Tumgik
#it’s so much darker when you don’t have snow with the moon out
astrow1zar6 · 9 months
Text
Astro Notes-18
Tumblr media
Leo placements I notice tend to have a different texture hair then the rest of their family. Like their family could all have straight hair & they come out with really thick curly hair or something.
Gemini Venus’s always have their nails done 💅
A lot of cancer risings are really pale or just find it difficult to tan. They give Snow White vibes (ik this varies race wise however) even with darker skinned families they tend to be a little lighter than the rest
Scorpio Venus’s will try to make their crush jealous to see if they really care. They do this A LOT. They can be very insecure when they catch feelings.
Scorpio moons all have hunter eyes, they like penetrate your soul
Saturn in the 7th house natal is so difficult to have. This aspect delays marriages & relationships. In ur early years dating was probably really difficult for you & grew up seeing everyone get into relationships but you. The relationships you do have are usually very cold & unaffectionate:( but the older you become the easier it will be to find a partner that’s for you. You do best with very mature partners!
Uranus in the 4th house shows that you could’ve been the black sheep of the family or just have an overall different personality/lifestyle than the people you grew up with. Could be very distant with family members.
A lot of Scorpio suns or people with heavy Scorpio placements have had their parents or a parent pass at a young age. A lot of Scorpios have to experience death too early in life..
Saturn in the 5th housers grew up being judged a lot i notice. Any little bit of expression from these people were usually shamed by family or peers. Many were made to feel like everything they did was cringey which is why they become so uptight as they age.
Gemini risings can never stay at one job for too long. They’re always getting bored lol.
It’s kinda difficult to tell what if a Taurus Venus likes you they move so slow & cautiously it’s hard to tell. They take SO long to make a move 😭 they will micro flirt tho however like give you touches that linger or stare at you a lot.
Jupiter in the 1st housers always know everybody. They have a flock of people around them constantly. This can make you extroverted even with quieter placements. I also notice these people are always so TALL.
Once you bring up something someone with a mercury in the 3rd house is interested/passionate in be prepared to listen to a 5 hour rant about it lol. Once you get them started (even the quiet ones) they will talk your ear off. These people tend to over talk others when they get too excited. They don’t mean to tho lol
Cap moons try to act really nonchalant when they like someone. They usually pretend they have no feelings for you but will do little things to give it away like making excuses to be near you but won’t straight up admit it, they hate expressing emotions.
Apologize for not posting as much was on vacation! Will get back to my daily posts 🥰👌🏽
1K notes · View notes
xxnghtclls · 1 year
Text
Permission
Chapter 15
(Chapter 14; Chapter 16)
True Form Sukuna x Reader
Rating: Explicit
Warning: Graphic Depiction Of Violence
Please see Chapter 1 for tags!
Don‘t Look Back
With a heavy beating heart you stumble back into your own room. You take the shears, which you used to cut away unwanted and ugly branches of trees and bushes and cut and rip a slit into your new kimono. You need to be able to move. Fast probably too. You gather the food the maiden left, some mochi she made for you and put them into your cleavage. Taking off the sheet from your futon, you wrap it around you. Can’t take much with you.
If the cold get’s me, then it’ll be like that.
You put on your tabi and take your geta sandals in your hand. Can’t slip into them yet, they’re too loud. You hate that it came to this. You hate how you feel. You want to go back just a few nights ago.
When you were with him.
Alone.
You slide open your door, check if someone is there. No one. You start to tip toe through the halls and you realise, that you have no idea how to get out of here. You have never left this part of his shrine, since you arrived. Arriving at the passage that leads to his throne room, you hurry into the opposite direction. Past the door that leads to the kitchen, where you used to collect his dinner, you see another big, heavy door in front of you. You pull at the knobs and with a lot of strength, you manage to pull them open just wide enough for you to slip through. Eyes wide open, you try to see in these dark halls, despite them being almost pitch black. The only source of light being the openings that let light from the moon fall through to your right. It’s still snowing. You hurry through these halls, noticing more doors to your left, looking similar to the door that belongs to your room. While wondering if these are the rooms of the other maidens, you see that the halls channel off to your left.
Which way do you go? Forward or left?
In the blink of an eye, you decide to go left, halls turning darker and darker the more your feet carry you into them. Your ragged breathing being the only thing you hear. Luckily no one is to be seen. Actually nothing at all.
It’s getting so dark, you have to touch the wall right next to you, to keep you somewhat oriented. Your feet tap along for several minutes, until the wall ends there.
Going right then.
Hurrying through the darkness, you suddenly stumble and fall.
Stairs. Leading up. Adrenaline quickly lets you stand up again and you carefully climb the stairs until you feel wood in front of you.
The wooden door.
You push against it. Not moving. Pushing more and more, until suddenly a freezing breeze from the outside hits your face.
It stings.
You’ve done it. Putting on your sandals, before you’re pushing a little bit more against the door and you stumble out into the white coldness. The snow already coats the floor, covering your feet when you walk in it. The area around you as dark as the halls you came from, the crowns of the trees from the forest in front of you being only illuminated by the moonlight. The cold wind blows, you inhale and start to run.
Don’t look back.
The sounds of snow beneath your feet and the panting of your lungs fill the air. Soft, white, foggy clouds form in front of your face, while you breathe. You feel so cold. Freezing. Running keeps your body warm, you can’t stop running. As you’re getting closer to the wall of trees that make up the big forest, fear starts pooling up in your stomach. You halt in front of the first tree. It’s pitch black in there. You see nothing. An endless sea of nothing.
Can’t go back.
You run inside. Lungs start to hurt from the freezing air you’re breathing, hair and clothes getting wet from the snow that’s falling. You already know, that this is going to be your end. You’re going to freeze to death. Never thought, that snow would be the culprit. You thought it would be probably some tramp, trying to kill and rob you for something you don’t even own.
Getting slower, you have to be careful not to trip. Seeking help from touching the cold tree trunks, you faintly see a clearing in some distance to you. Before you start to make your way to it, you hear something. Something, that’s moving in the bushes and trees, twigs snapping, footsteps in the snow. Dark growling sounds. You can feel it moving around you, but you can’t see anything. It feels threatening and soon you know, that you’re being hunted. You don’t know what it could be, hoping it’s not the man you once called your King.
Or do you?
Hesitating for a moment, you decide to run. Darkness keeps a lot of things and you hope, that it also applies for the thing hunting you.
You run. Run. RUN.
Fear pulsating in your throat, as you trip over a twig. Ice cold snow and dirt are being greeted by your hands and face. Loosing the sheet you had wrapped around you, as you quickly stand up again, ignoring the stinging feeling on your skin, you continue to run.
It’s close. So close. Only a couple of yards.
A loud howling growl behind you. The noises from in between the branches grow faster and louder. Your breath hitches.
You’re scared. So, so scared. You just want to be back in his chambers. Warm and protected. Feel him. Fuck him. Lov-
Finally you arrive at the rim of the clearing. Trees circle a field of snow in a wide range. The light of the full moon illuminates it, you can see pretty far. Your lungs feel like they rip apart soon, but you can’t just stop here. The thing behind you growls another time and it’s your sign to run into the middle of the clearing. Your feet are already soaking wet and freezing from all the snow they carried you through.
A howl.
The thing didn’t stop, it’s right behind you still. You turn around as you run and see something horrifying.
A beast, reminds you of a bear, runs behind you on all fours, multiple, gigantic eyes spread across the body of it. They start to glow in a toxic green as soon as you lock eyes with it. A big mouth, baring it’s sharp teeth to you. It snarls loudly.
You keep running and in the blink of an eye you notice a red trace you leave on the snow. Eyes widen in shock.
The cotton cloth.
You’ve been bleeding through. The thing howls another time and you start to hear more of them, crawling through the thicket of the trees. Your lungs give up and you start to get slower. Arriving in the middle of the clearing, you’re trapped. The thing drools, as it slows down, crouching, ready to strike. Another snarl at you and in the corner of your eyes, you see more of the green eyes slowly creeping out of the darkness of the forest.
That’s it.
Unable to move any further, shivering, you start to accept your fate. Suddenly the sound of fire rushing through the air rips your eyes shoot up. Above you, you see a huge flame shooting through the sky, looking like some sort of arrow, illuminating the black night and crashing down right next to the predator in front of you, starting a fire on the ground. The beast flinches, exhales a loud growl. Another flame, crashing down far to your left, keeping the pack away from you, as they retreat back into the woods. You look back in front of you, as you hear the thing growling at you once again. Suddenly a smaller flame, shoots right into the beasts neck in front of you, coming from your right. It hits with such a velocity, it had to be shot from a short distance. The beast falls to its knees, howls in agony and you quickly turn your gaze to the direction of which it came from.
Sukuna!
Tears of hate and relief form in your eyes as you see him only a couple of yards away from you. He looks so angry and fierce, his red eyes glowing so bright. He’s wearing his kimono, the upper part of his robe hanging down at his hips. His upper body naked in the snow, holding a dagger in his bottom left hand. Sukuna puts his upper arms into an arching pose, when suddenly another flame arrow manifests at his hands. Your eyes widen, as he aims it exactly at you. You turn around and want to run in the opposite direction, not expecting to see another of these beasts running directly at you. Stopping abruptly, crashing through the snow, you manage to crouch down and cover your head with your arms, as soon as you see the beast jumping into the air to strike you down. With a sharp whoosh, the flame arrow shoots through the air right above your head and hits the beast in its chest. The howling sounds of the dying beasts echo through the air. Feeling relieved that you didn’t die, you remember the one who’s responsible for this. You turn around, only to see Sukuna starting to run into your direction. Adrenaline goes up, eyes widen. Survival mode kicks in and you stand up as fast as you can and run into the direction of the flames he shot at the pack earlier. You’re pretty sure you won’t survive his punishment this time.
You run and run and run and you can hear his footsteps in the snow approach you fast. Getting louder and louder and as you turn around, you see him right in front of you, approaching so fast. Sukuna tackles you and you both fall down into the cold, wet snow. He pins you down with two of his arms and growls loudly into your face, punching into the ground right next to it with one of his fists. Red, angry eyes, so wide open, piercing right into yours. Your eyes scream fear and anger back into his, as he pants heavily into your face, his hot breath on your skin. His face just inches apart from yours.
“YOU’RE MINE!” he growls, so loud it’s echoing through the woods. “YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE!” he starts putting a lot of his weight on you, pushes his pelvis into yours.
“Fuck you!” you spit back, trembling under his weight. It’s actually making it hard for you to breathe. One of his hands shoots to your throat in response, starts choking you hard, even holds the dagger to your skin.
No air. The freezing steel and lack of air making you gasp.
“Do it.” you say with the last air that you had in you, shooting him a fierce look. He sneers at you, mouth twitching in anger, before he lets you go with a growl. You start to cough, slowly filling your lungs again with freezing air, as he stands up. You see his tall figure standing above you, snowflakes crashing against his naked torso, as he’s still breathing heavily, looking down at you. You elevate yourself on your elbows and look up at him with hurt. Sukuna bends down, only to hoist you up at your scarf with one of his hands like you weigh nothing, holding you in front of him.
“You’re not going anywhere” he snarls at you, before he throws you over his right shoulder. The impact knocking the air out of your lungs, as you watch the white ground far beneath you starting to move. Feeling his warm skin under your wet clothes, you try to punch into his back a few times, wiggle in his hold. The arm holding you in place at your thighs presses you more into him.
It’s no use. You’re weak and even more in your current condition. Running through the snow and also falling in it a couple of times drained you and you just start accept that he’s going to carry you back into his shrine.
Except… he doesn’t.
You look up, the distance to the cavaders of the beasts grows. He’s carrying you into the opposite direction of where you came from. Further into the pitch black woods. Away from the shrine.
“That’s not the way back!” you breathe.
“I know.”
155 notes · View notes
mostlymaudlin · 11 months
Text
Twenty Questions for Fic Writers 💫
thank you @decaflondonfog for the tag !! ill tag @sillyunicorn @starwarned @urban-sith @tea-brigade
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
98!! (woah) plus an unrevealed t&n fest fic, so 99. wow i need to do something rly crazy for 100 lol. what if i do a ridiculous crossover of all my fandoms and everyone in the fandom tags will hate me. 
2. What’s your total AO3 word count?
544,914. (again. woagh)
3. What fandoms do you write for?
mostly all for the game and simon snow series, have dabbled in & posted even less for check please, captain america, and one direction! i feel like i’m missing something but regardless my fixations are hardcore, so all except like 4k of that posted wc is for either aftg or ss hahahha
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
all are andreil! boyfriend privileges (4k, T) / Trigger (62k, E) / flashes of intimacy (10k, t) / Would you still love me if I was a worm? (6k, T) / Inside Thoughts (1k,T)
man this is long, rest is going under the cut lol
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
not very often, but i wish i did. i am stricken with a combination of being really awkward when people are nice to me & being bad at interacting with anyone in ways i fear could be perceived as ingenuine. im not sure if that makes sense LMAO. and sometimes when i put a story out, i kind of feel like i’ve said my piece — i’ve put so much into it that i don’t really know what else to say!
anyway, i always reply to questions, because that’s got clear social boundaries hahaha, and i DO love talking abt my stories!! and sometimes i’ll reply to comments that really get me thinking. but yeah, i know i reply less than i could, and i want to like double down on the fact that i am endlessly grateful for everyone who has ever left a comment on my work <3
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
i have killed simon snow twice lmfao. i’d actually classify icarus as rather hopeful — it’s about grief & healing. but legacies is just fucked up lmfao
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
oh man, i write a lot of happy endings haha. i feel like even when my story is tonally darker (rare), it still has a happy or at least hopeful ending. this is probably not the correct answer, but i think sing of the moon has a really vividly happy ending. like — the sun rises for the first time in the whole fic! amazing. or maybe my high school au, We Can Live Forever, which is just the happiest thing i’ve ever written. 
8. Do you get hate on fics?
not really, thankfully! people are smartasses sometimes but overall ive been lucky. there have been a couple of fics where ive winced before hitting post, but it usually ends up fine
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?
yessss. i guess i mostly write tender smut, bc i write tender things in general. i think my smut tends to be rather exploratory/playful as well? intentionally sloppy and awkward choreography hahaha
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?
sort of LOL. once upon a time i was betaing @tea-brigade's medieval snowbaz au, Reliquary of an Arsonist, and there’s this part where three highway bandits mug simon and baz and then get blasted by simon’s chosen one magic. i am sick in the head so im in the google doc like “lol what if its kandreil.” and then i was like… what if it was kandreil….. and so i wrote Reliquary of a Bandit
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
i don’t think so
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
yes!!! and i’m really thankful for everyone who has done so <3333 shoutout to russian aftg translators, yall go HARD
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
i recently collaborated with @thewholelemon on our episode of Star Trek: Redemption, Heart-Shaped Box. by which i mean: i wrote the outline & a few scenes, got really overwhelmed, and jenny turned it into something worth reading! 
i also wrote Good Boy in the snowbaz stoner verse with @starwarned, which was rly fun — we sat in the google doc for like, 5 hours trading back and forth on POVs as we wrote pure porn together LOL. it’s funny to think about this, because lauren knows like everything abt me now but we did not know each other as well back then!!! and we were just like “yeah lets write porn together” hahahahha 
14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?
right now it is deeefinitely andreil… they are everything to me for reasons i just cannot possibly be brief about LOL so ill just leave it at that
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
i have a postcanon snowbaz time travel/time loop wip that i was going to try to write for COBB this year but i fucked up the deadlines then the brainrot was like “guess that means more andreil !”. i did SO MUCH research for it and i think it’s rather clever and smutty and fun bc they are yeeted back to watford era! but it’s also dealing with snowbaz, who are in their late 20s and are like in a relationship low point/actively fighting when they end up in the loop… so they are dealing with that tension at the same time as they are trying to get out of the loop. and also fucking around watford to fulfill fantasies HAHAHA
16. What are your writing strengths?
characterization is the thing i care most about! and i think that’s the draw of fanfic in particular to me — i love getting such a grasp on a character that i can translate them into endless situations while still making them feel true to self. i rarely let myself publish anything until i can read through the whole thing without any he would not fucking say that moments hahahha. this is of course pertaining to my own interpretations of the characters, which is the only thing i care abt lmfao
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
i rely a lot on body language because im always writing abt reticent fuckers who cant use their words. but i think i sometimes overcompensate, or describe actions that don't actually fit the scene. i've seen this described as "cheek-biting" -- like, throwing in action during a conversation just to delay the pacing/further the tone, but when you really look at it, it's not necessary. (cheek-biting being like, "character bites at their cheek" in the middle of a tense conversation)
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
i don’t really know any other languages! i think i’ve put a little bit of french in neil/kevin/baz POVs before, but my french knowledge is elementary at best. love the idea of it though.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
one direction babyyyyyyyy !! i wrote quite a bit of it in like 2012-2015 but published very little. there’s 1 on my ao3, some lost somewhere on fanfiction.net (i dont rmr my username lol), and tons in my folders from my old laptop lol.
20. Favourite fic you’ve written?
hmmmmm. im gonna cheat bc i cant pick a single favorite. i always say i think No Turning Back is some of my best writing from a craft standpoint, and it also includes my favorite type of conflict (andrew self-destructing lol). however, i reread both that fic & We Can Live Forever on a plane trip recently after not having touched either for 6+ months — and the solidness of We Can Live Forever actually surprised me, especially because i wrote the majority of that fic while i was stoned and also view it as just exceedingly silly. the world of it is just very rich, and also very very different from the typical character backstories, and i’m very proud of how much that reread played with my heartstrings.  
ok last one — there are several installments of my flashes of intimacy series that i come back to a lot, because i’m proud of what they each accomplish in 500 words. especially because i often turn to those when im trying to express my own emotions lol. specifically, my favorites are picking fights, i don’t mind, swimming lessons, and practicing gratitude.
that was such a bullshit and cocky way to answer this lmfaooooo. but tbh i am my own biggest fan and that is by design — i write stuff so that i can reread it months later and have it be perfectly catered to my tastes. i love all my fics <3
17 notes · View notes
pvffinsdaisies · 2 years
Text
Hetalia ships as songs from Taylor Swift’s Midnights
LAVENDER HAZE: PruHun
“I feel a lavender haze creeping up on me, so real, I’m damned if I do give a damn what people say. No deal, that 1950s shit they want from me. I just wanna stay in that lavender haze.”
A song about staying in a little love bubble despite what other people may say about you or your relationship. Dodging negative and/or weird opinions and you and your partner, and not caring because you are so in love. I just think lyrics like “you don’t really read into my melancholia” “no deal, that 1950s shit they want from me” and “they’re bringing up my history, but you aren’t even listening.” Just fit PruHun so well.
MAROON: SuDen
“The burgundy on my T-shirt when you splashed your wine into me, and how the blood rushed into my cheeks, so scarlet, it was the mark you saw on my collarbone, the rust that grew between telephones, the lips I used to call home, so scarlet, it was maroon.”
Obviously, I had to choose a Denmark ship for a song that references many different shades of red. A song about a relationships that was fun and joyful and exciting, that was destroyed from constant fighting. My personal take on the lyric “so scarlet, it was maroon” is that Taylor WANTS to remember the love as a bright red, happy, joyful and fun, but then she realised it was much darker than that. I just think this fits with SuDen so well considering how many wars they’ve had. Just the entire second verse, “when the silence came, we were shaking blind and hazy. How the hell did we lose sight of us again? Sobbin with your head in your hands, ain’t that the way shit always ends? You’re standing hallow-eyed in the hallway, carnations you had thought were roses, that’s us. I feel you no matter what, the rubies that I gave up.” Screams SuDen to me.
SNOW ON THE BEACH: EngNor
“And it was like snow on the beach; weird but fucking beautiful. Flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful, you wanting me. Tonight feels impossible, but it’s coming down, no sound, it’s all around like snow on the beach.”
What better ship for a song all about a love so pure and strange it feels magical than EngNor? Basically THE magic ship of hetalia. Especially considering the song starts out on a more pessimistic note with the first verse saying, “life is emotionally abusive, and time can’t stop me quite like you did, and my flight was awful, thanks for for asking. I’m unglued thanks to you.” I think it’s just very england. Not to even mention the line “this scene feels like what I once saw on a screen, I searched Aurora Borealis green.” This song was, quite frankly, just written for EngNor.
MIDNIGHT RAIN: DenNor
“He was sunshine, I was midnight rain. He wanted it comfortable, I wanted that pain. He wanted a bride, I was making my own name, chasing that fame. He stayed the same, all of me changed like midnight rain.”
Whilst I do not want to be dismissive of Norway’s need for independence, this song just fits DenNor too perfectly. A song about looking back on your past relationship and realising how good of a partner your ex was and missing them. The description of the ex being a sunshine, and having only positive words to say about them, and Norway being the midnight rain. I think DenNor will always be the best example of a sun and moon ship in hetalia, and this song perfectly embodies that trope.
QUESTION…?: ScotFra
“Can I ask you a question? Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room and every single one of your friends were making fun of you but 15 seconds later they were clapping too? Then what did you do? Did you leave her house in the middle of the night? Did you wish you’d put up more a fight? When she said it was too much? Do you wish you could still touch …her? It’s just a question.”
I was, truth be told, not expecting this song to fit ScotFra the most. But, the more I looked at the lyrics, I realised this song is about someone asking an old fling if they miss them, despite that fling now being in a happy and comfortable relationship. As a result, it kinda gives me Auld Alliance vibes. Especially the part where Taylor sings, “we had one thing going on, I swear that it was something, because I don’t remember who I was before you painted all my nights a colour that I’ve searched for since, but one thing after another: lost in situations, circumstances, miscommunication…” 
LABYRINTH: ScotNor
“Uh oh, I’m falling in love. Oh no, I’m falling in love again. Oh, I’m falling in love. I thought the plane was going down, how’d you turn it right around?”'
A slept on ship for a slept on song, it’s just fitting really 😌 as ScotNor is my favourite ship, I knew it would make its way onto this list, and labyrinth is one of the two songs from this album in my ScotNor playlist. A song about the complexities of being in a relationship which is moving fast when you’re afraid of loving, and the feeling that the relationship can’t possibly last, but the person takes you by surprise and turns out to be exactly what you need. With the lyrics, “it only feels this raw right now, lost in the labyrinth of my mind. Break up, break free, break through, break down: you would break your back to make me break a smile.” Considering I headcanon Norway to be scared shitless of romance, and having a strong desire to run away the moment he falls in love. I think this is a sweet and fitting love song for his feelings about Scotland.
SWEET NOTHING: AmeLiet
“They said the end is coming, everyone’s up to something, I find myself running home to your sweet nothings. Outside they’re push and shoving, you’re in the kitchen humming, all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing.”
Whilst I’m not an avid shipper, I’ve always enjoyed just how pure and loving AmeLiet is presented in hetalia. Lithuania being America’s calm, and being patient enough to keep up. Sweet Nothing is another song about being caught up in such a pure love whilst everyone is pushing you and expecting things, and having your partner be patient and calm enough to reassure and comfort you through it. I have to be honest, though, the line “and the voices that implore ‘you should be doing more,’ to you I can admit that I’m just too soft for all of it.” Tell me that doesn’t perfectly suit america and his responsibility as a superpower? And having Lithuania there to help him cope??
MASTERMIND: NorBela
“What if I told you none of it was accidental and, the first night that you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me? I laid the groundwork and then, just like clockwork, the dominos cascaded in a line. What if I told you I’m a mastermind? And now you’re mine. It was all by design, cos I’m a mastermind.”
This one kills me, because anyone who knows me knows I don’t like norbela at all, but alas, this song suits them too well. Mastermind fits belarus perfectly, it’s about a woman stopping at nothing to get her partner, I know it fit her perfectly from the verse, “you see all the wisest women had to do it this way, cos we were born to be the pawn in every lovers game” and even, right before the final chorus, “no one wanted to play me with as a little kid, so I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since, to make them love me and make it seem effortless (…) and I swear, I’m only cryptic and machiavellian cos I care” and with the plot twist revealed in the final verse, that she didn’t manipulate anyone, he saw what she was doing the entire time and thought it was cute. I hate it, but it just fits norbela perfectly.
THE GREAT WAR: FrUK
“To that bloodshed, crimson clover. Uh-huh, the worst was over, my hand was the one you reached for all throughout the Great War. Always remember, uh-huh we’re burned for better. I vowed I will always be yours, cos we survived the Great War.”
Ahh the one that inspired this entire post. I’ve always found this one quite weird with hetalia bc it quite literally ends up becoming about the Great War, but I personally take the world wars as the defining moments where France and England knew that through it all, they will always be there for one another and they do deeply care for one another. So, this song with FrUK just makes perfect sense.
PARIS: nyo! GerFra
Ahh, this one was always going to be a France ship, as it’s quite literally about being in love in Paris. But the song paris just give me more… woman vibes. Whilst I was thinking about different ships with nyo France, it hit me, the second verse is “privacy sign on the door, and on my page, and on the whole world. Romance is not dead, if you keep it just yours. Levitate above all the messes made, sit quiet by my side in the shade, and not the kind that’s thrown, I mean the kind under where a tree has grown.” And I think that respect for intimacy and privacy, really make it stand out that the other person is nyo Germany.
GLITCH: SuNor
“I think there’s been a glitch, oh yeah, 5 seconds later I’m fastening myself to you with a stitch, oh, yeah. I’m not even sorry, nights are so starry, blood moonlit. It must be counterfeit. I think there’s been a glitch.”
A song about a romance where there’s not suppose to be a romance. An accidental love that neither of them are complaining about. Which I, personally, thinks fits well with the idea that SuNor fell more in love with one another after their divorce. The first line is even “we were supposed to be just friends.” I also really think the “fastening myself to you with a stitch” line fits them really well too, as I imagine sunor to be a couple just are just always around one another. Neither of them are codependent on one another, they just like being around one another. Again, another unexpected one.
15 notes · View notes
lady-snow-flower · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media
RP QUESTIONNAIRE
Your Name: Laur
Characters: Berlioz, Hades, Merida, Nemo, Jun, Pip, Amity, Snow, Penny, Karen, Eboshi
Pick one of your characters and talk about their growth (we recommend choosing an older character, but it’s up to you!) What about their story has surprised you? What are you proud of? How have they changed from their original inception to now?
We’re gonna talk about Jun Moon. 
It turns out that I have a favorite kinda character, apparently– a character who simply loves to Not Grow (™) actually, to resist growth, to sometimes grow backwards and get worse. I have written this section before with both Mel and Ashleigh, where I talked a lot about that kind of anti-growth and why I love it. Guess what– we’re doing it again!
Well, only kind of! Because Jun DID grow…is growing… in fits and starts and a way that really excites me! And we all have Juno to thank for it!
But yes: Jun is a character who does not actually believe that people change. I discovered this, and many other things about Jun in our epic letter-writing experiment throughout the year. Only through this medium was Jun able to access emotions and memories he has ignored or suppressed. And at the root of a lot of Jun’s issues is I think this hopelessness that he is who he is and can never be anything but what he is. And I think that makes a lot of sense for him bc his life was in many ways decided the second he was born. As the oldest son in a Korean household, that just– immediately defines things about your life that you really don’t have any say about. And it’s not like Jun COULD change those things if he tried. He will always be mathyung. 
But… even just acknowledging things he wishes opens up the door for other smaller, minute changes. It’s been such a subtle journey. And he is still very stuck, very passive, very resistant, but the crack is there– and got a little wider now with the rebuilding of the Moon Market which is a Metaphor I Am Sure You All Realize. So I am hoping that this crack in Jun’s proverbial dam will open up in the months to come.
Pick another character (or the same character if you only have one) and talk a little about where you WANT them to go. What are your plans for them going into the new year? 
So hard to pick if only because spoilers lol. I think… Pip in a lot of ways has had a quieter year (for him) and I definitely want to refocus on some of his plots going into next year. I have some ideas that I’ve not really gotten around to when it comes to Amy and Maggie and so next year might be a good idea to tackle that! 
