#it’s creepy as shit

[ikiprian]

Mr. Fenton is a competent teacher. Almost too competent.

If Mr. Daniel Fenton had any more than a BS (with a minor in education), Tim would’ve flagged his profile as a potential Rogue. That’s the way of most charismatic academics, at least in Gotham. (Got a PhD? Instant watchlist.) Instead, he’s Gotham Academy’s newest celebrity, as a young, passionate, out-of-towner substitute while the chemistry teacher’s on maternity leave.

Tim gets the hype. Fenton seems to genuinely love teaching, and is invested in the welfare of the student body. He hands out bananas during exam week, hosts a “study habits seminar” each month to coach effective learning strategies, and the third time Tim falls asleep in his class, he even pulls Tim aside to ask if he’s doing okay. With all the late work he accepts and the protein bars he sneaks Tim, he’s every teen vigilante’s dream teacher. He could’ve been Tim’s favorite.

In fact, Mr. Fenton was Tim’s favorite. Up until Tim walks into Mr. Fenton’s chemistry classroom for a forgotten textbook, an hour after the final bell.

On the board where tallied scores for today’s review game had been kept, “THE CHEMISTRY BEHIND DR. CRANE’S FEAR GAS: ANXIOGENICS, NERI’S, & YOU,” is now scrawled. A detailed diagram of the human endocrine system projects in front of a small crowd of adoring and attentive students.

Fenton is wrist-deep in the skull cavity of an anatomical model. A short tug, and out pops the brain.

It’s plastic. It’s fake.

Tim identifies the nearest emergency exit.

Fenton turns to the door, and in the dark classroom with the projector illuminating half his face, his eyes almost seem to flash red. “What’s up, Tim?” he asks. His friendly grin is too big for his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to join the Just Science League!”

[OR: Danny’s a science teacher at Tim’s school. Gotham’s a pretty wild place, even for someone who grew up a superhero in a ghost-infested town, so he takes it upon himself to start a club teaching kids how to manage themselves in the event of a crisis. These Gothamites are pretty hardy, but a little extra training never hurt anybody! And he suspects one of his students might be a teen vigilante, like he’d been, back in the day. As a senior super, it's Danny’s duty look out for him! Surely, this is the subtlest and most appropriate way to give the kid pointers.]

[Tim immediately assumes supervillain.]

[raindropdragon]

Opportunist Long Quiet is absolutely terrifying

Like, holy shit, look at those TEETH

[straycalamities]

this was supposed to be just a doodle erm

[deadsetobsessions]

“Tim. Timmy. Ancients, kid, what are you doing?!”

Danny Phantom smacked away the instinctual terror of seeing an eight year old dangling out of a third story window.

“I gotta go take pictures of Batman and Robin! They’re out tonight!”

Danny thought that his barely healed vivisection wound might bust open from the sheer stress.

“Setting aside how you even know the patrol schedule of honest to god vigilantes, why’d you choose the window? The house is literally empty, just walk out the front door, for Ancient’s sake.”

Tim paused, a motion Danny was overwhelmingly thankful for, and blinked sheepishly.

“Um… for the aesthetic?”

Danny allowed the silence to settle between them before dropping his head into his waiting hands. Tim panicked.

“You- you can’t stop me!”

And yeah, Danny really can’t. In the months he’s been mooching off of the Drakes (not that they’ll notice), Danny’s learned that Tim Drake is nothing but relentless in the pursuit of whatever he sets his mind on. Whether thet might be putting hot chocolate in his cereal (which Danny doesn’t actually mind) or, apparently, stalking a pair of vigilantes.

He wanted to hack into the library cameras? Danny had to hover just to make sure the kid didn’t get caught after arguing for an hour about it.

He walked out of that argument with a loss, yes, but he also let Tim know that Danny cared about him. Danny also walked out of that argument with a new hatred for Janet and Jack Drake and his mind (just as diabolical as Tim’s) whirring with plans to haunt them.

Tim is never ever introducing his new little brother to Tucker. Ever.

“Okay. I don’t want to see you take unnecessary risks, but I’m also aware that I can’t really stop you. So. I’ll go with you.”

Maybe this is like… Tim’s obsession? When he put it that way, Danny lost the fight to prevent this tiny kid from what clearly is the only joy in his poor life.

“But…!” Tim’s eyes darted to Danny’s chest, the vivisection scars still fresh in his mind.

