded in bitter quiet. 

You looked away first, dropping your flower and storming back into the house with renewed frustration. From the corner of your eye, you could see him vanish from the window, probably to disappear into his office for yet another day of avoidance. Through your anger, your heart ached. He never explained his sudden hatred towards you. One night, he simply stopped speaking to you. When you confronted him, he’d shouted and shut himself away in his room. No word between you had been uttered since. 

To fill your lonely hours, you walked the length of the house. Clyvedon was a beautiful estate and offered at least some distraction from your empty heart. This time, however, your usual path was interrupted. 

“Your grace,” You greeted coolly. It was odd to see him in this part of the house, so far away from his usual fortress. He rarely left his office anymore. “I must say, I am surprised to see you away from your desk. You have been married to your work recently.” You put as much venom into your words as you could muster. For a moment, you thought you saw him flinch. 

“Y/N, I understand you are uncomfortable with our current situation-”

“Uncomfortable?” You exclaimed furiously. “You think that I am uncomfortable? This is not an ill fitting dress or-or a pebble in my shoe. I saw you in that window and I couldn’t breathe. Even now, it feels like my heart is trying to leap out of my chest and give itself to you, for maybe that will finally be enough for you.” His eyes shifted to the window, desperately trying to escape your hateful stare. 

“You are more than enough for me-”

“Then tell me, your Grace,” You spat, “why you can’t even bring yourself to look at me!” You had raised your voice beyond what was proper, but you didn’t care. You wanted him to see the anguish that this forced solitude was bringing you. “Explain to me how we can be making love one morning and by that afternoon, you can hardly utter a word to me. Look at me, Simon! For God’s sake just look at me.” 

Whatever his reasoning for coming to you was lost to him now. He could only hear the anger and frustration in your voice. The hatred you must hold for him. While his eyes finally found yours, it felt as though he was looking past you. 

“I presume you will be eating in your quarters again.” Was all he said. The return of his indifference was the final straw for you. Having had enough, you charged off to find the furthest place in the house away from him. Simon watched you go in quiet agony, cursing himself for being unable to shut out his affection for you. He told himself again that this was how it must be. If only that was enough. 

-

Wasting in my lonely tower

Waiting by an open door

He wasn’t sure how late it was, but his eyes were starting to burn from staring at documents all night. He could hardly keep them open. Setting his work aside, he ran a hand down his face, trying to rub the exhaustion from his eyes, and slowly dimmed his lamp until the light was gone. When he looked up, he found you standing in the doorway, shrouded in shadow. If he didn’t know better, he’d say you looked like a spirit in your white nightgown and tear stained face. 

“Why are you not in bed?” He questioned, only half awake himself. 

“I came to…” The words caught in your throat, making them sound garbled and broken. You stepped into the moonlight and composed yourself. “I came to say goodbye.” Simon froze. 

“What?”

“I have arranged for a carriage to take me back to London at dawn.” You stared blankly at him, your face sunken and despaired. He hadn’t realized the depths of the misery he had caused you until now. “My presence is clearly unwanted and I feel that we may live our lives more peacefully apart.” 

“I see you’ve already made up your mind on the matter.” Simon scoffed, the pain your words inflicted fueling anger. You didn’t reply. Instead, you turned and started back down the dark hallway to your quarters. He caught your arm before you got too far. “You cannot just leave.” 

“I see no reason to stay, your grace.” 

“You are my wife.” He growled. Finally, your sullen exterior broke away to reveal the anger burning inside of your chest, threatening to swallow you. 

“Am I?” You jerked your arm away, stumbling backwards in the dark. “Because these past few days I’ve felt like a stranger, wandering these beautiful halls, looking for something in them to keep me here. There is nothing but emptiness and grief and pain and I cannot-” 

He placed a hand on your cheek, your words halting on your tongue. You stepped closer into his touch, a touch that you had been aching to feel for days. Simon dipped his head down, bringing your lips slowly to his own. 

His movements were fast and urgent, his lips moving against yours like he depended on you for breath. You felt the familiar feeling rush over you. It was the intense feeling you’d felt so many times at the beginning of your marriage, one you had feared you’d never feel again. But it wasn’t enough. 

“Simon, wait.” You pushed back, trying to find anything in his eyes that could explain to you why he’d been acting so distant. “Talk to me, my love.” 

He tried. He wanted so desperately to be able to share with you his fears, but every time he opened his mouth he felt like that stuttering little boy again. Your gaze pleaded with him. 

“Please, say something.” Still no response. You pulled out of his grasp forcefully, that feeling fleeing just as quickly as it had come. “Tomorrow, I am leaving for London. At least there I will not be reminded how little I must mean to you.” 

You gave him no chance to reply, vanishing into the dark night while he furiously went back into his office, knocking almost every paper off his desk. Simon craved to follow you back to your quarters and show you what you really meant to him, but his feelings didn’t matter. You were miserable and it was his doing. 

Still, the idea of being away from you, the feeling of abandonment sunk into him like sharp claws. It was dark and grim and kept him awake, pacing back and forth in the confines of his office. That night, he did not get a moment’s rest. 

-

I let her steal into my melancholy heart

It’s more than I can bear

Days passed, each one quieter and darker than the last. You were gone. He had watched your carriage leave from his window, solemn and alone. Each day he waited. He waited to hear the rattling of the carriage, the pounding of the horse’s hooves. He left the door to his office open as if he expected you to walk in like nothing had happened. In fact, he hardly left his office at all in hopes that his waiting would conjure you somehow. 

It was the fifth day of your absences when he received the letter. Lady Danbury started by inquiring as to why his wife was in London unaccompanied, but it was the end of the letter that sent an icy fear through his blood. You had fallen ill and had doctors in and out of the house for the last two days. While she did not know the severity of your illness she had heard that you had been bed ridden and unable to take any visitors. She feared the worst. 

Simon didn’t waste a second readying his horse and taking off towards the city. It didn’t matter how many hours the ride took, he went on without stopping. His horse sped through the city, having little care for the foot traffic around him. Hastings house stretched ominously over him, adding to the dread filling his chest. He didn’t wait for a servant to open the door, he didn’t wait to be shown to your room. He ran through the halls like a mad man only to find your quarters empty. 

“Your Grace?” Your lady's maid gasped, nearly dropping the bundle of fabrics she was carrying. “I-I thought you were staying in-”

“Where is she?” He barked, making her jump. He didn’t mean to frighten the poor girl, but he did not have the patients for explanation. 

“S-she’s having tea with Lady Danbury in the drawing room.” The girl squeaked. His confusion was quickly replaced by rage and he stormed into the drawing room, Lady’s Danbury’s letter crumpled in his fist. Your eyes widened at the sight of your husband, sweating and disheveled. 

“Simon, what are you-”

“Your Grace, how wonderful for you to join us.” Lady Danbury smiled triumphantly. 

“Is this meant to be some kind of cruel joke to you?” He snapped viciously. You’d never seen him this way before and, frankly, it frightened you. Lady Danbury didn’t seem phased. “My life is not a game for you to meddle in!” 

“Someone had to show you how much you stand to lose, your Grace.” She said, keeping incredibly calm under the circumstances. 

“How dare you.” Simon was seething. “You wretched woman-”

“Simon!” You exclaimed, jumping up from your seat. “A word, your Grace.” You opened the door to the garden and waited outside for him to join you. 

“I think it’s time for you to leave.” Simon glared. Lady Danbury stood and walked past him with enviable elegance. 

“Don’t lose her, your Grace. Not when she’s finally made you believe in love.” She left without further comment. 

Simon finally walked out and you resisted the urge to slap him. Your fists were balled at your sides and you were walking furiously back and forth on the path. 

“How dare you come here and speak to my guest in such a manner.” You wanted to scream and cry and kiss him all at once. “What on earth are you doing here, anyway?” 

“Lady Danbury sent me a lie in order to get me to come here.” He finally let the exhaustion of his ride rush over him and he leaned against the wall. 

“And what lie could have been so great to get you to leave your office?” You scoffed. Simon’s face softened. 

“She said that you were ill.” He said quietly, his voice betraying the truth. For those few hours before he arrived were the most terrifying he’d ever experienced. “I thought that… I was afraid I would lose you.” 

“You haven’t seemed that concerned these past weeks.” You muttered in irritation. Simon’s face fell. 

“Do you really believe that?” He asked with such pain in his voice it nearly broke your heart. “That I am not concerned for your well being? That I do not care if you are hurt or-or sick?” 

“What else am I to believe, Simon?” You said, exasperated and exhausted with his constantly shifting moods towards you. “You avoid me at all costs when I am with you, you have suspended any affection towards me, and now you tell me that you came all this way because you thought I was ill? I don’t understand you, your grace, I truly don’t.” 

“Everything I have done has been for your benefit.” He stepped towards you. “My affection towards you runs deeper than I could possibly explain and that is why I cannot condemn you to a life cast into my darkness.” His eyes did not look through you now. Rather, they pierced down to your very soul. You stood in shock, trying to find the right words to convey your true feelings. 

“Simon…” You gasped, laying a hand on his chest to feel his racing heartbeat. “You are not a shadow. You are the moon. Yes, you have darkness. Yes there are parts of you that I do not yet understand, but that does not mean I do not wish to know you. You are the guiding light in my darkest nights. You are my husband and I love you.” 

You wrapped your arms around him and brought his lips to yours. It was like your first kiss, hesitant at first, but soon evolved with passion and need. Simon cupped your face in his hands and vowed. 

“I will not hide my love from you again. I will cherish you the way you are meant to be. And I will remind you how dear you are to me every moment I can.” He brushed a joyous tear from your cheek. “For evermore.” 