Also, spoiler I guess but idk i have talked about it to a few people so i dont care lol, I do want him to direct his own play. That feels so majorly important because it’s seizing control of the narrative and getting to decide his own fate! I think there’s so much fun to be had for Director Pip and one can hope I have enough creative energy to really see it through, because I do want to have him adapt something probably, and make it like, queer and edgy and probably over the top and hilarious in the way that only Pip Seville can do. I will work on when the best time is for this, we’ll see. Stay tuned. 
Meanwhile, one can HOPE that he makes some like emotional headway lolol but i probably shouldn’t promise anything. We’ll make several attempts to grow Pip emotionally. I do kinda wanna… shake up the status quo… wink. 
Pick a thread or a plot that you’re proud of and talk about why you loved it. 
I will shout out my entire Murder Plot lol. This was definitely a bucket list item for me and Snow. I wrote on last year’s questionnaire or goals or something that I wanted to do more necromancy with her this year, perhaps even something darker, and I believe brutally murdering John Cunningham her old necromancy teacher counts!
 I loved this plot because it combined both fantasy and contemporary elements, which I love to do. I also love to bring people together, and so I liked finding roles for Wolf, Gem, and Ting-Ting. And on a very very self-indulgent level, I wanted to write horror! I enjoyed playing with those details and creating that atmosphere, and I just really wanted to murder someone using their own bones and so i did lmfao.
And I am also proud of the fact that I wrote a bunch of one-shots and stuff this year. I think I’m unfortunately a very long-winded writer who also thinks conceptually about things, which can be a good thing but also leads me to not writing certain one-shots or tasks because in my mind if I can’t do like a 10k fully realized narrative, what is the point?? But this year, I wrote and published a few things anyway. So I’m going to Kudos myself bc I really am proud of these things. 
Penny’s Lessons Series: personally i like the format of this. I like the idea of taking a word and exploring it from multiple angles!! I was inspired a lot by the one chapter in Mara Wilson’s memoir, where she tracks her views of religion and god throughout her life. Part One: Name Part Two: Father Part Three: Bad 
Karen’s The Door Is Open: I am increasingly finding value in writing in the first person and Karen unlocked for me while I wrote their postcards to family, and later, to their MAFIA friends. It is what gave me so many hcs about them– how they have swynlake au dreams; that they design postcards; their general artistic interests lol. OFC this piece also incorporates more traditional prose– i am a girly who loves her mixed media. But yeah, I worked hard on it and i think it’s a pretty good character study of a young Karen!! 
Next, I’m going to shout out some things very generally because honest to GOD, when I am writing my paras, so many times they are my favorite paras of the moment lol. 
Ashleigh’s Last Arc (Dreams Come True, Annaleigh’s Goodbye, Kidnapping Evangeline) 
The Loud Bell + Acheron Song Fest (always a good challenge and very emotional too!!) Tiny Dancer Goodbye ugh 
Snowbell demon summoning duh 
Everything Juno, duh 
Penny’s entire Hollywood arc bc she is my special girl– shoutout to Tenny break-up also 
The dumb ass Phinnip Frenchy Fight of the Summer
The Entire Darling Arc as well– especially my John ‘task’ where he had to assemble a living family tree! Matcha goodbye! Ugh! 
There’s definitely more i rly do love all my threads but i wrote like 800 this year probably. 
In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 things you love to write about (metaphors? Sibling relationships? Physical description?) and talk about why you enjoy it! 
Sorry that these are gonna be pretentious it is my fairy talent i fear…
Posthumanism or transhumanism or perhaps just sheer Wildness. Sorry i did warn u all. But I think the reason that I love rping fairies and then gravitated very strongly to Penny is that I like to imagine brand new modes of living and thinking beyond that of the human. Like, what does the world look like when you’re 3 inches tall, and money is a foreign concept to you? Or like, how would your BRAIN develop if you were literally taught concepts through the eyes of a poodle? I will acknowledge that from the start, this is a losing battle. I am a human, raised with all my human assumptions and biases, and so everything I ever create will inevitably be colored by that. But I LIKE to try. I like the experiment, and the challenge. It is so fun to me to try to catch myself out and unpack my own perspective and really really try to see the world another way (hence the Penny series), and although I will fail, oftentimes I discover new things about humanity, or at least my own humanity, in the process. if u read this paragraph congrats its foreshadowing, and now a quote from jack halberstam on the subject: "Definitions of wildness will jostle with another for classificatory dominance, and just as quickly as formulations of the wild emerge, they may just as easily recede into babble. We will journey from bewilderment to chaos, from weeds to wandering, from the will to wilderness; we will be in the wild but not imagine ourselves to be of it; we will be guided by unhinged children, poets, animals, and wild thinkers. We will think ourselves wild too and then question the 'we,' the 'wild,' and everything in between."
Humor: anyway enough critical theory how about some LAUGHS! Yes, I just love supremely silly things. The sillier and goofier the better. For me, the most fun drama is not so much rooted in angst but like, embarrassment and misunderstanding and silliness, so yeah I think I definitely enjoy doing that kind of thing and probably why a lot of my characters (see: Karen and Pip) also use humor to process all negative things in their lives lol.
Image Systems: every year this is on my questionnaire without fail sorry about it. But yeah it’s my bread and freakin butter yall. I pick up characters, sometimes exclusively, to write in a new image system. That’s right, I just think to myself “Well, gosh, how fun would it be to have all these new metaphors attached to WIND and FLIGHT and AIR and BREATH and WEATHER” (to use Nemo as an example) and then I get that character, thank u! In a way it goes back to point one, though in a way more broad sense of like, I like to think in new ways and image systems are a wonderful doorway into a person’s mind who has experiences that I don’t have. 
What major updates have your characters gone through this year? (For example: 
beginning/ending a relationship, moving, starting a new job, adopting a pet, etc). Think if it as anything you would have put in the #character-updates channel. If you have a pinned post, consider adding these updates so everyone is aware of them in the future.
Berlioz: Berlioz became a teacher! Then he said fuck being a teacher and quit being a teacher! He’s grown closer with Jenny, gotten more confident and sure in what he wants, and has started looking outside of Swynlake for the next step in his life and marriage. <3 he has self-actualized good for him
Hades: got married a THIRD TIME!! Helped return his children to the future! Got kicked out of being mayor and started working at Queen’s Boutique!
Merida: discovered their brother is a MEDIUM! Many fights with Elinor. Helped nurse Elinor back to health after gunshot. Embraced being nonbinary and changed their pronouns!
Nemo: continued to readjust to life as a uni student! Put on a summer showcase with Ashlee and said goodbye to her. <3 He’s been working hard on choreo and balancing fairy duties/uni duties, got Luca to join the volleyball team, and ofc dealt with drama about his mother’s investigation reopening. Plus, Marlin is dating now, yikes!
Jun: got a secret penpal, opened up to secret penpal, discovered penpal was Lo, fell for Lo, watched his father’s store get totally destroyed brutally, launched a redesign/expansion of market, continued to do nothing about crush on Lo
Pip: got into a relationship with Jeremy and helped Jeremy come out!!!!! Lived a terribly disappointing summer as Frenchy, then lived an equally disappointing fall as part of the Distinguished Gentlemen. Filled his existential void with new projects with Build a Brand, rebranded SSIC into SPF. Continued to have weird relationships with most men in his life
Amity: prepared for uni in the fall, got Lilith to sponsor her for the magick grand prix, broke up with Riley, got super depressed, reconnected with Willow but has yet to apologize, series of hook-ups (most infamously with Jenny Marsh Foxworth) annnnd helped defeat an evil sentient plant hybrid.
Snow: broke up with Bruce, started dating Tom, part of Isa’s drama-filled bach weekend, accidentally unleashed demons into Swynlake because she was threatened by Eboshi’s arrival, then she had to deal with someone blackmailing the inn and it turns out that was her old necromancy teacher who she then accidentally killed to avoid being killed herself!!! Necromancy revealed to: Gem, Snow, Ting-Ting. Against all odds, still dating Tom. oh my gosh she’s a shitshow
Penny: brought HOLLYWOOD TO SWYNLAKE!!! Starred in Olive Bright, Pigeoneer! Bit her producer! Quit the movie! Quit acting! Enrolled in school! Catfished Tanya! Accidentally made Pip jealous by getting along with Jeremy! Went to NYC for Thanksgiving! Also a shitshow!
Eboshi: brought IRONTOWN TO SWYNLAKE!!! Kicked out Hades, closed the forest, shut down Chapter Three. Is now secretly training with her long lost ancestor Ashitaka and wrestling with her internalized anti-magick attitude.
Karen: they JUST got here. Done practically nothing besides squabble with their mother and flirt with various good-lookin’ bitches up and down Swynlake. Watch out suckers, 2024’s gonna be their year!
Talk about your dash reply style and your Discord reply style! (And if applicable, also your doc reply style). What do you like about each type of interaction? What is something you feel is difficult? Do you have preferences regarding how many times you’re tagged per day, or do you prefer for your replies to be queued for a certain amount of time?
Generally speaking, I do not hold threads nor do I want threads held for me. This is blanket permission: REPLY AS MUCH AS U WANT!!! The only time this doesn’t apply is when I travel, then I usually ask people to reply once a day or something, just because I might miss things on the dash and then it’ll slip through the cracks. Otherwise, my rp style is just to reply every single day to as many threads as I’d like! It’s really just that simple. I try to make sure each one of my partners gets at least one reply and we go from there. 
On the individual methods of rping.
Dash: love it. Call me old school but its my preference. I like having the record of things on there. I’m game to go back and forth as long as I’ve completed my daily amount of threads for the day. Can dash all day babyyyy
Discord: like it. Def love jumping on ol discord to do an event here and there! But once the notif disappears, I am infamously bad at forgetting it exists. Im so sorry. U do have to tap me in these instances. 
Doc: hate it. Jk jk but– weirdly enough i am getting worse at remember these??? I dunno what’s up with me, it just throws me off my groove. So I prefer to only do docs when absolutely necessary, like for surprises and stuff like that–stuff that i KNOW is high priority, or else it slips from my head. 
And now, a wishlist! Jot down a few themes or stories or genres etc that you want to maybe pursue in the upcoming year! (i.e. a good ol’ fashion forbidden romance, maybe you want to dig deep into racial identity etc) This doesn’t have to necessarily be attached to any characters or stories you have now– it’s just meant to help you see for yourself what kind of stories call to your heart.
Villain hijinks for Karen!
More dating and uni drama for Penny and Amity specifically!
MORE FAIRY STUFF!!! The fact we have Clarion is amazing. I’m looking forward to doing more fairy plots in and outside of the hollow. I won’t even front with yall, I am looking at several fairy muses. Idk if they will come through in the end, but I do hope I get another fairy character because I enjoy them so much :) 
I am once again asking for a tournament arc like in an anime. I really just have to make this happen myself dont i 
Sports Anime™ as well. I have athletic characters but I have never really pursued that kind of thing as a serious plot so maybe we can finally make it happen with magick grand prix or i’ll find another avenue lolol.  
OPTIONAL: Why do you RP?
I say it every year and it remains true: writing for writing sake! I just love that I can be inspired here, be silly here, try things out here, and it’s all because I love it and love my characters and love the people. Writing is so fun when you do it with friends! It continues to be true for me.
Also: deeply important to my mental health! I start every day with RP and I think being able to check even these little paras off my mental to do list really sets me up for success lol. I’m glad my brain works this way honestly. Not to be too capricorn up in here but I’m glad i take rp too seriously, I’m glad I treat it like part of my job, I’m glad that it feels productive and that makes me feel good about myself like bla bla bla capitalism or whatever but sometimes work is good esp work that you assign yourself or whatever lol.
0 notes
turnpage · 3 years
Text
send me a ✐ for a random sentence starter from my muse (1-1500) — tw: profanity, mild nsfw, long list
generator here quotes compiled from here inspired by
feel free to change to fit your preferences as need.
❨1❩ ❛ They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. ❜
 ❨2❩ ❛ Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters. ❜ ❨3❩ ❛ I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. ❜ ❨4❩ ❛ Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. ❜ ❨5❩ ❛ The world's a hard place. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate you and me, but it doesn't love us, either. ❜ ❨6❩ ❛ The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. ❜ ❨7❩ ❛ Pull your act together and just go on. ❜ ❨8❩ ❛ I had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there is nothing physically wrong. I hurt all the time. ❜ ❨9❩ ❛ Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ❜ ❨10❩ ❛ Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford? ❜ ❨11❩ ❛ Truth comes out. In the end it always comes out. ❜ ❨12❩ ❛ Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are. ❜ ❨13❩ ❛ No matter where you go, the same asshole gets off the plane. ❜ ❨14❩ ❛ We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives. ❜ ❨15❩ ❛ That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. ❜ ❨16❩ ❛ Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. ❜ ❨17❩ ❛ God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you. ❜ ❨18❩ ❛ Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you. ❜ ❨19❩ ❛ How many times, over how many years, have I—a grown adult—asked for the mercy of another chance? ❜ ❨20❩ ❛ I was suddenly so sick of myself, so revolted. ❜ ❨21❩ ❛ You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. ❜ ❨22❩ ❛ But those pieces, they’ll never fit just the same way again. Never in this world. ❜ ❨23❩ ❛ Dying is a part of living. You have to keep tuning in to that if you expect to be a whole person. ❜ ❨24❩ ❛ Officious little prick. ❜ ❨25❩ ❛ I’ve been sleepwalking again, my dear. — The plants are moving under the rug. ❜ ❨26❩ ❛ How I wish you were fear. ❜ ❨27❩ ❛ But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. ❜ ❨28❩ ❛ All we have is time, you know. An eternity of time. Or shall we end it? Might as well. After all, we're missing the party. ❜ ❨29❩ ❛ We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. ❜ ❨30❩ ❛ The way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. ❜ ❨31❩ ❛ Got to be regular if you want to be happy. ❜ ❨32❩ ❛ But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. ❜ ❨33❩ ❛ He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. ❜ ❨34❩ ❛ Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. ❜ ❨35❩ ❛ It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness.  ❜ ❨36❩ ❛ If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. ❜ ❨37❩ ❛ I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. ❜ ❨38❩ ❛ I cannot bear this world a moment longer. ❜ ❨39❩ ❛ I have a better idea. I will do as I please. ❜ ❨40❩ ❛ All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. ❜ ❨41❩ ❛ You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. ❜ ❨42❩ ❛ When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. ❜ ❨43❩ ❛ When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. ❜ ❨44❩ ❛ But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. ❜ ❨45❩ ❛ I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ❜ ❨46❩ ❛ This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. ❜ ❨47❩ ❛ You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. ❜ ❨48❩ ❛ Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. ❜ ❨49❩ ❛ If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. ❜ ❨50❩ ❛ You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. ❜ ❨51❩ ❛ Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. ❜ ❨52❩ ❛ I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape I’ve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. ❜ ❨53❩ ❛ I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. ❜ ❨54❩ ❛ Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. ❜ ❨55❩ ❛ Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. ❜ ❨56❩ ❛ The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ❜ ❨57❩ ❛ My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ❜ ❨58❩ ❛ This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ❜ ❨59❩ ❛ Witches are not so delicate. ❜ ❨60❩ ❛ Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. ❜ ❨61❩ ❛ I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. ❜ ❨62❩ ❛ There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. ❜ ❨63❩ ❛ The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. ❜ ❨64❩ ❛ Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ❜ ❨65❩ ❛ Now it's a whisper from the past. ❜ ❨66❩ ❛ But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. ❜ ❨67❩ ❛ Why is it always such a surprise? The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush. ❜ ❨68❩ ❛ Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it. ❜ ❨69❩ ❛ What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?  ❜ ❨70❩ ❛ I have scars, inside me. ❜ ❨71❩ ❛ The dead are not entirely dead but are alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. ❜ ❨72❩ ❛ However dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void. ❜ ❨73❩ ❛ Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. ❜ ❨74❩ ❛ It is another way of saying tough luck. To people you aren’t going to help out. ❜ ❨75❩ ❛ I'm waiting, far off in the future. ❜ ❨76❩ ❛ The only sure camouflage is unpredictability. ❜ ❨77❩ ❛ There are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. ❜ ❨78❩ ❛ First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. ❜ ❨79❩ ❛ I long to swim in liquid moonlight. ❜ ❨80❩ ❛ That's right, I don’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. ❜ ❨81❩ ❛ The part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. ❜ ❨82❩ ❛ Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew. ❜ ❨83❩ ❛ Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. ❜ ❨84❩ ❛ At last. It's you. ❜ ❨85❩ ❛ No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish. ❜ ❨86❩ ❛ Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful. ❜ ❨87❩ ❛ How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. ❜ ❨88❩ ❛ Is it disapproval or extreme lust? With some men it’s hard to tell the difference. ❜ ❨89❩ ❛ My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died. ❜ ❨90❩ ❛ Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. ❜ ❨91❩ ❛ Everything digests, and is digested. ❜ ❨92❩ ❛ My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft. ❜ ❨93❩ ❛ You cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜ ❨94❩ ❛ I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. ❜ ❨95❩ ❛ And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living. ❜ ❨96❩ ❛ The world is a beautiful place. Don’t forget that. And don’t miss it. ❜ ❨97❩ ❛ I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. ❜ ❨98❩ ❛ Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. ❜ ❨99❩ ❛ It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ❜ ❨100❩ ❛ We’re interpreters. We’re translators. ❜ ❨101❩ ❛ You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way. ❜ ❨102❩ ❛ No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that. ❜ ❨103❩ ❛ We lived in monochrome those nights. ❜ ❨104❩ ❛ You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? ❜ ❨105❩ ❛ Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? ❜ ❨106❩ ❛ I stand here in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing. ❜ ❨107❩ ❛ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. ❜ ❨108❩ ❛ Not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye. ❜ ❨109❩ ❛ Selective emotional detachment. ❜ ❨110❩ ❛ Not for me, or at least not today. ❜ ❨111❩ ❛ Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene. ❜ ❨112❩ ❛ Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that? ❜ ❨113❩ ❛ Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon. ❜ ❨114❩ ❛ The dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone. ❜ ❨115❩ ❛ My shadow stretches along the carpet, as though trying to detach itself from me. ❜ ❨116❩ ❛ It curls away from me, like blood in water. ❜ ❨117❩ ❛ It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind. ❜ ❨118❩ ❛ But snow I never want to feel again. ❜ ❨119❩ ❛ Through adversity to the stars. ❜ ❨120❩ ❛ No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out. ❜ ❨121❩ ❛ Thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. ❜ ❨122❩ ❛ The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you. ❜ ❨123❩ ❛ Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. ❜ ❨124❩ ❛ Women get consumed. ❜ ❨125❩ ❛ Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them. ❜ ❨126❩ ❛ A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. ❜ ❨127❩ ❛ Safer to be feared than loved. ❜ ❨128❩ ❛ I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. ❜ ❨129❩ ❛ It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wish I could stop trying. ❜ ❨130❩ ❛ I always feel sad for the girl that I was. ❜ ❨131❩ ❛ Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. ❜ ❨132❩ ❛ How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. ❜ ❨133❩ ❛ See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. ❜ ❨134❩ ❛ Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ❜ ❨135❩ ❛ To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ❜ ❨136❩ ❛ I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. ❜ ❨137❩ ❛ I'm tired of dying. ❜ ❨138❩ ❛ What if you hurt because it feels so good? ❜ ❨139❩ ❛ How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. ❜ ❨140❩ ❛ Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait? ❜ ❨141❩ ❛ Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own. ❜ ❨142❩ ❛ Everyone has their own version of a memory. ❜ ❨143❩ ❛ Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon? ❜ ❨144❩ ❛ My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past. ❜ ❨145❩ ❛ Do what I want; I might like you. ❜ ❨146❩ ❛ I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been. ❜ ❨147❩ ❛ She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. ❜ ❨148❩ ❛ The sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. ❜ ❨149❩ ❛ It infects you. It ruined me. ❜ ❨150❩ ❛ Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects. ❜ ❨151❩ ❛ Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? ❜ ❨152❩ ❛ We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ❜ ❨153❩ ❛ Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. ❜ ❨154❩ ❛ The strongest of all warriors are these two — time and patience. ❜ ❨155❩ ❛ If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. ❜ ❨156❩ ❛ There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. ❜ ❨157❩ ❛ The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness. ❜ ❨158❩ ❛ Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. ❜ ❨159❩ ❛ It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. ❜ ❨160❩ ❛ You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. ❜ ❨161❩ ❛ If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. ❜ ❨162❩ ❛ We are asleep until we fall in love! ❜ ❨163❩ ❛ I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. ❜ ❨164❩ ❛ Everything I know, I know because of love. ❜ ❨165❩ ❛ Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. ❜ ❨166❩ ❛ If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ❜ ❨167❩ ❛ Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. ❜ ❨168❩ ❛ How can one be well...when one suffers morally? ❜ ❨169❩ ❛ Kings are the slaves of history. ❜ ❨170❩ ❛ God is the same everywhere. ❜ ❨171❩ ❛ Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. ❜ ❨172❩ ❛ One must be cunning and wicked in this world. ❜ ❨173❩ ❛ We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. ❜ ❨174❩ ❛ When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! ❜ ❨175❩ ❛ For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed? ❜ ❨176❩ ❛ He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. ❜ ❨177❩ ❛ Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. ❜ ❨178❩ ❛ Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. ❜ ❨179❩ ❛ The distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. ❜ ❨180❩ ❛ How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ❜ ❨181❩ ❛ The wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ❜ ❨182❩ ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜ ❨183❩ ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜ ❨184❩ ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜ ❨185❩ ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜ ❨186❩ ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜ ❨187❩ ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜ ❨188❩ ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜ ❨189❩ ❛ He died alone. It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜ ❨190❩ ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜ ❨191❩ ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜ ❨192❩ ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜ ❨193❩ ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜ ❨194❩ ❛ If not for death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜ ❨195❩ ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜ ❨196❩ ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜ ❨197❩ ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜ ❨198❩ ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜ ❨199❩ ❛ I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜ ❨200❩ ❛ You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜ ❨201❩ ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜ ❨202❩ ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜ ❨203❩ ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜ ❨204❩ ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜ ❨205❩ ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜ ❨206❩ ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜ ❨207❩ ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜ ❨208❩ ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜ ❨209❩ ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜ ❨210❩ ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜ ❨211❩ ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜ ❨212❩ ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜ ❨213❩ ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜ ❨214❩ ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜ ❨215❩ ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜ ❨216❩ ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜ ❨217❩ ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜ ❨218❩ ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜ ❨219❩ ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜ ❨220❩ ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜ ❨221❩ ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜ ❨222❩ ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜ ❨223❩ ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜ ❨224❩ ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜ ❨225❩ ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜ ❨226❩ ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜ ❨227❩ ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜ ❨228❩ ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜ ❨229❩ ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜ ❨230❩ ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜ ❨231❩ ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜ ❨232❩ ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜ ❨233❩ ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜ ❨234❩ ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜ ❨235❩ ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜ ❨236❩ ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜ ❨237❩ ❛ The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜ ❨238❩ ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜ ❨239❩ ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜ ❨240❩ ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜ ❨241❩ ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜ ❨242❩ ❛ And, oh, God . . . how frequently I weep! ❜ ❨243❩ ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜ ❨244❩ ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜ ❨245❩ ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜ ❨246❩ ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜ ❨247❩ ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜ ❨248❩ ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜ ❨249❩ ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜ ❨250❩ ❛ Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜ ❨251❩ ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜ ❨252❩ ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜ ❨253❩ ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜ ❨254❩ ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜ ❨255❩ ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right. ❜ ❨256❩ ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜ ❨257❩ ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜ ❨258❩ ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜ ❨259❩ ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜ ❨260❩ ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜ ❨261❩ ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜ ❨262❩ ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜ ❨263❩ ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜ ❨264❩ ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜ ❨265❩ ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜ ❨266❩ ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜ ❨267❩ ❛ I'm beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜ ❨268❩ ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜ ❨269❩ ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜ ❨270❩ ❛ If you see a ghost, you say "hello". ❜ ❨271❩ ❛ The war is not over. ❜ ❨272❩ ❛ You're not going. You left us once already. ❜ ❨273❩ ❛ You can’t go! ❜ ❨274❩ ❛ I loved you, but that wasn't enough, was it? ❜ ❨275❩ ❛ If you're dead, then leave me in peace. ❜ ❨276❩ ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜ ❨277❩ ❛ I won't ask for forgiveness for something I didn't do! ❜ ❨278❩ ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜ ❨279❩ ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜ ❨280❩ ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜ ❨281❩ ❛ They're everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜ ❨282❩ ❛ You're always teasing me, and telling lies. I'm sick of it. ❜ ❨283❩ ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we'll sense them. Other times, we won't. ❜ ❨284❩ ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. ❜ ❨285❩ ❛ You listen to me. I've seen them too. ❜ ❨286❩ ❛ You'll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be... changes. ❜ ❨287❩ ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn't you stay like the others did? ❜ ❨288❩ ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜ ❨289❩ ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜ ❨290❩ ❛ I wasn't expecting you so soon. ❜ ❨291❩ ❛ What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜ ❨292❩ ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜ ❨293❩ ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜ ❨294❩ ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜ ❨295❩ ❛ Whatever you do, don't open the curtains. ❜ ❨296❩ ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜ ❨297❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜ ❨298❩ ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨299❩ ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜ ❨300❩ ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨301❩ ❛ Love does not exist, it's like religion, made to control you. ❜ ❨302❩ ❛ After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. ❜ ❨303❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨304❩ ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜ ❨305❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜ ❨306❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜ ❨307❩ ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜ ❨308❩ ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜ ❨309❩ ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜ ❨310❩ ❛ It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜ ❨311❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨312❩ ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there's no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜ ❨313❩ ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜ ❨314❩ ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜ ❨315❩ ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜ ❨316❩ ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜ ❨317❩ ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜ ❨318❩ ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜ ❨319❩ ❛ We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜ ❨320❩ ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜ ❨321❩ ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜ ❨322❩ ❛ Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. ❜ ❨323❩ ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜ ❨324❩ ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜ ❨325❩ ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜ ❨326❩ ❛ Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜ ❨327❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨328❩ ❛ Maybe that's what love is: it's being pissed off. ❜ ❨329❩ ❛ You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. ❜ ❨330❩ ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜ ❨331❩ ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜ ❨332❩ ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜ ❨333❩ ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜ ❨334❩ ❛ We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜ ❨335❩ ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜ ❨336❩ ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜ ❨337❩ ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜ ❨338❩ ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜ ❨339❩ ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜ ❨340❩ ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜ ❨341❩ ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜ ❨342❩ ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜ ❨343❩ ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody -- a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜ ❨344❩ ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜ ❨345❩ ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜ ❨346❩ ❛ I'm fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜ ❨347❩ ❛ Because if you can't wish, why bother? ❜ ❨348❩ ❛ It's better to hope than mope! ❜ ❨349❩ ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜ ❨350❩ ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜ ❨351❩ ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜ ❨352❩ ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜ ❨353❩ ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜ ❨354❩ ❛ ‘Why can't I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜ ❨355❩ ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜ ❨356❩ ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜ ❨357❩ ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜ ❨358❩ ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜ ❨359❩ ❛ In the end, we'll all become stories. ❜ ❨360❩ ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜ ❨361❩ ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. ❜ ❨362❩ ❛ If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜ ❨363❩ ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜ ❨364❩ ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been. ❜ ❨365❩ ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜ ❨366❩ ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜ ❨367❩ ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜ ❨368❩ ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜ ❨369❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜ ❨370❩ ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜ ❨371❩ ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜ ❨372❩ ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜ ❨373❩ ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜ ❨374❩ ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜ ❨375❩ ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜ ❨376❩ ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜ ❨377❩ ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜ ❨378❩ ❛ Isn't the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜ ❨379❩ ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. ❜ ❨380❩ ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜ ❨381❩ ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜ ❨382❩ ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜ ❨383❩ ❛ But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling. ❜ ❨384❩ ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜ ❨385❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨386❩ ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜ ❨387❩ ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜ ❨388❩ ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜ ❨389❩ ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜ ❨390❩ ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜ ❨391❩ ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜ ❨392❩ ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜ ❨393❩ ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜ ❨394❩ ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜ ❨395❩ ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜ ❨396❩ ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜ ❨397❩ ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜ ❨398❩ ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜ ❨399❩ ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜ ❨400❩ ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜ ❨401❩ ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜ ❨402❩ ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜ ❨403❩ ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜ ❨404❩ ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜ ❨405❩ ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜ ❨406❩ ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜ ❨407❩ ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜ ❨408❩ ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜ ❨409❩ ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜ ❨410❩ ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜ ❨411❩ ❛ Nevermore. ❜ ❨412❩ ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜ ❨413❩ ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜ ❨414❩ ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜ ❨415❩ ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜ ❨416❩ ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜ ❨417❩ ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜ ❨418❩ ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜ ❨419❩ ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜ ❨420❩ ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜ ❨421❩ ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜ ❨422❩ ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜ ❨423❩ ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜ ❨424❩ ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜ ❨425❩ ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜ ❨426❩ ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜ ❨427❩ ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜ ❨428❩ ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜ ❨429❩ ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜ ❨430❩ ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜ ❨431❩ ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜ ❨432❩ ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜ ❨433❩ ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜ ❨434❩ ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜ ❨435❩ ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜ ❨436❩ ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜ ❨437❩ ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜ ❨438❩ ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜ ❨439❩ ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜ ❨440❩ ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜ ❨441❩ ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜ ❨442❩ ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜ ❨443❩ ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜ ❨444❩ ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜ ❨445❩ ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜ ❨446❩ ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜ ❨447❩ ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'. ❜ ❨448❩ ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜ ❨449❩ ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜ ❨450❩ ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜ ❨451❩ ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜ ❨452❩ ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜ ❨453❩ ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜ ❨454❩ ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜ ❨455❩ ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜ ❨456❩ ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe ❨457❩ that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie ❨458❩ asleep. ❜ ❨459❩ ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜ ❨460❩ ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜ ❨461❩ ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜ ❨462❩ ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜ ❨463❩ ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜ ❨464❩ ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜ ❨465❩ ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜ ❨466❩ ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜ ❨467❩ ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜ ❨468❩ ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜ ❨469❩ ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜ ❨470❩ ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜ ❨471❩ ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜ ❨472❩ ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜ ❨473❩ ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜ ❨474❩ ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜ ❨475❩ ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜ ❨476❩ ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜ ❨477❩ ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜ ❨478❩ ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜ ❨479❩ ❛ If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged. ❜ ❨480❩ ❛ When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass. ❜ ❨481❩ ❛ Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word; - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase.  ❜ ❨482❩ ❛ Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. ❜ ❨483❩ ❛ If the world treats you well, you come to believe you are deserving of it. ❜ ❨484❩ ❛ If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go. ❜ ❨485❩ ❛ It’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ❜ ❨486❩ ❛ There is no fool like an educated fool. ❜ ❨487❩ ❛ There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ❜ ❨488❩ ❛ I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. ❜ ❨489❩ ❛ Underneath it all is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. ❜ ❨490❩ ❛ And underneath all that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.  ❜ ❨491❩ ❛ The small details of life often hide a great significance. ❜ ❨492❩ ❛ Guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you. ❜ ❨493❩ ❛ I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once? ❜ ❨494❩ ❛ It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between. ❜ ❨495❩ ❛ Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam. ❜ ❨496❩ ❛ I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. ❜ ❨497❩ ❛ I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely. ❜ ❨498❩ ❛ If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one. ❜ ❨499❩ ❛ It’s as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent. ❜ ❨500❩ ❛ Today you wear your habitual expression of strained anxiety; you smell of violets. ❜ ❨501❩ ❛ Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude. ❜ ❨502❩ ❛ I wonder what would become of me, and comfort myself that in a hundred years I will be dead and at peace. ❜ ❨503❩ ❛ For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer. ❜ ❨504❩ ❛ There is a “do this” or “do that” with God, but not any “because”. ❜ ❨505❩ ❛ If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. ❜ ❨506❩ ❛ They say, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. ❜ ❨507❩ ❛ I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out. ❜ ❨508❩ ❛ I see what you’re after. You are a collector. You think all you have to do is give me an apple, and then you can collect me. ❜ ❨509❩ ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜ ❨510❩ ❛ Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜ ❨511❩ ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜ ❨512❩ ❛ After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜ ❨513❩ ❛ There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive. ❜ ❨514❩ ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜ ❨515❩ ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜ ❨516❩ ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜ ❨517❩ ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜ ❨518❩ ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜ ❨519❩ ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜ ❨520❩ ❛ “I'll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I'll make you me.” ❜ ❨521❩ ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜ ❨522❩ ❛ Expectation isn't the same as desire. ❜ ❨523❩ ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜ ❨524❩ ❛ Maybe there aren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜ ❨525❩ ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜ ❨526❩ ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜ ❨527❩ ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜ ❨528❩ ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It's not good for you. ❜ ❨529❩ ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜ ❨530❩ ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜ ❨531❩ ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜ ❨532❩ ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜ ❨533❩ ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜ ❨534❩ ❛ Don't be so fucking sentimental. ❜ ❨535❩ ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜ ❨536❩ ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜ ❨537❩ ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜ ❨538❩ ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜ ❨539❩ ❛ You will hear thunder and remember me. ❜ ❨540❩ ❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜ ❨541❩ ❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜ ❨542❩ ❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜ ❨543❩ ❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else's mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜ ❨544❩ ❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜ ❨545❩ ❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜ ❨546❩ ❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜ ❨547❩ ❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜ ❨548❩ ❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜ ❨549❩ ❛ You do not know just what you've been forgiven. ❜ ❨550❩ ❛ I need to slaughter my memory.  ❜ ❨551❩ ❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜ ❨552❩ ❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜ ❨553❩ ❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜ ❨554❩ ❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜ ❨555❩ ❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜ ❨556❩ ❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜ ❨557❩ ❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜ ❨558❩ ❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜ ❨559❩ ❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜ ❨560❩ ❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜ ❨561❩ ❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜ ❨562❩ ❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜ ❨563❩ ❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜ ❨564❩ ❛ Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. ❜ ❨565❩ ❛ I've got no more tears or explanations. ❜ ❨566❩ ❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜ ❨567❩ ❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜ ❨568❩ ❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜ ❨569❩ ❛ I was not a lovable child, and I've grown into a deeply unlovable adult. ❜ ❨570❩ ❛ The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ❜ ❨571❩ ❛ I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark. ❜ ❨572❩ ❛ I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. ❜ ❨573❩ ❛ I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way. ❜ ❨574❩ ❛ I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen. But the meanness usually wins out. ❜ ❨575❩ ❛ I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ❜ ❨576❩ ❛ Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it. ❜ ❨577❩ ❛ Coffee goes great with sudden death. ❜ ❨578❩ ❛ I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite. ❜ ❨579❩ ❛ “Smile, it can't be that bad!” Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad. ❜ ❨580❩ ❛ Everything bad in the world already did happen. ❜ ❨581❩ ❛ You’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? ❜ ❨582❩ ❛ Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. ❜ ❨583❩ ❛ Homesick for a place I've never been. ❜ ❨584❩ ❛ Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. ❜ ❨585❩ ❛ It is always consoling to think of suicide. It's what gets one through many a bad night. ❜ ❨586❩ ❛ Do you understand this is serious? ❜ ❨587❩ ❛ Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with. ❜ ❨588❩ ❛ How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ❜ ❨589❩ ❛ Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs. ❜ ❨590❩ ❛ We have the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia. ❜ ❨591❩ ❛ I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. ❜ ❨592❩ ❛ The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it’s near. Midtongue. ❜ ❨593❩ ❛ Nothing to it but to do it. ❜ ❨594❩ ❛ There are a lot of people who deserve a lesson, deserve to really understand, that nothing comes easy, that most things are going to go sour. ❜ ❨595❩ ❛ If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas. ❜ ❨596❩ ❛ Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ❜ ❨597❩ ❛ What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? ❜ ❨598❩ ❛ That mean old bitch across the street bit it. ❜ ❨599❩ ❛ Survival is a talent. ❜ ❨600❩ ❛ Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. ❜ ❨601❩ ❛ Who has the courage to burn themselves? ❜ ❨602❩ ❛ Is insanity just a matter of dropping the act? ❜ ❨603❩ ❛ Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? ❜ ❨604❩ ❛ You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. ❜ ❨605❩ ❛ When I am supposed to be awake, I am asleep; when I am supposed to speak, I am silent. When a pleasure offers itself to me, I avoid it. ❜ ❨606❩ ❛ There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. ❜ ❨607❩ ❛ In a strange way we are free. We've reached the end of the line. We have nothing more to lose. ❜ ❨608❩ ❛ The world won’t stop because we aren’t in it anymore. ❜ ❨609❩ ❛ I can't answer the real question. All I can tell you is, it's easy. ❜ ❨610❩ ❛ I am lighter, airier than I’ve been in years. ❜ ❨611❩ ❛ I am not dead, yet something in me definitely is. ❜ ❨612❩ ❛ You meant that as an insult but I am taking it as a compliment. ❜ ❨613❩ ❛ What life can recover from that? ❜ ❨614❩ ❛ It's a fairly accurate portrait of me. It's accurate but it isn't profound. ❜ ❨615❩ ❛ Pull yourself together! There's nothing wrong with you. ❜ ❨616❩ ❛ It's quiet. It's like― I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff. ❜ ❨617❩ ❛ Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ❜ ❨618❩ ❛ I lost him. I did it on purpose. ❜ ❨619❩ ❛ It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there. ❜ ❨620❩ ❛ Reality is getting too dense. ❜ ❨621❩ ❛ I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favourite word. ❜ ❨622❩ ❛ I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions you raise. ❜ ❨623❩ ❛ A spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. ❜ ❨624❩ ❛ Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ❜ ❨625❩ ❛ A thought is a hard thing to control. ❜ ❨626❩ ❛ Life demands skills I don’t have. ❜ ❨627❩ ❛ Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful. Most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them. ❜ ❨628❩ ❛ It never stops, even at night, it’s my lullaby. ❜ ❨629❩ ❛ Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. ❜ ❨630❩ ❛ This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes. ❜ ❨631❩ ❛ I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. ❜ ❨632❩ ❛ Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. ❜ ❨633❩ ❛ Hatred is easier. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love. ❜ ❨634❩ ❛ Potential has a shelf life. ❜ ❨635❩ ❛ Don’t move. Stay like that, let me have that. ❜ ❨636❩ ❛ I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. ❜ ❨637❩ ❛ Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ❜ ❨638❩ ❛ It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. ❜ ❨639❩ ❛ We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. ❜ ❨640❩ ❛ This is what I miss, not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. ❜ ❨641❩ ❛ I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ❜ ❨642❩ ❛ You are amazing. Amazing and agonising and almost lethal. ❜ ❨643❩ ❛ In my dreams of this city I am always lost. ❜ ❨644❩ ❛ I don't know where these feelings have come from, I don’t know what I've done. ❜ ❨645❩ ❛ I am not the centre of your story, you are.  ❜ ❨646❩ ❛ I’m mad because you’re an asshole. ❜ ❨647❩ ❛ It's enormously pleasing to me, walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. ❜ ❨648❩ ❛ There is never only one of anyone. ❜ ❨649❩ ❛ I can't do this without feeling I'm acting. ❜ ❨650❩ ❛ I am prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ❜ ❨651❩ ❛ I’m losing my appetite for strangers. ❜ ❨652❩ ❛ You wear your cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. You want it all. ❜ ❨653❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people weakens you. You are forced to understand their reasons for doing things. ❜ ❨654❩ ❛ I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. ❜ ❨655❩ ❛ Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. ❜ ❨656❩ ❛ Whoever cares the most will lose. ❜ ❨657❩ ❛ Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defences.  ❜ ❨658❩ ❛ Time has gone on without you. ❜ ❨659❩ ❛ Don't let the bastards grind you down. ❜ ❨660❩ ❛ Who can remember pain, once it’s over? Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ❜ ❨661❩ ❛ Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. ❜ ❨662❩ ❛ There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. ❜ ❨663❩ ❛ Remember that forgiveness too is a power. ❜ ❨664❩ ❛ I am not your justification for existence. ❜ ❨665❩ ❛ I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. ❜ ❨666❩ ❛ If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ❜ ❨667❩ ❛ All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard. ❜ ❨668❩ ❛ Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ❜ ❨669❩ ❛ I want everything back, the way it was. ❜ ❨670❩ ❛ You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave. ❜ ❨671❩ ❛ Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. ❜ ❨672❩ ❛ To want is to have a weakness. ❜ ❨673❩ ❛ There isn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. ❜ ❨674❩ ❛ The past is a great darkness, filled with echoes. ❜ ❨675❩ ❛ Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. ❜ ❨676❩ ❛ I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light. ❜ ❨677❩ ❛ The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. ❜ ❨678❩ ❛ By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you. ❜ ❨679❩ ❛ Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard. ❜ ❨680❩ ❛ Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. ❜ ❨681❩ ❛ Keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. ❜ ❨682❩ ❛ The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. ❜ ❨683❩ ❛ The world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. ❜ ❨684❩ ❛ Nobody's heart is perfect. ❜ ❨685❩ ❛ One false move and I'm dead. ❜ ❨686❩ ❛ Watch out. I've got my eye on you. ❜ ❨687❩ ❛ Fear is a powerful stimulant. ❜ ❨688❩ ❛ I couldn't afford to lose you. ❜ ❨689❩ ❛ Name one hero who was happy. ---- You can’t. ❜ ❨690❩ ❛ I feel like I could eat the world raw. ❜ ❨691❩ ❛ We are like gods at the dawning of the world. ❜ ❨692❩ ❛ I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ❜ ❨693❩ ❛ There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. ❜ ❨694❩ ❛ You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. ❜ ❨695❩ ❛ He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. ❜ ❨696❩ ❛ Some men gain glory after they die, others fade. ❜ ❨697❩ ❛ I am made of memories. ❜ ❨698❩ ❛ Will you come with me? ❜ ❨699❩ ❛ I wish I had let you all die. ❜ ❨700❩ ❛ It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after. ❜ ❨701❩ ❛ Bury us. Let us be free. ❜ ❨702❩ ❛ Go. He waits for you. ❜ ❨703❩ ❛ Nothing could eclipse the stain of this dirty, mortal mediocrity. ❜ ❨704❩ ❛ I know I have told you of this. ❜ ❨705❩ ❛ I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me. ❜ ❨706❩ ❛ Perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. ❜ ❨707❩ ❛ I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. ❜ ❨708❩ ❛ There is no honour in betraying your friends. ❜ ❨709❩ ❛ There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. ❜ ❨710❩ ❛ Divine blood flows differently. ❜ ❨711❩ ❛ How is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. ❜ ❨712❩ ❛ This is what I will miss, I think. I will kill myself rather than miss it. ❜ ❨713❩ ❛ How long do we have? ❜ ❨714❩ ❛ Do you think we fight hopeless wars? ❜ ❨715❩ ❛ There is no law that gods must be fair. ❜ ❨716❩ ❛ I do not fear ridicule. I never have. ❜ ❨717❩ ❛ You were always better with words than I. ❜ ❨718❩ ❛ Who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? ❜ ❨719❩ ❛ When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. ❜ ❨720❩ ❛ That's how the madness of the world tries to colonise you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. ❜ ❨721❩ ❛ The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear. ❜ ❨722❩ ❛ Silence creates violence. ❜ ❨723❩ ❛ Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough. ❜ ❨724❩ ❛ There are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜ ❨725❩ ❛ Nothing that ever lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. ❜ ❨726❩ ❛ We all live in a kind of continuous dream. ❜ ❨727❩ ❛ You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you. ❜ ❨728❩ ❛ What can you do when your five senses are not enough? ❜ ❨729❩ ❛ We will neither be what we had been nor what we would become once we reach our destination. ❜ ❨730❩ ❛ Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable. ❜ ❨731❩ ❛ When you are too close to the centre of a mystery there is no way to pull back. ❜ ❨732❩ ❛ I long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. ❜ ❨733❩ ❛ I look not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I try to imagine what kind of life lives in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. ❜ ❨734❩ ❛ I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, I think. If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ❜ ❨735❩ ❛ I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. ❜ ❨736❩ ❛ All of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. ❜ ❨737❩ ❛ We don’t have real answers, because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. ❜ ❨738❩ ❛ This part I will do alone. Don’t follow. ❜ ❨739❩ ❛ People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control. ❜ ❨740❩ ❛ Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead? ❜ ❨741❩ ❛ I loved them, but I didn’t need them, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. ❜ ❨742❩ ❛ Places can impress themselves upon me, and I can become part of them with ease. ❜ ❨743❩ ❛ There is no one with me. I am all by myself. ❜ ❨744❩ ❛ Pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic. ❜ ❨745❩ ❛ I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. ❜ ❨746❩ ❛ What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months. ❜ ❨747❩ ❛ Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool. ❜ ❨748❩ ❛ I need to know what’s inside. ❜ ❨749❩ ❛ These aren't decisions. They're impulses ❜ ❨750❩ ❛ What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden pinning, looking up at the sky? ❜ ❨751❩ ❛ If I know what’s happened I can save their life. ❜ ❨752❩ ❛ They either went crazy or something in here killed them. ❜ ❨753❩ ❛ Something is coming through the fence! ❜ ❨754❩ ❛ Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny. ❜ ❨755❩ ❛ People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. ❜ ❨756❩ ❛ Happy endings are still endings. ❜ ❨757❩ ❛ We believe in all sorts of things that aren't true; -- we call it history. ❜ ❨758❩ ❛ Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? ❜ ❨759❩ ❛ In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats. ❜ ❨760❩ ❛ Girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise.  ❜ ❨761❩ ❛ Love makes hunters of us all. ❜ ❨762❩ ❛ There is much to hate in this world and way too much to love. ❜ ❨763❩ ❛ You confuse not speaking with not listening. ❜ ❨764❩ ❛ As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ❜ ❨765❩ ❛ The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say. ❜ ❨766❩ ❛ Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. ❜ ❨767❩ ❛ We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. ❜ ❨768❩ ❛ The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness. ❜ ❨769❩ ❛ I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! ❜ ❨770❩ ❛ Even at the very worst - there is always choice. ❜ ❨771❩ ❛ Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ❜ ❨772❩ ❛ Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the entire universe is changed. ❜ ❨773❩ ❛ That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness. Life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same. ❜ ❨774❩ ❛ I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without. ❜ ❨775❩ ❛ It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new. ❜ ❨776❩ ❛ Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the godfather, never the god. ❜ ❨777❩ ❛ The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew. ❜ ❨778❩ ❛ Evil is an act, not an appetite. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. ❜ ❨779❩ ❛ How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table?  ❜ ❨780❩ ❛ Even God used silence as a strategy. ❜ ❨781❩ ❛ I learned failure early and mastered it. ❜ ❨782❩ ❛ It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all. ❜ ❨783❩ ❛ This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is a very wicked distraction. ❜ ❨784❩ ❛ Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery. ❜ ❨785❩ ❛ Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ❜ ❨786❩ ❛ Such brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. ❜ ❨787❩ ❛ I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can. ❜ ❨788❩ ❛ Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss off, go on, say it, but don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. ❜ ❨789❩ ❛ The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on. ❜ ❨790❩ ❛ One can't make peace with another by force. ❜ ❨791❩ ❛ I am a forgettable leaf on a tree. ❜ ❨792❩ ❛ That's all I want; --- to do no harm. ❜ ❨793❩ ❛ I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is. ❜ ❨794❩ ❛ Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ❜ ❨795❩ ❛ You’re too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to that we manage to endure the burden of the past. ❜ ❨796❩ ❛ Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. You are either born knowing how, or you never know. ❜ ❨797❩ ❛ Whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life. ❜ ❨798❩ ❛ There is no God worth worrying about. ❜ ❨799❩ ❛ The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. ❜ ❨800❩ ❛ Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. ❜ ❨801❩ ❛ Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the very end in itself. ❜ ❨802❩ ❛ Only God knows how much I love you. ❜ ❨803❩ ❛ There is no greater glory than to die for love. ❜ ❨804❩ ❛ Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ❜ ❨805❩ ❛ Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life. ❜ ❨806❩ ❛ Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion. ❜ ❨807❩ ❛ I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century. ❜ ❨808❩ ❛ I want to be myself again, to recover all that I was obliged to give up. ❜ ❨809❩ ❛ The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name. ❜ ❨810❩ ❛ This soup tastes like windows. ❜ ❨811❩ ❛ Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist? ❜ ❨812❩ ❛ One has to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ❜ ❨813❩ ❛ No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ❜ ❨814❩ ❛ My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. ❜ ❨815❩ ❛ That may be the reason he does so many things, so that he will not have to think. ❜ ❨816❩ ❛ Love if it exists, is something separate: another life. ❜ ❨817❩ ❛ Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you. ❜ ❨818❩ ❛ There are things you do only for love. ❜ ❨819❩ ❛ I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die. ❜ ❨820❩ ❛ There is no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age. ❜ ❨821❩ ❛ You treat me as if I were just anybody. ❜ ❨822❩ ❛ The symptoms of love are the same as those of cholera. ❜ ❨823❩ ❛ There is no law, human or divine, that you have not ignored. ❜ ❨824❩ ❛ Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years? ❜ ❨825❩ ❛ Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ❜ ❨826❩ ❛ It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. ❜ ❨827❩ ❛ We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? ❜ ❨828❩ ❛ There must be something, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ❜ ❨829❩ ❛ If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ❜ ❨830❩ ❛ If you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore. ❜ ❨831❩ ❛ You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. ❜ ❨832❩ ❛ It was a pleasure to burn. ❜ ❨833❩ ❛ I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? ❜ ❨834❩ ❛ Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? ❜ ❨835❩ ❛ Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays? ❜ ❨836❩ ❛ Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ❜ ❨837❩ ❛ I don't talk things. I talk the meaning of things. ❜ ❨838❩ ❛ I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. ❜ ❨839❩ ❛ I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. ❜ ❨840❩ ❛ That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. ❜ ❨841❩ ❛ Someday we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. ❜ ❨842❩ ❛ You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. ❜ ❨843❩ ❛ You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. ❜ ❨844❩ ❛ When they give you lined paper, write the other way. ❜ ❨845❩ ❛ The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. ❜ ❨846❩ ❛ We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing. ❜ ❨847❩ ❛ I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago. ❜ ❨848❩ ❛ I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. ❜ ❨849❩ ❛ Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! ❜ ❨850❩ ❛ How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you? ❜ ❨851❩ ❛ It must be right. It seems so right. ❜ ❨852❩ ❛ To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. ❜ ❨853❩ ❛ It's my game. And no one can help me. Not even you. ❜ ❨854❩ ❛ What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. ❜ ❨855❩ ❛ Death is a long process. Your body is just the first part of you that croaks. Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. Your anger and memories must die. Your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope. ❜ ❨856❩ ❛ Help me give up my addiction to hope. ❜ ❨857❩ ❛ Life is short, death is forever. ❜ ❨858❩ ❛ Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break. ❜ ❨859❩ ❛ If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. ❜ ❨860❩ ❛ We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. ❜ ❨861❩ ❛ All the demons of hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. ❜ ❨862❩ ❛ I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful. ❜ ❨863❩ ❛ It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ❜ ❨864❩ ❛ You fucked up. Game over. So just relax. ❜ ❨865❩ ❛ The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ❜ ❨866❩ ❛ If killing you will end my existence as well, be it. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. ❜ ❨867❩ ❛ I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. ❜ ❨868❩ ❛ Dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. ❜ ❨869❩ ❛ Any concept of right versus wrong, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. ❜ ❨870❩ ❛ To prove that I exist I must kill you. ❜ ❨871❩ ❛ I'd say that my life has been a way-too-long case history of chasing rainbows. ❜ ❨872❩ ❛ The world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard. ❜ ❨873❩ ❛ Every garden looks beautiful in May. ❜ ❨874❩ ❛ When we neglect to fear such brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless. ❜ ❨875❩ ❛ My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it. ❜ ❨876❩ ❛ Such language! Why don't you just take a dump in my ears? ❜ ❨877❩ ❛ You’d be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. ❜ ❨878❩ ❛ Depending on her mood, she can be more frightening than any demon or devil you might ever run across. ❜ ❨879❩ ❛ Cross your fingers! Maybe death won't happen to you. ❜ ❨880❩ ❛ Do not die while wearing cheap shoes. ❜ ❨881❩ ❛ Old habits die hard. ❜ ❨882❩ ❛ It's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us. ❜ ❨883❩ ❛ What do I think I am? In a thousand words; I don't have a clue. ❨884❩ ❛ If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ❜ ❨885❩ ❛ All I wanted was to be loved for myself. ❜ ❨886❩ ❛ I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer. ❜ ❨887❩ ❛ Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? ❜ ❨888❩ ❛ You have a heart that can hold the entire empire of the world. ❜ ❨889❩ ❛ Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you. ❜ ❨890❩ ❛ Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. ❜ ❨891❩ ❛ You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! ❜ ❨892❩ ❛ Are people so unhappy when they love? --- Yes, when they love and are not sure of being loved. ❜ ❨893❩ ❛ Your soul is a beautiful thing. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. ❜ ❨894❩ ❛ Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! ❜ ❨895❩ ❛ Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a life like everybody else. ❜ ❨896❩ ❛ You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. ❜ ❨897❩ ❛ I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ❜ ❨898❩ ❛ I am going to die of love, I am dying of love. That's how it is. I loved you so. I still love you so. ❜ ❨899❩ ❛ I am dying of love for her, I tell you! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her. ❜ ❨900❩ ❛ He fills me with horror but I do not hate him. How can I hate him? ❜ ❨901❩ ❛ Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest. ❜ ❨902❩ ❛ Nothing is colder or more dead than my heart. ❜ ❨903❩ ❛ I had loved an angel and now I despise a woman. ❜ ❨904❩ ❛ Our lives are one masked ball. ❜ ❨905❩ ❛ Why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing? ❜ ❨906❩ ❛ He would commit murder for me. ❜ ❨907❩ ❛ If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug, she is lost. But I shall save her. ❜ ❨908❩ ❛ We will go from here together or die together. ❜ ❨909❩ ❛ Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ❜ ❨910❩ ❛ Destiny has chained you to me forever. ❜ ❨911❩ ❛ You must never ask me that. ❜ ❨912❩ ❛ Are you afraid that you will change your mind? ❜ ❨913❩ ❛ You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly. ❜ ❨914❩ ❛ The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. ❜ ❨915❩ ❛ I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. ❜ ❨916❩ ❛ There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home. ❜ ❨917❩ ❛ I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. ❜ ❨918❩ ❛ It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to even mourn for it. ❜ ❨919❩ ❛ There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. ❜ ❨920❩ ❛ When did you become so weak? ❜ ❨921❩ ❛ I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. ❜ ❨922❩ ❛ Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. ❜ ❨923❩ ❛ Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. ❜ ❨924❩ ❛ I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. ❜ ❨925❩ ❛ I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away. ❜ ❨926❩ ❛ I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move. ❜ ❨927❩ ❛ Who was it that said following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. ❜ ❨928❩ ❛ It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. ❜ ❨929❩ ❛ Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ❜ ❨930❩ ❛ I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. ❜ ❨931❩ ❛ How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn? ❜ ❨932❩ ❛ Now look -- Now look what you made me do. ❜ ❨933❩ ❛ It’s okay, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. ❜ ❨934❩ ❛ They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. ❜ ❨935❩ ❛ You broke me and I broke us. ❜ ❨936❩ ❛ I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you. ❜ ❨937❩ ❛ I’d never realised, not until now, how shameful it is to be pitied. ❜ ❨938❩ ❛ Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. ❜ ❨939❩ ❛ I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. ❜ ❨940❩ ❛ There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. ❜ ❨941❩ ❛ Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point in denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ❜ ❨942❩ ❛ I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love. ❜ ❨943❩ ❛ You don’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with. ❜ ❨944❩ ❛ The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. ❜ ❨945❩ ❛ You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it? ❜ ❨946❩ ❛ I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it. ❜ ❨947❩ ❛ If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying, he’s got another thing coming. ❜ ❨948❩ ❛ I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away. ❜ ❨949❩ ❛ I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ❜ ❨950❩ ❛ I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate it, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. ❜ ❨951❩ ❛ Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away. ❜ ❨952❩ ❛ I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. ❜ ❨953❩ ❛ Failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. ❜ ❨954❩ ❛ It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time; I don’t feel bad enough. ❜ ❨955❩ ❛ Some battles aren’t worth fighting. ❜ ❨956❩ ❛ I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to. ❜ ❨957❩ ❛ I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? ❜ ❨958❩ ❛ What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ❜ ❨959❩ ❛ A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. ❜ ❨960❩ ❛ It isn’t only wickedness and scheming that make people unhappy, it is confusion and misunderstanding. ❜ ❨961❩ ❛ Falling in love can be achieved in a single word—a glance. ❜ ❨962❩ ❛ Though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you. ❜ ❨963❩ ❛ I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. ❜ ❨964❩ ❛ It might hurt, it is horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but it is what it is to be in love. ❜ ❨965❩ ❛ It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. ❜ ❨966❩ ❛ Come back, come back to me. ❜ ❨967❩ ❛ In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. ❜ ❨968❩ ❛ The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence and I don’t think I can blame the heat. ❜ ❨969❩ ❛ Beauty occupies a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, has infinite variation. ❜ ❨970❩ ❛ Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ❜ ❨971❩ ❛ However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been. ❜ ❨972❩ ❛ Hate is a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. ❜ ❨973❩ ❛ I’m going mad. Let me not be mad. ❜ ❨974❩ ❛ Is everyone really as alive as I am? ❜ ❨975❩ ❛ Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself. ❜ ❨976❩ ❛ Something has happened, hasn’t it? ❜ ❨977❩ ❛ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. ❜ ❨978❩ ❛ Is it possible that I am, in the modern term, in denial? ❜ ❨979❩ ❛ How could anyone presume to know the world through the eyes of an insect? ❜ ❨980❩ ❛ Not everything has a cause. Some things are simply so. ❜ ❨981❩ ❛ I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. ❜ ❨982❩ ❛ How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? ❜ ❨983❩ ❛ It was never meant to be read. ❜ ❨984❩ ❛ If I fell in the river, would you save me? ❜ ❨985❩ ❛ That was an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do. ❜ ❨986❩ ❛ I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll be eternally grateful to you. ❜ ❨987❩ ❛ I’m very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused. I’m very, very sorry. ❜ ❨988❩ ❛ Don’t call me that! – Please don’t call me that. ❜ ❨989❩ ❛ It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine. ❜ ❨990❩ ❛ Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ❜ ❨991❩ ❛ No one ever really gets used to nightmares. ❜ ❨992❩ ❛ I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. ❜ ❨993❩ ❛ Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. ❜ ❨994❩ ❛ Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. ❜ ❨995❩ ❛ Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ❜ ❨996❩ ❛ The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. ❜ ❨997❩ ❛ You will fulfil a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. ❜ ❨998❩ ❛ Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. ❜ ❨999❩ ❛ I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore. ❜ ❨1000❩ ❛ What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff. ❜ ❨1001❩ ❛ Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ❜ ❨1002❩ ❛ It’s just silent, no sound at all. It’s like something’s waiting. ❜ ❨1003❩ ❛ I guess I’m hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control. ❜ ❨1004❩ ❛ Oh and something else: – Fuck you. ❜ ❨1005❩ ❛ God I’ve never been afraid like this. ❜ ❨1006❩ ❛ I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived that you can’t call your own. ❜ ❨1007❩ ❛ I’m so tired. Sleep’s been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ❜ ❨1008❩ ❛ Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the Hey-I’m-Bleeding part. ❜ ❨1009❩ ❛ These days fantasies flourish and die like summer flies. ❜ ❨1010❩ ❛ Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous. ❜ ❨1011❩ ❛ ‘Fuck’ and 'fall for’ have very different meanings. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do. ❜ ❨1012❩ ❛ It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. ❜ ❨1013❩ ❛ It’s, well…one thing in two words: fucked up…very fucked up. Okay three words, four words, who the hell cares…very very fucked up. ❜ ❨1014❩ ❛ Do you think I could spend the night at your place?  ❜ ❨1015❩ ❛ Any fool can pray. ❜ ❨1016❩ ❛ I feel like I haven’t slept in months. My neighbours are scared of me. ❜ ❨1017❩ ❛ I’ve lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m just really drunk. ❜ ❨1018❩ ❛ Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace. ❜ ❨1019❩ ❛ I should be dead. Why am I still here? ❜ ❨1020❩ ❛ Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. ❜ ❨1021❩ ❛ You are my flesh. You are my bones. I know you too well. I read you too perfectly. ❜ ❨1022❩ ❛ Not all complex problems have easy solutions. ❜ ❨1023❩ ❛ Do you believe in God? I don’t think I ever asked you that one. ❜ ❨1024❩ ❛ We all create stories to protect ourselves. ❜ ❨1025❩ ❛ Are you kidding me? This place is scary. ❜ ❨1026❩ ❛ These days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ❜ ❨1027❩ ❛ You like that crap because it reminds you of you. ❜ ❨1028❩ ❛ You may suddenly realise things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ❜ ❨1029❩ ❛ The two hardest tests are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. ❜ ❨1030❩ ❛ People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. ❜ ❨1031❩ ❛ Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different. ❜ ❨1032❩ ❛ You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. ❜ ❨1033❩ ❛ God chose you to be different. ❜ ❨1034❩ ❛ Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? ❜ ❨1035❩ ❛ You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you. ❜ ❨1036❩ ❛ Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to. ❜ ❨1037❩ ❛ Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death?  ❜ ❨1038❩ ❛ If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem. ❜ ❨1039❩ ❛ Nothing in this world happens by chance. ❜ ❨1040❩ ❛ I want to continue living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. ❜ ❨1041❩ ❛ Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. ❜ ❨1042❩ ❛ Collective madness is called sanity. ❜ ❨1043❩ ❛ Consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. ❜ ❨1044❩ ❛ You say they create their own reality, but what is reality? ❜ ❨1045❩ ❛ Many people don't allow themselves to love because there are a lot of things at risk. A lot of future and a lot of past. ❜ ❨1046❩ ❛ Death frees from the fear of dying. ❜ ❨1047❩ ❛ The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort. ❜ ❨1048❩ ❛ The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ❜ ❨1049❩ ❛ Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ❜ ❨1050❩ ❛ It's best to accept life as it really is and not as you imagined it to be. ❜ ❨1051❩ ❛ You don't seem mad at all. ❜ ❨1052❩ ❛ We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroys us. ❜ ❨1053❩ ❛ You’re what you are, not what others make of you. ❜ ❨1054❩ ❛ Am I cured? ❜ ❨1055❩ ❛ Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself. ❜ ❨1056❩ ❛ A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Is that it? ❜ ❨1057❩ ❛ They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. ❜ ❨1058❩ ❛ I didn't know that other ‘me’s existed inside me, ‘Me’s that I could love. ❜ ❨1059❩ ❛ I have no idea what's awaiting me. ❜ ❨1060❩ ❛ What will happen when this all ends? ❜ ❨1061❩ ❛ I know that you are capable of great deeds. ❜ ❨1062❩ ❛ A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ❜ ❨1063❩ ❛ The truth is that everyone is bored. ❜ ❨1064❩ ❛ I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. ❜ ❨1065❩ ❛ If there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. ❜ ❨1066❩ ❛ Who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for even a single moment's suffering? ❜ ❨1067❩ ❛ It's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. ❜ ❨1068❩ ❛ While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. ❜ ❨1069❩ ❛ People are more often bad than good. ❜ ❨1070❩ ❛ I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. ❜ ❨1071❩ ❛ What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ❜ ❨1072❩ ❛ In fact, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. ❜ ❨1073❩ ❛ Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves. ❜ ❨1074❩ ❛ Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ❜ ❨1075❩ ❛ There are more things to admire in men then to despise. ❜ ❨1076❩ ❛ It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. ❜ ❨1077❩ ❛ What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this? ❜ ❨1078❩ ❛ Your code of morals? What code, if I may ask? ❜ ❨1079❩ ❛ I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding anything. ❜ ❨1080❩ ❛ No doubt our love is still there, but quite simply it is unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. ❜ ❨1081❩ ❛ I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start. ❜ ❨1082❩ ❛ I am incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that I am incapable of anything really worth while. ❜ ❨1083❩ ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ ❨1084❩ ❛ We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. ❜ ❨1085❩ ❛ The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ❜ ❨1086❩ ❛ There are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live. ❜ ❨1087❩ ❛ The best protection against anything is a good bottle of wine. ❜ ❨1088❩ ❛ There is no peace without hope. ❜ ❨1089❩ ❛ It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. ❜ ❨1090❩ ❛ There is always something left to love. ❜ ❨1091❩ ❛ A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can. ❜ ❨1092❩ ❛ Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls. ❜ ❨1093❩ ❛ Tell me something: why are you fighting? ❜ ❨1094❩ ❛ I've come to realise only just now that I'm fighting because of pride. ❜ ❨1095❩ ❛ One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship. ❜ ❨1096❩ ❛ It's better than not knowing why you're fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ❜ ❨1097❩ ❛ Holy Mother of God! ❜ ❨1098❩ ❛ A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground. ❜ ❨1099❩ ❛ I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1100❩ ❛ Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. ❜ ❨1101❩ ❛ I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance. ❜ ❨1102❩ ❛ Get those bad thoughts out of your head. You're going to be happy. ❜ ❨1103❩ ❛ Children inherit their parents' madness. ❜ ❨1104❩ ❛ I'll turn to ashes in here but I won't give this miserable town the pleasure of seeing me weep. ❜ ❨1105❩ ❛ You would be good in a war. Where you put your eye, you put your bullet. ❜ ❨1106❩ ❛ Men demand much more than you think. ❜ ❨1107❩ ❛ Even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth. ❜ ❨1108❩ ❛ If we’re alone you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of. ❜ ❨1109❩ ❛ You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. ❜ ❨1110❩ ❛ We have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect. ❜ ❨1111❩ ❛ What worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death. ❜ ❨1112❩ ❛ What worries me is that you've ended up as bad as they are. ❜ ❨1113❩ ❛ It is characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites are satisfied. ❜ ❨1114❩ ❛ Dying is much more difficult than one imagines. ❜ ❨1115❩ ❛ If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself! ❜ ❨1116❩ ❛ We have still not had a death. ❜ ❨1117❩ ❛ How awful, the way time passes. ❜ ❨1118❩ ❛ You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house. ❜ ❨1119❩ ❛ I missed you every hour. ❜ ❨1120❩ ❛ You know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. ❜ ❨1121❩ ❛ I’ve risked my life for you. ❜ ❨1122❩ ❛ The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak. ❜ ❨1123❩ ❛ I love you, even the part of you that loved him. ❜ ❨1124❩ ❛ I’m sorry it took me so long to see you. ❜ ❨1125❩ ❛ I never really belonged anywhere. ❜ ❨1126❩ ❛ Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable.  ❜ ❨1127❩ ❛ Thanks for finding me. ❜ ❨1128❩ ❛ You and I are going to change the world. ❜ ❨1129❩ ❛ I’ve been waiting for you a long time. ❜ ❨1130❩ ❛ I’m not used to people trying to kill me. ❜ ❨1131❩ ❛ You’re shaking. ❜ ❨1132❩ ❛ There's nothing wrong with being a lizard. Unless you were born to be a hawk. ❜ ❨1133❩ ❛ Make me your villain. ❜ ❨1134❩ ❛ Just you and me. It’s always just you and me. ❜ ❨1135❩ ❛ Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every dumb thing I’ve said? ❜ ❨1136❩ ❛ Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal. ❜ ❨1137❩ ❛ Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark? ❜ ❨1138❩ ❛ Did you miss me when you were gone? ❜ ❨1139❩ ❛ What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men. ❜ ❨1140❩ ❛ You’re interfering with my plan. ❜ ❨1141❩ ❛ Too much champagne? ❜ ❨1142❩ ❛ I hope you don’t expect fairness from me. It isn’t one of my specialties. ❜ ❨1143❩ ❛ There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings. Faith. ❜ ❨1144❩ ❛ All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how. ❜ ❨1145❩ ❛ What is she? She’s everything, you dumb son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1146❩ ❛ She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned. ❜ ❨1147❩ ❛ I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ❜ ❨1148❩ ❛ It’s a great honor, to save a life. You saved many. ❜ ❨1149❩ ❛ In this world, there are things you can only do alone. ❜ ❨1150❩ ❛ What seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. ❜ ❨1151❩ ❛ If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. ❜ ❨1152❩ ❛ Why should you be interested in me? ❜ ❨1153❩ ❛ I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times. ❜ ❨1154❩ ❛ It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. ❜ ❨1155❩ ❛ I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel. ❜ ❨1156❩ ❛ The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish. ❜ ❨1157❩ ❛ The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.  ❜ ❨1158❩ ❛ So once you're dead there's just nothing? ❜ ❨1159❩ ❛ If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality. ❜ ❨1160❩ ❛ Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? ❜ ❨1161❩ ❛ Nobody can shake off their own shadow. ❜ ❨1162❩ ❛ The silence is so deep it hurts. ❜ ❨1163❩ ❛ I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. ❜ ❨1164❩ ❛ Killing time is one of my specialities. ❜ ❨1165❩ ❛ You can't fight it. ❜ ❨1166❩ ❛ Tell me something,—do you believe in reincarnation? ❜ ❨1167❩ ❛ I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it. ❜ ❨1168❩ ❛ I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner.  ❜ ❨1169❩ ❛ I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. ❜ ❨1170❩ ❛ I can't take it any more, I can't go on any more. ❜ ❨1171❩ ❛ You don't really have it together. ❜ ❨1172❩ ❛ Is it against the law for me to know it? ❜ ❨1173❩ ❛ I keep having the same dream. ❜ ❨1174❩ ❛ Are you asking because you really want an answer? ❜ ❨1175❩ ❛ I hate this! I don't want to be changed this way! ❜ ❨1176❩ ❛ No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas. ❜ ❨1177❩ ❛ Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop. ❜ ❨1178❩ ❛ If I didn’t have these memories inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. ❜ ❨1179❩ ❛ I don’t know what you’re feeling. I won’t even pretend. ❜ ❨1180❩ ❛ What are you doing here, honey? ❜ ❨1181❩ ❛ You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. ❜ ❨1182❩ ❛ You don't understand me. ❜ ❨1183❩ ❛ All wisdom ends in paradox. ❜ ❨1184❩ ❛ It is love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. ❜ ❨1185❩ ❛ I have lost my gift. ❜ ❨1186❩ ❛ Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. ❜ ❨1187❩ ❛ The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us. ❜ ❨1188❩ ❛ They're just memories now. It’s time to forget. ❜ ❨1189❩ ❛ The time has to be right and the heart willing. ❜ ❨1190❩ ❛ The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season. ❜ ❨1191❩ ❛ Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. ❜ ❨1192❩ ❛ Grief is natural, overcoming it is a matter of choice. ❜ ❨1193❩ ❛ I want out of that decorating scheme. ❜ ❨1194❩ ❛ With most people suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. ❜ ❨1195❩ ❛ You never get over it but you get where it doesn't bother you so much. ❜ ❨1196❩ ❛ Don't waste your time on life. ❜ ❨1197❩ ❛ I'm a teenager. I've got problems! ❜ ❨1198❩ ❛ Adolescents tend to seek love where they can find it. ❜ ❨1199❩ ❛ Obviously, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ❜ ❨1200❩ ❛ It was a mistake. ❜ ❨1201❩ ❛ It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever. ❜ ❨1202❩ ❛ Buffeted but not broken. ❜ ❨1203❩ ❛ Shit. What have kids got to be worried about now? ❜ ❨1204❩ ❛ If they want trouble, they should go live in Bangladesh. ❜ ❨1205❩ ❛ I can't wait until I get out of here. ❜ ❨1206❩ ❛ When she jumped she probably thought she’d fly. ❜ ❨1207❩ ❛ I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help. ❜ ❨1208❩ ❛ You're a stone fox. ❜ ❨1209❩ ❛ It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. ❜ ❨1210❩ ❛ Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. ❜ ❨1211❩ ❛ He broke my heart. You merely broke my life. ❜ ❨1212❩ ❛ I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. ❜ ❨1213❩ ❛ Words without experience are meaningless. ❜ ❨1214❩ ❛ I loved you. I was a monster, but I loved you. ❜ ❨1215❩ ❛ Come just as you are. ❜ ❨1216❩ ❛ If a violin string could ache, i would be that string. ❜ ❨1217❩ ❛ Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. ❜ ❨1218❩ ❛ What's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own. ❜ ❨1219❩ ❛ Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me. ❜ ❨1220❩ ❛ You took advantage of my disadvantage. ❜ ❨1221❩ ❛ I walk in a maze I cannot get out of. ❜ ❨1222❩ ❛ Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ❜ ❨1223❩ ❛ Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me. ❜ ❨1224❩ ❛ There is no harm in smiling. ❜ ❨1225❩ ❛ There is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere. ❜ ❨1226❩ ❛ There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. ❜ ❨1227❩ ❛ I am so tired of being cynical. ❜ ❨1228❩ ❛ Come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me. ❜ ❨1229❩ ❛ This is the only immortality that you and I may share. ❜ ❨1230❩ ❛ I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ❜ ❨1231❩ ❛ I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! ❜ ❨1232❩ ❛ Years of secret suffering has taught me superhuman self-control. ❜ ❨1233❩ ❛ Solitude is corrupting me. I need company and care. ❜ ❨1234❩ ❛ I've missed you terribly. ❜ ❨1235❩ ❛ I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. ❜ ❨1236❩ ❛ It doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. ❜ ❨1237❩ ❛ What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? ❜ ❨1238❩ ❛ Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. ❜ ❨1239❩ ❛ The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. ❜ ❨1240❩ ❛ Tell me, have you ever thought of killing me? ❜ ❨1241❩ ❛ I can not believe you are the same human being. ❜ ❨1242❩ ❛ Just how urgent is it? ❜ ❨1243❩ ❛ It is time for you to be going. ❜ ❨1244❩ ❛ How is it you know something like that? ❜ ❨1245❩ ❛ I don’t mind. Your mess is my mess. ❜ ❨1246❩ ❛ Everybody has one thing they do not want to lose. ❜ ❨1247❩ ❛ I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up for me. ❜ ❨1248❩ ❛ Nothing I’ve tried to do by myself has ever come off. ❜ ❨1249❩ ❛ I am not catching you in the middle of anything important, am I? ❜ ❨1250❩ ❛ Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. ❜ ❨1251❩ ❛ My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. ❜ ❨1252❩ ❛ To get irritated is to lose our way in life. ❜ ❨1253❩ ❛ A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. ❜ ❨1254❩ ❛ I don't really know if it's the right thing to do. ❜ ❨1255❩ ❛ Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? ❜ ❨1256❩ ❛ Most of everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. ❜ ❨1257❩ ❛ Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. ❜ ❨1258❩ ❛ You’re loads better than you think you are. ❜ ❨1259❩ ❛ You’re only half-living, the other half is still untapped somewhere. ❜ ❨1260❩ ❛ The song is over. But the melody lingers on. ❜ ❨1261❩ ❛ You are extraordinary. ❜ ❨1262❩ ❛ We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. ❜ ❨1263❩ ❛ It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. ❜ ❨1264❩ ❛ I’m forever realising things too late. ❜ ❨1265❩ ❛ I’m not complaining when I say my life is boring. ❜ ❨1266❩ ❛ Weakness is something that rots in the body. ❜ ❨1267❩ ❛ Coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them. ❜ ❨1268❩ ❛ You can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? ❜ ❨1269❩ ❛ A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat. ❜ ❨1270❩ ❛ So, kill me. Tell the others I attacked you so you killed me. ❜ ❨1271❩ ❛ Should never have come here. ❜ ❨1272❩ ❛ Hard to guess my tastes. ❜ ❨1273❩ ❛ Can’t it wait until the morning? ❜ ❨1274❩ ❛ You’ll find temper tantrums won’t help you here. ❜ ❨1275❩ ❛ It must have taken courage to return. ❜ ❨1276❩ ❛ It all sounds grimly dystopian. ❜ ❨1277❩ ❛ I am not afraid of you! ❜ ❨1278❩ ❛ All this could be avoided! ❜ ❨1279❩ ❛ You consider me a murderer? ❜ ❨1280❩ ❛ Gross way to die. ❜ ❨1281❩ ❛ What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. ❜ ❨1282❩ ❛ My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops? ❜ ❨1283❩ ❛ Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. ❜ ❨1284❩ ❛ I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. ❜ ❨1285❩ ❛ You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human. ❜ ❨1286❩ ❛ Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ❜ ❨1287❩ ❛ Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ❜ ❨1288❩ ❛ Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. ❜ ❨1289❩ ❛ Dreams are all I have ever truly owned. ❜ ❨1290❩ ❛ Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. ❜ ❨1291❩ ❛ I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. ❜ ❨1292❩ ❛ By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ❜ ❨1293❩ ❛ The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. ❜ ❨1294❩ ❛ Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right. ❜ ❨1295❩ ❛ The weak are meat the strong do eat. ❜ ❨1296❩ ❛ Do whatever you can't not do. ❜ ❨1297❩ ❛ What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. ❜ ❨1298❩ ❛ I remain thankful to God for all his mercies. ❜ ❨1299❩ ❛ You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power. ❜ ❨1300❩ ❛ Power. The ability to determine another man's luck. ❜ ❨1301❩ ❛ Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong. ❜ ❨1302❩ ❛ Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. ❜ ❨1303❩ ❛ Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions? ❜ ❨1304❩ ❛ You can’t lie to your soul. ❜ ❨1305❩ ❛ Why would I want to do a thing like that? ❜ ❨1306❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. ❜ ❨1307❩ ❛ Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨1308❩ ❛ I’m not running away, I’m moving on. ❜ ❨1309❩ ❛ The reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨1310❩ ❛ Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. ❜ ❨1311❩ ❛ Love does not exist. ❜ ❨1312❩ ❛ Fuck that ‘regrets’ bullshit. ❜ ❨1313❩ ❛ How does it make you feel? ❜ ❨1314❩ ❛ It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ❜ ❨1315❩ ❛ Choose us. Choose life. ❜ ❨1316❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨1317❩ ❛ I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. ❜ ❨1318❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. ❜ ❨1319❩ ❛ You don’t have to run away.  ❜ ❨1320❩ ❛ I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn’t. ❜ ❨1321❩ ❛ I’m not going to get crushed. ❜ ❨1322❩ ❛ I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination. ❜ ❨1323❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty. ❜ ❨1324❩ ❛ You’re a mess. ❜ ❨1325❩ ❛ I know that it’s never left you alone. ❜ ❨1326❩ ❛ Are you asking me or telling me? ❜ ❨1327❩ ❛ You just get used to all the shit. ❜ ❨1328❩ ❛ You can’t afford a conscience in this life. ❜ ❨1329❩ ❛ None of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy. ❜ ❨1330❩ ❛ Doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them. ❜ ❨1331❩ ❛ What was that? ❜ ❨1332❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨1333❩ ❛ You can’t love yourself if you want to hurt things like that. ❜ ❨1334❩ ❛ What happens when people open their hearts? ❜ ❨1335❩ ❛ Nobody likes being alone that much. ❜ ❨1336❩ ❛ I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.” ❨1337❩ ❛ Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. ❜ ❨1338❩ ❛ You need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. ❜ ❨1339❩ ❛ I want you always to remember me. ❜ ❨1340❩ ❛ Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. ❜ ❨1341❩ ❛ What stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. ❜ ❨1342❩ ❛ All I want in this world is you. ❜ ❨1343❩ ❛ I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. ❜ ❨1344❩ ❛ No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. ❜ ❨1345❩ ❛ What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. ❜ ❨1346❩ ❛ If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. ❜ ❨1347❩ ❛ I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. ❜ ❨1348❩ ❛ People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. ❜ ❨1349❩ ❛ Stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. ❜ ❨1350❩ ❛ When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble. ❜ ❨1351❩ ❛ When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. ❜ ❨1352❩ ❛ If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. ❜ ❨1353❩ ❛ Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven’t answered me. ❜ ❨1354❩ ❛ People are strange when you’re a stranger. ❜ ❨1355❩ ❛ The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. ❜ ❨1356❩ ❛ You don’t get it, do you? ❜ ❨1357❩ ❛ I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you ❨1358❩ realise. ❜ ❨1359❩ ❛ At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. ❜ ❨1360❩ ❛ All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. ❜ ❨1361❩ ❛ I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die. ❜ ❨1362❩ ❛ So I’m not crazy after all! ❜ ❨1363❩ ❛ I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. ❜ ❨1364❩ ❛ Will you wait for me forever? ❜ ❨1365❩ ❛ I don’t want our relationship to end like this. ❜ ❨1366❩ ❛ When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. ❜ ❨1367❩ ❛ It hurts not being able to see you. ❜ ❨1368❩ ❛ I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. ❜ ❨1369❩ ❛ The world is an inherently unfair place. ❜ ❨1370❩ ❛ Life frightens me sometimes. I don’t happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. ❜ ❨1371❩ ❛ I’m a real bargain, don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end up going somewhere else. ❜ ❨1372❩ ❛ We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. ❜ ❨1373❩ ❛ Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don’t know a soul? ❜ ❨1374❩ ❛ You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ❜ ❨1375❩ ❛ He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ❜ ❨1376❩ ❛ If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. ❜ ❨1377❩ ❛ We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. ❜ ❨1378❩ ❛ Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ❜ ❨1379❩ ❛ Power is not a means; it is an end. ❜ ❨1380❩ ❛ They are not interested in the good of others; they are interested solely in power, pure power. ❜ ❨1381❩ ❛ Now you begin to understand me. ❜ ❨1382❩ ❛ In the face of pain there are no heroes. ❜ ❨1383❩ ❛ Big Brother is watching you. ❜ ❨1384❩ ❛ Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. ❜ ❨1385❩ ❛ It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. ❜ ❨1386❩ ❛ The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. ❜ ❨1387❩ ❛ Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind. ❜ ❨1388❩ ❛ Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. ❜ ❨1389❩ ❛ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them. ❜ ❨1390❩ ❛ How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? ❜ ❨1391❩ ❛ You must try harder. ❜ ❨1392❩ ❛ Confession is not betrayal. ❜ ❨1393❩ ❛ What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. ❜ ❨1394❩ ❛ If they could make me stop loving you —- that would be the real betrayal. ❜ ❨1395❩ ❛ Of pain you can wish only one thing: that it should stop. ❜ ❨1396❩ ❛ To die hating them, that will be freedom. ❜ ❨1397❩ ❛ No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. ❜ ❨1398❩ ❛ What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself? ❜ ❨1399❩ ❛ To keep them in control is not difficult. ❜ ❨1400❩ ❛ So long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. ❜ ❨1401❩ ❛ The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. ❜ ❨1402❩ ❛ The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. ❜ ❨1403❩ ❛ Stupidity is as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ❜ ❨1404❩ ❛ I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ❜ ❨1405❩ ❛ The past is dead, the future is unimaginable. ❜ ❨1406❩ ❛ You know the answer already. Everyone knows it. ❜ ❨1407❩ ❛ You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ❜ ❨1408❩ ❛ It is not easy to become sane. ❜ ❨1409❩ ❛ No emotion is pure anymore, because everything is mixed up with fear and hatred. ❜ ❨1410❩ ❛ They say that time heals all things —- they say you can always forget. ❜ ❨1411❩ ❛ The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. ❜ ❨1412❩ ❛ I sold you and you sold me. ❜ ❨1413❩ ❛ You do not exist. ❜ ❨1414❩ ❛ How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. ❜ ❨1415❩ ❛ Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? ❜ ❨1416❩ ❛ Everything else we shall destroy – everything. ❜ ❨1417❩ ❛ Two and two makes five. ❜ ❨1418❩ ❛ Facts, at any rate, can not be kept hidden. ❜ ❨1419❩ ❛ The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. ❜ ❨1420❩ ❛ So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing. ❜ ❨1421❩ ❛ If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ❜ ❨1422❩ ❛ The lie became the truth. ❜ ❨1423❩ ❛ It is like swimming against a current that sweeps you backwards however hard you struggle. ❜ ❨1424❩ ❛ Turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. ❜ ❨1425❩ ❛ It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. ❜ ❨1426❩ ❛ I don’t want to die without any scars. ❜ ❨1427❩ ❛ This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time. ❜ ❨1428❩ ❛ You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. ❜ ❨1429❩ ❛ You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. ❜ ❨1430❩ ❛ You are not special. ❜ ❨1431❩ ❛ You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. ❜ ❨1432❩ ❛ The things you used to own, now they own you. ❜ ❨1433❩ ❛ Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. ❜ ❨1434❩ ❛ Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ❜ ❨1435❩ ❛ Only after disaster can we be resurrected. ❜ ❨1436❩ ❛ Everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ❜ ❨1437❩ ❛ We’ve all been raised believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. ❜ ❨1438❩ ❛ Don’t you have other things to do? ❜ ❨1439❩ ❛ Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. ❜ ❨1440❩ ❛ You have been warned. ❜ ❨1441❩ ❛ If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t. ❜ ❨1442❩ ❛ It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ❜ ❨1443❩ ❛ If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? ❜ ❨1444❩ ❛ Why did I cause so much pain? ❜ ❨1445❩ ❛ The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. ❜ ❨1446❩ ❛ Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. ❜ ❨1447❩ ❛ May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. ❜ ❨1448❩ ❛ Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. ❜ ❨1449❩ ❛ We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. ❜ ❨1450❩ ❛ The girl is infectious human waste. ❜ ❨1451❩ ❛ I want to destroy everything beautiful I’ll never have. ❜ ❨1452❩ ❛ On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❜ ❨1453❩ ❛ If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ❜ ❨1454❩ ❛ It is like you’re never really awake; but you’re never really asleep. ❜ ❨1455❩ ❛ Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. ❜ ❨1456❩ ❛ A moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. ❜ ❨1457❩ ❛ The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. ❜ ❨1458❩ ❛ You have to give up! ❜ ❨1459❩ ❛ Reject the basic assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions. ❜ ❨1460❩ ❛ Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. ❜ ❨1461❩ ❛ You have to realise that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless. ❜ ❨1462❩ ❛ A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. ❜ ❨1463❩ ❛ Lies make us evil. ❜ ❨1464❩ ❛ If you died right now, how would you feel about your life? ❜ ❨1465❩ ❛ You always kill the one you love. ❜ ❨1466❩ ❛ Maybe we should always assume the worst. ❜ ❨1467❩ ❛ Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. ❜ ❨1468❩ ❛ Which is worse? Hell or nothing? ❜ ❨1469❩ ❛ A minute of perfection is worth the effort. ❜ ❨1470❩ ❛ You’re going to die, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. ❜ ❨1471❩ ❛ Lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. ❜ ❨1472❩ ❛ I don’t give a shit. I have a gun. ❜ ❨1473❩ ❛ I know who you are. I know where you live. ❜ ❨1474❩ ❛ Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life. ❜ ❨1475❩ ❛ My philosophy of life is that I can die at any moment. And the tragedy of my life is that I do not. ❜ ❨1476❩ ❛ Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. ❜ ❨1477❩ ❛ There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love. ❜ ❨1478❩ ❛ We just had a near-life experience. ❜ ❨1479❩ ❛ If people think you are dying, they give you their full attention. They listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. ❜ ❨1480❩ ❛ I am nothing, and not even that. ❜ ❨1481❩ ❛ This isn’t really death. —- We’ll be legends. We won’t grow old. ❜ ❨1482❩ ❛ Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go. ❜ ❨1483❩ ❛ The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object. ❜ ❨1484❩ ❛ Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. ❜ ❨1485❩ ❛ I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one. ❜ ❨1486❩ ❛ Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. ❜ ❨1487❩ ❛ Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. ❜ ❨1488❩ ❛ A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger. ❜ ❨1489❩ ❛ A leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. ❜ ❨1490❩ ❛ In the end, we are alone. ❜ ❨1491❩ ❛ It is like a piece of my soul is lost, empty. ❜ ❨1492❩ ❛ If my life on Earth must end, let it end with a promise. Let it end with hope. ❜ ❨1493❩ ❛ Sorry? Sorry isn't enough. ❜ ❨1494❩ ❛ Every single thing I ever loved is beyond my reach now. Everything I ever wanted. Everything I ever was. ❜ ❨1495❩ ❛ Will you stay with me? ❜ ❨1496❩ ❛ A leader doesn't make pawns - he makes people. ❜ ❨1497❩ ❛ Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. ❜ ❨1498❩ ❛ It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. ❜ ❨1499❩ ❛ There is nothing between us but rain. There is nothing between us at all. ❜ ❨1500❩ ❛ I like a little chaos. ❜
3K notes · View notes
littlefreya · 4 years
Text
The Devil’s Tongue
Tumblr media
Summary: A mask of virtue hides a man riddled with lust and while his stoicism proceeds him, even he can’t withstand a begging girl. 