“They’re healed.” Danny pulled his dumbass little brother off the window sill, core settling as Tim follows willingly. “I’ll make us invisible and fly with you behind Batman and Robin so you can get even better shots. You can’t make any noise, though. That camera got a shutter sound, right?”

“Yeah!” Tim’s face brightened and Danny melted. He shoved a bottle of the (incredibly stinky but helpful in a pinch) ecto contaminated tap water into a backpack, along with some snacks and a blanket for when Tim gets cold. Danny’ll be fine, he’s got a Space Core. The cold his kind of his thing.

“Cool. We’ll stay out of earshot. If things starts to get too dicey, we’re heading home, okay?”

“Okay!” The look Tim shot him is full of trust and adoration and it makes Danny’s human heart squeeze painfully. “C’mon! I don’t want to be late!”

“We need to talk about your stalking tendencies later,” Danny said fondly.

“I’m not stalking them! I’m observing them!”

“Uh-huh,” Danny drawled, picking Tim up and making them intangible and invisible. “They’re not a bird observatory and also, even the birds in the observatory knows they’re being watched. Batman and Robin clearly doesn’t.”

Danny felt more than saw Tim’s pout.

He laughs as they fly just below the Gotham-brand of toxic smog. He waves to the City’s Spirit as Tim cranes his head around to catch sight of Batman and Robin.

“There!”

Danny obliged. With Danny’s flight, Tim got much better- much closer- photos than he would have originally.

Danny hung back as the pair of vigilantes swooped down to take care of a mugging.

“Wanna mess with them?” He grinned down at his little brother, canines glinting.

Tim looked up at him, admiration and mischievousness in his gaze. “Yes.”

Gotham parted her clouds in response to their glee.

——

Dick Grayson, AKA Robin, finally understood why criminals are so creeped out by him.

Other than the whole flippy child kicking grown people’s asses and winning thing, obviously (that, and Batman loomed menacingly behind him everytime a criminal even looked at Robin wrong).

Batman had picked up on it first, but the for entirety of their patrol, they kept hearing eerie little giggles and laughter. Haunting them. Never distracting. But persistent. And so creepy. He got goosebumps.

“B, I wanna go home.”

“Hm.” That’s a resounding yes if Dick’s ever heard one.

Maybe Alfred can chase away the giggles and chuckles.

Robin shudders and follows the Bat home.

——

Danny lowered the temperature as he held Tim up near Batman’s cowl so his brother could giggle menacingly. He knew for a fact that any recording device would get completely cram led by the sheer output of ambient ectoplasm he’s emitting. Plus, it freaked Robin out and raised the hairs on the back of the vigilantes’ heads. He tones it down when he noticed Tim rubbing his hands together.

He let out a quiet laugh, enjoying the flight with his brother in his arm and the light of the stars (thanks, Gotham) at his back.

——

Danny: oh, this kid’s got an Obsession, gotta let him do it safely, he’s a liminal from all that tap water

Danny: *forgets Tim isn’t a ghost nor is he from Amity and is therefore extremely breakable*

——

Danny and Tim: doing crime is a good bonding activity

Batman and Robin, who wants to say no it isn’t but they’re literally a pair of illegal vigilantes:

——

Dick as Robin: *cackles*

Tim, learning habits from stalking them: *giggles*

Gotham Criminals: *fear*

[j0celynh0rr0r]

Trying to get away?

[okaydays22]

[existentialterror]

Hypothetical question:

There is a book that is 200 pages long. If you read the entire book, you will 100% get a neurodegenerative disease and die in 1-5 years. Everybody knows this. There are studies. Every reputable organization, even very pro-free-speech ones, are like "no this specific book WILL literally kill you."

There are no consequences to reading the first page of the book. There are studies. The only risk is that you might be interested enough that you'd like to read the rest (especially if you didn't know about the effect.)

(More details: The effects of reading past Page 1 are hotly debated - you do need to read all 200 pages to get the disease, but some kind of compulsion kicks in over time and makes you much more inclined to finish the book. Reading to page 10 is a little dangerous, reading to page 50 or past is very dangerous, but it's kind of unclear how much. The compulsion is NOT measurably present from the first page.)

Every government has banned this book, but it's pretty easy to find copies online or (with a bit more work) in person. By all accounts, the writing is quite beautiful. It is even easier to find copies of the first page, since everyone agrees it's not dangerous.