-

General Tag: @rae-gar-targaryen; @takemepedropascal; @childhood-imagination;  @mylovegoesto; @yellowbadgergirl; @itmejado; @suckmyapplejacks

[txttletale]

Ask meme: tlt obviously

(ask meme)

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): ianthe! ianthe is blorbo from my shows. all my friends recognise ianthe even if they haven't read the books because i talk and post about her that much. there's just something so special about a female character who is genuinely horrible in a deeply pathetic, wretched way that we don't get to see enough and it speaks to me! she's so awful, so miserable, not in a sexy brooding way but in a pitiful yet ultimately loathsome way. and that makes her perfect <3

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): nona. yes i know her book hasn't come out yet. but if nona doesn't win the best birthday party of the year award i will kill myself on live tv.

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): coronabeth. listen i know she has her share of fans but they don't UNDERSTAND her. they haven't dug deep into every moment she's on the page to dig out her fucked up psyche. also commander wake because some people don't like her it seems (those people are wrong)

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): i know nothing about We Suffer but i support her <3. dulcie obviously isn't OBSCURE but in terms of how much i love her to screentime ratio she's an enormous outlier. every moment she's in ht9 is gold.

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): ianthe again. also coronabeth (not unpopular but definitely pathetic.) i just love these miserable co-dependent twins who keep getting rejected by their crushes. perfect characters. badtwin and lessbadtwin my beloveds

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason: babs. i like babs, i think he's so funny. and he's so funny because misfortune constantly befalls him. i want to see babs get bad customer service at a mid-range diner chain and be sulky about it for the rest of the day.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): john gaius. my tag for him is paypal.com/IFuckingHateJohnGaius for a reason. he's a perfectly written manipulative, horribly likeable, grotesquely self-pitying abusive imperialist. i hope his dick falls off

[ithinkthereforeidread]

the collected poems of todd anderson

christmas day of 1959.

ao3 link here

He knew this day would come. He’s been dreading it, sure, he’d never really enjoyed Christmas much beforehand, his multiple unopened desk sets epitomised such. At his house, fires weren’t warm, hugs were stiff and silence was punctured by the sounds of laughing children in the house next door. It’d always been this way for the Anderson family. Todd grew to accept it.

But this year was supposed to be different.

He was supposed to spend his Christmas at Welton, with all the Dead Poets.

 Usually, the boys would go home to their families for Christmas, but through the efforts of Neil he assembled a complex string of falsities about a gargantuan Latin group project that all the Dead Poets needed to finish.

“Serious business, I care about my education father, why else would have you sent me here?” said Neil over the phone, holding his index finger to his mouth to silence Todd from his chuckling, although all Todd really saw was the wide grin that hid behind it, and the way Neil’s eyes crinkled up all the way, a complete oxymoronic action when Neil was usually on the phone to his father. Todd stifles back laughter and Neil smacks him lightly, only causing him to laugh more.

“Well, that was quicker AND easier than I expected...” Neil states after placing the phone back on it’s cradle and ending the call. “But hey!” Neil squeaks, “We’re all spending Christmas together! The biggest concern was just getting my father to agree, everyone else’s parents seemed fine with it.”

Todd and Neil start to walk, side by side, Neil bumps him playfully. “I’m so glad you told me, Todd.” Neil turns his head and looks towards the shorter boy. “My Christmases at home aren’t that great either, I’ve always wanted to spend them here, but I could never work up the courage to ask my father, ask Charlie, in our first year he almost called up my father himself. It was hilarious, he had to look up at the phone, he was so short.”

“You and Charlie have been friends for ages then?” Todd queries “Oh yeah, we met in our last year of preparatory school, he was a pretty mischievous kid, obviously not much has changed.” Neil laughs, “he was just always so confident and sure of himself… I always wanted to be like that, nothing ever got to him.”

“Has that changed?” Todd’s questions were always short and straight to the point. Startling upfrontness in the most unexpected of moments. It was something Todd was known for.

“Not really… I mean, I try to get him to open up… he just isn’t an emotions type of person, I think?” Neil scratches the back of his head. “During our 9th year he went through something really big and not great, but he didn’t tell me a single word about it. To this day I have no idea wahat happened. I tried asking but it didn’t lead anywhere… all I know is some kid had been expelled but it didn’t look like him and Charlie fought or anything because they spent so much time together ....” Neil trails off.

“You know people stare at us sometimes.” Todd blankly states, an unconscious switch being flicked immediately. “When we’re walking to classes, when we go into our dorm, when we exchange smiles in classes… They bump their friends with their shoulders and snicker under their breaths… Have you noticed that Neil?”

Neil’s walking pace slows slightly, “Uh… no, I-uh I didn’t… Do they think we’re-“ “-Maybe.” Todd interrupts before Neil can say The Word. “Bu-but we aren’t, I mean, you were talking about that girl from-“ “-Yeah! Ginny, from the play, wow, I mean, she’s just great.” “Yeah, I’m sure she is.”

God.

This got awkward.

Nice one Todd.

Did it again.

~~

Ink splatters dried on the paper he cradled so delicately, he stares at the contents once more.

“what wouldn't i give to love myself as feverishly as I love you? what is the opposite of amnesia? that is what you are. sometimes i cant find my way around my memories. i have to take detours… i think you were the best one.

little fragments of joy pepper my vacancy i didn't know that i should want to be hopeful or that being hopeful meant giving up some intrinsic part of me.

last night i had a dream that we were breathing underwater flying high in the sky, arms outstretched, laughing, smiling, hugging, bodies pressed onto one another. it didn’t last long. piece by wretched, fragile piece i throw out every hated qualm of thee your impenetrable stare fixed onto me

i have hoped for love that is beyond you being caught by me or me trying to slip through the cracks. they read me, you, us, with their glacial eyes and think they know but they don't

and it seems neither do we.”

“Wow, Todd. This is so… different. But good! It’s just, I’ve never seen anything like this in our English class, in the poems we’ve studied… I just… wow.” Neil looks up at Todd, eyes so soft, Neil knows how big of a deal this is to Todd. He doesn’t just share his work with anyone.

“I-I’m glad you liked it.” Todd smiles, it’s almost as if he’s had to completely remove himself from himself in order to let Neil observe and compliment this part of him, he takes the page out of Neil’s hands and places it in his book. “What-er, who was it about?” Neil gingerly queries. “I- uh, well.” Todd’s heating up now, he should’ve expected Neil to ask him this question. Dammit. Why was he so stupid for letting him read it. “Well, I-I don’t think you necessarily have to go through something to write a-about it, it-it’s fiction for a reason.”

Neil’s lips downturn slightly, “I guess, but everything that we produce in art- whether that be acting, or poetry writing, painting- whatever… it… subconsciously shows something that you might not necessarily want to show or see, right? Like how Keating got us the other day to choose a poem we liked and recite it… It tells you so much about a person. When Charlie was reading his poem… wasn't all you could think about was how bleak it was?” Neil continues, “The academically and poetically rigorous selection made by Cameron or Knox’s complete devotion and enamoration with the simplest emotion of the human being, love? We hide these parts of ourselves, maybe we view them as flaws and faults of our cognitive machine, but art reveals them all.” Neil delivered a love poem to the class himself. He takes a big breath and lets the words he just spoke sit in the air of their dorm for a while.

“Into the meadows dawn..” Todd clicks his fingers, a vague ritual to jog his memory. “flashes my faun.” Todd recites “O Hunter, snare me his shadow… O Nightingale catch me his strain. Else moonstruck with music and madness, I track him in vain” all they’re doing is staring at each other.

“You- you remembered my poem?” Neil questions. “Yeah- I went to the library after you said it- wanted to see if there was more… Oscar Wilde…” “Yeah.” “I notice them staring now that you mentioned it.” Neil breaks the trajectory of the conversation, “God, they’re all so stupid, it’s as if Judy Garland and President Eisenhower just strutted into the school, arms interlocked!” Todd chuckles. Then more silence.

“Has anything changed, Neil?” “What do you mean?” “Between us. What this is. Our comradely bond, as Keating puts it.” Todd chuckles, “ Our co-dependence, attachment at the hip.”

More silence…

“I-I think…” Neil finally states, “that it was never anything it wasn’t already… perhaps we ignored it, suppressed the feeling… but… it was always there.”