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes x OFC (3rd person POV)
Warning: 18+. Manhandling, abuse of power, MaleDom/FemSub, some thigh riding, unprotected sex, deflowering, loss of virginity, mild mentions of blood, sex in front of mirror (auto-voyeurism), profanities, bodily fluids, possessive behaviour. 
Words: 4.5k
A/N: Many thanks to my muse @agniavateira for supporting me through this story and for betaing. This was inspired by a certain scene in the film. My pervy mind took it elsewhere. Sincerely, I am not sure how I feel about it, so I’ll let you be the judge while I’m having my panic attack. 
Please reblog and give feedback if you enjoyed. 🖤
*No permission is given for reposting my work, copying it, ideas or parts it and claiming it as your own*
Title: The Devil’s Tongue
The treacherous moon was already high in the midnight sky and winds of melancholia whispered through the ivy leaves that grew timidly around the window’s panes. Despite the solace of night, her blood seeped with venom, and vicious thorns grew beneath her skin.
Striding through the desolate corridors of Holmes’ estate, Vanessa fumed while listening to the sounds of the old house: the creaking of the floorboards, the glass panes rattling in the wind, and the scratching of mice that ran between the walls. A kerosene lamp hung heavy between her sweaty fingers; her knees cracked as she marched forward to face her master.
Same as every night, Sherlock hid in his library to chase adventures behind thin sheets of paper. He was not to be disturbed, though he left her no choice.
Sent her away he did, claiming that her service was no longer needed even though she was promised a home at the estate, despite Enola’s departure. The worst of it was that he didn’t even bother telling her himself, but simply sent another servant to announce that she must pack her belongings tonight.
‘Like hell, I would!’
Vanessa willed her heart to beat slowly as she tiptoed, cursing every wooden plank that grated beneath her feet. It’s been over a year since she started working for the Holmes family, and despite battling her concupiscence tooth and nail, Mr. Holmes has possessed her very existence. Sleepless nights left her yearning to drink the mead of his mouth and feel the slapping of his skin onto hers.
Wistfully, the brooding detective only stared at her with a lustre of ice. But the notion of never seeing him again felt like holding a blade pointed to her chest; the wish to confess nibbled in her gut like a pesky little fish.
‘At least I will have the chance to say farewell…’ she mused as she finally reached the open doorway of the library. It was a cosy cavern, stuffed with endless shelves of books and vases of pink roses to mellow its austerity.
Wood burnt to a crisp within the hearth, its aromatic scent bleeding into the air and a light layer of ashen mist wafted over the chamber. There sat her master, resting comfortably on his maroon leather armchair with a book in one hand and a pipe pressed between his succulent lips like a king on a throne of solitude.
Silently she stared, brow furrowing at his sight. It baffled her how a man can be so oblivious to the dangerous power he had over women. Sherlock was as divine as the coldest day of winter: eyes of crystal snow, curls darker than the night, and sharp facial features that gave a tinge of intimidating flavour. The ancient god Hades would have been jealous of his divinity. Even in these serene moments, Sherlock’s presence exhumed dominant masculinity, consuming oxygen like the fire that burnt in the mantle.
Clad in a white cotton shirt loose over his broad chest, he calmly turned a page on his book and sighed.
It was impossible not to sense her nearby. The young woman was a breeze of autumn wind: spiced yet soothing, bringing the omen of a season’s change. She tried very hard to hide her feral nature, abiding, serving, and acting polite. While she fooled everyone, including herself, he detected the brazen kiss that raged within her.
Nights were riddled by dreams of dismantling her shackles, only to bind her further to himself. And yet, every time he looked at her a loathing rage gnawed inside. To him, she was a dire trap meant to expose the thing that hid behind his mask of virtue—a reckless savage, sick with twisted desire.
It took true power to send her away. Yet, here she was, barging into his shelter to pour another drop of simmering turmoil into his already seething blood.
“Can’t sleep, Nessie?”
Vanessa jolted with a startle. His deep voice threaded tendrils of dark silk around her heart, attempting to draw it further out of her fragile ribcage. Maintaining attention on the book in his hand, Sherlock’s mouth twitched into a cold grin of respect, sensing her glare stabbing at his nape.
“You might be a mouse, but you have the stomp of an elephant.”
Forcing the book shut with a soft thud, Sherlock turned his head aside, daring to catch a glimpse of her. His pretentious smile died, and a surge of passion seized at his groin. Like the virgin Persephone, she stood before him wrapped in a sheer nightgown, the creamy fabric barely hiding her delicacies. A mystic glow of sweet honey and amber gold rimmed her flesh, kissing down her clavicles and leading his enslaved gaze to the soft heaps at her chest.
By courtesy, he should have looked away, but the wish to incinerate the silken threads that retained whatever left of her modesty whispered in his ear like a little devil that sat on his shoulder. It was cruel of her to provoke him like this.
Quirking an eyebrow with disdain, he finally battled the sight away.
“Something ails you, girl.” Sherlock’s rich baritone dropped. Touching the pipe to his maw, he took a long whiff and suckled his lip. “You seem unnecessarily emotional,” he noted dryly, pretending as if her appearance was a mystery.
Noticing the uncaring shift in his tone, she scowled and stepped carefully into the room. Placing the lamp on a nearby stand, she purposely stepped into his line of sight and looked at the frowning detective with the feral wilderness growing inside her chest.
“You’re sending me away tomorrow,” an unmistakable hint of rage seeped between the cracks in her voice. Grasping her knuckles, she began striding back and forth across the Parisian rug as if lost in her own musings, “why? What have I done to you?”
A small huff escaped his nose, and he rubbed a finger beneath his bottom lip. His patience spread thin as the young lady scurried about with hysteria. The mere idea of bending her over and teaching her some discipline caused the fabric of his trousers to stretch over his engorging desire.
“You’ve done nothing wrong, it was simply my decision.” He answered, striving to sound neutral and remorseless. “A lady’s maid without a lady is useless in a place like this. But now, Vanessa, it’s late, and I’d like to get back to my book. No reason for you to stand here in your... undergarments.”  
Lips agape and feet nearly colliding on to one another, Vanessa paused on her steps. His words crept a chill down the length of her spine, making her cheeks blaze. Passionate and irrational, she never even noticed her lack of chastity when she left her room.
“I… didn’t think much, I was upset…”
‘Of course, she didn’t think much. Irrational, savage thing.’
A string twitched in Sherlock’s cheek, and a dark errant lock fell rogue upon his pale temple as he turned his head aside, adamant to brush her away. His self-restraint was but a delicate, dying leaf, hanging by its last yellowing strand.
“I came here to ask you to…”
“I’m afraid it’s not negotiable.” Sherlock interrupted and swatted his hand flat on the leather binding. His stern glance floated out the window, focusing on a large spider that threaded lines of silver amidst the peeling frames. “You will find a new job in London, a better house,” he apprised and took a deep inhale, turning the book over to open it where he paused. “Now please leave before we’ll both hurt one another.”
‘Before I will pierce cavities in your soft flesh.’
Stunned by his dismissive, arctic demeanour, her stubbornness and frustration only grew to monstrous proportions. With clenched fists and water pooling at her lids, she grunted and took a courageous step closer, standing at the fore of his couch while shaking her head.
“No!”
“No!?” he scowled, eyebrows lowering with dismay. “You forget your place, woman.” He flashed her a quick warning look, his icy glare tinted midnight black as he stood at his wit’s end.
If only it didn’t make her heart shrivel with wanton. Their proximity perilously close, Sherlock’s strong scent pervaded into her lungs: a musky blend of whiskey, leather, and fine tobacco that made her thighs wobble. Before she could even register what’s happening, her knees were brushing the thick carpet, her decorum and dignity gone.
“I want to stay here. With you.”  Slender like stalking vines, her fingers crawled onto the armchair, squeezing at the smooth leather with pitiable desperation.
“Keep me, please!”
“Vanessa,” Sherlock drawled, still refusing to meet her gaze while his thumb circled deep into the coarse binding. Furious tides rose in his eyes, whisked by the rageful storm that inhabited his mind, “Do not make me regret this night.”
He didn’t want to hurt her, but she was pretty when she begged.
“You don’t know what it is that you’re asking, I am not the gentleman you think I am.”
Ignoring his warning, she insisted. Daring, needy talons rose from the armchair to claw at his arm, clutching it with demand. Even through barriers, a surge flushed between their bodies.
“Sherlock,” she half-whispered, crystal droplets of sadness gliding down the smooth slope of her cheeks. Not caring the least as they dribbled onto the soft sleeve of his shirt, leaving tiny stains that dampened his arm.
“Guide me, teach me, make me yours!”
Nostrils flaring and breath rigid, the large man finally snapped his stare at her with the sanguine hunger of a starved vampire. The mask of his virtue fell shattering to the floor, and a harrowing silence took over the room, diffused only by the sound of crackling embers and Vanessa’s shaky breath.
“Remember this tomorrow when you’re raw and hurting; this is what your begging bought you, little Nessie.”
A strangled gasp died at her sternum as his hand suddenly grasped her throat. With a quick yank, she was up on her feet, her toes barely scraping the ground as the hulking man held her up to his face.
“Oh the things I’ll do to you..” he whispered as his thumb dug deep onto her cheek and the rest of his fingers etched at her throat.
Swinging on his boots, he swept her across the silent halls. His stride a dark ceremonial gyrate, the creamy fabric of her pristine nightgown floating mid-air like a sheer tongue of white morning mist.  
“I will make you mine as you begged,” he rasped barbarically, one hand pushing the door open while the other held her attached to his chest, “I will teach you what you asked…” his lips brushed her ear, his breath hot over her cheek, “your first lesson begins... in my bed.”
With a swift shove, she was forced into his realm. Feet stumbling upon the tepid wooden floor, her ears throbbed with shock. Her hands reached to grasp onto the engraved bed column to prevent herself from falling.
His bedroom smelled of dying roses and smoked wicks, echoing the putrid decadence that gnawed at Sherlock’s mind. A dozen melting candles burned in every secluded corner, their little orange tongues licking the reflection of a sizable mirror that stood opposite of his large bed.
A dull metallic click broke the air, followed by Vanessa’s sputtering breath as she saw him lock the door. Her faith sealed - now caged in the lair of the beast. Reduced to his own shimmering shadow, Sherlock advanced toward her, ripping his shirt off.
Fingers biting into the wooden pole, Vanessa stared, unable to determine if it was a man or a lycan god who stood before her. Every breath made his bare torso look menacing. Under the deep dusky twilight, his muscles curved and stretched, coated by a virile, dark fur.
Curious, her gaze followed the striking veins and the trail of unkempt hair that paved its way down his fine abdomen and disappeared beneath his trousers. Guiding to that which she feared and wanted at once.
Eyes of blue flame shone with absent remorse, brows arched with a pretentious demeanour as he reached a hand to seize her to him. “Your innocence dies here tonight,” he hissed in her ear, “from now on, you’ll be my little whore to plough as I please.”
The air died in her lungs as his firm chest collided with hers and his knee forced her legs apart. Bulging and muscular, his thigh rose to brush at her clit, the thin fabrics a shy barrier.
Shuddering, she swallowed hard in a dire battle to find her voice. “I will be whatever you need me to be,” she retorted as the thought of being exploited by her master released fluttering butterflies of fear and excitement in her chest.
Sherlock smirked and captured her jaw between his finger and thumb as he leaned in. Torrid lips hovered over her own, offering a phantom kiss to distract her from the greedy fingers that pushed the sleeves of the gown off her shoulders.
Like warm milk it poured down her body, exposing her delicacies to the night and to the gluttonous hands that kneaded her breasts while he flicked his tongue over her closed mouth, tasting the plumpness of her lips.
A true creature of the underworld, Sherlock’s touch was cruel like his promises; he took as he pleased, leaving his sigil seething on her skin. Her sputtering gasps served as an opportunity to invade her hot cavern. The detective’s kiss was even more ruthless, his tongue smooth as silk seized and conquered her breath.
She could feel him streaming in her blood, tasting him all the way down through her gut. Dark and intoxicating like poisonous absinthe, the promise of death swung amidst their hot, serpent-like dance.
Yet she only yearned to drink to her demise.
As if under a stupor, she swayed to his spells, bucking her hips to ground herself on the meat of his thigh, leaving the coarse fabric wet with sticky arousal. A condescending grin tugged at his lips, and his hand rushed to the back of her head, weaving through her hair and yanking her back.
“Already the wanton harlot,” he spat, swiftly turning her over and holding her against his chest. “Look at yourself,” he growled hoarsely in her ear, forcing her doe eyes to stare at their reflection. Sherlock rested his dimpled chin on the top of her head with his brows lowered like an apex predator examining his prey.
His hand disappeared behind, hastily fumbling with his trousers, “You wanted me to show you, you want to see,” he called as his trousers piled at his feet and he carefully stepped out.
Something hefty and hard nudged at the small of her back, turning her veins into thin tendrils of ice. Abysmal panic coiled at her gut at the realisation that Sherlock meant to reshape her as the vessel of his primal urge.
Hand snaking around her belly, he snatched her to fall back onto the mattress with him pillowing her fall. Her firm buttocks slid across his hairy abdomen, hands fumbling to grasp his thick thighs while her eyes flared at the sight of his hardened cock displayed in front of her in its full generous size.
It was nothing like the medical illustrations she saw in books: bulging tendons swerved across an imposing, meaty rod. Ridges rippled across its girth like soft silk, and the heart-shaped head dripped of glistening, pearly arousal.
Curious, her trembling hand wandered to feel him, stunned by the liquid-like texture that engulfed the absurd rigidness. By order of her touch, he twitched and swelled, causing the radiating heat at the apex of her groin to palpitate.
Pressing his lips to the shell of her ear, Sherlock growled, “Do you like what you see, little one?”
His taut hands reached to grasp her thighs, spreading her wide over each of his legs and holding them apart to expose her untouched sleek at the mirror. The thundering in his throat was nothing but animalistic as he glowered at her perfect sight: his little Nessie, his little untainted flower blooming fresh with dew, yearning to be plucked.
“Look at yourself,” Sherlock demanded with a whisper drenched of fervour. His coarse hand dragged to capture her chin and forced her to face the salacious spectacle reflected before them. Her breath shuddered; she saw their skin mapped onto one another, their bodies entangled and their souls unmasked.
How could something so forbidden be so beautiful?
“I dwell in the darkness, Vanessa.” Sherlock explained, his voice stroking her temple as his lips inched closer, “You must know that, you must have me as I am.”
He laved his tongue over her cheek as if he was tasting the sweetest delicacy and reached for his erection, stroking the pulsating girth between his fingers. Eyes still glued to their likeness on the glossy surface, she glanced as he pressed his pink, meaty tip between her dripping petals.
“Watch as I take something from you that can never be given back, something that will forever belong to me.”
“Sherl….”
His name died on her tongue, the moment forever lost in a loud shriek. Savagely and unceremoniously, he pried her virginal cunt open the way a predator rips at its prey’s throat. His massive shaft tore through her purity with no resistance to fight back against his brutal invasion.  
Pain rattled its way through her entire entity while the dark spectacle of the loss of her innocence played right in front of her eyes, spurring grievous tears. Lost to the bliss of her warm cavern, Sherlock chanted in loud groans, continuing to force himself all the way between her squeezing walls. Remorseless of her cries, he never stopped until every hollow inch inside her was full of his cock and his sac smacked against her stuffed opening.
“My! You feel good!” He panted with astonishment, his virility twitching within the lush sanctuary between her thighs. Noxious pride flowed in his veins at the reflection of the naked young girl, spread open with him inside her.
“Do you like having me inside you, my little harlot?”
“God!” Vanessa screamed, stunned by the sensation of him swelling at her core. His invasion seared, her legs trembled against his in a plea to be kept together. But he only stretched her wider, hooking both hands below her thighs.
“It will feel good in a little while,” he promised and slowly shifted his hips back. Inch by inch, his cock slid out of her now defiled slit, coated by blood and a sheer layer of arousal. It was something of decadent theatrics; his broad chest puffed against her spine, a blissful hum leaving his bobbing throat at the image of the crimson stain that decorated his sword.
“From this moment and beyond, this belongs to me,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck and planting wicked, butterfly kisses along the tender slope, “do you understand? Your little cunny is my property, your moans, your pleasure, all belong to me.”
Her cunt clenched around nothing as she watched his full length slipping out, tainted by broken purity, the empty void leaving pure urgency to course through her tendons. Hopeless for something she couldn’t even recognise, she whined and writhed on top of him. Her eyes levitated from their sexes to meet his icy glare.
“Sherlock, please, more! Please put yourself back inside me!!!”
“Fuck!” Sherlock rasped in awe of her wanton, his control nearly lapsed. Fingers digging into her thighs, he undulated his hips and pulled her down the length of his throbbing erection. Low melodies of pleasure rolled on his tongue as her wet cunt pressed around him again.
Gawking at the mirror, she nearly fell apart in his arms, cries of daze escaped her as Sherlock's drove back into her sleek. Every bit of his flesh unfolding hers, disappearing within her body to defy the loneliness aching in her cove until his entire shaft was lost in her depth and the tip of his cock hit something lush and tender. She could have sworn she felt him waver deep in her gut.
“Sherlock!!!” she cried, shutting her eyes at the sharp twinge that shuddered through her core.
“Don’t you dare close those eyes, dove,” he warned, and the authority in his voice left her no choice but to obey. Wickedly, his fingers slithered to the little nub of flesh above her slit and ruthlessly tugged at it to expose more of her battered sex. He continued to pound into her mercilessly, quickening the rhythm with each one of his thrusts.
“Look at you, taking me so obediently. Perhaps I was wrong about you, perhaps you are easily tamed.”
The thick bones of his hips crashed into her rump vigorously, his girth violently splitting her protesting walls. He was fast, wet, and hard inside her, his cock drilling into her over and over, every plunge stripping more layers of her soul and pushing her higher toward the heavens.
Enslaved to the beguiling aphrodisiac, she squirmed on top of him, her body beginning to push down to meet every thrust. The vision of herself being brutally taken by the large, civilised beast made the blood pool at the seams of her womanhood and tingle with frustration.
A shuddering quake began to spread within her, spiralling out in a sequence of spasms sourced at the spot where they connected. Bliss and ecstasy shattered her body and a sudden flush of pleasure exploded through her body as she came all over his cock.
Engulfed in her milking cunt, Sherlock could hardly believe what beheld his eyes. His beautiful nymph, coming undone around him, ethereal and divine. Her blissful chants a song to his ears only, she was like dryad humming a hymn to call upon a lonesome hunter.
“‘My Vanessa, I wanted you for so long.” He called, fucking her wildly through her orgasm. “Tell me you want me to come inside you,” he choked out on his grunts, her sugary walls closing around his thickness like a predatory flower, demanding to suckle his sweet elixir.
Still riding her climax, she shook her head, hesitant of speaking such profanities. But the stern glower on Sherlock’s face instantly forced her into submission.
“I want you to come … come inside me!” She panted and then screamed as another wave of intense rapture swept her away.
Her squeezing cunt forced the thick stream to vibrated through his shaft, making him drill into her with zeal. His fingers clutched her waist as he slammed her down onto his swollen cock, burying himself the deepest he could. Vanessa yipped as something hot sprouted into her, flooding her womb like a soothing kiss that slowly began trickling between their tight flesh.
Still locked in an embrace, they shivered together. Soft maple hues glimmered over their wet skin, their bodies heaving against one another while a symphony of pants and gasps filled the silence.
Sherlock’s glaciers sought to capture her reflection, a dark, brooding look on his sweat-silken face while his lips ghosted over her shoulder. There was no question in the rough expression of his face.
Nothing spoke louder than the possessiveness that pierced through the sharp reflection.
~*~
A tender stream of sunshower kissed her lids awake. The cerulean sky winked at her through the open window while her senses gingerly regained their functions after what felt like graveyard slumber. Finding herself alone, she wondered for a moment if the night before was only a fantasy; but this bed was too soft and far too large, and the sensation of shame licking between her thighs told her otherwise.
Even in his absence, Sherlock’s presence lingered. His pungent sweat layered on her skin, and from her torn seal trickled the pearly, forbidden essence of his loins. She allowed herself a moment of coy bliss, pressing her lips upon her bare shoulder to kiss the taste of him off her flesh when the thud of inching footsteps and creaking wood made her sit up with fright as if her presence was forbidden.
Huddling the blankets around her chest, she gulped as the door flung open.
Already dressed in a clean shirt, a vest of golden brown, and a long black jacket, the hulking man offered her a small wrinkle on his brow. Fine silks were folded on his forearm, and his eyes fell upon the naked beauty in his bed. A shadow of dark desire danced upon his slanted smirk as he noticed the little inkling of dry blood on the edge of the mattress.
“Slept well, my little Nessie?” He asked, passing a finger over his neatly combed locks before gesturing for her to approach him. Obedient as ever, his little servant quickly climbed out, immediately regretting her haste as a spear split through her core. With jolting legs, she swallowed her discomfort and approached him with her head lowered to the floor.
“No, we will have none of this,” Sherlock chided, his finger stalking beneath her chin to fix her stare on his. Their gazes met for a shy second and then he stepped back, unfolding the fabrics held beneath his arm.
A waterfall of black and crimson flowed down, hanging from his hands.
Vanessa’s eyes rounded with wonder; being a woman of lower status, she never owned anything as beautiful and expensive as the dress he held before her.
“Lift your arms, dove,” Sherlock commanded and she did as he bid.
The soft fabrics felt like warm liquid washing over her skin as Sherlock carefully slipped the dress over her head. His hands smoothly roamed her body, tugging at the delicate fabric to fit over her figure. The tall detective stepped to stand at her back and began working the laces of the corset embedded into the gown.
One by one, he tightened the silk binds as he pulled at the laces. Vanessa slightly hissed when her breasts squished against the generous cleavage.
“Forgive me,” Sherlock mumbled as he heard her distress, “I am not used to such… arrangements.”
“Arrangements?” she asked naively, though it quickly dawned on her that her dear master never had a wife or a mistress, which didn’t come much as a surprise after witnessing his bohemian desires the night before. And yet, no regret touched her heart as Sherlock pressed his hand over her torso and perched his chin atop her head once again.
“Look at us.” His lustrous eyes carried to the mirror, guiding hers to follow as he stroked his hand lower to flatten the folds of her dress and pushed her hair over her shoulders with the other.
“Don’t we make a pair?”
Glancing forward, Vanessa took a deep inhale. Crimson and black were unusually beautiful as they graced her figure. The rim of the cleavage was beaded with fine black jewels that gave her appearance an elegant, yet erotic flavour.
Taken by her new design, she allowed herself to be swallowed into Sherlock’s beautiful darkness.
She wouldn’t have him without it.
___________________________________
Additional notes: I don’t own Sherlock Holmes or Enola Holmes franchise. Thanks to @wondersofdreaming  @wolvesandhoundshowltogether and @sapphirescrolls for moral support. 
3K notes · View notes
lilmissquackson · 3 years
Text
The Brighter The Sun
Pairings: Cedric Diggory x Fem! Reader (First pov)
Warnings: Mentions of death, tears, it’s all just sad and depressing. (The ending is very bittersweet tho)
Summary: Cedric Diggory has always been a sunshine. When he left, Y/N was left with only gloom.
Author’s note: I don’t have a map as I write this, so I apologize in advance lmaoo
~~~~~
The sun has never felt darker. Day after day, the sun stared at me with such sorrow like mine.
It felt surreal. When I saw him in Harry’s arms, it was like I was dreaming. My mind couldn’t take the fact that he was gone. That my Cedric was gone. I was in denial. Frozen in time. But when Amos’ screams came, it was an awakening.
Cedric left only a few months ago, and never did I go out ever since his funeral. I couldn’t. My bed was always left unmade, his sweater was filled with dry tears, food was always brought up to my door because I didn’t have the energy to go down to eat. Sometimes, the silence would be unbearable, and I would just imagine him beside me, hugging me tightly, so that I didn’t feel alone. He always did that.
But whenever I open my eyes, and realize he’s not there, my eyes would always flood with tears, the cut reopening like I’ve just got it.
It hurt that we once made memories, and now we couldn’t make any more. All I can do is look back at them over and over again. It hurt to think there was no next chapter for the two of us, and that he left me with a cliff hanger.
I remember what he always said: “The brighter the sun, the happier we are.”
He said the weather was always in out favour. What we felt, earth would always radiate. I never really paid attention to those. Not until he left me, that I paid attention to everything he said, and did. Even if it was just from my memory.
The summer of nineteen ninety four was sunny, and so was Cedric and I. My parents allowed me to stay with the Diggorys for a week before school, and it was the best week I’ve had my whole life.
Waking up beside Cedric, and him showering me immediately with kisses once my eyes open. He was as bright as the sun.