(this is curiosity / idle research for a fiction project)

[mxrtified777]

paws at your leg. hey its cool if i possess ur friend and then steal this scroll and then steal this sword and then steal this crystal to try and kill all of u right.

[emmg]

It is no hardship, Emmrich tells himself, to wear his face. It is his, after all. The one he was born with, the one that grew and shifted under his own patient gaze, seen in puddles, in mirrors, in the glass of a carriage window as he smoothed down his hair with the flat of his palm. A face he had stared at for far too long that first time he shaved, and again a few years later when he invited that very pretty boy out for a promenade and wanted, with all the force of a young man’s vanity, to be just as pretty himself—no hair astray, the kohl at his lower lids an almost imperceptible shadow, the perfume at his neck a whisper of carelessness, though in truth, nothing had ever been more deliberate.

For a decade now, they have called him distinguished. Before that, they called him handsome. He knows his face, likes his face. Its summoning should be no trouble at all; especially now, especially like this, stripped down to something more elemental, all ivory angles and nothing more. But Rook is uneasy. She does not say so—she is all sorry, shit, don’t mind me, fuck, fuck, I’ll get used to it, I’ll get used to it—but she is not made for the sight of bone in the dark when she wakes abruptly. He has had years to come to terms with the unmaking of his flesh. She has not.

So he does not miss his face, not really. But Rook does. And for Rook, he will pretend. 

No, he tells himself again, he does not mind. He does not. 

Lichdom, as he had once explained to her, sanded down most of his senses. Blunted them, rubbed them smooth. But in their place, others have surfaced. Senses without names, without proper edges, ones that slip through language like smoke through a cracked door. He cannot smell the perfume she wears, though he knows it is dreadful, some sticky, saccharine thing she bought in Treviso with Lucanis and spilled all over her shirt. But he can see her pleasure when she presses a little figurine into his palm, triumphant and insistent. This one, she affirms, is so much prettier than the first, and most importantly, not haunted. 

He watches her giddiness churn inside her, thick and writhing. It is purple, inexplicably. It loops and knots, wriggling sideways, swelling through her veins, a restless thing. It coils, slippery, around her heart before pouring from her mouth when she speaks. When she presses her lips to what passes for his cheek, he thinks he can taste it. Or something like tasting. As if she had chewed it to a pulp, crushed it between her molars, worked it down to something fibrous and wet and pressed it into him, like carrion slipped between teeth, offered as a gift. 

He swallows it, slow. 

Perhaps this is what purple has always tasted like. 

There are other things. Other feelings. They arrive misshapen, crawling over the edges of his thoughts, curious, pestering, impossible to ignore. They perplex him. They amuse him. And sometimes—sometimes—he wishes he felt nothing at all.

Like when she cuts herself, and he watches the blood spill, a slow, indifferent line along the curve of her arm. But it is not blood, not in the dull, medical sense. Not something as pedestrian as iron and salt. It is a ribbon, impossibly red, and he can see the rest of it coiled inside her, packed neatly away, waiting to be tugged. How much could he pull free before she wavers, before her lips lose their color, before the bright, stubborn thing inside her gutters out? 

He heals her arm. Does not look at her when he does it. Says nothing of consequence. 

But he wants to take that ribbon and wind it around her wrist, knot it, twist it, pull it so tight that it ceases to be a ribbon at all. Flesh yielding to pressure, pressure forcing permanence. A bracelet of skin. A smooth, bloodless seam. A correction. 

Rook thanks him. A glance, a nod—already half-gone as she turns toward Rivain. There are things to be done there for her, and he cannot stray from the Necropolis for long. What things, exactly, she does not say, but he knows their shape well enough: dragons, impulse, the peculiar magnetism of disaster. She has always been like this, drawn to the spectacularly unwise with the certainty of a moth misjudging distance. 

He can no longer follow. 

She will return. He knows this. And yet, if his hands still possessed the capacity for tremor, he suspects they would betray him now. 

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she sings, a careless, looping refrain, a child’s chant repurposed for a woman who has never quite learned to tread lightly. She chatters as she moves; this and that, something or other, a bad decision or three. She shows him rings, delicate and stolen, lifted from a dragon’s hoard, then tells him of a strange mug found in the same place and promptly lost to someone forgettable in a game of cards. 