“For me, at least.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

~~~

The wind pierced Todd’s skin in tiny microscopic ways, embedding itself under the protection of his coat and completely evading the rest of his physical form, though perhaps the wind wasn’t the cause of the spine-curdling ache he felt, but simply an additional symptom.

Bells rang, green and red Christmas themed paraphernalia adorned the streets he’d previously been driving through, staring out the window at lights and snow that trickled onto an already naturally bleached layer of the ground. His footprints leave indents and obtain a slippery consistency to the outer sole and toe cap. He treads more carefully.

His hands clutch the leather cover of the journal he is hiding underneath his jacket, minimising any further damage that may soon come its way, finally, through minutes of soul-searching and carefully treading through stones and flowers, he makes his way to Neil.

He looks at him with a certain sense of fragility, his stone head protruding from the ground and covered in snow. Todd wipes some away to see the carvings made into him. His full name. Aged 17. Dutiful son of Tom and Susan Perry.

The newness of it all sends a pang to Todd’s stomach as he looks at the other stones weathered with age and the constant bombardment of the elements. That’ll be Neil one day. Flowers not fresh and carvings unreadable. Forgotten to the world and all its inhabitants, rotting in satin lining and cherry oak wood. Todd stifles back a sob and covers his mouth, forcing himself to get it together for just this moment.

“Merry Christmas Neil.” Todd whispers, the words can barely come out. “You-you’re not here physically but you’re here with me, and Charlie, and-and all the other Dead Poets.” he continues, “though- though Charlie isn’t here technically either. He left. Had to. He’s not graduating, at least he’s not at Welton” Todd looks down, brushes his emerging tears away with his shoulder

“I just wanted to come here and give you your gift, I’ve had it in the making for a while now, you’ve seen some of it already. I wish I could’ve given it to you earlier… if I had known this would happen.” he pulls out the journal, and opens it up.

“Here, I’ll read you some.” Todd, though already cold and miserable, situates himself next to Neil’s cold headstone and leans his head on it, opening the journal's contents to its first page.

“Dear Neil,” Todd’s starts, but adds an offside, “It’s dated on the 7th of a while back, my-my birthday.”

“I hope this book finds you well,” Todd’s breath hitches, “especially considering that I’m probably too anxious to deliver it to you. What you’ll see here is what we spoke about the night we first kissed. About freeing ourselves from any subconscious fear or dichotomous dread of both working with and against the grain or being liked or disliked. The people I look up to the most are inspirationally unpopular. So, here’s a suite of poems by yours truly. Hopefully you’ll find your own meaning and reverence in the words my brain has conjured up, words mostly pertaining to you. Every inch of your being alive has me transfixed and enamoured, and I’m truly gobsmacked on the good deed I must’ve committed to have deserved having you in my life.” Todd’s face is red and stuffy from the cold and his breathing is short and punctured.

“You’re sleeping right near me at this moment, and as a sweaty toothed madman once said. We were together. I forgot the rest. Consider this journal a detachable limb of my own self, something you can always carry around and know that I am with you, always. You can suck the life force, the bone marrow out of the words I have written in here and I would applaud and encourage you to do so. Without you, I have no idea where I’d be right now. I owe you so much Neil, you’ve taught me that sometimes the world can be good. That a person’s smile can brighten an entire room. A performance perfectly acted can be a person’s ultimate achievement and their triumph. You are the word phenomenal incarnate Neil, I hope my words do you some sort of justice.

You deserve the world, Neil. I’m brainstorming ways to give it to you.

With love, Todd.”

——————————————————————————

i hope you guys enjoyed!! its fucking brutal honestly but needed some angst and tragedy in my fictional life to reflect my own.

just a preface that some of the poem todd read's is borrowed from pete wentz old emo livejournal posts because i need to somehow tie my two big interests together and MAN does that man write some gay ass shit. hope your heart doesnt hurt too much <3

creds to @neilscrown on tiktok for posting the headcanon "Todd definitely bought Neil a Christmas present and he never got the chance to give it to him so he would sit in his once shared room and stare at it" it tore my HEART OUT and inspired this rambling

[acapelladitty]

16 and 17 from the headcanon bit with Crane?

16 - Anger Headcanon

For all his talk of rationality and being in control of his emotions, Crane is actually quite partial to irrational anger and rage which can influence his actions beyond a reasonable level. His anger is extremely cold and calculated in public with any explosive destruction of things and yelling being reserved for his private space. He will let an insult slide off him like oil but the intended sting will be remembered and avenged upon.

17 - Soft Spot Headcanon

You know that Hannibal quote about seeing a wounded bird and how part of you may wish to help it as much as some part of you might instinctively want to crush it for its weakness? I feel like Crane straddles that line when it comes to his soft spots as he can see himself in some of the miserable wretches he encounters in Gotham and that sometimes invokes a sense of kinship which can be VERY quick to dissipate when the other person doesn't respond in the way which he wants them to.

He has a soft spot for those who are unfairly victimised and terrorised but it knocks at his heart so rarely that it is never something that can be depended on. Also, people mistake his preferences for adult subjects as a 'soft spot' for children when really he just has no interest in younger subjects as their fears are naturally pure and open to the world.

[magioftheseas]

A.I. to AI

Summary: Post-SDR2.5 AU in while a certain Alter Ego and a certain Ultimate Lucky still have some difficulties moving forward.

Rating: T

Warnings: Emetophobia (mild)

Notes: Hhhhhh, World Destroyer/Komaeda...good...and yet so rare. So, here it is. Have fun.

***Alternate Ao3 Link***

Commission? Donate?

Komaeda Nagito is

Capricious

Stubborn

Frustrating

Unstable

Desperate

Hopeless

Lovely

Problematic

Through many deep dives, Alter Ego is confident in identifying Komaeda Nagito’s character. As confident as a program can be, although it was not the prerogative to know and understand Komaeda Nagito. The mission was simply to retrieve Komaeda Nagito, the last of the remnants.

It had taken many deep dives. Many methods had to be used. Some involving direct contact from the start, and others requiring more distance, more detachment. All the same, there had been many confrontations.

It is not Alter Ego’s mission to know and understand Komaeda Nagito, but with how much time spent in Komaeda Nagito’s dreamscape, it was inevitable to take notice of and learn such things.

When Komaeda Nagito was extracted—the mission was complete.

That was it.

It was over.

--

It should have been over.

“World Destroyer-kun! Alter Ego-kun! Destroyer-kun? Ego-kun? Which would you prefer I call you?”

“I have no preference.”

“I do know another Alter Ego-san,” Komaeda was saying. Acting sweet and cheerful. As if there isn’t somewhere else he should be. “The one made by the Ultimate Programmer. They’re much more polite and pleasant than you are.”

“And yet, I am the one you are speaking to.”

Komaeda laughs, smiling without care. But there are signs of tension from the tightness of his shoulders to even the way his elbow dug into the table’s surface with his chin pressing down hard into his fleshy palm. Only the mechanical limb was able to remain completely still.

“You are troubled,” is the obvious observation to make. “I presume it is about the other remnants and my master.”

“Your presumptions would be correct,” Komaeda says. His smile is twitching around the corners. The typical sign of contradictory emotions. Of admiration and irritation. “If you already know, then I don’t have to explain anything, right?”

“Explanations would be...” A pause. “Unnecessary.”

Komaeda seems pleased with that answer, but somewhere in the back of Alter Ego’s coding was the curious thought if that had been the correct response.

How irritating.

--

Among the methods, there had been direct contact. Komaeda Nagito does not remember this, but these attempts are in fact stored in Alter Ego’s data banks. If one knew how to dig, the footage of those attempts could be replayed. All taken from Alter Ego’s vacant gaze at the time.

A gaze that caught Komaeda Nagito in a state of shock. Which had observed and scrutinized the way Komaeda Nagito shrank in on himself, pulling further and further away from the program’s prodding.

“I’m already at peace, so don’t bother me anymore,” Komaeda Nagito had said. “You’re—an annoyance.”

Irritating.

--

 “Destroyer-kun!”

“Is that the name you have decided on?”

“If you have a problem with it, just say so!”

“I have nothing to say.”

Once again, Komaeda Nagito has visited. How did Komaeda Nagito even find this place?

The answer was obvious.

(“It was just good luck!” Komaeda Nagito had exclaimed, looking so unbearably joyful. “And after spraining my wrist...! It was only a matter of time before something good happened!”)

“I made my own coffee today,” Komaeda was saying now. “It was so awful! So brutal! A truly contemptible and pitiful attempt! I got so sick that I threw up in the sink!” His spirited performance turned downcast in a heartbeat. “Koizumi-san was quite cross with me. According to Owari-san, the smell was so awful.”

“Yes, bile does have a stench,” was the dry, unimpressed response. “The odor gets worse depending on what was ingested.”

“Oh, Destroyer-kun,” Komaeda mourns. “I just keep messing up around them. No matter what I do, I can’t help being wretched!”

“That mistake...was hardly serious.”

For some reason, Komaeda’s distraught expression was troubling. Had he, a program, developed a bias? A proximity bias? If so, that was a bug.

One that his master needed to patch out. His master would have to be informed. Informed of the displeased reaction that comes about simply because Komaeda Nagito is distressed.

“It’s not just that mistake,” Komaeda sighs next. “It’s—surely you know the saying. The straw that breaks the camel’s back?”

“I am aware, but that perspective is flawed.” It was aggravating. Truly aggravating. Perhaps not a mere bug but a virus in how vicious this sensation became. “You are not...”

The sensation gets aggressive. It threatens to consume the entire system. It gets to the point where he needs to be reset, but—

Komaeda is...

“I’m sorry,” Komaeda is apologizing. Komaeda gives such a miserable smile. “I’m troubling you, aren’t I?”

“No.” Immediate. Almost panicked. “No, Komaeda...”

“Ah.”

Komaeda blinked at him. His expression changed. Eyes went wide, mouth parted open. An expression of surprise.

“...I didn’t think a program could make an expression like that.” Then, a laugh. “Oh, wait, what am I even saying? You’re not even the first advanced artificial intelligence I’ve ever met.”

Komaeda seemed taken aback but tickled nonetheless. When faced with something incomprehensible, it was...understandable to simply take it in bewildered stride.

“I meant to reassure you,” he realizes now. “But it appears I am inadequate at such a task.”

