#it only got done bc i finally finished dishonored

[thatmistersguy]

and i’ll get you, i’ll get you yet!

inspired by mx sinister by idkhow... love me a two-way weird-ass stalker relationship. version w/o text and no overlay redd below

[gloryblooded]

with a gif of achilles/austin being a major mood ( i mean, who doesn’t want to nap all the time ? ), i hope to catch your attention & say HELLO !   i’m hanna, i’m 22, and i use she/her pronouns! i’m a hufflepuff, a libra, and ISFJ ( what a shocking combo, i know ). anyway, over here i’ll be playing everyone’s favorite disaster hero, achilles, and his new mortal self, austin pelham. i’m so excited for this group and getting to write & plot with all of you. 

anyway, below the cut you’ll find some info about both achilles and austin ! it got kinda lengthy ( especially achilles’ part ) + it’s messily written. sdfsfdsdhsfbh im truly sry about that & pls still love us.

ACHILLES.

disclaimer: i’ve utilized several sources to form my portrayal of achilles, namely the iliad and the song of achilles. i have not read the pjo books, but i googled achilles’ role in it & i’ll incorporate that to my characterization to the best of my abilities.

so, achilles. a son of peleus, a king, and thetis, a nereid. boy was destined for greatness long before he was even conceived; great enough that the gods chose to dilute it by giving thetis to a mortal man. despite this, his destiny was to still become the greatest warrior of his generation. thetis, wanting to further protect him, dipped him in the river styx and boom, the powers of almost complete invulnerability ( except that one heel ) were achilles’. 

his childhood was actually quite lonely? sure, he had peleus’ orphan boys to keep him company & plenty of admirers, but there was always a certain distance between them, especially he had separate, private lessons. that is until a certain awkward young prince arrived in peleus’ court. achilles was instantly smitten ( a shoutout to that time when he became that ‘g2g chicken’ meme after their first kiss ) and this feeling just became stronger through the years as they studied under chiron’s tutelage at mount pelion. 

AND THAT’S IT. NOTHING HAPPENED AFTER THAT. ACHILLES GOT HIS HAPPY ENDING.

just kidding. unfortunately :sob emoji:

tHEN PARIS HAD TO DO HIS THING AND RUIN ACHILLES’ HAPPINESS ( thanks a lot dude ). the war started and, despite the ordeal with thetis where achilles was yeeted to lycodemes’ court & ended up knocking up deidamia, he was off to fight in the trojan war ( with his emotional support philtatos right by his side ).

during his years there, he does his thing. he fights, kills more trojans and their allies than anyone else, is a great leader to his men, and spends his free time with his boyfriend. also i wanted to add that he was not as hostile toward briseis as he was in tsoa. like, ofc they weren’t as close as patrochilles or pat and bri, but he wasn’t as jealous as implied in tsoa. 

anyway, now we’re getting closer to that period of time. stuff goes fairly normally, but then aging meninist ( idk how to spell his name & im too lazy to look it up, but u know who i mean ) decides to dishonor him by unlawfully taking briseis from him. and oh boy, do we get to see achilles’ non-chill side. victim-playing & stubborn spite game is strong af. someone tries to reason with him? he becomes that ‘i suddenly can’t read i don’t know’ gif. 

anyway, shit turns bad enough that he eventually, although reluctantly, consents to patroclus donning his armor and leading the myrmidons out there. that obvs ends super badly and achilles, true to himself, reacts even worse. he goes ballistic and even fights a river before he finally gets what he wants --- hector dead. after that, he stops caring. he fights, sure, but every single time he wishes his death would come. death eludes him for a while after that, and when it finally arrives & that arrow lodges itself in his heel, achilles vc: finally some good fucking food.

except sike, not ! his bitchass of a son delays the reunion he’s been yearning for. achilles curses him & 100% disowns him because he dared to disrespect his final wish. bUT EVENTUALLY HIS PERSON ARRIVED AND ACHILLES WAS SO !!!!!!!!!!!! BECAUSE ALL WAS FINALLY GOOD. achilles got a good dose of positive character development bc he realizes the error of his ways when he was alive, but most importantly, he never had to part with his one true love.

until the gods got themselves into another mess & dragged other, innocent people with them. smh ( uncle sam and/or the gods better square up when achilles regains his memories bc how dare they interrupt his lovely afterlife with pat!!!! )

AUSTIN.

so, enter the man achilles thinks he now is: austin pelham. his full name is austin alexander pelham-niarchos, but for the sake of simplicity, he goes by austin pelham most days. he is the only child of us army general & greek heiress to a shipping empire. not really a happy marriage, but they wouldn’t divorce either. both adored austin, though, so the boy didn’t pay too much attention to his parents’ marital struggles.

austin’s future was laid out from a young age too. he was to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an army official as well, possibly one of the greatest this nation had ever seen. considering his natural athleticism and gift for commanding crowds, it seemed a feasible future path & austin himself accepted it without complaining.