"Look, look," she says, because excitement makes her redundant. "I kept these for you." 

The rings slide onto his fingers—bandaged, skeletal, indifferent to the distinction. He flexes them. Smiles, because each one carries an emerald, and green has always pleased him. 

"I was meaning to ask you," Rook says. She is still holding his hand, turning it gently in her own, left, right, right, left, as though testing whether it is truly there. "You are smiling now." 

"I am." 

"Don’t interrupt me." 

"My deepest apologies." 

"It was a joke," she says, but absently, without weight. Then, again, softer: "You are smiling now. But is it real? Or do I see a smile only because I expect to? Because I believe it should be there?" 

"It is quite real," he reassures her, lifting his free hand, brushing two fingers against her cheek. "The glamour does not fabricate emotions. It is a projection, not an invention. A polished pane of glass through which I am seen, rather than a mask obscuring what lies beneath. It filters nothing. It simply allows you to perceive what is still there, as it was." 

She exhales. He watches it unfurl from her mouth, a slip of breath that curls, dissipates, wrapped in green. Relief, perhaps. 

"Good," she murmurs. "That is good." 

There are things he misses more than others. Some he had not expected to mourn, believing that lichdom would cauterize the want before it could take shape. And perhaps it would have, if not for Rook. But she exists, unavoidably, and so the loss takes shape, outlines itself, defines itself against the hollow places she touches. 

The intimacy of the body: its mechanics, its heat, its crude and glorious simplicity. He misses the way skin clings, damp and sticky, the tack of sweat drying between them. The way lips grow chapped from too much kissing, saliva sapped away until the skin cracks, until the next kiss stings. He misses the raw and graceless rhythm of it, the press of her thighs around him, the slow loss of self in the churn of it all. He misses the way he could press his palm to her stomach, still sheathed within her, and feel himself there, caged by her. 

And afterward, in the languid sprawl of spent nerves and loose limbs, the way his mind would wander, taking him by the hand, showing him its little fantasies, its secreted-away indulgences—let us get married, Rook, I will buy you so much gold, let’s get married, yes, and then let’s have a child, but not immediately, not at once, let’s linger here a while, let’s lose ourselves in this, let’s glut ourselves on one another until we are utterly ruined by it, and then, yes, then, we will have that little thing.

Now, he feels her differently. Not through skin but through something more fundamental, a closeness that eclipses anything flesh ever allowed. It is fuller, sharper, deeper than anything he could have imagined. 

But it is not the same. 

And he does not yet know if he prefers it. 

Time, as always, will decide. 

Pleasure has not abandoned him. It has only changed its nature, its source, its means of arrival. Now, it exists solely through her. He sees, now, how men dissolve into drink, into smoke, into whatever tincture delivers them to sensation. The body remembers its peaks; the body conspires to reach them again. 

"Will you come for me, darling girl?" he murmurs against her ear, his fingers curling inside her as they have done so many times before—when his hands were warm, when they ceased to be. 

And she does what she always does: she writhes, she gasps, she laughs, she moves against him with the helpless, thoughtless grace of something yielding to gravity. Her hips chase the friction, her mouth parts, her breath hitches, her lashes lower, heavy with pleasure. And he—he is there inside her, feeling it as she feels it, tasting it in a way that has nothing to do with taste, swallowing it down, letting it course through him. It is vast. It is staggering. Pleasure enough for two, for more than two, enough to fill the space where he no longer exists. 

Afterward, she is breathless, boneless, staring up at the ceiling and laughing that strange, impossible laugh. He no longer tries to make sense of it. Some things cannot be translated. She has a laugh for anger, a laugh for excitement, a laugh for surprise. He thinks he knows this one well enough by now, the one that trickles out of her in the aftermath. 

A trick, an echo, the imitation of a thing once real. He kisses her where he would have kissed her once—her mouth, the sharp ridge of her collarbone, the small curve of her breast, except now there is no heat, no wet drag of a tongue, no parted lips. Only the careful architecture of a spell, a memory sculpted into sensation, something just close enough to pass for real. He trails lower, following the old pathways, the ones his hands remember even if they are no longer the same. 

She sighs. Again. Again. Another time. 