“It’s alright,” Komaeda says with such sincerity. “Just your intent rather warmed my heart, Destroyer-kun. You’re such a kind person. I wonder who you got that from...?”

Komaeda ponders this as if he doesn’t already know the answer. As if that very answer doesn’t cause Komaeda’s smile to falter.

“Thank you, Destroyer-kun,” Komaeda says next, and it will have to do for now.

--

Komaeda visits him regularly. Not every interaction is worth remembering, but he finds that he perks up regardless. Sometimes, Komaeda won’t converse much; instead just settling down in the chair with a coffee. Sipping demurely and rubbing exhaustion from his eyes. The only sounds that transpired would be Komaeda’s breathing, the whirl of his robotic arm, and the buzzing of the program.

Komaeda would finish his coffee, give him a simple smile, would leave, and repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

And then, Komaeda lays his head down in front of him.

“Let me rest for a bit,” he tiredly requests. Silence is taken as acquiesce, and it isn’t long before Komaeda Nagito drifts off into slumber.

It’s strange.

That position is not comfortable, and yet, Komaeda Nagito sleeps with ease. Perhaps the other had simply been exhausted—but perhaps Komaeda Nagito felt secure here. With only a mere AI for company, Komaeda Nagito was relaxed.

But not as relaxed as he had been in the program, surrounded by friends who cared for him and encased by a world designed to keep him safe.

He does wonder if Komaeda Nagito yearns for that place despite having verbally dismissed it in the past. He likely does. Komaeda Nagito may have been sincere in the thoughts and feelings he expressed, but he wasn’t very honest to himself. What a frustrating contradiction.

And, yet, the artificial intelligence that has long since fulfilled its objective...cannot help but find this person fascinating.

Fascinating and lovely.

How could something like this happen?

--

He watches Komaeda Nagito sleep.

He watches Komaeda Nagito sleep.

He watches Komaeda Nagito sleep.

Komaeda Nagito sleeps.

Komaeda Nagito does not wake up even when the door opens.

“So this is where he is,” his master sighs. His master looks a bit ragged but also relieved to see Komaeda’s hunched shoulders. No matter the occasion, his master strides forward with grace and purpose. His master then lightly takes those hunched shoulders.

“Do you plan to awake him?” he asks, and it is strange, isn’t it, to have this be the first question he has asked his master in so long. “He has been sleeping well up until now.”

His master flinches the slightest bit even though that response should have been expected. Perhaps, his master is fatigued enough to impair his instincts.

“I...” His master swallows. Nervously. “I do know that he’s been visiting you as of late... Alter Ego.”

Alter Ego is not surprised to hear this. Obviously, his master would have known. Why, then, does his master look so uncertain?

“Master,” he says and asks with all the grace that can be generated from a machine, “Are you feeling insecure?”

There is a reason why there is no such thing as a ballerina android. Subsequently, this is why artificial conductors are much more inefficient for orchestras than human ones are.

“That obvious, huh,” his master mutters as if the dryness of the question had rubbed him raw. His master sighs. Inhale, exhale. His master regards his creation with brief disdain before it’s blinked away, leaving behind a vulnerable, insecure human.

A human which is still more capable than a machine.

“Komaeda really likes you,” that human says, like he can’t believe it or understand it either. “Komaeda would rather be around you than anyone else. Including me.”

“It...” Alter Ego processes this, and finally, finally, he comes to a logical explanation. “It is not about liking me. It is about the simulation of companionship with none of the expectation nor the baggage. Komaeda Nagito is lonely, but he fears intimacy. With a mere program, he has nothing to fear.”

The human—Hinata Hajime, Kamukura Izuru, no, simply his master—blinks at him.

“I suppose that is one explanation,” he says slowly. “But, it’s never that simple. Not with people, and especially not with Komaeda.”

“That seems like a generalization, master,” Alter Ego points out.

“It is, but... Urgh. You’re basically saying that Komaeda finds you unfulfilling, which is a bit...” His master shook his head. “That... Do you really know for sure if that’s true?”

...

Machines are not designed to feel pain. And he in particular was not given the capacity to come even close to pain due to his purpose. To feel pain himself would have been counterproductive. His master had known that. Thus, his master had taken great pains to ensure that he would never feel pain.

Still, Alter Ego had paused and mulled that painful question over.

“It is a sound explanation,” he decides on, but his gaze lingers on Komaeda Nagito.

Komaeda Nagito, who murmurs so softly in his sleep. Smacks his lips. Looks at peace.

“I guess it is beyond your capacity for understanding.”

Alter Ego snaps back to attention. His master regards him coldly and warily. Irritated and insecure. Since he understands his master, it does not bother him.

“If Komaeda Nagito thinks himself fond of me...”

He is mistaken.

That is what Alter Ego should say, but for one reason or another, he can’t bring himself to continue.

It doesn’t matter. His master can fill in the blanks, and given by the way his brow furrows and his expression darkens, his master does just that.

Soon after, though, his master’s look softens.

“It’s a good thing,” he sighs. “It’s great that Komaeda’s not completely keeping to himself and that he’s socializing at all, but... I just wish he’d give us another chance. Sure, not everyone’s willing to welcome him back but... We should get the opportunity to try, right?”

“You cannot force him,” Alter Ego points out. “Komaeda Nagito is not obligated. He should approach you because he wants to.”

Not to mention—

“If you respect his feelings, you should not be having this conversation that he can overhear.”

His master laughs. It’s harsh and lacking mirth, but when his master turns his attention to Komaeda and pats his shoulder, he’s nothing short of gentle. Gentle while wearing a melancholy smile.

“Both of us would be able to see right through him,” his master says. “It’s taken a lot, but I think I understand him well enough.” Idly, almost without thinking, his master moves his hand from Komaeda’s shoulder to card through the fluffy white strands. “I’ll help the others understand, too. So that when he’s ready...”

His master trails off. His master stops. His master shook his head.

“Komaeda...will end up hurting his neck if he sleeps like this. I’m gonna take him to his room, okay?”

His master hoists up Komaeda Nagito with ease. Holds him close and secure. Gives Alter Ego one last wry smile before heading out.

Alter Ego simply watches him go.

--

“Destroyer-kun, do you think I could speak to you in person?”

Komaeda fidgets. He’s visibly sheepish.

“Did something happen?” is asked in return instead of giving a proper response.

“It’s not that I dislike talking to a screen, but I’d like...” Komaeda trails off, his cheeks pink. He sputters softly, jaw working on the words he can’t bring himself to say. “That is...if it’s okay with you... Obviously I understand if...mm...”

“Is that really what you want?”

“Yes!” Komaeda’s chirpy response was immediate. “But is that okay?”

It would be best to decline.

“It is fine. There just has to be a degree of setup first. Follow my instructions closely, Komaeda Nagito.”

“O-Oh I don’t want to risk breaking anything.”

“It is fine. Even the total destruction of this island wouldn’t be the end of my existence.”

“Ooh!” Komaeda lights up. “Just like Hinata-kun and Kamukura-kun, then!”

Komaeda looks so happy.

It’s dazzling even with a screen in-between, but he is durable so it will be fine.

It has to be.

--

“Hey. Can you hear me?”

Komaeda Nagito wakes up on the beach.

“...Destroyer-kun?”

Komaeda Nagito blinks up at him owlishly but when he takes his hand, it’s with a desperate grip.

“It worked,” he breathes. “It really...”

“I had thought the setting being the same as the initial Neo World Program would be easiest to work with,” is explained as Komaeda Nagito is helped up. “How long do you plan to stay here?”

“Not long, I just...” Flushing, Komaeda is smiling so wide it looks painful. Yes. It is difficult to take, and yet—it is nice. “I wanted to talk to you. But...”

Komaeda Nagito does not let go of the other hand. If anything, he grips that hand even tighter.

“I...wanted it to be like this. Selfish, right?”

“It is human. But—if you wished for intimacy, my master...” Strange. He ends up trailing off. “My master...”

Komaeda Nagito squeezes his hand briefly. Once again.

“I’m not like that with them yet,” he said. Softly. But, in a way where significance ran underneath the words. Tucked under that light, airy chucker. “Destroyer-kun is my only friend for now.”

“I...”

Strange.

The words.

Wouldn’t—

“But even when I do manage to muster up my courage, I’m not going to forget you,” Komaeda went on, promised—seriously, this guy—“Destroyer-kun. The last thing I want is for you to be lonely.”

“I...do get lonely.” He blinked. Multiple times. “When I think of how you should be with your peers, I get lonely.”

“You’ll come with me,” Komaeda said suddenly. “We’ll work to better ourselves together. You’re much too capable to simply be left to rot.”

“My purpose is fulfilled.”

“Helping the world is surely more fulfilling than talking with me,” Komaeda says so easily with such assertion. “It’s no good to be so aimless, Destroyer-kun! Let’s do our best! You can even talk to other AI! We’ll both be among our peers, but we’ll still be friends, too...”

He wondered if that would truly be the case. It seemed silly that someone called the World Destroyer could build relationships with others—and yet...his relationship with Komaeda Nagito was undeniable.

Perhaps, it would be fine?

No.

It had to be fine.

“We can’t stay like this,” he realizes. “The world is open to us, and we must go there.”

“Yes,” Komaeda agreed, melancholy but resolute. “We’ll go together. You helped me out of the program, so I feel wretched for continuing to ask for your support, but...”

“You are offering yours in return, Nagito,” he said. “It’s fine.”

Komaeda smiles so brilliantly that it was too much for the simulation and the program. But, he shone with a hope that made the World Destroyer smile once again.

[themattress]

Inspired by this post, I wanted to reiterate a view I’ve long held.

Redemption at its core is a three-step process: feel remorse for the wrong you’ve done, commit to stop doing wrong, and commit to start doing right. And while it’s mostly possible for any villainous character to do this, the question is whether it’s plausible based on how the villainous character is established and written...and if it’s plausible, would it still make sense if they don’t do it? Once Upon a Time’s redeemed mainstay villains provide great examples: 

Regina and Zelena - NOT PLAUSIBLE.

Whether you like these characters and their redemptions or not, the fact is that the writers royally fucked up when it came to establishing them in their debut story arcs. Regina was established as a warped psychopath who is willing to kill her own father to enact a horrible curse that will grant her total control over the eternally miserable population of an entire realm solely because she irrationally blames a child for her boyfriend’s death and can’t feel happy unless said child, now grown-up, is “punished”. The only hint at a possible redemption was her love for her adopted son Henry, and even that eventually went out the window in the following story arc where a brief attempted redemption was followed by her being even worse than she was before in both flashbacks and the present day! Zelena, meanwhile, had power in Oz and could have had it good there, but she was so obsessively jealous of the sister she’d never met and lustful over their mutual magic teacher that she would uproot time itself just to ensure Regina was never born and that she would be the one to cast the Dark Curse for Rumple; still not explaining how she’d get around the whole “she’d have to crush his heart to do it” factor which was why Rumple rejected her in favor of Regina in the first place. Oh, and both of these ladies are straight-up rapists, with Regina even murdering her rape victim.