“Good morning, my love!” Were his words every morning, his smile as big as ever.
And my lips would always spread in delight of seeing him under the morning light, “Good morning, Ced,” my soft words were just for the two of us to hear, “You’re so pretty under this light,” I told him, cupping his face.
He gave me a grin, “They don’t call me the golden boy for nothing,” he said, giving me a peck on the lips— oh how much I missed them, “And a golden boy isn’t complete without his golden girl.”
I wasn’t. But I was, apparently, for him.
But was a golden girl complete without her golden boy?
It was unfair. I wanted to be mad, I wanted to shout, to yell bad things, to have someone to blame. But even if I did, I knew Cedric wouldn’t be happy about it. He’s always wanted peace. To not have to fight with people.
He was such a sunshine.
“You look absolutely beautiful.”
The Yule Ball truly was a great night to remember. Cedric and I received plenty of compliments, some with hints of jealousy, but most were genuine.
When people started to party in the middle of the dance floor, Cedric and I decided it was the perfect time to slip away. We ran through the hallways of Hogwarts, me leading, and him not far behind.
Our laughs bounced off the walls, until we made it out into the Courtyard.
The moon was so beautifully round, so bright. Not as bright as the sun, but it’s almost just as beautiful.
I stared up at the sky, the stars sparkling down at me, making me smile. For a moment, I was just silent, not even noticing Cedric come nearer to put his blazer on my shoulders, “Thanks,” I kissed him on his cheek.
“You missed,” he rolled his eyes, then pointed at his lips. I laughed, and kissed him on the lips, “That’s more like it,” he had said.
With a small chuckle, I wrapped my arms around him, cuddling to his side as snow softly fell on our heads, “It’s so pretty out here,” I told him, “I want stars in my room,” a pout made its way to my lips.
But Cedric laughed at me, “You’re adorable,” he said, pulling me closer by wrapping me in his arms, “We can put stars in your room— glow in the dark ones, maybe.”
My eyes made its way up my ceiling. They were filled with stars, but even they didn’t light up anymore, as if we put them on a very long time ago.
I looked out my window instead, not being able to stare at the stars any longer.
But I immediately stood up when I realized that the sun was no longer dark.
It was bright, with only a hint of gloom from a far.
Cedric is happy. And I was the one with gloom.
Before I knew it, I had my shoes on, and my wand in hand. I didn’t even told my parents I was going to leave, but I apparated before anyone noticed.
June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety five.
This was the last time I saw him smile. The day it all ended. The day the sun suddenly felt much darker.
He hugged me tightly before going into the maze, “I’m bringing the cup back for you,” he whispered in my ear, giving me a peck on the lips, “Wish me luck?”
I smiled at him, proud of how far he’d gone, “I wish you the best of luck,” I told him, to which he responded with a kiss on the hand, “I love you, Cedric.”
The love of my life kissed me on my temple, “I love you too, darling.”
He went into the maze. He went in without knowing he won’t ever come back to me alive.
Cedric’s tombstone was always clean. Shiny, and bright as ever. Just like him.
I sat on the grass, lifting my hand to hold his tombstone like how I would’ve held his cheek in my hand.
“Cedric,” my voice was soft, my eyes clouding with tears. But I blinked them away, not wanting him to see me so sad, “I miss you, my love,” I told him.
The breeze hit my face, the trees swaying.
I could be imagining things, but I truly felt his presence. Maybe he was just waiting for me.
“For the past months— It’s been hard for me, Ced,” I told him quietly, “It’s so hard to live without you. All my days were full of darkness. The sun was never bright for me. Remember what you said? The brighter the sun, the happier we are,” I laughed, a tear rolling down my cheek, “Guess what, love. Today, the sun was bright.”
To say I didn’t know how to continue was an under statement. But I had to.
“I know you’re happy now, at peace. And I should be, too. I shouldn’t get in the way of the sun. I shouldn’t fill my heart with gloom, because that’s what you would’ve wanted,” I sniffled, wiping my tears with the sleeve of his sweater, “I’m still not okay, of course. It will take time for me to heal this wound in my heart you’ve cut. But it will heal. Maybe not now, but it will soon.”
The wind sent yet, another breeze.
With a bitter smile, and tear stained cheek, I stood up from the grass, “Until then, Cedric,” I said, “Keep the sun bright, alright? I love you, and even if you can’t say it back— I can still feel it.”
And so I bid my goodbyes. I walked away from him, my chest felt lighter, and the sun seemed brighter. The breeze felt like spring, as if welcoming me to a new book.
Maybe Cedric and I’s story was over, but it will always be my favourite.
The sun was brighter with him. And I’ll go back to read those pages to remember the light.
But never the gloom.
~~~~~
Cedric Diggory taglist: @thehalfbloodedwitch @pottahishotasf @blackthunder137 @kazscrow
𝖌𝖔 𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝖙𝖔 𝖓𝖆𝖛𝖎𝖌𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓?
113 notes · View notes
Text
Rating: T Summary: It isn't that Gaster is stopping him. Asgore can't bring December back. She doesn't exist in this world's code. (The world revolves, until one of them no longer persists.) Word Count: 1055 Prompt: Gaster and/or Kingdings, "The moment when reality starts to make sense again"
For @a-snow-decahedron, tumblr at the ask but luckily I had the prompt request written down C:
XXX
It's a numbers game, a dice roll, an RNG, that throws Gaster into the not-garden between, with its crooked blood-red maple and royal purple grass. No flowers, golden or otherwise. Perhaps that’s on purpose—the Knight does love the gravitas of ancient human tales, and one doesn’t get exiled to Eden, but from it.
(Does that make the ever-spawning eggs his forbidden fruit? He’d hoped that something so mystical would taste better.)
A red leaf falls on his head. Time is moving again, then. He's been Connected. Will today's dose of interaction be the missed-taken vessel, the non-antlered girl, or—
"Gaster."
Asgore Dreemurr, the Roaring Knight, steps into Gaster's prison. His cape—a swatch of violent violet—stretches out behind him like a liquid shadow. Darker yet darker yet darker.
Despite everything, Gaster's shattered soul quickens.
"Dreemurr." Gaster nods. The leaf tumbles past his eyesockets, and he blushes at the thought of being seen with such an impromptu, immature hat, never mind that he’d forgotten it was there entirely.
His (universe's, not his his) Asgore would have chuckled at the sight. Gaster has yet to hear this iteration laugh, and would not bet on that changing anytime soon.
This Asgore does change, however. Has changed. Cycling through phases like the moon, like grief. Anger, sadness, bargaining. Never acceptance. What Gaster admired in his Asgore fractalled out, reflected and refracted until frustration overlaps infatuation.
Asgore sits down among the maple's thick roots and lets out an even thicker sigh. Not anger today, then. He hefts the shears that had been strapped to his back, running a paw along the golden blades.
"How long must this continue?" he asks quietly, his black eyes unfocused.
"UNTIL SOMEONE FAILS TO PERSIST," Gaster answers.
More leaves fall. Red, red, red. The lightwaves that travel the farthest. The Angel's unwavering shade.
“I cannot be the one to break,” Asgore murmurs. “I have to find her. For Rudy, and for Toriel. For Noelle and Kris and Asriel.”
Kris. The vessel that was never meant to be. They’ve suffered enough for Gaster’s mistakes, without their father spinning them around and around, open-close open-close. Strung on strings until someone bigger than they all chooses to snap them free.
Asgore could end this. Probably. Maybe. Gaster should know if Asgore is as much of a dependent variable as himself, but he doesn’t. Can the puppet be trusted when he says that he’s real? Should the staff lift up itself as if it were no wood?
“You understand, don’t you?” Asgore continues.
The shears snip, open-close. It’s a tick, nervous or otherwise, but not a threat. Even the weapon that tears fountains from the earth can’t touch someone who doesn’t exist.
“You can’t know everything. The world can’t keep revolving forever. Something… something has to break.” Snip. “Even if you say she can’t be saved—”
“SHE CANNOT.” Gaster sighs, like a pressure valve being released.
Revolving, revolving. Sometimes he wonders if Asgore forgets their conversations, if Gaster still carries the curse that severed him from his own reality. Untethered from the minds and souls of all who might have loved him, a drifter in the hands of code and fate. Looking too high, too far, just like all who followed and yet follow him.
Fists clench over golden blades. Gaster may be immune to Asgore’s touch, but not to the rage that boils off of him. Today is multiphasic, crescent and gibbous and half, sadness and bargaining and anger.
“If you would just help me, instead of sending your pawns to foil every attempt I make—!”
“DECEMBER HOLIDAY IS OUT OF BOUNDS. UNBOUND. SHE CANNOT RETURN ANYMORE THAN I.”
Gaster rests his skull against the maple’s rough bark. A pleasant texture. Rough is an easier sensation to hold than soft.
Asgore’s breath catches, hanging the room in silence.
“Then if you can return, so can she.”
Gaster looked to him, eyesockets wide with shock. It’s a logical jump—but the underlying notions are invalid, rendering the equation unsolvable.
Still, it warms him that this Asgore would think to try.
“I HAVE NOWHERE,” Gaster begins carefully, “TO RETURN.”
“No one has nowhere,” Asgore insists. “The Darkners, they think they have nowhere. And aren’t they happier when they get moved somewhere? When your pawns carry them off to their Castle Town—”
“YOU INTENDED THAT?” Gaster’s browbone furrows. He’d thought that was Ralsei’s idea. Has the prince been corrupted as well?
Asgore shrugs. “It would be best if they could reach our world and be free. But since, well, someone keeps closing my fountains…”
Someone also keeps opening his fountains. Kris pushes back against the Angel, their knife mirroring Asgore’s shears in an attempt to cut themself free. At least, that’s the only explanation for their chaos that Gaster can fathom. Variables, variables.
“THIS WORLD CANNOT BECOME COVERED IN DARKNESS.”
Not again. Not again.
Asgore shakes his head. “If you must blame me, so be it. But I cannot base my choices on your so-called ‘legend.’”
They’re talking circles around each other. Words with no meanings. No connection. Garbage noise.
“WE WANT THE SAME FUTURE,” Gaster mumbles, more to himself than to Asgore. There’s no altering his course. Stalwart as always, even when he knows he will lose. “WE WANT HAPPINESS… FOR THEM.”
The children. The ones who are left. Light and dark alike. The only difference between Gaster and Asgore is that Gaster knows the truth of this world, the layers of code that can’t be unwritten, while Asgore clings to ideals of what this world should be.
Gaster can’t bring himself to tell him, even after all this time. The knowledge broke the jester, and the salesman, and every other Darkner that Gaster thought could understand. He won’t break Asgore too.
“For them.” Asgore nods. “I will make it right. Fight me if you must. Hate me if you must. But I will save you, too.”
He says it with a smile, and for that moment, he looks so much like the Asgore that Gaster remembers. Calm, assured, carrying the weight of his actions no matter how hard they try to break him.
Maybe he could withstand the truth. Maybe he should have to.
But before Gaster can open his mouth, Asgore stands, sheathes his shears, and walks off into the dark.
A leaf freezes in midair.
38 notes · View notes
twelfth-harbinger · 4 years
Note
Hello, I hope you're doing great! ^^ Could I request a Kaeya x male Reader, where the reader is a thief and Kaeya cathes him and teaches him a lesson (nsfw)
A/n: I live for this shit. This is...kind of kinky so.. & I wrote this at 4am. Listening to: Throat babyyyyyy
Mentions: Blowjobs, Denial, Teasing... blowjobs.
Warnings: Nsfw Face fucking at its finest, A very dominant Kaeya.
Tumblr media
The King of Thieves
Kaeya left Angel’s Share for the night. Dark cheeks tinted a dusty deep red from a night of indulgence. Diluc was there, tending the bar coincidentally.
“There have been a plethora of incidents revolving around thieves as of late. I suggest you be mindful when leaving for the night Kaeya.”
His younger brother’s light warning drifted back into the depths of his mind as he strolled the nearly vacant streets of Monstadt’s city. Of course, on his way back to headquarters; the Knight took the long way around. Cutting through a specific alleyway that lead to a patch of grassy plains above a stone stair case. Out the corner of his eye he saw a shadow zip by and over the short roof top of someone’s home. As he moved to take a precautionary step backwards the shadow figure landed behind him. Assuming Kaeya was drunk enough to one up, the figure moved in to grab Kaeya’s shoulder in efforts to flip him onto his back and steal his vision. Kaeya, in a rebuttal too quick for this thief’s skill set. Side stepped and ducked, only to elbow his assailant in the chest cavity and then reappear behind them with his sword drawn.
“Why is Diluc always right?” Kaeya sighed, a frown on his face as he stared at the person in front of him, whom he had knocked the wind right out of. He wasn’t sure who the person was, given they were covered from head fo toe in all black. When Kaeya saw that they were recovering he twirled his sword, knocking them unconscious with the hilt of his blade. When the thief dropped, Kaeya looked down at them. He moved to uncover their face and saw a young man. He saw, you? His eye went wide, you were not much older than Diluc. The young Knight couldn’t help but think it was a shame to see such wasted potential resort to something of a scoundrel at best. He threw your arm over his shoulder, picking you up with a deep exhale. Effortlessly carrying you off back to one of the empty confinement cells within the knights headquarters. The one he picked out had been out of use for quite some time, given Klee had blown it up rendering the cell unlivable (for her). — It was a perfect place for a thief, especially one that tried to steal his vision.
Kaeya sat on the edge of a small table in the corner of the room, arms crossed and a light frown on his face. He waited until you had come through and regained consciousness. In a panic, your dark eyes darted across the room. Something Kaeya found quite amusing.
“Where..am I?” You huffed out, there was a draft in the room and you visibly shivered. Kaeya stayed seated looking at you.
“In the Knights of Favonius’ HQ, a confinement cell to be more precise.” He replied nonchalantly and as you tried to move, chains rattled against your wrists and ankles.
“Let me out of here, else you’ll be sorry—“
You were cut off by Kaeya’s abrupt laugh, it made you frown and your brow crease. “What’s so fuckin’ funny?” Kaeya’s chuckle faded into a sigh, his finger tapping idly on the bicep of his crossed arms.
“Nothing, it’s just you are in no position to talk. In fact, I bet if I did away with you right here I could get away with it.” His smile may have been playful but his eye hinted at something much darker.
“You.. can’t do that, you’re an honor bound knight it would be a disgrace—“ Kaeya smiled, this time it wasn’t playful but it still held amusement.
“Relax I’m not a barbarian. Why don’t you tell me why you tried to rob me in the middle of an alleyway and most interestingly... try to take my vision.” After Kaeya stated his questions there was a stagnant silence that sat in the stale air of the confinement cell. Kaeya looked down at you, who shifted uncomfortably. “Oh? No answer? Are you sure that’s what you wish to do?” Your eyes drifted over to look up at Kaeya. Who moved from his spot on the table to walk towards you. In the dim light of the cell his features illuminated, it may have been the full moon that peeked through the barred window that made him look so appealing. The sound of his boots tapping down on the stone floors of the cell sent a slight chill down your spine. He towered over you as you sat on the floor. A light smirk threatened the corner of his lips, as he stared down at you with a quizzical eye. The air around him was cool and it seemed to get even colder as he knelt down to eye level. “I think I’ll give you until the count of say- three.” He held up three fingers before putting them down.
“What?”
“One.” He moved his hand behind your head almost as if he was cradling you. Unbeknownst to you his sword appeared in his palm. Your side profile reflected off the blade as it drew near your head. “Two.” His voice was deep and melodic and his tone evermore serious as he counted down. He wasn’t smiling anymore, seeing him this serious started giving you second thoughts about keeping your mouth shut. He was so close you could smell him, eye half lidded as he stared down at you and a crease in his brow. Against the back of your neck your hair brushed against the blade that dangerously kissed the skin of the nape of your neck. He leaned in and as he drew near, a light grin forming at his lips. Was he enjoying the reaction he was getting out of you? Or the interrogation process? Your hand pressed against his chest to try and move him back you couldn’t stand to have him that close. He paused for a split second, his eye dropping down to your hand, it was warm. “Thre-“
“Wait!” You say, your dark eyes shifting up to peer into his. Staring at him this closely, being able to smell him. It was hard not to think about the things you wanted him to do to you while sitting helpless on the cell floor. He was ridiculously attractive and equally as intimidating when he wished to be.
“Hm? Did you change your mind?” He asked, flashing a cold smile. Your cheeks flushed, he smelled like the first snow fall of winter, shamelessly it made blood rush to where you didn’t need it to. His eyes drifted down briefly before he looked at you more closely. “Or maybe you didn’t?” He purred lightly and a smile crossed his face again.
“I-I..I was just.. curious as to what it’s like to have a vision I don’t have one.” You spoke out, Kaeya didn’t sense a lie from you. Even as you continued to try and make him feel sorry for you. “I haven’t been blessed by the Archons. I’m poor and I...I can’t do much of anything let alone use a vision. Being a thief is all I’ve ever known. The only way I know to survive. I wasn’t going to hurt you.” His brow creased as you babbled that last part, you caught yourself and spoke sheepishly. “Not..that I could’ve anyway—“ Kaeya laughed again, he moved back but not very far. His sword disappeared in one swift movement and he took a minute to look at you. Your hands moved over to your lap, you didn’t think he noticed.
“What am I going to do with you hm?” He pondered aloud as he stood up, a hand resting on his hip. He stared down at you, “You assaulted me in an alleyway, tried to rob me and now..” You couldn’t help but think it wasn’t much of an assault, you were the one who got hit square in the chest and knocked unconscious after all.
“Kaeya-“
“And you know who I am? You’re quite the bold thief. Tell me if I let you go, how do I know you won’t do it again?” You shifted uncomfortably, nothing he was saying was arousing but, truthfully you fell victim to his charm the moment he began questioning you, not to mention the count down and intimidation attempt. Kaeya noticed, he was quite observant but he was doing his job- for the most part.
“I won’t.” You lied, he saw right through it. Kaeya crossed his arms again, if he felt any remorse for you before it was gone now. You avoided eye contact with him even as he stared down at you.
“Do you like being chained up in a cell, you’re excited.” He asked genuinely, his voice was soft and curious. It made you twitch uncomfortably. You shook your head and Kaeya tilted his. “Really? Your as hard as this stone floor, I wasn’t going to tease you about it but it only...fed into every words I’ve said to you thus far.” You could hear him smile, you made the mistake of looking up at him. He was gorgeous and the blush that crossed your face made his smile widen.
“I..can’t help how you’re making me feel. You’re just-“
“I’m just what?” He cut you off, moving his hand to rest on the top of your head. He gently ran his fingers through your hair with his gloved palm. Idly moving his hand down to the back of your head before gripping the ends of your hair between his fingers. “Were you going to say charming? Sexy, hot?” He asked, his grip on your hair wasn’t that tight or painful it aroused a light whimper to fall from your lips. Kaeya noticed your hand palming your growing erection — your pants were growing tighter you couldn’t help it. With his boot he kicked your hand away and stepped on the back of your hand, causing the restraints he had you in to rattle against the stone floor. “You did something bad why should you gain pleasure after committing a crime? As I see it I’m the victim here. You assaulted me in an alleyway.” His grin was wide and with his free hand he moved to unzip his pants. Immediately your mouth began to water as he slipped his hand inside to touch himself right before your very eyes.
“I-I won’t do it again..” You lied once again and he saw through it yet again. His grin only widened, he was going to enjoy this.
“I don’t believe you, therefore...” His grip tightened in your hair and he pulled your head back. “I think I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t soon forget.” The weight he had on your hand increased when he saw you try to move your other hand to slip inside your own pants, it was a warning not to try and relieve yourself. You moved your hand away with a whine as Kaeya freed himself from the tight confines of his trousers. His thick member prodded against your cheek before he let it rest on your lips. He let out a light and playful hum as he stared down at you, almost as if he was beckoning you to open your mouth.
“Kaeya I-“ As soon as you opened your mouth he pushed himself inside, the taste of his pre made you shudder and your eyes flutter. He held your hair and head firmly in place as he thrusted deeper into your mouth. He was genuinely surprised that you were able to take him all the way to the back of your throat.
“It’s not polite to speak with your mouth full.” He teased. “Go on, keep stuffing your face thief.” As you struggled to swallow his cock, you couldn’t stop your hand from reaching down to palm the hard tent in your pants. Kaeya caught wind of your actions and knocked your forearm to the side with his other boot. The deep groan you let out reverberated against his shaft, Kaeya had to bite back his own moan as he pulled your hair again which inevitably moved your head back so your lips wrapped around his tip. “If you do it again you’ll regret it.” He wasn’t smiling when he spoke, it was a threat you weren’t going to see through to the end. Kaeya chuckled lightly and moved his free hand down to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing sweetly against your cheekbone. “You’re so obedient...”
He mumbled, his touch was gentle as he moved his hands up to tangle in your hair. It was almost too gentle and had you questioning his motives. You made eye contact with him and a sly grin spread across his face like wildfire. Without warning his grip tightened to hold your head in place. He slammed hips against your face, bottoming out completely in the back of your tight throat. He groaned out quietly and under his breath, as the ridges of your throat and mouth constricted against his thick shaft. Your soft lips tickled the underside of the base of his cock. His pants sagged and his balls pressed against the stubble of your chin, which only edged him on and reflexively urged his hips to thrust against your face. He exhaled with a light chuckle that sifted through the quiet air of the confinement cell.
You whimpered, drooling all over his cock as you squeezed your eyes shut, it took everything in you not to milk and pump your shaft. Your balls were heavy and full and you ached for a release that you didn’t think you’d get. Kaeya looked down on you to subconsciously check to see if you were okay and to see the sight of his dick disappearing down your throat. He pulled back by a few centimeters and you successfully breathed in through your nose. The taste of his pre on your tongue reminded you of a fermented apple wine. None too surprising to say the least and all the more enjoyable.
Kaeya rutted into your mouth again, you choked and he chuckled. He felt your tongue swirl around his shaft against a prominent vein that curved up from the base of his cock. Your leg twitched in need as he moved, beginning a rough and steady rhythm. He noticed the bulge in your throat, it only made him move faster. Kaeya let out deep exhale and a light moan that was simply music to your ears. His head tilted back as you took him, he glanced down at you for a moment and his lips curled into a smile seeing you hard at work.
“If your mouth is this tight, I wonder how your ass must feel.” He teased you, moving one hand down to wipe away that inevitable tears that formed in your eyes. His other hand loosened in your hair but still rested in place idly. He pulled back completely, giving you a chance to breathe. As you caught your breath Kaeya looked down at you, the blush that stained your cheeks inflated his ego a bit. He arched a brow, waiting for you to keep going.
You gave into that cute, suggestive stare and moved your hand up to stroke him; something you wanted to do for yourself since he started fucking talking. You dragged your tongue along the thick length of his member before taking him into your mouth. What you didn’t choke down, you pumped with your hand. Kaeya finally let out a proper moan it was deep and breathy, he started throbbing in your mouth and palm; biting down on his lower lip in ecstasy. In the midst of milking him dry he took hold of your hair again, only to push himself right back down your throat, he needed that tight fit to finish him off. You were going to swallow it all, not that you minded; he was as inebriating as Everclear. As he filled your throat and mouth, he pulled back his warm cum dripping down your chin. He watched you reach up to wipe it away and lick the back of your hand.
His eye drifted down to your continually throbbing erection, he noticed a dark spot where your own pre had ruined your trousers. He stepped back and moved his hand away from your hair, shifting as he pulled his pants up only to zip them up. Your expression was absolutely priceless in his eyes. You opened your mouth to speak to find that your jaw was already sore from his earlier actions. Kaeya moved to sit on the edge of the table again with a light smile on his face.
“What?” He says like he didn’t just pump his seed down your throat. He made an ‘O’ with his mouth as he looked at your disheveled and needy appearance as if he had forgotten. He didn’t. He moved to toss you a key to the restraints you were in. “You’re free to go and...do something about that.” He smiled with a teasing glint in his eye, you looked at the key in front of you. Picking it up with a frown on your face as your freed yourself. “I told you I’d teach you lesson you wouldn’t forget.” He chuckled moving to cross his arms over his chest. You looked at him and he smirked.
“Asshole.” You mumbled, moving to stand up, Kaeya looked your way not feeling remorseful in the slightest.
“You do realize you tried to assault me and steal my vision. I think I let you off rather easy if you ask me. Going straight to Jean just didn’t feel right.” He quipped, and stood to walk over to the door opening it up for you to go. “I don’t want to see you here again, I’d rather the Cat’s Tail or Angel share preferably. Maybe then you’d get a proper..reward and the aftercare I so graciously give to those who listen.” He said, completely insinuating he wanted to see you again under the right circumstances. With a pout you exited the cell, there wasn’t really much you could say to that. You were indeed happy you didn’t have to spend the night in a dingy unlivable cell. Kaeya leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. “Till we meet again King of Thieves.”
Bonus
A week went by, you were at Sara’s sitting down to a late night meal before heading off to Springvale for a few days to visit family. You poked at the fisherman’s toast you ordered, thinking about the Knight who left you thoroughly frustrated. You wanted to beat his ass in all honesty but, apart of you just wanted to—
“Well if it isn’t The King of Thieves.”
638 notes · View notes
themattress · 3 years
Text
Unpopular Opinion Re:Fire Emblem
Azure Moon is the weakest route in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, not the best.
First of all, some context. There are four routes in this game, and also four sets of dualities in how a pair or routes parallel each other.
Silver Snow <---> Crimson Flower Silver Snow <---> Verdant Wind Azure Moon <---> Crimson Flower Azure Moon <---> Verdant Wind
Silver Snow is the route where Byleth leans into embracing their divinity, whereas Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind are all about them embracing their humanity...the difference lies in whether they embrace humanity while remaining with the Church (Verdant Wind) or not (Crimson Flower). Likewise, Azure Moon is where Byleth embraces the traditional structure of power in Fodlan with any changes being mostly in response to what the other factions do, while in Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind they become a revolutionary who wants to completely upend the way things are done in Fodlan, whether that be through a primarily diplomatic approach (Verdant Wind) or a primarily aggressive one (Crimson Flower).
All of these routes are valid and I don't think any of them are completely perfect nor completely bad. They all have their pros and cons. However, many players (especially hardcore FE fans) seem to hold a preference for Azure Moon, and I honestly feel it's the least enjoyable of the routes due to five huge problems.
1. I don't take issue with Dimitri in general and on paper I really love his character arc in this route. The problem all lies in the execution. When you actually get down to it, Dimitri feels like two completely different characters rather than a cohesive whole. Yes, there are hints at a repressed darker side to him during the first half, but that should have started coming out gradually until it consumed him. Instead, the instant he discovers the Flame Emperor is Edelgard, his character does a complete turn into Crazy Town Murder Pants. It's like a switch was flipped and he's suddenly thrown away everything that made him who he was before. If it was only in the second half, after the time skip, that he behaved like this, that would be reasonable given the shit that happens to him. But no, it just happens out of nowhere in the penultimate chapter of the first half. He just loses all his compassion for his allies, positive feelings for Edelgard, and general sanity in one fell swoop.
And if that wasn't bad enough, the transition back is just as unconvincing. After behaving like a self-centered monster for several chapters on end, which the presence of Byleth, Gilbert, Rodrigue, or even Dedue should he make a miraculous return from the dead, did not have any deterring effect on, he is suddenly flipped back to his original characterization overnight following the death of Rodrigue and a pep talk from Byleth. And I get that Rodrigue dying for him, taking the blow from someone as crazed with revenge as Dimitri himself, would shake Dimitri up, but in the talk with Byleth afterward he is still stubbornly trying to stick to his broken, nihilistic worldview. And nothing Byleth says nor any reaction from Dimitri indicates he'll change his mind anytime soon, yet that's exactly what happens.
Ultimately, I wish there was more cohesiveness and subtlety in how Dimitri was written. The writers needed to resist the temptation to dial him up and down so quickly. Let him more gradually become the monster, and then let him more gradually cast the monster off and become the Savior King. His arc would be more realistic and satisfying that way. As it stands, his fate in every other route of pursuing revenge to his death comes off as the far more logical outcome for him.