He lingers where she yields the most, where she is all pulse and warmth, where her thighs, slick and trembling, part for him before he even touches her. Where breath quickens and thought slips away. And through it, he drinks. Draws from her as he always does, as he must, in ways he does not fully understand, or perhaps does, but has decided against understanding. He takes until she is weightless, drifting, until her voice emerges in that low, drowsy enough, enough, until she exhales, unconscious of herself, shifting, turning into him, her cheek settling against his shoulder, her body already gone to sleep.

And he wonders—if he did not stop, could he empty her? 

What is it that they share, exactly? What does she give? What does he take? Is it taking at all? Perhaps she is feeding from him just as he feeds from her.

He could ask. He could go looking for the answer. It is what he has done his entire life. 

But he does not. Because the answer, whatever it may be, does not matter. Because, at his core, he knows this much to be true: 

He is an empty thing now. 

And all empty things must be filled. 

It is a dreadful experience, watching her get hurt. Dreadful in its predictability, in the casual inevitability of it. Rook, as he has come to understand, is the sort of person who leaps from a cliff first and wonders, mid-air, whether there was perhaps a gentler way down.  

He saw it in Hossberg—how she, in some fit of blind fury over a slight he can no longer remember, kicked a blight boil with all the grace of a petulant child, only for the thing to rupture, spraying its filth over her boots, her legs, her hands, her face. Later, when he spat out his anger—you could have infected yourself, and then what? Where would the Veilguard be without their leader?—she had, without hesitation, lifted her middle finger and held it aloft, like a banner, like a flag planted firmly into the dirt, a gesture so profoundly Rook that it settled the argument before it could begin.

She returns from Rivain with a sprained wrist and, predictably, does not acknowledge it until he gestures toward it, a quiet inquiry rather than an accusation. 

So he buys her things. Things with weight, with shimmer, with the ability to distract. A bottle of wine she favors, a dress the precise shade of blue that once made her pause in front of a shop window, jewelry that catches light and throws it back in a thousand fractured directions. Loud things, bright things, expensive things. The kind of things a magpie would die over. Because Rook—misnamed, mislabeled—is no rook at all, no solemn, shrewd thing perching in the rafters. She is a magpie, ever in pursuit of the next gleaming fragment, the brightest piece of a broken world. That is why she is away, isn’t it? Always away. Always chasing.

But Nevarra has more gold than the Rivaini coast. 

He wants to say—won’t you stay? Won’t you, at last, stay longer? But there is something perilous in the asking. The wrong phrasing, the wrong weight to his voice, and she will fold up like a map, unreadable, distant, already turning toward the door.

She lifts a necklace, lets it spill through her fingers, a thin chain pooling in her palm. "Ooooh," she hums. "What’s the occasion?" 

"I have missed you terribly," he says. "You were away too long." 

"I missed you too." 

"Then stay. My townhouse is yours, of course. It is in the heart of the city—" 

"But you won’t be there," she interrupts, without sharpness, without accusation. A simple statement of fact. "You’ll be in the Necropolis."

"Then stay with me in the Necropolis," he says, more softly. 

She looks at him. Long enough for him to grow aware of the silence. Long enough for him to think he ought to say something more, to fill the space with some innocuous remark, something to break the weight of it—a comment on the weather, the slow drip of rain against the windowpanes, the scent of damp stone, the candlelight shifting across her cheek, the peeling corner of the wallpaper he has been meaning to mend but never does. 

Then, at last, in a whisper, as if she is considering each word before releasing it: 

"I'm trying." 

A breath. 

"I'm really, really trying. I love you so much. This frightens me, but I love you, and I'll stay longer, I promise, and you needn’t hide your face, no, no, you can stop hiding it now, but it is so terribly cold here, and I can smell the bones, Emmrich, did you know one can smell bones?" 

Senseless, rambling little words, leaving her mouth with no regard for order, no real expectation of being understood. He listens anyway. He nods as if these words, specifically, are the ones he has been waiting to hear. He holds her hands, pressing his fingers lightly over hers, as though reacquainting himself with the shape of them, the bones beneath the skin. And this time—this time—she stays.

He does not move. Does not speak. Instead, he lets the moment settle around him, lets it press in from all sides, cautious and weightless, as if sudden motion might send it scattering. A trick of the mind, surely, nothing more than habit, the vestigial longing of a body that no longer exists. And yet—something, something faint and absurd and wholly impossible—something like warmth uncoils in the vacant spaces of him, and for the first time in too long, he allows himself to believe in the illusion. 