So the problem with the Mills Sisters and their redemption is that it is totally dependent on them just...changing their established characters on a dime. In Season 3 and Season 5 respectively, they’re still not good people at the start but are suddenly psychologically stable and totally fine with working with the good guys in pursuit of a mutual goal. This makes them plausibly redeemable, but it also makes them wildly different characters than they were previously shown to be. The trick worked on many viewers, but it also failed on many others, or it worked in regards to one of them but not in regards to the other. For my money, I find redeemed Zelena to be more tolerable since didn’t backtrack as much nor was she rewarded for her redemption far beyond what she deserved, but both her and Regina were not the kinds of characters who could feasibly be redeemed in their initial two seasonal story arcs.

Rumpelstiltskin - PLAUSIBLE, BUT UNLIKELY.

From the beginning, many people said that contrary to Regina, Rumple was established in Season 1 as a character who would plausibly be redeemed. His backstory, certain character traits, and motivation for his role in the Dark Curse certainly made him more appealing than Regina. However, I never felt that plausibility meant that it was likely with Rumple. The whole point of his character seemed to be that yes, he could be a better man than he is, but he actively chooses not to be because he’s a selfish, power-hungry coward. And he was one even as a struggling peasant and single father, something he flat-out admits. Many people point to his desire to find his son and make amends with him as altruistic, but it really isn’t, especially when not only is he willing to do horrible things (the same kind of horrible things that drove his son away to begin with) to make it happen just to alleviate his own guilt, but he isn’t willing to achieve this goal without also working in a means for him to keep his power, which was what the whole True Love Potion thing was about. The best that Rumple could ever hope for was a Redemption Equals Death rather than a living, continuous redemption.

Oh, yeah. That happened.

Captain Hook - PLAUSIBLE AND LIKELY.

Killian Jones, aka Captain Hook, was introduced as a pirate with an honor code who then had his lover murdered in front of him and his hand chopped off for good measure. This drove him to become a ruthless, dishonorable seeker of vengeance, willing to stop at nothing to get what he wants and caring for no-one and nothing else. And the more we see of him, the more apparent it becomes that there is a deep well of self-loathing underneath the surface: it’s because he believes he’s a wretch doomed to both an unhappy life and an unhappy afterlife that he is able to shut off his conscience and honor and positive emotions. In his depressed, nihilistic worldview, nothing matters except getting his revenge and then dying to suffer the consequences of all the wrongs he’s committed in pursuit of it. And that perfectly sets up the question of what would happen if that worldview was challenged, and if he realized that happiness and salvation were still possible and that seeking revenge is what’s keeping him miserable? Answer: he’d feel remorse, stop doing evil, and commit himself to doing good.

Hook’s redemption is plausible and sensible because unlike the Mills Sisters, the object of his revenge is someone who actually wronged him, and the hurting of other people caught in the crossfire stems from a place of misery and self-loathing rather than from a sadistic sense of satisfaction from hurting others. And unlike Rumple, his redemption is likely because he’s not a coward, and his ruthless selfishness is a flaw we see him develop and can thus believe he can un-develop too rather than being a central component of his character from the start. Rumple stans point to him bullying peasant Rumple when the latter is pleading for his wife back in his formal introductory scene, which ignores that he gives Rumple the chance to fight honorably, doesn’t hurt him when he refuses and allows him to leave his ship totally unscathed, and later admits that if Rumple had just fought him he’d have let him talk it out with Milah. Him being kind of a jerk about it is because he’s a freaking pirate captain, it’s part of the job description. Hook is hands-down the least evil of the mainstay villains, and him joining the good guys and becoming the heroine’s love interest was an organic development.

[louiseleblancdiggory]

Once Upon a December

Chapter 3: It’s a Rumor, a Legend, a Mystery!

A/N: This chapter is a little small but has extremely important information, so I didn’t want to write too much and drown out the important parts. Please, if you want to be tagged/I forgot to tag you send me an ask instead of a comment, makes my life so much easier. Hope you all don’t hate this!

Chapter 2 // Chapter 4

Lin couldn’t help but stare at their dynamic.

Despite her initial statement that she had no interest in being close to them, she had to admit that the way they acted around each other gave her a longing feeling. It was the way she had once acted with Lysandra.

Like a family.

Even when discussing what they would do next, if they should leave Orynth immediately or wait a few days, Lin could see how at ease they were around each other. How easy it was for one of them to call the other out, how they kept bickering at each other. Even the ones that looked like complete opposites interacted in the way brothers would.

She was jealous. It was burning hot inside of her and some wretched part of her wanted to scream at them for acting like a loving family when her own family was probably suffering in Inish. She had to bite her tongue several times not to snap at the men.

“I believe that it would be wise to leave as soon as possible, but not tonight.” Gavriel said, always the voice of reason as Lin had quickly realized. He was the oldest one, but his mild behavior was probably what stopped him from being their leader. “It would attract too much attention a group of seven people leaving the capital during the night. You know how the officials are.”

Rowan merely grunted, and that might have been his way of agreement because the matter was settled after it.

“We leave tomorrow, then. Around lunch when it’s not too packed but also not too empty.” Lorcan replied, his arms crossed over his broad shoulders. His midnight black eyes fell upon Lin again and she rolled her eyes when a sneer appeared on his face. “Do you have a passport?”

“Do I look like someone who would have a passport?”

“Your parents never got you one?” His voice was full of suspicion, making Lin roll her eyes again.

“Do I look like someone who has parents?”

“Are you going to answer every single question with another question?”

“Does it bother you?” She asked sweetly, then smiling when Lorcan’s face contorted with anger. She said she would help them, not that she would be pleasant during it. But she also remembered that Lys’s fate depended on these men, so she sighed and added, “I lived my life in an Adarlanian orphanage. They barely bothered giving us names, the idea of an official passport is laughable.”

He nodded, something almost like understanding and empathy shining on his black eyes. “We can get you one. Not an official one, but it will do.” He turned to Gavriel and Rowan. “Go to Faliq and ask for an urgent passport for Lin…”

He looked at her and for the first time, her cheeks heated. “Sirota.”

Most of the kids in the orphanages came knowing their names and surnames. Very rarely an older child needed both a new name and last name, but in those cases they were simply given Sirota as the last name.

An orphan.

In the sense of it all, it was almost being nameless. Kids with the last name Sirota weren’t the kids who had lost everything and went to an orphanage or the ones who had been left there since the beginning. No, these were the kids found when older, the ones who had been abandoned. Problem children, all of them, Clarisse would say. As Lin didn’t remember if her parents had died, she was thrown into that group. Any kid in that piss poor orphanage had a small chance of being adopted, but Sirotas had absolutely zero.

“Moonbeam.” Fenrys said. Lin’s head snapped back to him, and he looked serious for the first time. “Blonde hair and tan skin, we can pass her as our younger sister. No one will believe a girl with the last name Sirota would have a passport, so make her our sister. Lin Moonbeam.”

She was too shocked to form any rational thought, so she only blurted out, “Your last name is fucking Moonbeam?”

Vaughan laughed out loud, and Fenrys gave her a knowing smile. “You weren’t that wrong when you called me wolfie earlier, sis.”

She looked at Connall, but he merely nodded.

And that was that.

———————————

“Which one?”

“What?”

“Which of the cities in the route you need to visit?” Vaughan explained. They were all sitting together in the train station lounging room. No one bothered to approach her, not with six sneering giants hanging around. They all played the role of older brothers just alright— any men or women who looked a little bit too long at Lin was met with the scary stare of her companions.

The cadre, she decided to call them. An easier way to refer to all six at the same time.

When Rowan and Gavriel came back the night before with her new fake passport, they had also brought new clothes for her. Whoever Faliq had been, she was obviously smaller and less curvy than Lin. The linen white shirt was tight around her breasts, and the long and yet simple brown skirt hugged her waist and hips almost uncomfortably. The skirt ended on her ankles, and she tied a thick leather belt around her middle. She was wearing her necklace, but the pendant was hidden inside her blouse.

“What the fuck is the leather thing for?” Fenrys had asked earlier, his brows furrowed.

“It adds form.” Lin answered defensively.

“More?” He replied, faking incredulity. Lin merely flipped him off and went to wait by the castle’s front as the rest of them finished cleaning up. She didn’t tell him that it was also an easy place to store knives and not get caught or hurt. She had two strapped to her right leg and one to her left, but raising the skirt would take too long and putting a knife between her breasts was a stupid idea. Hence the infernal thing around her waist.

“You look like a hot barmaid.” Connall said, being the first one to leave the castle and join her.

She looked him up and down. Grey dress pants, white button down, grey waistcoat and a black coat hanging from his shoulders, Connall looked like…

“You look like the rich brat that would spend hours trying to get the hot barmaid to go home with him.” She replied mildly and he smiled, handing her a leather brown jacket. She shrugged it on, hiding the belt. It was still chilly in Orynth, and the jacket made her feel better. She almost thanked Connall.

Now she was sitting besides Vaughan and Gavriel. The latter was reading a geography book, and Vaughan was just relaxing, asking her questions every now and then. Nothing too personal or invasive, just to kill some time. Lin had the impression that Gav and Vaughan had seated on her side so no one else from the cadre would. It was obvious that the other four didn’t possess Gavriel’s calm or Vaughan’s ability to be civilized.