2. Gilbert is a major character in this route, becoming Dimitri's retainer in place of Dedue (which makes it awkward if you enabled Dedue's return later on). I don't think there is a character in this game that I give less of a shit about than Gilbert. His personality is boring, his voice puts me to sleep, and the game asks too much of me when it asks me to sympathize with him abandoning his family out of self-pity and keeping his distance even when his daughter is right fucking there at Garreg Mach. There's just no investment in him, and so I begrudge his significant amount of screentime here.
3. OK, am I the only one that feels there's this weird pattern of sexism that's specific to this route? While there's thankfully a lot more depth to Ingrid, Annette and Mercedes than what's on the surface, those surfaces can be off-putting: Ingrid seems the typical tomboy who aspires to knighthood but is expected to be a proper lady and marry even if it's someone she doesn't love, Annette the cute, peppy, klutzy girl you see everywhere, and Mercedes all traditional female gender role qualities put in a blender. Again, these are all good characters once you start peeling away the layers, but it's weird their layers are so stereotypical when it comes to female characters.
Meanwhile, we also have the aforementioned expectation of sympathizing with a dude who abandoned his wife and daughter, the resident skirt-chasing character being a closet misogynist who actually wants to break women's' hearts, the complete lack of any onscreen resolution for Lady Rhea despite her still being built up in the first half, and TWO cases of female characters - Fleche and Edelgard - being paralleled to Dimitri and being unable to have the turnaround and redemption that he gets, simply being killed instead. While that's understandable in the case of Edelgard, it's baffling with Fleche, for more than one reason as I'll get to later. Why does a young girl with a body count of two (random Faerghus soldier and Rodrigue) need to die when seeking revenge when a war criminal like Dimitri is allowed to turn his life around? It hardly seems fair, and just adds on to the nagging feeling that female characters are getting the short end of the stick on this route.
I will, however, give points for the major role played by Cornelia. After the disappointment that was Kronya in the first half, it's great to have a competent and deliciously wicked villainess in the vein of The Blazing Blade's Sonia around.
4. The final boss is Hegemon Edelgard, and at first this seems really cool, but the luster wears off pretty quickly. For one thing, there is absolutely no explanation behind what the fuck even happened to turn Edelgard into this. It's clearly something akin to demonic beast transformation, but also not quite that. Was Flayn's blood involved? The stolen crest stones? Or was it just Aymr that did it? And why is it only this route where this happens?
It doesn't help that the boss itself is ridiculously easy. Making it through all of her soldiers to reach her is the true challenge - once you're actually fighting her, it's a cakewalk.
Lastly, it just doesn't feel right. This whole game starts out with a scene depicting the battle between Seiros and Nemesis. In all other routes, the final boss with be either Seiros or Nemesis. Edelgard being the final boss may fit with Dimitri's story, but this should also be the story of Byleth and of the larger destiny and mythos of Fodlan, and in that context Edelgard feels like as big of an anti-climax as a final foe as Daenerys was in Game of Thrones.
5. Last but not least, THAT scene with THAT plot hole. Everyone knows the one: at the end of Chapter 17 where Fleche attacks Dimitri, Rodrigue takes the killing blow, and Byleth kills Fleche. Not only does this make Rodrigue look incompetent for not being able to deflect Fleche's blow without having to take it himself and Byleth look cold-blooded for just fatally cutting Fleche down instead of incapacitating her another way, but this all happens because the game just up and ignored that Byleth has time-rewinding powers. It remembered when Jeralt was killed and gave a reason why that power wouldn't save him, but not here - Byleth just straight-up doesn't use it. Dimitri's sudden transition back to sanity and moral purity was jarring enough, but the fact that this boneheaded event is what causes it makes it worse.
So yeah, don't expect me to be replaying Azure Moon anytime soon. (Hey, it rhymes!)
33 notes · View notes
skiller0dani · 4 years
Text
Obliviate | Draco Malfoy
M A S T E R L I S T Harry Potter Masterlist
very sad (light) smut requested requests info
this is so sad. I’m sorryyyyy. also if you wanted to set the mood more, I listened to THIS while writing it. Please listen to it, it wont be the same without the song lmao
Part 1/10 (Part 2)(Part 3)(Part 4)(Part 5)(Part 6)(Part 7)(Part 8)(Part 9)(Part 10)
Tumblr media
Draco had thought back to every other time in his life where he had felt like this, and nothing came to mind. There wasn’t another second of his torturous life that felt like this. He tended to count his blessings where he had them, and you were a blessing in his life. One that he woke up every single day thanking God for, Draco isn’t sure he’d ever love anyone the way he loves you. But he knew from the start, that the two of you were doomed, two lovers caught on each side of the war. His Father in direct relation with the Dark Lord, and you- Harry Potter’s cousin. There was a target on your back from the second you got to Hogwarts all those years ago and when Draco had first met you- he didn’t understand just how much danger you were already in. 
Nobody looked at Draco the way you did, nobody looked at him like he was worth saving. But when you looked at him, you saw something in him that he didn’t even see in himself. Draco believes that he was never a good person until he met you, and even then whether or not he was good is still up to debate. You inspire people to be better, to be good and if there is no good- you create it. You are a light in an everlasting darkness, and he doesn’t deserve you. But selfishly he wants to keep you- and he knows you’d never voluntarily leave him. He had to make the choice for you. You can’t stubbornly stand by his side if you don’t remember you’re in love with him. 
The Black Lake looks darker than Draco remembered it being. The view he currently held from the astronomy tower was beautiful in it’s own way, but now that he held every memory you have of him in his hands- the beauty seemed to slip out of the world. Looking down at the small vial in his hands, the vial containing your memories of him, his bottom lip quivers. He can’t stand how emotional you make him, you make him feel both weak and strong at the same time. His hand curls around the vial, Draco knows this is what he needs to do. He never expected it to be this hard though. 
Closing his eyes, Draco decided to take one last walk down memory lane before he would destroy your memories of him forever. 
The first time you had met Draco was when you were stood on the steps next to your cousin, Harry. Draco was stood in front of you, and although his eyes were on Harry- the blush on his cheeks came from being so close to you. Draco had held his head high, even when you snapped at him and told him how wonderful you found Ron to be. Draco always admired your sharp tongue, your unwillingness to step down when you felt passionately about something. He’s going to miss being your voice of reason, or the hand that holds you back when you’re ready to literally fight for what you believe in. You always say what you’re really thinking, how you’re really feeling. That’s something Draco has never really had the strength to do. If he did he would have said he loved you more often, and perhaps would have told Harry that he doesn’t hate him. 
Draco vividly remembers the first time you looked at him, and saw him in a way nobody else does. Not even Crabbe and Goyle. He was sat in the back corner of the Library, hiding away from everyone and everything after receiving yet another disappointed letter from his Father. You’d been gathering books to study for Potions when you spotted him sitting secluded, alone. You didn’t hesitate to go sit next to him, and when you looked over at him you saw every emotion he carefully hid from the world written plainly on his face. As if you had the only key to unlock the innermost parts of his brain. After a few minutes of gentle coaxing, Draco eventually began to open up to you about his Father and in return you opened up about your terrible parents. About how abusive they were to Harry- how much that hurt you. Draco hadn’t given it a second thought when you revealed you were muggle born. Really Draco didn’t mind, nor did it offend him in the way he acted it did but for his Father Draco must keep up appearances. 
He still feels guilty remembering how you recoiled away from him when he had spat the word ‘mudblood’ in your direction. He feels guilty as he remembers the tears trickling down your cheeks. Even that feeling paled in comparison to the way Draco feels now. 
Draco remembers the first time you kissed him, and yes much to his embarrassment it was you that kissed him. You always were someone who went after what you wanted. He was in the Hospital wing after Buckbeak attacked him. Despite him being the biggest prat you’d ever met, you still went to see him anyway. You sat next to Draco in the bed, seeing the tears well in his eyes at the revelation Buckbeak would be executed. Sure he was angry the stupid thing attacked him but never would he want Buckbeak killed for it. Draco wasn’t entirely surprised to learn his Father had threatened the committee in order for Buckbeak to be sentenced. It’s not Draco that his Father cared about, it’s the family image. You had cupped his cheeks, and gently pressed your lips to his. It was the only thing you could think to do to soothe him, and it worked. Draco melted against you, his sorrows briefly muted by the feeling of your lips on his own. He thinks he might have fallen in love with you right at that moment. 
The first time you went to Hogsmeade with him was the following year, during the winter. Your cheeks were rosy and your hand was as cold as ice around his warmer palm. He remembers you squealing with excitement as it began to snow again, the soft flakes fluttering gently around you. You truly did look like an angel. The snow stuck to your hair as you turned to look at him, “make a snowman with me!” Your voice was lilted, almost melodic as the happiness you felt carried over into your tone. While Draco didn’t normally do silly things like making snowmen, he couldn’t fight the smile that split across his face as he helped you roll the bottom of the snowman. Before that moment, Draco never knew joy like that even existed. It was only later that he discovered that this kind of joy only existed when he was with you. 
The first time the words ‘I love you’ graced the space between your lips was when you’d both met at the astronomy tower at midnight. The stars were twinkling beautifully, but even so Draco couldn’t keep his eyes off you. You blushed, refusing to meet his eye. You were always insecure, which baffled Draco immensely. How could you believe any other girl is anywhere close to being as pretty as you? There’s not another woman on the face of this Earth that compares to you, and you would often giggle and tell him to stop when he would begin his long ‘you’re the most beautiful girl’ rant. You had led Draco to believe, that maybe he and Harry could find peace. You were in fact, the only thing they had in common. The words fell right out of his mouth before he could pause to give them any thought. “I love you,” The air seemed to stiffen around him, crushing him as he watched you. You didn’t hesitate. 
“I love you Draco.” It was the best moment of his life. 
Draco will never forget the first time he was allowed to see the beauty of your bare skin. You’d think it would be easier to find places to be alone in this great big castle, eventually Draco had settled for the edge of the Black Lake- far from the castle. The journey out to the Lake had started innocently, the both of you quite enjoyed star gazing and spending your evenings together. You’d been sitting next to him, watching the large tentacles of the monster that lives in the Lake toss you things from the depths. You really did have a way in bringing out the good in everything, you’d even managed to befriend the monster that lives in the Lake. “Wow look at this,” your voice was quiet with amazement as you turned over a beautiful amulet in your hands. It was simple, silver chain with a white gem that shone as brightly as the moon. The Lake monster had given it to you, and Draco remembers the soft sigh that left your lips as his hands graced the back of your neck, fastening the amulet. 
Draco remembers the delicate way you turned to face him, how your eyes never left his as you carefully slid onto his lap. Your hands were placed on his shoulders as your lips met in a slow and languid kiss. The searing heat built between you two and seemed to draw your most intimate parts together. Without realizing, you’d begun to gently grind against Draco- drawing out soft moans from his lips. Never before had Draco felt this kind of desire for another person. His hands slid up your back and carefully removed each layer of clothing that was in between him and your bare skin. Your skin was flushed as Draco’s lips explored your naked body, carefully turning you over so that he would hover above you. You gripped fistfuls of the grass as Draco had found his home in between your legs, laving your sensitive folds with his tongue and mouth. It felt like heaven, and he knew it did. He could see it on your face, and you looked so beautiful. 
The desire burning inside you began to beat between your legs like a drum as you pulled Draco back up your body. Nuzzling his nose against yours, Draco slipped the head of his member in between your folds. The thought of hurting you made him feel sick to his stomach, but with a few gentle words of encouragement from you, he was gently working himself inside your tight heat. The feeling was incomparable, indescribable, suffocating, and intoxicating all at the same time. Draco knew that here on the grass, between your legs, was somewhere he wanted to be forever. If he could capture this moment in something more than his minds eye he would, he wants this memory to live forever. He rocked into you again and again, losing himself in the way your body felt against his. Never had Draco felt so connected to another person, you had him, mind body and soul. He was falling into that pit now, no doubt about it, and there was no way out. He was head over heels in love, not that he minded. 
Draco would do anything to keep you safe, and he really means that. 
Draco had grown distant from you this year, mostly because of the swirling black tattoo on his left forearm. The Dark Mark. He knew in an instant that you had to stay as far from him as humanly possible, and while he tried to stay away, he was weak and kept falling back into your embrace. He needed to convince you to stay away from him, and if he couldn’t...then he had to make you. You’d confronted him this evening, with tears in your eyes and a tremble in your hands. You wanted, needed, to know what was going on. Why he felt so far away from you. So Draco pressed a kiss to your forehead, took your hand, and led you here. To the Astronomy tower, a place where so many monumentous things happened between you. This would be the perfect place to say goodbye. 
You staggered back when he lifted his sleeve. The breath was stolen from your lungs when you saw the Dark Mark, writhing and wriggling on his arm. Tears built in your eyes as you looked at him, his name falling past your broken lips. How could this have happened? How could he let this happen? You wanted to scream, to tear your hair out, to cry, to do anything but your body wouldn’t let you. You simply stood frozen before him, feeling as though the most powerful force in the world was tearing the two of you apart. The next words out of his mouth shattered you beyond repair. 
“You need to stay away from me, for your own good. And for Harry’s.” It was the first time he’d ever used Harry’s first name, that’s how you knew he really meant this. But you couldn’t, you loved Draco with every ounce of your heart, how could you leave him? You shook your head vehemently, tears now free falling down your cheeks. “I-I can’t.” You gasped, watching a pained expression cross onto Draco’s face. He didn’t want to do this, he really didn’t want to do this but the thought of you getting tortured or killed by Voldemort replays in his mind. He couldn’t put you in danger, not for something so selfish, not because he loves you. It’s because he loves you that he’s willing to let you go, that he’s willing to make this sacrifice if it means keeping you safe. 
When he turns to you again, his wand is raised and the look on his face is one you’ve never seen before. His hand is trembling, his eyes look hollow and his mouth is quivering. He looks desperate, he looks distraught, but most of all, he looks broken. “Draco,” You whisper, tears in your eyes as you look up at him, your hand finding the railing behind you. “You have to stay away from me.” Draco gasps, desperately fighting tears. 
“Please don’t do this.” Your voice is weak, you know what’s coming next. You’re smart enough to connect the dots. 
Draco’s hand wavers, “I have to.” His voice is final, but his body looks as though it’s falling apart. Thoughts of him facing what he must face, without your love, sends panic through your chest. He’ll have to endure the pain, the struggles, all of it, alone. You want to be there for him, you don’t care about the danger. Draco knows you don’t, that’s why he has to do this. 
“Baby please, I love you.” You cry desperately, and Draco feels his heart burning to dust in his chest as he looks down at you. “I love you too.” He breathes, closing his eyes and steeling his nerves for what he is going to do next. “Draco!” Your voice comes out as a cry of desperation, and you lurch forward. But Draco is faster. 
“Obliviate.” He whispers the word into the open air, watching as you halt, your tearful eyes locked on his. “Draco,” You whisper as a light of blue slips from your head and into the tip of Draco’s wand. Your hands drop to your sides, and your eyes fall flat, looking through him now, seeing him as everyone else does. Your face is empty, expressionless as you watch him. Lowering his wand, Draco slips your memories into the vial as you blink in confusion before sending him a nervous smile. You look around briefly, before reaching over to grab your coat. You brush past Draco without looking at him again, offering a hollow ‘goodnight’ over your shoulder as you go. Draco feels empty, emptier than he ever has. It’s only now that he lets a tear slide down his cheek. 
His hands were shaking as he leaned over the railing, the cool wind chilling him. The view laid out before him doesn’t hold any beauty in it anymore, and it feels as though all the color has drained from the world. Grasping the vial tightly in his hand, Draco squeezes his eyes shut before throwing it as hard as he could over the edge of the astronomy tower. He watches with bleary eyes as the vial of your memories, the vial containing your love for him disappears into the Black Lake. This is the right thing to do, but Draco can’t fight how wrong it feels. He knows now that he’ll never be the same, but he turns anyway. Straightens his suit, wipes his tears, and begins the journey back to his common room. 
904 notes · View notes
readyplayerhobi · 4 years
Text
Jung Hoseok and the Magic to Happiness | 04
Tumblr media
; Hufflepuff Teacher!Hoseok x Reader
; Genre: Fluff, angst, future smut
; Word Count: 5.2k
; Synopsis: An unexpected issue with your Ministry of Magic job leads to you taking the role of Transfiguration Professor at Hogwarts. It’s here that you meet your best friend’s younger brother for the first time in years, the Hufflepuff Head of House, Jung Hoseok. While you contend with seeing him once again, Hoseok tries to show you that he’s very much a man and no longer the gangly teenager you once knew.
; A/N: I swear, it’s so hard getting back into writing because I’m permanently convinced that everything I write is bad lol. If you enjoy reading this, please let me know by leaving me an ask or writing a comment on a reblog! I appreciate all the comments I get and it helps to inspire me on <3
Last Chapter ; Next Chapter
-
The Winter Solstice Ball was a newer tradition at Hogwarts. Before the Battle of Hogwarts, there hadn’t been anything resembling the ball that would happen. The closest you knew of was the Yule Ball, but that only occurred whenever there was a Tri-Wizard Tournament. 
Something that hadn’t occurred since the unfortunate events of 1994, when poor Cedric Diggory had been murdered by the dark wizard Voldemort. As expected, it had been mutually agreed that the tournament should no longer continue to ensure there could never be another event like Diggory’s death.
Admittedly, that had been a rather unique set of circumstances. The inclusion of the wizard, Harry Potter, in the Tournament had been arranged by dark wizards on the behest of Voldemort, meaning that Diggory’s death had been even more tragic as he wasn’t meant to be there. 
In an attempt to bring more cheer to what should be a happy holiday, Hogwarts had started the Winter Solstice Ball tradition. Unlike the Yule Ball, all years were invited to attend and it also wasn’t on Christmas Day. Instead, it was held on the last day of term and was just a fun event for everyone to enjoy and let off some steam after their first semester back.
You’d always enjoyed it as a student; feeling like a grownup during the first few years and using it as a great way to flirt with boys when you were older. There hadn’t been a year that you hadn’t loved going to it.
It felt a little odd this time though as you were attending as a professor, which meant you had the job of chaperoning all the excited students for the evening. As such, you were excited for an entirely different reason as you would get to watch the First Year’s experience of the ball.
The House Elves had gone all out when decorating the Great Hall today, bringing the feeling of winter inside and taking your breath away. Standing by the open doors, you look around cavernous space with wide eyes and a bright smile. Chaeyoung was next to you, a dress of starlight gracing her body and highlighting just how beautiful she is.
You’d already complimented her as soon as you’d spotted her, admiring the elegant design of her dress and how the tiny crystals are sewn into the fabric reminded you so much of sunlight hitting frost on a winter’s day. Her long black hair was curled into soft waves with her fringe pinned away from her face with a delicate snowflake.
Where she was all light and ice, you were the sumptuous darkness of winter. Your dress was a sumptuous royal blue around your chest which slowly blended into deep midnight by your feet, a shawl of the lightest chiffon in a dark blue around your shoulders. Silver glinted occasionally, threads of it woven through the fabric of your dress and adding a little sparkle alongside the dainty silver necklace around your neck.
The two of you made a striking pair and the combination of a full face of beautiful makeup combined with the jaw-dropping dress made you feel like the prettiest girl in the room. Whether that was true or not, you didn’t care.
The hall itself matched the colour scheme of you both with long swathes of gauzy fabric in rich lavender, crisp white and shimmering silver decorating the tall windows and streaming from the ceiling. Tonight, the ceiling had been enchanted to show clouds backlit by a full moon and tiny flakes of snow fell. They didn’t reach the ground though, melting away a few metres away from the tallest person in the room.
Candles lit the room in all corners, hovering in the air and situated around the room and the tables. A large open space in the centre of the hall was reserved for dancing while a raised section before it hosted the musical entertainment for the night. Small tables surrounded the floor, each only big enough for six people and with white cloths embroidered with tiny snowflakes in silver.
Platters piled high with finger foods dotted the tables alongside empty goblets and jugs of pumpkin juice and butterbeer. A few of the ghosts that haunted Hogwarts floated through the tables, greeting the formally dressed students with cheer and getting into a few conversations with some of them.
Already the hall was filling nicely, students greeting you happily as they rushed inside to meet up with friends and a few of them had already begun to dance. Some of them danced together, trying to figure out how to ballroom dance with the typical awkwardness of teenagers discovering their hormones, and others danced in friend groups. The latter seemed to just be having fun, shaking their bodies wildly to the beat of the music.
“I remember doing that.” Gesturing towards a group of mixed house Fourth Years, you grin at Chaeyoung before chuckling at the memory of dancing like that with Jisoo, Robert and Candace. That had been your ‘group’ of loyal friends throughout your years at Hogwarts, though only Jisoo had remained a close friend once you’d all left.
“Merlin...me too. I had no rhythm back then. Still don’t. Dancing is not for me.” Chuckling, you lean into her and push until she staggers away from you a little before returning the gesture. Glancing around the hall, you note the more introverted people sitting at the tables and sipping at drinks. They don’t seem to be uncomfortable but you resolve to check up on them throughout the night to make sure they’re okay.
“One thing I do love about working with such handsome men here? They make the ball so much better to enjoy.” Chaeyoung hums over the top of her goblet of butterbeer, her refined brows rising in amusement as she looks across the hall. Following her gaze, you have to hide a smile as you take in the sight of some of Hogwarts most eligible bachelor professors and how well they smarten up.
Park Jimin is standing next to Kim Taehyung, his silver hair styled even more elegantly than normal while his dress robes look to have been perfectly tailored to his slim body. A white bow tie adorns his neck and he’s smiling at whatever Taehyung had told him. The Gryffindor Head has his usual boxy smile and you note that he scrubs up just as nicely. Together, they make a lethal pair in terms of looks.
“Now, now,” You muse lightly, looking over to Chaeyoung with mischief on your face. “We’re here to chaperone, not to swoon over good looking men like the teenagers we teach.”
A derisive snort is the only response she gives you, but you see that she’s not taken her eyes off the two younger men. Idly, you wonder which would make the perfect partner for her. You’d consider Taehyung to be a good candidate as their fun-loving natures would get on well, but there’s something about Jimin that makes you think he’d be an even better pick.
She wouldn’t even have to change her last name.
Any more thoughts you have on the subject vanish when the newest professor walks through the door. Black hair made darker from some kind of styling gel is swept up from his forehead, a strand or two falling stubbornly and giving him an almost charming appearance. Deep black robes sweep from his shoulders, covering up a suit that highlights his body in all the right ways.
Unlike Jimin and Taehyung, his outfit was completely black and you swallowed instinctively as you let your eyes run down his frame. Hoseok pauses at the doorway, pink lips moving as he talks to Nayeon, the divination professor. She looks pretty in a floaty dress of bubblegum pink and fizzing lilac, her smile genuine and eyes sparkling as she looks up at him.
Lips twisting, you turn away from the sight and don’t even notice the way Chaeyoung is watching you closely, her lips turning up in a smile she tries to hide. Looking away from you, she catches Seokjin’s questioning expression across the hall and nods at him subtly, enjoying the way the astronomy professor gets a determined look on his face.
“Speaking of men who are too beautiful to be real, Jung Hoseok always looks so good at these events. How is a man like that allowed to even exist?” There’s a breathy note to Chaeyoung’s voice, causing you to frown at her a little before looking back over in his direction. 
Nayeon is still standing there, a forlorn expression gracing her face as she watches Hoseok move away from her. It’s only then that you realise he’s walking towards you, causing your eyes to widen in surprise. Confusingly, you’re a little unsure of what to do or how to act.
Not when he’s looking like that. This is not the shy and awkward Hoseok with his dress robes too big for him, the only memory you have of him at the Winter Solstice Ball. He couldn’t be any further from that teenager and you don’t know how to handle that.
Especially when he gives you that breathtaking smile, his cheeks rising and dimpling while his dark eyes shine in delight. You should’ve known the Jung genes would result in him growing into an attractive man; his sister was one of the most beautiful people you’d ever seen.
“Y/N, Chaeyoung,” He bows his head to you both, that smile just as prominent and you nod back to him a little awkwardly. “You both look beautiful tonight. Winter is personified with your colours, it’s nice.” 
For a moment, you’re a little lost for words on how to respond to him. You couldn’t recall the last time you’d been so casually complimented, especially from a man. A man as attractive as him. It causes you to swallow wrong and you cough loudly, pressing a hand to your throat.
“Thanks, you’re looking pretty fine yourself tonight,” Chaeyoung teases him, causing that smile to become a little more bashful. “Anyway, I’m going to leave you two alone for a moment, okay? I need to go talk to Seokjin about something.”
You watch her go with wide eyes, noting with suspicion that she’s moving a little faster than you’d expect and you wonder if she’s up to something. But then you realise that you’re being left alone with Hoseok, who’s casually looking you up and down while you’re attention is elsewhere.
It’s only when he catches your eye when you look back, a brow raised, that he realises you’ve caught him. Hoseok turns his head quickly, probably giving himself whiplash and you have to hide the snort at the soft blush on his cheeks.
He may be all grown up now, but he still reminded you of that shy boy who never quite knew how to talk to you.
Reaching out, you poke at his chest and grin at him.
“She’s right, you are looking good tonight. Cleaned up very well.” Hoseok gives you a droll stare and you laugh, feeling any awkwardness rushing away as you both fall into the easy-going nature of your friendship.
The rest of the evening goes by in much the same manner with the two of you separating on occasion to handle issues with students or just to do a walk around. Apart from that though, you both end up spending more time with each other than with anyone else. Conversation flows easily like a fast-moving river and you find yourself laughing more than you have in a while.
You only have to break up one fight between two young boys; the culmination of weeks of tension between the two finally bubbling over. It starts with raised voices before escalating to blows, resulting in you escorting the two to Madame Pomfrey to check for any injuries. After that, you leave them in the hands of Park Jimin to discipline them given their house.
When you get back, you look around for Hoseok or Chaeyoung. You can’t see either of them, causing you to take up a place at the back against the wall to observe for any fallout from the fight. Thankfully, the mood seems to have picked up and you wonder if that’s got anything to do with the more upbeat music that’s being played.
It was never nice watching your students get into fights with each other or lose friendships, but you knew that was part of growing up. The thing about teenagers, and kids, was that they were incredibly resilient. You did not doubt that they would both be back to being friends within a week or so.
“All sorted?” Comes a deep voice to the right, the sound closer than you expected and causing you to jump slightly. Turning to look, you note that Hoseok has turned up out of nowhere and you relax at the sight of his familiar face.
“Yeah, no injuries to each other apart from wounded pride and friendships.” That causes Hoseok to snort and roll his eyes, leaning back against the wall alongside you. Suddenly, you recall how many times Jisoo complained of having to comfort her brother when he’d had yet another fight during his tenure at Hogwarts.
“I’m sure you know all about that, Mr Jung. I remember Jisoo having to deal with you. You were shy but a firecracker.” He sighs deeply and you lean into him, giggling as you regale him with some of the tales she’d told you. Thankfully, he takes it all with his usual good nature and you end up segueing into other memories of your time at Hogwarts.
The exams and the studying, the professors back then and your favourite subjects. It’s something he already knows as you’ve both discussed it previously, but he indulges you and listens amiably while keeping an eye out.
You’re stopped though when he suddenly interrupts you, straightening slightly.
“Would you like to dance? There’s not as many people out there now and you haven’t danced once tonight.” His question is abrupt, causing you to falter in your conversation. Narrowing your eyes, you look him over closely and wonder if he’s being serious. And you conclude that he is.
Looking over at the dance floor, you contemplate for a moment and chew your lip before nodding. Now it’s your turn to feel shy, avoiding his gaze and trying not to catch the eye of anyone else in the hall as he leads you carefully to the floor. 
There’s probably a few statues in the British Museum that are less stiff than you as you turn to him, feeling his hand as he settles it on your lower back. You’re hyper-aware of that hand; how hot it feels against you even with the fabric of the dress between you. But that pales in comparison to the feel of his hand against your own, the way he holds it almost tenderly.
Logically, you know that he’s doing that because that’s how you’re supposed to dance like this. A light touch, but it makes you feel a little strange. You’re not sure why it makes you feel like that and you find yourself staring at his long fingers, wondering if he kept up the piano he’d been taught when younger.