however, he was a mere kid when all this was told to him, so he couldn’t be too bothered. sure, he excelled in school ( his mother insisted he should only attend the best institutions ), but mostly he enjoyed the perks that came with having been born to a lap of such luxury. 

contrary to popular belief, austin had basically no true friends; sycophants and other admirers, yes, but no one he truly bonded with. he wouldn’t have minded finding such person, but they never came along & that was fine with austin. he was independent enough to “survive alone.”

so years have gone by, manhattan’s boy king has graduated from harvard with a degree in history, and it’s time for him to join the army, right? sike, no ! austin’s mother had never been particularly enthusiastic about the idea of her son joining the army & possibly getting killed in action, but this is the first time she has a major argument with her husband about it. 

before he could do anything about it, she made her move. she used her connections to get him his movie role and manipulated austin by telling him that if he were to abandon his military plans & pursue a career as an actor, he could achieve more fame than he had ever dreamed of. austin, being a trusting person, had no reason to believe otherwise, so he accepted his mother’s offer and began working as an actor.

and what a rise to stardom it was. after his role, he got more and more offers, most of which were action / war films. austin did not mind being known as an action star; those were his favorite type of movies to film anyway. recently he finished filming what is supposed to be next spring’s ( & year’s ) biggest blockbuster and now relocated back to new york city where he plans to stay for a few months at least.

personality wise, i’d say he is most similar to pre-trojan war achilles ( when he’s at mt. pelion & lycodemes’ court ). he still has that certain brand of innocence to him and fairly easy to manipulate if you know where to strike. however, he has earned a reputation of being somewhat challenging to work with ( he knows what he wants / how he wants something done & isn’t afraid to demand this respect ). this hasn’t tamed the constant flow of work offers, though, because a) he has a way with the crowd, so fans love him, b) money is guaranteed due to his large crowd of followers, and c) he always gets the job done when he sets his mind to it. slightly more prone to making bad decisions, since he doesn’t have his impulse control person. austin is often up for a good time, though, and an evening with him won’t be a boring one.

AND THAT’S ABOUT IT, I THINK ! I DON’T YET HAVE A CONNECTIONS PAGE UP, BUT I’LL START WORKING ON IT ASAP. IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS, FEEL FREE TO MSG ME BECAUSE I’M UP FOR P MUCH WHATEVER. I’LL DO MY BEST TO COME UP WITH IDEAS MYSELF & MSG YOU LOVELY PEOPLE! ugh im so excited for this group!!

[awashsquid]

If you’re wondering how long this is going to end up being, the answer is...I don’t know.  I’m writing this as a character-based piece, meaning that I don’t have a comprehensive outline of the plot, and I’m kind of figuring it out as I go based on the characters.  This marks over 10,000 words for this piece, HOLY SHIT Y’ALL.

Here’s the pieces before this. Also, there are some specific trigger warnings for this chapter: they are spoilers, and so I’m putting them in the tags, so please scroll through those if you need a heads-up.

“May I join you?”

Ami was startled out of reading Einstein’s theory of relativity for perhaps the hundredth time (but this time in the original German, just in case the translations to Japanese and English she had read had left out some detail, a small mistranslation that could mean everything) by the warm, low voice.

“Setsuna!  Of course you can.”  Setsuna dipped her head slightly in thanks before sliding into the booth across from her, primly placing her teacup in a small opening where the surface was not covered by research.  “I’ve just been doing some reading.”  She smiled weakly, realizing the mass understatement.

“Yes, I see that.” Her eyes darkened as she scanned over the book titles and notes in front of her, picking up a piece of paper covered in complex equations before gently setting it back down.  She shook her head lightly.  “Ami.  You need to stop this.”

“I’m just doing some research.”  The smile plastered onto her face felt thick and stiff, water slowly forming into ice.

Setsuna’s eyes became sharp and hardened as though she was back on the battlefield.  “Is that truly all?”  She shook her head slightly, olive hair rippling with the movement, and she delicately picked up her teacup to take a sip.  “I don’t believe you.”

The iced-over smile melted with the sudden flush of hot blood that rushed to her cheeks.  “I’m just -” she cut herself off before she lied again, knowing it would do no good “- I’m just seeing if there’s anything that I can do.  That we can do.”  She had hoped that the emphasis of their unity would spur Setsuna into helping her cause, but her face remained impassive, and she said nothing.

Ami found that she couldn’t stop her thoughts from tumbling out, and she explained animatedly, hands flitting with the passion of her words, that since they now existed in a paradox, there must be a way to right it, and it was their duty to figure out how.  She finished short of breath from her rapid-fire speaking and with tears in her eyes, a mixture of absolute determination and a grief that she refused to allow to surface, because she would fix it so that there was never a reason to grieve in the first place.

Setsuna listened patiently, never once interrupting, only moving to occasionally sip at her drink. When Ami’s monologue ceased, she replied in a carefully measured tone, “Ami.  What you hope for is impossible.  Believe me, if it were not, I would have already brought us together.  But I -“ her hands clasped tightly together as she said, for the first time aloud “- have lost my connection to the Time Gate.” She ignored Ami’s gasp and continued, eyes lowered to gaze into her empty teacup.  “I cannot travel back.  I cannot see the paths of Time any more as I once did.  And so, I have no hope of changing what has already been done.”