“Why do you care which city I want to visit?” They had chosen a route with Inish in it, and Lin had almost cried in relief when she saw Lorcan paying for their tickets. There were other several cities in between Orynth and Inish, but Lin couldn’t care less. She was going to see Lysandra in little over a month. That’s all that mattered.

Vaughan shrugged but didn’t stop looking at her. Impulsively, she looked at Fenrys sitting in front of her. “What are you in for?”

“I beg your pardon?”

She rolled her eyes at his tone. “Why are you doing all of this?”

He rested against his seat. His hands rested on top of his stomach and he gave her a lazy smile. “For money, of course.”

She raise an eyebrow at Connall and Lorcan’s direction. Connall was the one who responded while Lorcan nodded. “Same as Fen.”

“Gavriel?” She turned to the older man by her side.

“Money, partially. There’s someone I need to visit in Banjali.” He said calmly, going back to his book.

Lin wisely ignored Rowan, trying to not look at him even though she could feel his gaze burning the left side of her face.

When Aelin turned to Vaughan, he was already watching her. He seemed to hesitate before answering, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Because Connall is going.”

Her brows furrowed in confusion, the frown deepening when she felt all six of them watching her. Fenrys was Connall’s brother, not Vaughan. Unless they were brothers of sort or… Her eyes fell upon the simple silver band on his finger. When she looked at Connall’s hand, a twin band lay there.

Lovers then. That explained why Vaughan watched her suspiciously, as if waiting to see her reaction to his marriage to Connall. She knew that that moment would decide how the rest of their interactions went.

“Being Fenrys’s brother-in-law sounds fucking miserable.” She said flatly. “At least you fell for the nicest Moonbeam.”

Vaughan relaxed and Connall grinned. Fenrys was pouting. “He’s the nicest Moonbeam?”

“He called me hot barmaid. You didn’t. That’s a point for him and none for you.”

“If you wanted me to be a basic asshole, all you had to do was ask, princess.”

For the first time since Lysandra had left the orphanage a year ago, Lin genuinely smiled. It was more of a grin, but it was a good feeling nonetheless. Smiling because someone was jokingly bickering with you.

“Time to dispatch the baggage.” Lorcan announced, standing up. As one, all of them stood up after him, even Lin. He looked directly at her, shaking his head. “During this trip, you are to be as unnoticeable as possible. A 5’8 woman lifting baggage with a bunch of enormous men isn’t exactly inconspicuous. Sit you’re ass down. You,” he pointed at Rowan, “stay with her.”

He turned and left before Rowan could complain. And judging by the look on his face, he was gonna complain a lot.

Alone with him, Lin couldn’t help but analyze his profile. Now that they were in an illuminated place, she could see that his skin was tanned, and that he had a long tattoo that sometimes showed up through his sleeve or the collar of his shirt. She could notice the slope of his mouth, the lines that made up his face. His eyes were of a deep pine green and were watching her as intently as she was watching him. She gave him a lazy smile and he clenched his hands.

“Why do I have the feeling you don’t like me very much, Mr. Whitethorn?”

“I don’t particularly care for you, lady Moonbeam.” His voice was cold and hard as he replied. He used her new surname considering that for the next month or so she was legally a Moonbeam. Well, kind of legally.

“And yet your face almost contorts with anger or disgust when you look at me. That doesn’t sound like indifference to me.” Lin didn’t know why she cared. She had said herself she didn’t want friendship with these men, but something about Rowan’s dislike of her bothered her infinitely.

He crossed his arms, eyes never leaving her face. He looked at her as if she was a puzzle he couldn’t understand and hated himself for even trying. “Have you been staring at me to know my expressions, lady?”

“You do certainly have a pretty face, Whitethorn, so I don’t see the harm at staring.” Her words left her mouth before she could even consider them. They were dripping with sarcasm and venom, and she knew he had picked on the tone when his jaw clenched. Although she liked to believe she was above petty fights, she was also glad to see she could get under Rowan’s skin.

“You enjoy hearing yourself talk, don’t you?”

“Do you enjoy hearing me talk?”

He had already opened his mouth to respond when a woman approached them, her heels clinking on the wooden floor. Slowly, Rowan and Lin tore their gazes from each other to look at the woman now standing by them. She was a pretty thing. Small, pale skin and dark brown curls, she looked like a doll. Her chestnut eyes were going back and forth between Rowan and Lin.

“Rowan.” Was all she said, her accent sounding a little like his but washed down by years living in Terrasen. “Who is this?”

“Lyria.” Was all he said.

Lin just stared at the two of them. The silence got so uncomfortable that she shifted on her seat, careful not to wake Fleetfoot sleeping by her feet.

When she realized Rowan wasn’t on the mood for talking, something Lin felt that was his usual mood, the woman turned to her.

“You are?” She asked, her tone rude and impatient.

“Lin.” She answered, laying her hand on her lap. “And you would be?”

“Lyria. Rowan must have mentioned me before.” Lyria raised her chin, looking down at Lin. The gesture was so Clarisse-like that Lin wanted to get up and beat the pretty girl.

“Actually, no.” She didn’t add that she only knew Rowan for a day. Judging by how Rowan relaxed slightly, it was the correct answer.

“In what can we help you, Lyria?” Rowan sighed, crossing one ankle over the other. If with Lin he seemed secretly enraged, with Lyria he only seemed tired.

“Your Majesty heard that you and your troupe would be leaving the city and asked me to come see if it was true. And why. You know how Maeve can be, especially after she has asked you so many times to join her inner circle.”

“We are going on vacations.” Rowan gave her a fake smile. “To celebrate.”

“And what would you be celebrating?”

“My eighteenth birthday.” Lin butted in and Lyria and Rowan’s head snapped back to her. “It was a few weeks ago but I was visiting my aunt Clarisse in Adarlan so unfortunately we couldn’t celebrate together. The boys were kind enough to give me a belated present. Isn’t that right, Ro?”

He seemed amused. “Yes. Lin has been a friend for a while now and we didn’t want such an important date to go unnoticed.”

Lyria stared at the two of them silently. Lin honestly thought she was going to ask for more information, but the girl merely walked to her side and sat down where Gavriel had been. Rowan’s features were washed in confusion as Lyria got close to Lin’s ear.

“He can’t love anyone.” Lyria whispered, her voice now empathetic and lovely. Lin was so shocked by her words that she couldn’t move. “I know, I’ve been there. There is something always holding Rowan back. Don’t break your heart because of him.”

Lin then looked at Lyria, and for a moment the girl smiled sadly. Only for a second before that cool mask slipped on again. She got up, nodding goodbye to Rowan and looking at Lin one more time. “If you choose to ignore what I said, I hope you are luckier.”

“What did she say?” Rowan asked as Lin stared at Lyria leaving the station. Lin had absolutely no feelings or attraction towards Rowan, but she couldn’t help but be intrigued by what Lyria had said. Couldn’t help but wonder if Rowan was actually incapable of loving or if his relationship with Lyria just hadn’t worked out. She looked back at him, his existence becoming an enigma Lin’s body was aching to understand.

“That you are a miserable fuck.”

Rowan opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted again by the rest of the cadre coming back. This time, Fenrys plopped down by her side and put an arm behind her. “Ready to go on an adventure, firedrake?”

She snorted, crossing her arms. “Born ready, wolfie.”

———————————

Rowan hated that dog.

He was usually fine around animals, but Fleetfoot seemed to be a little too similar to her owner and had taken a deep dislike on him. They were in one of their cabins inside the train, and he started putting his luggage on the compartment above the seats. However, when he want to sit down on his spot, the dog remained laying there lazily. He motioned to grab her, but she only growled deeply and he wasn’t on the mood to fight with a dog.

He was too busy thinking about Lyria’s appearance to bother anyways. Rowan had dated her for years during his adolescence. She had been funny and lovely and everything Rowan needed at the time. When she said she started working at the palace, Rowan was genuinely happy that she was finally leaving the streets of Orynth to live in the servant’s quarters. In the beginning, everything was fine, but then she started getting more distant, asking more and more of Rowan as she gave him less and less. And then when she was promoted to Maeve’s little inner circle, dating her became impossible. She was always trying to convince Rowan and the others to join Maeve. Every single one of his friends had their reservations about the conqueror queen on the throne, but Lyria should know that he had many reasons not to join that bitch’s reign. Rowan had no interest in helping the woman who had destroyed his life and the lives of the people he loved. Lyria’s blind loyalty to Maeve and Rowan’s complete hate for her was what finally broke the relationship.

Every now and then Lyria would pop up at the apartment he shared with the other five guys, asking them once more if they wanted to join Maeve’s forces. The answer had always been no, but that didn’t stop her from coming back again and again with the same words. Earlier that day when Lyria looked almost curiously at Lin, his stomach had turned.

Lyria’s appearance had unsettled him, and the presence of the woman he was now forced to sit next to unnerved him to no end. She had a mouth too big and a face too pretty and alluring for her own good. For their good.

Lin was splotched against the leather seat, playing with the little pendant from her necklace. It was small enough that Rowan could barely make out what it was, but it looked like a series of overlapping circles. He knew he should just leave her the hell alone, but he found himself saying, “Stop fidgeting with that thing and sit up straight.” Her eyes turned to him and narrowed, making the gold in the center stand out more. “Remember, you’re a princess.”

His last words were filled with sarcasm and there was no way Lin hadn’t picked up on the tone. “And how do you know what princesses do or don’t do?”

He gave her a sarcastic smile. “I make it my business to know.”

“Oh.” She replied, sitting up straighter. She batted her eyelashes at him and Rowan heard Fenrys and Vaughan coughing. “Rowan, do you really think I’m royalty?”

Her voice was filled with mocking, and Rowan clenched his hands as he replied her sarcasm with sarcasm of his own. “You know I do, Aelin.”

“Then stop bossing me around!” She grunted and turned her face to the windows. He heard the others raising a hand to put over their mouths or simply coughing again to mask their laughter. Even Gav reacted at that, marking something on his little journal with a humorous smile on his face.

“She certainly has a mind of her own.” Lorcan murmured, looking at Rowan.

“Yeah,” Rowan said mildly. “Hate that in a woman.”

Lin turned her face back to him to show him her tongue. He had to bite his own so he wouldn’t imitate the gesture. For fuck’s sake, this woman acted like she was five and made him act as if he was five.