And he is happy, so terribly, foolishly happy, until she steps where a step should have been, onto stone that no longer exists, because the Necropolis, fickle and treacherous as ever, decides to shift beneath her. One moment she is there, cursing the cold, flicking dust from her sleeve, and the next she is gone, swallowed into the dark, falling before he can reach for her. Then—impact, the sound of something snapping, something that should not snap. 

"Oh, for fuck’s sake," she spits, voice sharp with pain, her frustration seething through clenched teeth. "I hate this fucking place. This miserable, shifting, plague-ridden, necrophiliac fucking mausoleum. This—" she swallows, gasps, rage momentarily overtaken by the white-hot shock of agony, then forces the words out, savage and breathless—"this godsdamned, dusty, corpse-stinking labyrinth of a tomb. Fuck this place. Fuck you for living in it. Fuck this floor for moving. Fuck my fucking leg." 

She hisses even as she cries, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to will the hurt out of her body. He sees, at last, what has happened. A break, and not a clean one: bone slick and white against torn skin, jutting through muscle, her blood already thickening where it pools on the stone. 

And then—something strange. A pull, an unraveling, something unwinding before him, leading away. The ribbon again, unspooling, slipping from her, stretching outward, as though guiding him somewhere he does not wish to go. His vision narrows. He follows it. He follows it because he cannot help but follow it. 

"Emmrich?" Her voice has changed. The heat is gone, as is the anger. She sounds uncertain now. She sounds concerned. "Emmrich, are you—?" 

But he is looking at the ribbon. Watching where it leads. Watching where it ends. 

And he would weep if he could. 

He has spent his life in a state of want, always reaching, always grasping, always aching to be something necessary to someone. And now—now, at last—he has what he has longed for. Rook, quick and wild and untouchable. Rook, who was born lovely and careless and beautiful, who could have wrapped herself around anyone she pleased but chose, instead, him—old and grey, and then, simply, bone. Rook, with her hands always outstretched, her eyes always searching, who once told him, so offhandedly he almost believed she didn’t mean it, that she would have given him a child.

Now—now, she sits before him, cursing under her breath, her leg twisted, her blood sliding across the stone, and he understands, too suddenly, too clearly, that he cannot keep her. 

One day, that ribbon will slip from her entirely. 

And he will be wanting again, except this time, there will be no remedy, no second chance, no indulgence to dull the ache. 

Because she—she—the only thing that has ever fit the hollow inside him, will be gone.

A year. Ten. Twenty. Perhaps less. Perhaps more. 

She will be gone. 

Gone, gone, gone. 

"It will not break again," he tells her.

"Really?" she asks, pale from hurt.

"Truly."

He stands, glances over the chamber, and selects a sconce, its veilfire guttering weakly within its iron frame. He snuffs it out with a flick of his wrist, wrenches the metal free from the wall, and lets it sag into liquid in his palm. The Necropolis will not miss it. It devours offerings every day; what is one more? The molten iron shifts, pulses, rolls like living mercury as he shapes it between his fingers. She watches, suspicious, wary, but when he takes the pain from her, she sighs, slackens, her body a thing that yields, a thing that trusts. 

Bone is simple. A structure, a framework. Break it, mend it, break it again. He has done this before, he will do it again, and the body always obeys in the end. With a slow push, he sets her leg back into place. Crack, crack, crack—shattered edges realign, splinters withdraw, raw ends fuse like wax pressed to wax. He sees the place where the bone has chewed its way free, white and wet against the torn meat of her calf. 

He presses his fingers into the wound, past the sealing skin. The iron above them stirs at his will, stretching like a cat in the air before obeying, flowing down, clinging to the surface of the bone. Not inside it, no. That would be crude, inelegant. Instead, it forms a layer, thin but solid, a second skeleton over the first. It cools as it settles, solidifies, binds itself to her as if it had always belonged there. He guides it lower, shaping it over her tibia, letting it follow the curve of her ankle, turning his wrist slightly to direct it sideways, until the fibula is covered as well, safe beneath its new armor. There.

The final shreds of her wound pull themselves shut, sealing over his work, concealing what has been done. 

She shifts her foot, tilting her head, considering. "Oh," she says. "I suppose I'll be heavier now." 