“But – but – how?” Ami desperately asked, the reality of their situation finally sinking in.

“There are an infinite number of timelines, Ami,” she explained, trying to parse the vast complexities of Time into words fit for human language, “and an infinite number of futures.  What you all saw was the most likely future.  There were some where the Great Freeze ended the Earth, and Crystal Tokyo never came to be. There were others where it flourished. In some, the Black Moon Clan triumphed; in others, they never existed because Neo-Queen Serenity offered a different punishment, or no punishment at all.  And in a few select timelines, Sailor Moon died in battle.”

Setsuna’s voice did not shake.  She would not allow it.  “I admit that the probability of events that transpired was low, and I’m afraid I can’t quantify the probabilities because there are too many to even fathom.”  And yet, I could once fathom them all, she added in her mind bitterly.  “I admit also that, because the probability was so infinitesimal, and the likelihood of the future that you witnessed so great, I did not extensively research the aftereffects of Usagi’s death.”  The corners of her mouth turned up into a wry smile.  “If I am being honest with you, I didn’t want to explore it, and I neglected my duty.”

Ami sat, saying nothing, reeling in quiet shock.  There were tears running down her face, but she made no move to wipe them away.  “She… she’s really gone?”  The question at the end of her sentence made Setsuna’s heart ache, and she nodded, her own eyes beginning to glisten.

“She’s dead, yes. There is no changing that.  But we still love her, Ami, and love from afar is still a powerful kind of love.”  She thought of millennia alone at a door, knowing her comrades in so many incarnations simply through watching them and longing to be among them, to be human in a way she did not yet understand.  And now, she understood too well, and some part of her was shamefully grateful for the chance to live rather than observe.  “Love from afar is powerful enough to outlast even death.”

She rose out of the booth and gently placed a hand on Ami’s shoulder.  “Take care.”  And with that, she walked away, the bell over the coffee shop door tinkling upon her exit. Ami did not move for several minutes, her tears falling onto her notes, the ink running down the page.  Her phone buzzed, and instinctively she fished it out of her pocket.

MAKOTO: Hosting a movie night bc I got distracted and made too much fucking cake again. You in?

AMI: On my way.

The phone tucked away once more, she looked at the table in front of her.  Countless hours of research, of reading until her eyes simply refused to stay open, of writing until her hand cramped so much that she had to use a voice-to-text program to supplement, laid in front of her.

She scooped it all up in a heaping armful, stood up, and dumped it into the trash can.  As she walked away, she didn’t look back.

--

Mamoru hadn’t left his apartment in days.  Everywhere he went, there was some reminder of her: a necklace she would have cooed over, a new unicorn-themed dessert she would have begged him to try, a bench where they could have sat and watched the world go by, never dreaming that they would face it alone.  He saw her everywhere, haunting him, and there were moments he still forgot that she wasn’t around, still went to Snapchat her a bird with a piece of pizza in its mouth before remembering that the account was closed, still called just to hear her voicemail message.  He had read through their texts so much that he had most of them memorized.  He had slept with a hoodie that she had left behind just to pretend she was there, just to close his eyes and smell her, as though he could wake up from this nightmare and she would smile at him.

The girls had tried to reach out, but seeing them without her just felt wrong somehow.  Motoki had come by a few times to check on him and drop off food, but he was planning for his upcoming wedding and Mamoru couldn’t quite control his jealousy. When he told Motoki that he was honored, but he couldn’t accept Best Man because he wouldn’t be able to attend the wedding, they had gotten into a fight.  

Motoki had accused him of being selfish, of wallowing, of dishonoring Usagi’s memory by refusing to be happy.  A part of him knew that the accusations were right, but he lashed out anyway, screaming at Motoki to get out of his house.  He couldn’t understand how to live in a world without Usagi, and as the door slammed shut, he realized that he didn’t want to.

He spent the next few days getting his affairs in order.  He donated all of his money to charity, minus just enough to cover cremation. He cleaned his apartment immaculately and got rid of almost all of his possessions.  He wrote notes to the people who mattered, sometimes taking several drafts to get the phrasing just right, and left them sealed on his kitchen counter.

The photo of Usagi, one of his favorites, grinned at him as he adjusted his tuxedo in the mirror.  He couldn’t transform any more, but he was sure that she wouldn’t miss the mask and cape.  He sprayed on a little of the expensive cologne she always said she loved so much, smiling as he remembered when he had caught her spritzing some on a t-shirt to take home so that she could wear it and smell like him.

He took one last sweeping glance of his apartment, now bare of all except furniture, and double-checked that his app was set correctly to send a message in a half hour to Motoki to call the police to his apartment.  

“Let’s go on a date, Usako,” he whispered as he climbed onto the chair. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting.” He slipped the belt around his neck. “I’ll make it up to you.  I promise.”

“I love you.”  He closed his eyes.