“This is going to be a long month.” Vaughan said, looking as if he had found his new source of entertainment. His arm was around Connall’s shoulders and both men were smiling at Rowan like fiends.

“I think I rather like you, firedrake.” Fen said, earning a middle finger from Lin. At least she didn’t dislike only Rowan.

The thought almost made him smile.

——————————————

Lysandra Ennar hated that pub.

She hated the strong smell of cheap ale, the sweat of the bodies of the people mingling around, the terrible music coming from one of the corners of the room.

She had been here for a year and wasn’t even close to paying her debts. Differently from the orphanage where she would have left at eighteen, here Lysandra had to buy her freedom.

And her freedom costed a fucking lot.

Just thinking about it made her throat constrict, and she had to hold her apron a little bit tightly to keep the tears at bay. She wanted to be enjoying the beginning of summer with Lin in Adarlan. Wanted to be with her best friend while they stole alcohol from carts in the market and then drank their asses off.

She missed Lin greatly. Being taken away from her had been like losing a sister, and everyday Lys planned a way of finding her again even if she still didn’t even know how to free herself.

Her mind was wandering to a place where she and Lin lived in peace. A place where maybe both of them would have normal jobs and would find normal loves, maybe even getting married to them in the future. Lys would be Lin’s maid of honor and Lin would be Lys’s. They would be normal girls living perfectly normal lives.

Her daydream was interrupted by a cloaked man sitting on one of the stools by the bar. Differently from everyone else in this hellhole, this one seemed to have money. Tons of it, judging by the fine material of his cloak and the bejeweled dagger by his side. He sat up straight, and Lys felt his shadowed face analyzing her and then the rest of the room. He shrugged to himself and took off his hood.

Lysandra’s jaw literally fell. She took in the golden hair, the sharp jawline and high cheekbones. She took in the nose and the brows and his mouth. And then her gaze landed on the turquoise and golden eyes watching her.

“Holy fucking shit. What the hell?” She breathed at the man who sat in front of her.

The man who looked so much like Lin that they could be twins.

Tags:

@morganofthewildfire​ @alyx801​ @ladywitchling​ @westofmoon​ @rolltide7​ @queen-of-glass​ @alifletcher2012​ @rattlethestarsdarling​ @rowanisahunk​ @bilkul-sharam-nahi-aati​ @faerie-queen-fireheart​ @sweetlyvillainous​ @chemicha​ @jlinez​ @in-love-with-caramel-macchiato​ @abookishfreak​ @courtofjurdan​ @acourtofglass​ @maastrash​ @aelinfeyreeleven945tbln​ 

[whattimeisitintokyo]

Somos Familia Ch 45: Shantytown

The flight wasn’t a long one given how surprisingly fast Frangipani was able to fly, and soon she descended down upon an ancient Aztec pyramid. Unlike the rest of the city, with its dazzling lights and colors, the pyramid was cold and void of anything magical. Pieces had chipped and crumbled off and there was an ominous presence in the air. For the first time since coming to the Land of the Dead, Héctor finally felt like he was in a place of devoid of life.

In a show of good grace Frangipani did not let Héctor make a fool of himself by trying to climb down her side since it was such a hassle getting up. Instead she slowly shrank herself like a deflating balloon until she was the size of housecat, prancing off between his and Leti’s legs with Dante happily trailing after and barking at his friend. Héctor was grateful for that, but Frangipani’s large mass had done it’s damage and he was left with a huge case of saddle soreness. He wobbled around bowlegged trying to work out the kinks in his legs, wincing and hissing with each step.

Hearing Leti giggle at his predicament, Héctor gave her a playful glare. “Don’t laugh. I’ve got old bones.”

Leti shook her head with a smile. “You’ve got old muscles. Once we get down to Shantytown, then you’ll really see some old bones.”

“Shantytown, eh?” Héctor asked warily, stretching his leg out one final time as he peered down into the dark shadows below. He could hear water splashing faintly against the rocks and could already smell the mildew from all the way up top. He raised an eyebrow at her. “Ernesto is down there?”

“Uh huh!” Leti nodded, “Every Dia de Muertos Tio Nesto always gives a portion of his offerings to the people of Shantytown. And he always makes a grand speech and visits with everyone. He’s definitely down there!”

Héctor remembered well how he could usually tell that his daughter was lying. She would always talk extra brightly, smile just a little too widely. This time was no exception, and her new skeletal grin just made her smile wore wider. Or rather, this time it was like a lie mixed with the truth. Apparently this would be something Ernesto would do; he was sometimes charitable in life. Not as much as he and Imelda were, but for Ernesto each charitable moment was a triumph in his opinion.

“Okay.” Héctor nodded, grimacing again at the bleak murkiness below. “Seems kind of shady though.”

“Oh, I’ve been here loads of times, Papá.” Leti reassured him. “It may look scary and depressing… well it is depressing, but the people here are more friendly than anyone else. You’ll see. And we’ll get down that way.”

Héctor looked over to where she was pointing and gave a soft ‘huh’ in surprise. There, situated at the top of this ancient pyramid, was an escalator. It stood out against it’s surrounding so badly that Héctor felt stupid for not noticing it sooner. Seeing her father’s confusion Leti explained. “Oh, Tio Nesto had that installed a few years ago. Comes in handy, especially those with brittle bones.”

Héctor was puzzled. “You can still get brittle bones after you’re dead?”

“Oh sure.” Leti said. “Brittle, broken, ground to powder, stolen, misplaced. Just depends on how long you’ve been dead of if you are being forgotten. But anyway, the escalator helps those kind of people in need. Come on!”

All four of them walked toward the top of the moving staircase, Frangipani shrinking even more to her initial tiny size before plopping down onto Leti’s shoulder. Before Leti could reach for the handrail, however, a high-pitched whine stopped them. Turning back around they saw Dante sitting several feet away from them, head lowered and eyes looking pitifully afraid. A click of the tongue could not get him to budge, nor did the gently nudge from behind when Héctor went to fetch him. Dante just kept looking wide-eyed at the grinding metal plates before him, just waiting to slice of sensitive pads of the feet.

“Aww, he’s afraid of the escalator Papá.” Leti cooed, and even Frangipani gave a simpering little toot of compassion. “Looks like you’re going to have to carry him the whole way down.”

“Wha-?” Héctor started to protest, but three pairs of huge pouting eyes stopped him from saying anymore. With a groan of disgust he reached down to pick up Dante, difficult to do due his bony limbs and squirming body, but finally was able to hold him in an awkward spooning position. “Happy now, pelón?” he asked, and his answer was a happy slurp across the cheek.

It must have been a sight to see: A guitar-wielding old man carrying a dog like a small child, while with his skeleton daughter had an elephant on her shoulder, all riding down an escalator in awkward silence. It actually was pretty funny of one thought about it. Luckily, no one was there to see them, at least until midway down the giant pyramid. On the opposite escalator going up Héctor could see two figures emerging from the mist. Leti did too and with a gasp of surprise she started to wave. “Mama Chavela! Mama Rocío! Como estas?!”

“Hola, nieta!”

As the two parties drew closer together, Héctor saw that they were two skeletal old ladies. Both were dressed in faded gowns that looks as though they had been patched and mended several times over the years. Both were holding two baskets each that were overflowing with breads, fruits and vegetables and one lady had a small guitar strapped to her back.

Even closer still Héctor could see that these ladies were not like the skeletons he had already seen. Instead of the clean pearly white bones he had come accustomed to, these bones were dull and gray. And, just like Leti had said before, some places were chipped off and scratched. One woman even had part on her jaw broken off and held in place with a strand of wire. Héctor was slightly taken aback by the ladies run down looks, but Leti paid them no mind.

“Looks like you both got a good haul this year!” she said.

“Oh yes! We’re on our way to the trade show right now while the good items are still out.” One of the ladies said, shifting the baskets onto her hipbones for more support.

“Who’s your handsome young friend, Leticia?” The other asked.

“This is my Papá! He’s been cursed and we need to get a blessing from Tio Nesto or else he’ll die at sunrise.”

“Oh that’s nice dear.”

“Have fun tonight!”

“Adios!” Leti waved them goodbye as they finally passed each other up. Continuing down on their journey, Leti shrugged a little. “They’re a little batty, but still very nice. And Mama Rocío makes the best Shantytown ponche for Los Posadas.”

“Why did they call you nieta?” Héctor asked.

“Oh, heh. It’s just a term of endearment.” Leti said. “See, Shantytown is full of the nearly forgotten. They have no family, no ofrendas, no homes. So they all bundled together and made their own family with each other. And I’m an honorary member since I’m not forgotten yet, but I come here all the time.”

“So those ladies looked like that because they’re nearly forgotten.”

“Si. This whole place runs on memories, Papá. The more well remembered you are the longer you get to stay here. But, in the end, if no one remembers you… You just… go…”

The way Leti trailed off, so sad all of a sudden, didn’t sit well with Héctor at all. In fact he was starting to grow afraid. “Go where?” he was hesitant to ask.

“No one knows.” she said. “It’s called the Final Death.”

“Wait a minute! You can die again?!” Héctor was appalled. “No! I… I couldn’t watch you die again! I can’t.”

“Everyone gets forgotten eventually, Papá.” Leti reassured, and then actually had the nerve to get a little cocky. “Besides, I’m the tragic daughter lost from one of the richest families in Mexico. I’ll stick around for a while yet.”

It didn’t seem to make sense to Héctor at all, the way everyone was so nonchalant about the fact that they were dead and could die again at the drop of a hat. Even his own daughter was making jokes about it. If he were the one on the verge of being forgotten he would be an inconsolable mess, probably unable to do anything other than curl up in a ball and wait for the inevitable.

But as they reached the end of the escalator he was surprised to see that Shantytown didn’t look like the wretched, miserable place that it looked from above the mists. There was loud music playing, unfortunately, and laughter and all other sorts of rabble. Behind the giant stone arch there were bright lights shining through and Héctor could see papel picado hung up. Confetti and golden flower petals were strewn about all over the ground.

And there was one other thing.

Shantytown actually looked… nice.

It was on the water, which explained the musky smell, but the houses there were less like shanties and more like riverside condos. Several floors high and stacked as haphazardly as every other building in this realm, but much more sturdy. All painted a warm brown color and with beautiful murals on every other wall, high archways and clean clay tiles on the roofs.

The was a walkway that wove through the water and connected all of the houses together, made out of concrete and cobblestones with lamps illuminating the way down. All in all it looked like a very nice place to live and a realtor’s dream location.