He kisses her cheek and feels the faint shift of muscle beneath his lips, the small, secret curve of her smile. This time, for once, her happiness has no color. Not gold, not red, not that strange, shimmering violet he sometimes sees curling from her ribs. Just happiness, unembellished, undisturbed. And because she feels it, he believes it, and because he believes it, he takes it for himself, drawing her close.

"I am so, so happy that you are safe," he hears himself say, a confession with no real shape, a drunken speech without the mercy of intoxication. "I worry when you are gone, and I worry when you are here. It seems that no matter what I do, something always finds you first." 

She hums, arms looping around him, her fingers idly mapping the planes of his back, tracing aimless patterns into the fabric of his robes. "I don’t know what to say to that," she admits, her voice softened by exhaustion, by the slow retreat of pain. "But I am so, so happy with you too. And it’s all right, it’s all right. Every time I break, you can repair me." She pauses, then adds, utterly deadpan, "Guess that makes you my skele-tonic."

It is an objectively terrible pun. 

"Until you stop breaking altogether," he murmurs. 

Another hum, vague, thoughtless. 

He draws from her as he always does: pleasure, warmth, something deeper, something without a name, though it must have one, must have been cataloged somewhere, written down by some scholar who spent his life studying things that could not be grasped. He has never fully understood what it is he takes, only that it belongs to her, and that, by some quiet, unspoken permission, it is his as well. He wants to love her forever. But more than that, he wants to ensure that forever remains within reach, that it does not remain, as so many things have, just outside his grasp, dissolving the moment he closes his fist. 

He has spent too long watching what he yearned for unravel before he could fasten it down. This, he will not allow. It will take gold, it will take iron, it will take something far stronger, something absolute. Until she ceases to break. Until breaking is no longer a possibility, a concept, a word that has anything to do with her. 

He does not yet know how. But he has time—too much of it. More than she does. And he has always been a man of precision, of hypothesis and proof, of elegant solutions to insufferable problems. He will find a way. Through metal or magic, through that ribbon of red that keeps slipping from her, unspooling itself in slow increments, always trying to get away. He will take it, force it back into place, stitch it to the marrow, fix it with something incorruptible, something permanent, something that cannot be unwound without unmaking her in the process. 

He presses a kiss to her temple, then to her forehead, and speaks of flowers. The new blooms in the Memorial Gardens. Hideous, by all accounts. She will adore them. She appreciates beauty, certainly, but she loves foolishness even more. He kisses her cheek, the tip of her nose, her small, stubborn chin, and feels it again—that bright, quiet thing. Happiness. 

And, miraculously, when he takes a piece for himself, it does not feel stolen. 

"Enough, enough," she murmurs at last, the same word twice, as she always does when she needs a break from him, when she has given too much, when she feels him pulling, drinking, taking in excess without meaning to. Laughter ghosts beneath the words, thin but present, a reminder that she is still here, still whole. She taps his wrist with two fingers, light, quick, final—a gesture that, for all its carelessness, feels uncannily like closing a book. 

[ventique18]

Lilia: "This voice... Levan?! You, when did you return... No, but those horns are Meleanor's..."

Lilia for a while confuses Malleus for Levan... He only doubted himself because of the horns... Do y'all remember who has a similar build/hair color/skin tone/lip shade as Malleus...

"Those old fools of a senate... How dare they..."

"AND GRANDMOTHER AS WELL! Why have they kept the truth from me all this time?!"

OMG! He didn't know that Lilia hatched him... Lilia tries to calm him down and says that it was him who told them not to say tell. Because if he knew the truth, then he might feel guilty.

At this point Lilia begins to mix up reality and memory. He's questioning why he's calling this person Malleus when Malleus still isn't supposed to know how to walk on two legs. Malleus soothes him, saying that it's alright, Lilia doesn't have to think, and he doesn't have to suffer anymore.

Malleus: "What dream would you like to have? A dream where both father and mother are alive? Or would you prefer a dream where you and your son live peaceful lives?

"I will give you anything and everything you wish for. Now, Lilia, take my..."

Silver: "FATHER---!!!!!"

Lilia is still confused and mixes up things, and Malleus looks at Silver and Sebek exasperatedly, as if they're pests that keep on popping up. That they being awake is bad, and that they should go back to sleep. Silver objects and Sebek tells him that there's no way a man born from so much love should grow up to be villainous and hated by the entire world.