The music leads you both in the dance, each beat dictating where you move and you’re vaguely aware of the students dancing around you. None of them are staring or looking confused as there had been many professors who had danced together tonight. But you couldn’t help but feel like this dance was a little different.
This was the closest you’d ever been to Hoseok and his body is so close to your own that you can physically feel the heat coming from him. Every breath you take brings the smell of him into your nose, the familiar mix of rich wood and lemongrass that is so, undeniably Hoseok. And underlying all that is the smell that’s unique to him.
“Is this okay?” He asks quietly and you stare at the black button-up covering his chest, avoiding his gaze given how close the two of you are. It’s probably not the best thing to do when you realise that shirt is straining a little and you can see the outline of his torso from the light of the nearby candles.
Swallowing hard, you look over his shoulder and try to ignore the sudden knowledge that Hoseok is buff beneath his clothes. Which doesn’t help, because you find your eye trailing down his chest as you consider. It’s only when you reach his belt buckle that you suddenly look away, taking a deep breath and wondering what was wrong with you.
You’d had one too many butterbeers tonight or something, which was a terrible excuse as it had such little alcohol content that it didn’t even matter. This was Jisoo’s brother, her little brother. Not someone you should be thinking about half-naked.
Right?
Finally, though, you register his question and nod quickly in response. You’re not sure that you can talk to him without saying something inappropriate as your brain isn’t working very well right now. Not when you’re so confused about...well everything.
“Are you sure? You’ve gone a little weird. Quiet.” Hoseok murmurs, his voice low to avoid any of the students overhearing it. Sighing, you stand a little straighter before looking at him directly and giving him a firm smile. It takes a little more effort than you’d like to push away those errant thoughts but you do so.
“Fine, just worried about those students. I hate seeing their friendship ruined and them angry at each other, you know?” It’s not a lie as you are still concerned about them, but he doesn’t need to know everything going on in your head. Which is why you’re thankful when he nods slowly before spinning you around.
“They’ll be okay. I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that they’ll be back to being friends sooner rather than later. They’ve already got some of that testosterone out by punching each other, which I’d rather they didn’t do but Jimin will talk it out with them. Don’t worry too much, they’ll be fine.” It’s sweet how considerate he’s being and you can hear how genuine he is in his voice. 
You don’t get to say anything else though as the tempo increases when the song switches over, causing Hoseok to twirl you away from him with a laugh. All around you the dances start to get a little more energetic and you can’t help but shriek with joy as he matches the student’s enthusiasm, listening to them as they cheer at two of their professors getting involved in the frivolities.
Neither of you notices the way Seokjin and Chaeyoung watch you both closely before smirking at each other.
-
Glancing around the room, you note how most of the students had already left and gone to bed for the night. The clock had struck midnight a while ago and you had to press a hand to your mouth as you yawned, turning your head away to be polite. A few remaining students were still dancing on the floor but even as you watched, some of them started to walk towards the exit.
Looking over at Chaeyoung, you caught her eye with a wave and smiled with relief when she nodded and made a shooing gesture. Turning to Hoseok, you tried to hide another yawn and almost giggled when you saw that he’d caught one from you, his mouth wide as he didn’t even try to hide it.
“I think we can go now. Chaeyoung gestured that we can leave so I think they’re going to hustle the last students to bed. Something which I’m also very excited to do because I feel like I’ve been awake for two days right now.” Blinking and almost trying to stretch your eyelids by widening them as far as you could, you almost missed the way Hoseok laughed at your antics.
“Tired? It’s not even two in the morning, I expected better of you.” He teases, gently pushing his elbow into your arm before avoiding your hand as you try to swat him. You’d admit that he looked a lot more awake than you did, which you’d say wasn’t fair but you don’t think you’ve ever truly seen him look tired.
“Well, you’re still young and spry. You’ll learn when you get to my age.” Moving off towards the doors of the Great Hall, you grab a tiny triangular sandwich from one of the remaining platters on a table as you pass by.
Light pressure on the small of your back causes you to arch slightly, your chest moving forward and you tilt your head to look at your companion. There’s no expression on Hoseok’s face, nothing to indicate he’s affected by touching you and you frown slightly as you wonder why it’s affecting you.
“You’re not old, I don’t know why you keep thinking that.” He murmurs, voice deep and quiet.
Neither of you says anything more for a few minutes, instead just walking quietly through the hallways. It’s a comfortable silence and you muse for a moment on how much you’ve come to enjoy spending time with him. You would happily say that he was your closest friend here at Hogwarts; something you would’ve never thought would happen when you were studying here and he was just your best friend’s little brother.
That makes you think of how defensive he always gets whenever you, or anyone else, seems to imply that you’re old. Huffing out a laugh, you bite your lip as you contemplate that for a second. Maybe he doesn’t like the implication that you, and by extension, his sister, are considered ‘older’ by the students. Or that he’s also approaching thirty.
The student’s opinions have never bothered you as they think anyone over the age of twenty is old. Nor have you been concerned overall, given the extended lifespan that witches had compared to muggles. You were finally feeling content with your career and your life, something you attested partly to growing older and becoming more at ease with yourself.
But he always got so defensive of it, so maybe he was concerned about himself.
“You don’t have to keep defending my age, you know,” Apparently you were going to query this with him and you blamed the butterbeer for loosening up your tongue. “I’m okay with it, honestly. Which means I’m okay with joking about it.”
Hoseok stiffened slightly and you spotted his expression looking a little uneasy. Frowning, you placed a hand on his arm and pulled him to a stop. Your quarters were only a few corridors away now and the two of you were given a warm glow from the candles lit nearby. 
“I’m not defending...I mean, okay maybe I am. I just...I don’t want you to feel like it’s an issue.” Now you’re giving him an amused look, lip quirked up on one side as you try to hold in a small giggle.
“It’s not an issue. Have I made it seem like it was?” Tilting your head, you watch as his eyes dart across your face in an almost shy manner.
“No...well, not in the way you might think,” He looks uncomfortable and you’re about to tell him it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to continue but he does so before you get the chance to speak. “I’m just made every aware of our age difference. You know, the whole ‘you’re her best friend’s little brother’ thing.”
“Hey, I don’t do that, do I?” Now you’re a little concerned.
“No, not really. Not for a while anyway. You did when you first got here but I understood that. We hadn’t met in a while and everyone was curious about how we knew each other. But now...I don’t even know what I’m talking about. Honestly, it’s not important. You’re right.” Hoseok’s babbling a bit but you decide to let him change the conversation. You’re not entirely sure why it truly bothers him, but you’re not going to press it anyway. He deserves to have his feelings and they don’t need to be analysed.
“Okay-” Before you can say anything else, you hear the quiet chiming of bells and frown in confusion. The sound echoes a little in the empty corridor, simultaneously creepy and also ethereal. 
Hoseok looks around as well, his brow knitted in confusion before he suddenly spots something about you both. Following him, you note the odd plant that’s grown from the ceiling out of nowhere. The green branches are still growing and you note with interest the small white berries that seem to be forming and familiar leaf shapes appear at the end of each branch.
A red ribbon is delicately wrapped around the stems and you see the little golden bells that let out tiny chimes as they rock from side to side in a non-existent breeze. Now you’re the one frowning as you look around you both, trying to spot who’d set a mistletoe charm to grow when someone walked beneath it.
“Mistletoe?” Hosek whispers, reaching up with one hand in an attempt to touch it. He can’t reach it and you sigh, shaking your head and crossing your arms over your chest.
“Someone has thought it’d be funny to put mistletoe charms around the castle for the ball. Certainly adds to the Christmas spirit. I’ve seen these popping up all night above couples on the dance floor. I think it’s a seasonal Weasley thing, seems like something they’d sell to annoy people.”
The mistletoe is suddenly snowing, letting tiny snowflakes drift to the ground around you both and leaving fluffy snow to settle on Hoseok’s hair and dress robes. How very romantic, you muse to yourself.
“Does it just disappear on its own after a while?” He asks, running his fingers through his hair to try and get rid of some of the snow. Smiling at him, you gently brush at his shoulders only to decide it’s a losing battle as more snow lands.
“Nope. You gotta kiss, that’s the whole point of mistletoe, right? Otherwise, it follows you around.” Hoseok sighs deeply and rolls his eyes.
“Of course it does. Definitely a Weasley thing.”
Looking back up at the mistletoe, and having to blink to avoid getting snowflakes in your eyes, you purse your lips before looking back at Hoseok. You’d long since come to terms with the fact that you find him attractive; anyone with eyes can see that. But you hadn’t planned on doing anything about it, not given who he was and who his sister was to you.
His words from earlier play through your mind though, and you wonder if he hates having to constantly know he’s given the best friend’s little brother status. Even now, months after you’d arrived and you considered him a friend, you knew that there were still people who thought of that as the most defining characteristic of your friendship.
Letting out a little sigh, you straighten your shoulders before reaching out and taking hold of his dress robes. Fuck it, you’re not one to waste a perfect chance.
Pulling him closer, you watch as his eyes dart to yours and widen when he realises that you’re moving towards him as well. And then those same eyes flick to your lips, the movement so fast that you’d almost miss it if it wasn’t for the fact that he did again only seconds later. 
Combined with the zero resistance he was giving, you came to the solid conclusion that he wasn’t going to reject you. Not when you were giving him plenty of time and reason to back out if he wanted to.
Tilting your head to him, you felt his warm breath as it caressed your face, the smell of butterbeer strong. And then your lips are pressed together, neither of you sure who made the final move and neither of you gives a damn at that exact moment. 
The pressure of your lips against each other is gentle at first, almost hesitant as both of you try to figure out where to go from here. All that was required was a kiss, which was what you were both doing right now. But you didn’t quite want to let him go just yet, not when you knew he probably had so much more to offer.
Shifting, you manoeuvred your way into a position that made the kiss a little more personal and no longer like two teenagers who’d never kissed in their life. Letting go of his robes, your arms move to wrap around his neck and you run your fingers through his hair, enjoying how soft the black strands feel against your fingers.
A quiet noise leaves Hoseok, his arms sliding around your waist to pull you a little closer to him while he kisses you more forcefully than before. It feels...you can’t even find the words to describe how it feels, only knowing that you’re not entirely sure you want him to stop.
Any hesitation has disappeared between you both and you simply lose yourself to the delightful feeling of Jung Hoseok against your lips, against your body and how he feels under your fingertips. It’s only when he moves a little further, his tongue asking for entrance to fire up the kiss even more, that you suddenly come to your senses.
Pushing back from him, you stare with wide eyes and only just realise that the bells have stopped. A glance up shows the mistletoe is gone and you breathe a little heavily, not realising that you’d kissed him that forcefully until now. Hoseok looks just as out of breath with an odd look in his eyes that you can’t quite figure out.
Licking at your lips, and trying to ignore the knowledge that you could probably taste him right now, you run your hands down the front of your dress robes before giving him a slightly awkward smile. Coughing, you turn your eyes away from the strangely intense gaze he’s giving you.
“Erm, well it’s gone now. So...we’re not gonna be followed by mistletoe anymore,” Playing with your fingers, you wonder if you made a very bad decision tonight. “I, erm, I’m gonna go to bed now. It’s late and...well...yeah. Thank you, for walking me here and spending time with me, you know, dancing and all that. It was nice, I had a good time and thank you. Yeah, I already thanked you. Err...get to bed safely, okay? I mean, I…” 
Hoseok reaches out and takes hold of your nervous hands. It makes you jump nervously, but he just gives a reassuring smile while rubbing the back of your hands with his thumbs.
“Y/N...it’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. Go to sleep and have good dreams.” There’s no annoyance in his voice, no anger or outrage that you’ve gone from initiating that kiss to acting very strange in only seconds. 
“Yeah...I...you too. You too.” Frowning as you walked away from him, you wondered what in Merlin’s beard you’d just done.
319 notes · View notes
pinepickled · 3 years
Note
Hey!! So I just stumbled onto your fics today! I really like what I've read so far and look forward to reading more of your fics!!
You were saying "Let me know if you have a fic idea." So, here's my prompt to you, for writing a drabble or ficlet (I love your ficlets!!!)
Ship: Kakshi/Zabuza
Prompt: Touch
Drabble or ficlet? You choose! I look forward to seeing what you create! And please, don't hesitate to stop by my inbox with any requeats of your own!
Hi! I saw your comments on my fics and I really appreciate them! I'm glad you took the time to request a fic from me <3. I hope this one is to your liking, and I'm sorry it took so long! Under the cut!
Zabuza suspected that this was what it felt like to smoke pure ice. White, gray, and blue filled his vision as the rogue nin glanced around, the freezing cold winter field stretching out for miles every direction. He didn't know how he'd gotten there.
One moment he'd been battling it out with Kiri ANBU, the next he was standing under the moonlight, watching the glittering icicles and light snow fall with rapt attention. It was clear that he was no where near where he'd began. The cold was harsh, unforgiving. Zabuza felt as though his lungs were beginning to freeze, breathing becoming labored. This place was so frighteningly cold that Zabuza was sure that if he stayed out much longer, his blood would freeze and never thaw. He wasn't dressed for cold weather at all, having forgone his shirt due to the tropical climate of wave country.
His breath puffed out in front of him. One thing Zabuza was greatful for was that the moon was able to sufficiently light this snow field, the snow glittering under the silver light. The moon also seemed abnormally large, wherever he was. He figured he was on a mountain top, but deep down he knew that something wasn't natural around here.
Just as Zabuza made to move forward, walking just for the sake of keeping his blood flowing, a voice called out behind him.
"Dressed like that, you're begging for a wolf to pass on by." A man drawled lazily. Zabuza whirled around, or he tried to. The cold had affected him more than he'd thought, and his movement was slow.
The man who had spoken was wearing a traditional blue and gray hakama, two swords nestled into his waistband almost flippantly, and a black wolf mask obscuring his face all lined with long, straight white hair. Zabuza knew he could never wear Kubikiribocho- or any sword, for that matter- in such a relaxed manner, it was just strange. Not even to mention that this man was dressed awfully lightly for the weather and seemed completely unbothered. On a closer look, Zabuza could see that the man's hakama was slightly open, and what looked like a black turtleneck did nothing to hide the muscle that the man carried. The only actual skin Zabuza could see was that of the hand resting on the man's two swords, a sliver of a pale palm and long fingers.
For some reason, Zabuza couldn't bring himself to be threatened by the swords. The cold must have been getting to him.
"What makes you say that? Can't you see I'm enjoying freezing mys ass off?" Zabuza finally replied. He was well aware of how exposed he was, the cold air wrapping around his naked chest and arms, the slight breeze sending shivers up the nin's spine. The man chuckled, and shook his head.
"You misunderstand me. I am, too, very pleased to see you taking full advantage of the cold weather." The man said. Zabuza pondered those words for a moment, and then his face grew hot. He muttered something under his breath and began walking again, the man trailing after him. Zabuza watched as the man came into step beside him. Whereas Zabuza's shoes sunk into the snow, ice slipping into his sandals, the man lightly stepped on top of the snow, light as a feather. That step stood in juxtaposition to the man's lazy walk, a meander of a man who had nowhere to be.
"So why are you following me?" Zabuza asked. The man turned his head, the unseeing eyes of the wolf mask seeming to rake over Zabuza's body. The rogue nin tried to ignore it.
"Well, you're technically trespassing on my territory." He said. Zabuza made an 'ah' noise, suddenly feeling ashamed. He shook the feeling off.
"Hmph, well the sooner I can get out of your hair the better for the both of us then. I didn't exactly come here willingly." Zabuza retorted. The man ignored his confrontational tone and nodded thoughtfully.
"Yes, I did see you appear out of nowhere, so it's no problem. The real problem is that it's nothing but snowfields for miles, so long it would take you a month's trip to be rid of them. I don't think you'll last a month, and it would be such a shame...." The man trailed off toward the last sentence, and Zabuza found himself wondering just what the man meant by that.
"So what? I don't have much of a choice." He said. Assuming he could find some wolves or deer to skin for a good coat and firewood, then he would be fine... maybe. The man laughed lightly.
"Well, of course you do. If you give me a hug, I'll take care of it."
Zabuza stopped just to stare at the man. A part of him wanted to tell this white haired man that he should go fuck himself. The larger part of him was cold.
"At least tell me your name." He said. The man responded without hesitation.
"Kakashi."
Zabuza only nodded. It fit him, somehow. He rolled his eyes and awkwardly put his arms around the man's shoulders. The man moved quickly, surprisingly strong arms wrapping around Zabuza's torso. He was pulled flush to the man's chest, forced into the kind of hug he'd give his mother or an old friend. Kakashi chuckled, and Zabuza could feel the vibrations of that sound through the man's chest. Warm, almost scalding hot fingers traced a line down his back, another wrapping firmly around Zabuza's waist. He gasped, a high pitch noise despite himself, and he felt the cold wood of the wolf mask press to his cheek as Kakashi leaned impossibly closer.
"Are you ready?" He whispered. Zabuza could only choke out an affirmative, those accursed fingers sapping away all rational thought from the man's mind.
The world turned upside down and Zabuza fell asleep.
When he awoke, it was still night time, however much darker. Zabuza was beginning to suspect that this strange place had no day time at all, shrouded in eternal frost and endless night. That thought was quickly washed away, though.
Zabuza was warm. He was warm and he was being held close to someone's body, someone's very naked body against his own very naked body. All of his bones had melted into putty, Kakashi's skin on his own making him hypersensitive. It felt like he could feel every contour of the other man's body, could feel the blood thrumming under his skin, the heartbeat pounding strongly away. He couldn't even bring himself to jerk away, the man had him in such a grip without even trying. One arm over his chest, the other being used as Zabuza's pillow. He'd been captured like a reluctantly cuddly cat.
"What..." He tried, but his throat and mouth were dry from a long period without use. He didn't know how long he'd been sleeping but evidently it had been a while.
"Shh, just rest. Skin to skin is the best for being warm. Promise I won't do anything inappropriate~" Kakashi purred in his ear. Zabuza felt his body grow hot for entirely different reasons. This was going to be a long night.
23 notes · View notes
deermouth · 3 years
Quote
1. Is it winter again, is it cold again, didn't Frank just slip on the ice, didn't he heal, weren't the spring seeds planted didn't the night end, didn't the melting ice flood the narrow gutters wasn't my body rescued, wasn't it safe didn't the scar form, invisible above the injury terror and cold, didn't they just end, wasn't the back garden harrowed and planted— I remember how the earth felt, red and dense, in stiff rows, weren't the seeds planted, didn't vines climb the south wall I can't hear your voice for the wind's cries, whistling over the bare ground I no longer care what sound it makes when was I silenced, when did it first seem pointless to describe that sound what it sounds like can't change what it is— didn't the night end, wasn't the earth safe when it was planted didn't we plant the seeds, weren't we necessary to the earth, the vines, were they harvested? 2. Summer after summer has ended, balm after violence: it does me no good to be good to me now; violence has changed me. Daybreak. The low hills shine ochre and fire, even the fields shine. I know what I see; sun that could be the August sun, returning everything that was taken away— You hear this voice? This is my mind’s voice; you can’t touch my body now. It has changed once, it has hardened, don’t ask it to respond again. A day like a day in summer. Exceptionally still. The long shadows of the maples nearly mauve on the gravel paths. And in the evening, warmth. Night like a night in summer. It does me no good; violence has changed me. My body has grown cold like the stripped fields; now there is only my mind, cautious and wary, with the sense it is being tested. Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer; bounty, balm after violence. Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields have been harvested and turned. Tell me this is the future, I won’t believe you. Tell me I’m living, I won’t believe you. 3. Snow had fallen. I remember music from an open window. Come to me, said the world. This is not to say it spoke in exact sentences but that I perceived beauty in this manner. Sunrise. A film of moisture on each living thing. Pools of cold light formed in the gutters. I stood at the doorway, ridiculous as it now seems. What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature. Very simple. But there was no voice there. Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing. Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher— death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life. 4. The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared. The songs have changed; the unspeakable has entered them. This is the light of autumn, not the light that says I am reborn. Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered. This is the present, an allegory of waste. So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate: the ideal burns in you like a fever. Or not like a fever, like a second heart. The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful. They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind. They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish. And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly in anticipation of silence. The ear gets used to them. The eye gets used to disappearances. You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared. A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something. 5. It is true there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use. I am at work, though I am silent. The bland misery of the world bounds us on either side, an alley lined with trees; we are companions here, not speaking, each with his own thoughts; behind the trees, iron gates of the private houses, the shuttered rooms somehow deserted, abandoned, as though it were the artist’s duty to create hope, but out of what? what? the word itself false, a device to refute perception— At the intersection, ornamental lights of the season. I was young here. Riding the subway with my small book as though to defend myself against the same world: you are not alone, the poem said, in the dark tunnel. 6. The brightness of the day becomes the brightness of the night; the fire becomes the mirror. My friend the earth is bitter; I think sunlight has failed her. Bitter or weary, it is hard to say. Between herself and the sun, something has ended. She wants, now, to be left alone; I think we must give up turning to her for affirmation. Above the fields, above the roofs of the village houses, the brilliance that made all life possible becomes the cold stars. Lie still and watch: they give nothing but ask nothing. From within the earth’s bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?
October
Louise Glück
21 notes · View notes
prettylightsbigcity · 3 years
Text
Day 24 - Side Characters
Dec 18, 2021 Today's ficlet is all about everyone's favorite deeply problematic, slightly deranged aunt: Fiona Pitch. Rated T for excessive language/smoking & drinking, ~1500 words, read below or on ao3.
FIONA
I sigh, taking a drag of my cigarette and tipping back my teacup to swallow the last of the whiskey at the bottom. It’s dusk, and the streetlights have just blinked on along the avenue below me. I’m sitting on the thin strip of roof that runs along under my bedroom window; the protruding crown of my downstairs neighbours’ bay window. I sit out here almost every night, smoking and thinking about shit, usually with a finger or two of whiskey to keep me company. I frown down at my empty tea cup. I have plenty of rocks glasses, but they’re all dirty at the moment, and I couldn’t locate a single shot glass in the chaos of my flat. Disgraceful. I flick the butt of my fag down onto the street below. My window scrapes open behind me. I don’t turn around. 
“Fi, c’mon,” Nico’s voice says from inside, “are you going to sit out there all night?” 
“If I want to,” I reply stubbornly.
I can nearly hear his eye roll. A moment later, the window shuts, and I’m alone with my thoughts again. Nico is a potent distraction, but there are some things I can’t run from, no matter how much weed I smoke or how often I fuck my reformed-vampire boyfriend. 
Boyfriend.
What a fucking stupid word. I’m too old and cynical to have a boyfriend. That’s what Basil has, with bloody Snow; it’s a perfect word for being twenty and head-over-heels stupid in love. Even I can’t deny how happy he is these days. I sigh again, letting my mind wander down the familiar path of just how much I got wrong. I shuffle back and lean against the wall, feeling the cold brick grab at the back of my ratty jumper. I tilt my head back, looking up at the overcast sliver of sky jammed between the buildings. It’s rare that I can see the moon here in the city, and never the stars.
It all comes back to you, Natasha, I tell the smoggy sky silently, I’ve been so lost ever since you left us. We all have: me, Malcolm, Basilton especially… I’ve let him down so badly. I don’t know if you’d ever forgive me, if you could see how badly I cocked it all up. We knew— back then and every year since— we knew what he was, and not one of us ever tried to help him, or even explain what was going to happen. The year he turned thirteen… Christ, Tasha, I thought we were going to lose him. I thought he was going to go out the same way you did, to avoid living as the monster he knew he was becoming. But he’s not, he’s not a monster. That’s where you were wrong, dear sister. You never knew, because you never got to see him fight it, tooth and nail. He’s never hurt a person like that; I think he’d rather die. And he got there all on his own… we made him do it all alone. Malcolm and I have been such fools. Daphne tried to tell us; she’ll never compare to you, Tasha, but she loves that boy like her own, and even I have to respect that. But Malcolm wouldn’t listen, just stuck his head in the sand like always. I should have listened— no, I shouldn’t have needed anyone to tell me, I should have just been there for Basil. He fought that battle all alone, and he won against darker demons than any child should have to face. 
I cross my arms, hunching over myself and taking little breaths. I’m not going to fucking cry.
I tried to be better when he came out; Merlin knows Malcolm royally fucked that one. Who gives a shit who the kid loves? Hasn’t he been through enough? Of course, none of us would have guessed he’d choose the fucking Mage’s Heir. Christ. That’s Basil though, always has to make the most dramatic choice possible… Don’t tell anyone, Tasha, but the Snow kid is kind of growing on me. He looks at Basil like he’d jump in front of a bullet for him, and I like that. He deserves someone who’d die for him, and Snow would, without question. Basil loves him; it’s written on his face clear as day whenever they’re together. He’s finally just… happy, I think. I didn’t realize how much he’d been suffering all these years until it stopped. The happiness and love sits on his skin; I’ve never seen him like this, not since he was a tiny child, not since… not since he was with you. It’s been such a long road for him, and we haven’t been the family he needed, none of us (well, except perhaps Mordelia; that kid loves the shit out of him). 
I’ll never forget the day I found him in the numpty den— when I opened that godforsaken coffin, for a moment, I thought he was dead. I thought he was fucking dead, and it was like the day you left us all over again. When he moved, I was so relieved I almost pissed myself, so of course I was a complete aresehole to him about the whole thing. I wonder if he can tell, that I make it all a joke so he won’t see how fucking wrecked I was— I still can’t think of it, it turns my stomach. He was so thin, and the filth they were keeping him in… he’s stronger than I’ll ever be, to survive that, on top of all the other shit he’s been dealt. 
Fuck it, I’m crying now. May as well let it happen. I let the tears fall, fumbling in my pockets for my smokes. I light another, inhaling deeply and holding it in my lungs. I sigh out through my nose.
Without Basil, I’d never have given Nico another chance. I know you wouldn’t understand that one, Tasha, you never liked him even before he did what he did. But he’s not evil, he’s just a fucking idiot. He’s trying now, doing better. Not hurting people. You’d say it’s too little too late, that he can never be saved, that his sins can never be forgiven. Maybe you’re right, but I’m not any better. We just work together, me and him, even now, after all these years. The joke of it all is that the Coven’s made me the head of their vampire task force, so hunting them’s my literal job. It makes sense though, to me anyway, because they’re not all like Basil and Nico— well, not a one of them’s like Baz. He’s a class of his own, better than any of that scum. But this way, I can punish the ones who deserve it, the ones who are unrepentant and vile, who murder without remorse, like the ones who took you from me. I can also keep Baz safe (alright, alright, and Nico too, Christ). I’ll be the first to know if anyone ever suspects, if there’s ever any danger for him. I’m trying to do right by him now, to give him what precious little I can. I know it’s not enough.
Maybe you’d spit on my choices, sister. Maybe you’d condemn me and my shitty little life to hell where I belong. But the best thing I ever did was give Basilton a chance. You’d be so proud of him, Tasha, I know that for a fucking fact.
The window squeals in protest, snapping me out of my melancholy internal monologue. I quickly scrub the heels of my hands across my cheeks, sniffling and clearing my throat. Nico’s long leg swings out over the ledge, and he emerges from inside, looking comically gangly as he folds himself through my little window frame. He huffs, pulling his jacket tighter around himself as he picks his way over to me gingerly. He’s nicked one of my jumpers as well, and a ratty scarf that Mordelia made me three Christmases ago when she was going through a crocheting phase. It’s very knobbly and pink; I love it, but it looks bloody ridiculous on Nico.
“Nice scarf, Nicks,” I snort.
“Fuck off,” he says fondly, folding himself like origami to sit beside me on the narrow strip of roof. 
He slides his arm around me, and I lean against him despite myself. 
“This alright?” he asks softly.
I grunt in reply. 
“I know this is your alone time,” he continues, “but I’m here if you need me, Fi, always. You know that, yeah?”
I nod, clenching my teeth fiercely as my eyes threaten to well up again. I turn my face into his shoulder. He smells like bourbon. 
“Idiot,” I whisper.
“Crazy bitch,” he whispers back, kissing the top of my head.
18 notes · View notes