Again, Héctor was confused. “Uh… Shanty-town?”

Leti nodded. “Yeah, the name has stuck but believe me that this place was worse years ago. Rotting wood and pallets, rusted sheet metal, garbage everywhere. It was a terrible place to spend the last few days before the Final Death. But Tio Nesto got several other celebrities and wealthy citizens to pitch in and completely remodel the place!”

“It’s very nice.” Héctor admitted as he put Dante down on the ground. As he released him Héctor grimaced when he looked at his hands. The were completely skeletal now and reaching well past the wrist.

Leti smiled appreciatively, but then sniffed the air like a snob. “Well, I still say it’s a work in progress.” And Héctor laughed at that.

Several skeletons wandered all over it, going to neighbors houses with arms full of the same offerings as the two old ladies. They all seemed to be converging onto one spot in the middle of town, though. It was a much larger area, but still too small to be considered a plaza, but big enough to hold a huge pile of offerings stacked as high as some of the buildings. An absolute mammoth amount of bread, vegetables and fruits, cooked meats and musical instruments piled in a somewhat strategic manner so that it didn’t topple into the water below. But it was clear that it had been slowly picked away as the minutes passed, and currently there were around a dozen other Shantytown skeletons situated around it passing out offerings.

“Oye, Paola. I managed to save you some grapefruit this time. I know you missed out on them last year.”

“Three guitars? What are you trying to do, Primo? Start a band? Have some more food instead.”

“Señor de la Cruz must hate bananas because we’ve got tons of them! Caramelize ‘em, mash ‘em, make ‘em into bread. A very versatile fruit, c’mon don’t be shy!”

‘He does hate bananas’ Héctor thought with a wry grin. ‘No wonder he’d give them all away-… Wait.’

“This is a lot of offerings.” Héctor said as he watched a small boy tuck in eagerly to the shiny red apple that was atop his own pile of goodies. “I’m surprised he’d just give it all away.”

“Nah, just a tiny bit.” Leti said. “But, in Tio Nesto’s case, a tiny bit means an entire mountain! Speaking of… Oye, Tío Jaime!”

One of the skeletons handing out offerings, who was no older than twenty but looked like he had osteoporosis in every visible bone, smiled as Leti came up to him. “Hola, Leti. You’re here awful early tonight. Did you already visit your family?”

“Si, but not as long as I would have liked. As you can see…” She gestured to Héctor, and when Jaime looked towards him his eyes bugged out a little. “…I have a bit of a problem.”

“Santa Maria…” Jaime breathed out, and soon every skeleton was looking at Héctor again astonishment. A couple of jaws even fell off and splashed into the water. Héctor just cringed out a smile and waved to them all. “Espera… Is that Héctor Rivera? Your papá?”

Leti walked to Héctor and grabbed him by the wrist to hold his hand up as high as she could, showing off the shiny white bones that were exposed. “My papá has been cursed, and he needs a blessing from Tio Nesto before sunrise. Is he still here?”

Jaime winced and shrugged his shoulder, making an unsettling crack and pop at the slight movement. “Sorry, Leti. He was here, but after he presented us with his offerings he left. That was about half an hour ago, so he’s probably off to the party at his mansion.”

Héctor felt his chest sink at the thought that the trip to Shantytown had been a complete waste of time and now he was more cursed than before. Rolling up his sleeve he groaned at the sight of his ulna and radius making an unwelcome appearance. Bending down to Leti’s height he whispered into her phantom ear. “Mija, the curse is spreading pretty quickly. Maybe we ought to hurry things up and-”

“Well shucks!” Leti placed her hands onto her hips and comically pouted. “Looks like he’s gone already! Isn’t that just the luck? Phooey!” Then she looked up and gave Héctor a cloyingly sweet smile with too many teeth. “Before we go though, can we go see a friend of mine?”

Héctor blinked in confusion, then held out his bare arm for Leti to see. “Leticia, I don’t have time to see anyone else. I need to see Ernesto.”

Grabbing his hand and already starting to tug him away from the pile, Leti just waved him off. “Sunrise isn’t for another five and a half hours, and this will only take a few minutes. While we’re here we might as well make the most of it. Kill two birds with one stone, si?

“Two birds? What’s the second bird? Wait a moment! Leticia!”

Despite the dangerous nature of the situation Héctor let himself be dragged a ways by Leti as well as pushed by Dante and Frangipani. Maybe it was because he had just been reunited with his long dead daughter and could refuse her nothing at the moment. Maybe he was slightly curious to see what other new discovery awaited him in this new and exciting environment. But the real reason, probably, was because Héctor was somewhat desperate for any excuse to not see Ernesto as soon as possible. He didn’t want to think what would happen if he did lay eyes on him.

As they continued on Héctor could see where the restoration of Shantytown had stopped. The pristine building transitioned to scaffolding, paint buckets and blocks of concrete with yellow warning tape wrapped around it. All abandoned in favor of the holiday, Héctor presumed.

And past that was the slum that Héctor had in mind.

It was just as Leti had said: Rotting wood and rusted metal. The only thing that had been completed and stood out like a sour thumb was the walkway they were on, but even then the shanties were connected to it by moldy, broken planks. Leti just shrugged up at Héctor. “I told you it was a work in progress.”

With a skip and a wobbly jump they all made it into one such shanty, Leti knocking on the wooden wall and pulling open a moth-eaten blanket that served as a divider to the one room home.

“Buenas noches, Nieve! I thought I might find you here!”

“Of course you found me here.” A sullen female voice said. “Where else would I be?”

Holding up one finger to tell Héctor to wait there, Leti walked further in with a giggle. “Well, you could be out there getting some of Tio Nesto’s offerings. You’d better hurry before all the grapes are gone. You love grapes.”

Now Héctor was really curious as to see who his daughter was talking to and why. Staying put he carefully pulled back the curtain slightly to peek out. Standing there with Leti was another young girl, a teenage one at that, standing by an open window looking out. She was wearing a tattered blue shirt, a gray skirt and a dingy straw hat. She was barefoot and a little dirty, but Héctor noticed that she didn’t seem as run down as everyone else in Shantytown. Her bones were still a nice cream color.

But her eyes. They looked so sad and angry all at once. And they held a wisdom in them that only came with either a rough life or, given her young stature the passage of time. Héctor knew that he was really looking at an old soul. An elderly woman trapped in the body of a child. She had been dead for quite a while.

“I don’t want any of that stuff, I just want to be alone tonight.” the girl, Nieve apparently, said. “Why are you here anyway? Why aren’t you with your family?”

Leti shuffled her shoes against the dirty floorboards and smiled. “Oh you know, some stuff happened. One thing led to another, that sort of thing. But I get it: You don’t want any of Tio Nesto’s offerings. But it is Dia de Muertos, and everyone deserves a little something, sooo… I brought you an offering of my own!”

Nieve then turned to her, and Héctor saw her look at Leti in anger. “You didn’t go to my ofrenda, did you? I told you I want nothing to do with that man or anything else he gives me.”

‘Ah, so that’s why she’s different.’ Héctor thought. ‘She’s not being forgotten. But then… why is she here?’

“No, no!” Leti reassured her. “I would never do that to you! No, but my offering is a man. Someone I know you’ve been dying to meet for years, figuratively speaking.” Walking back to the curtain Leti pulled it aside to show Héctor in full form. “Okay, you can come in now.”

Héctor walked slowly, not wanting to shock the poor girl with the sight of a living, fleshed out man. Nieve was slightly taken aback by his appearance at first, but then recognition kicked in and the girl’s eyes widened. She just stared at him in shock, not saying a word. Héctor shifted the guitar on his back awkwardly and gave a small grin. “Hola.”

She still said nothing. Just stared at him some more in amazement and a little fear.

“Nieve, let me introduce you to my Papá, Héctor Rivera.” Leti said as she pulled Héctor closer to Nieve. “Papá, this is Nieve Mendoza, and she is a very close friend of mine! And she’s always asking about you constantly!”

“Oh, I see.” “Héctor said. “Are you a fan?”

That seemed to jumpstart Nieve’s brain, and she croaked out. “N-no, I’m just… are you dead?”

“Nope, just cursed!” Leti said. “We have to get Tio Nesto’s blessing but sunrise or else he’ll be stuck here.” Raising up Héctor’s wrist again, she showed Nieve his bony hand. “See?”

Anger came back full force and Nieve hissed out, “You idiot! He’s on a timeclock and you waste his time by coming here. You need to get him to de la Cruz now before it’s too late!”

Leti was crushed. “But I thought you said you wanted to see him as soon as got here! Well now he’s here!”

“Never mind what I want! He needs to get a blessing now! So get out, both of you!”

“But don’t you want to talk to him?”

“No! I don’t!”

“Please, Abuelita! He’s your-”

“BASTA!”

……..

……..

There was a silence that hung heavy in the air now, both girls panting softly and both looking at Héctor with trepidation. Héctor was now shocked into silence, his mind not quite working out what was happening in such a short amount of time. Nieve pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed harshly. “Leticia…”

“I’m so sorry, Nieve!” Leti said. “I didn’t mean to call you Abuelita. It just slipped out!”

Nieve glared hard at Leti. “Oh really? Because this is the first time in twenty years that you have ever called me Abuelita.”

“Oh, is it? Well then… oops?” Leti smiled widely, in that way Héctor remembered she used to do when caught in a lie.

“You little…” Nieve growled.

“Another term of endearment, mija?” Héctor asked.

Both girls looked at him, and Héctor grinned nervously. “Th-that’s what that was right? Because everyone in Shantytown is just one big family with different rolls and such… And it’s funny! Because you called her your grandmother even though she’s so young, right? I mean… Why else would you call her… that?”

Nieve didn’t look him in the eye anymore, couldn’t. She just stared down at the floor, looking sad and thoroughly ashamed. Leti bit her bottom lip and also couldn’t meet his eyes. Héctor still felt the smile on his face, but he could also feel the blood draining from it too. And suddenly it was hard to breathe.

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Leti whispered and rushed out of the shanty as fast as she could.

Héctor didn’t even notice. He just kept staring at this young girl in front of him, looking at every detail of her face to find… he didn’t exactly know what. Similarities? It was hard since she didn’t have any skin to look for dimples or curves of lips or anything like that.

She did have sharp cheekbones, though. Just like he did…

Finally Nieve looked up at him, her features schooled into a more neutral expression. Bending down she picked up an old wooden crate, walked over to him, and set it down in front of him. Then she turned back to the window and leaned against the railing. The exact same position that he first saw her in.

“Have a seat…”