Silver: "And that's why we will definitely defeat you. Lord Malleus... YOUR "BLESSING"!"

Because of that keyword, Lilia finally remembers everything that happened.

Lilia: "Well said. That's my disciples for you."

Lilia: "I must have taken a very long nap. Now you've done it, Malleus!"

Malleus: "Tsk. You've truly woken up, Lilia! But you need not worry. I will tuck you back to bed very soon."

Lilia: "Ha! Did you just say you will tuck me to bed? You've grown cocky, haven't you? Then do your worst!"

Lilia: "Everyone, after me!"

LILIA: "IT'S TIME TO RUN--!!"

OMFG LOL LILIA???? Malleus laughs "Are we playing tag? It's been far too long since we've played like this."

"We have all the time in the world. Why don't we have a bit of fun, Lilia!" *CUE UNHINGED FUCKING LAUGHTER HOLY SHIT THAT WAS CREEPY AS HELL

[valeovalairs]

chip should be able to take his head off now for giggles

[lokorum]

so....................i've read unraveled the other day.................... and then ive re-read it.........and now im in the middle of re-reading it again????

honestly cant promise that im not gonna keep coming back to it until someone would steal my phone and then i'll just log in from the pc lets be real here (¬‿¬ ) but!!! what i wanted to say is that its just such a good fic?? so well written? it has all the right words in just the right order and i can and will argue till late night that it healed part of myself that i had no idea existed. these descriptions of hugs??? gonna stay with me untill the very end  (*_ _)人  

and drawing something is the least i can do to show just how much your work means, @2btheanswertothequestion  (/▿＼ )

"unraveled" became my spiderverse canon since the moment ive finished chapter one and it will stay this way!!! thank you so so much for all the long hours and all the hard work you clearly had put into it!! you're amazing!! ♡

[starry-bi-sky]

more incorrect quotes for the stillborn danyal au - dpxdc

---------

Student: so like,, *gesturing to Plasmius* is he like,,, your dad or...?? Phantom: he would be if he wasn't such a BITCH Plasmius: excuse me Phantom: YOU HEARD ME

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Under the Bleachers: Danny and Dash smoking in solidarity Dash: Danny: Dash: do you have notes from Lancer's class today Danny: since when do I ever have notes from Lancer's class Danny: I can ask Tucker but only if you have notes from Abernathy's class Dash: deal

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Sam and Tucker: *making s'mores with Danny's lava hair* Danny, as Phantom: >:I Sam: you're just mad because you didn't think of it first Danny: yEAH

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Danny, freshly ghosted: .... Danny: well. at least i dont need to waste money on lighters anymore

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Tucker: with how long your hair gets we may just have to start calling you rapunzel Danny: don't you dare Sam: rapunzel, rapunzel, let down your lava hair Danny: NO

-----------

Danny's hair tie breaks in the middle of a fight Danny: fuck Skulker: language child Danny, pushing lava bangs out of his face: fuck you! just for this im turning your suit into molten slag Skulker: waitholdonwecantALK--

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Danny: you know, by your logic Maddie is equally as guilty for abandoning you as Jack. She also never visited you while you were in the hospital. Vlad, had put his infatuation with Maddie aside but still kinda had feelings for her: Vlad: you're right Danny, not used to an adult agreeing with him: I-- huh, I am? Vlad: yes. If Dr. Walker had cared about me -- even if only as a friend, she would have tried to remain in contact with me. But she didn't. She is also as equally guilty for the accident that took your life too since she also failed to properly check over the portal for flaws and any improper wiring. Danny: wait- wait, i mean-- Vlad: this means only one thing Danny, bewildered: ??? Vlad, extinguishing all lingering feelings: I have to kill her too (somehow) Danny: nO.

[fightingwithallreality]

The Enchanted Horse (1992) written by Magdalen Nabb, illustrated by Julek Heller

For @horsefigureoftheday

[chronicallycouchbound]

Ugly Laws. Creepy coming from the word cripple. Freak shows. Fear of clowns. Bearded ladies with PCOS & intersex variations. Contortionists with EDS. Little people. “Missing links” people with Microcephaly. “Snake man” people with limb differences. Lack of welfare programs. Disability rights. All of these things are connected.

[bixels]

Bit of a weird question, but what is your overall least favorite thing about MLP? 

Sparity.