#let's see how many words i'll manage to write before bedtime

[airenyah]

update on my thesis: i STILL haven't written a single word for it, i'm STILL missing 4k words

buttttttt!!!!!!

i've gone through my literature and analyzed almost all my examples and done almost all the research i still needed and taken notes sooooooo

that means all that's left to do is to turn my notes into actual proper sentences

[yuri-is-online]

And Your Name Is? (Jade, Leona, Riddle)

Synopsis- After successfully resolving whatever was causing NRC to be trapped in an endless time loop of overblotting and disaster, one last reset should give him a chance to experience a normal school year with you. But instead you find yourself trapped in the here and there, appearing as a vague shadow around the school that vanishes as soon as he catches up to you. The kind thing to do would be to allow you to be forgotten in the chance it lets you return to your world.

But this is Twisted Wonderland where the kind thing is seldom done, and he wants you back as much as you want to find him again.

a/n: Look, I don't know who decided to make MICKY MOUSE a sadman deadwife in Disney's attempt at animal crossing but it gave me ideas. This is shamelessly based off that questline, feel free to request other characters. Everyone deserves a chance at angst. This probably won't be the last time I'll write something with this sort of premise meh

notes: angst with the intent of comfort, Jade is a red flag. Otherwise mild.

Jade Leech

It’s a wonder you ever lived here.  Ramshackle is cold, Jade can’t bring himself to say lifeless for fear of speaking a crueler fate into existence, but the word’s on the tip of his tongue nonetheless.   It’s a pity this is where you call “home,” but he can work with this.  He can sweep up the cobwebs, dust every broken surface before popping the timbers back into place, figure out how to repair the upholstery so long as he sees the shimmery light that forms your shape begin to fill in.  He knows if he reaches for you that you will disappear, so he lets you observe as he keeps you in the corner of his eye.  Jade is careful, methodical, even as his hands shake as he launders your sheets and fluffs pillows on a bed he really wants to burn for its audacity to be so uncomfortable.  He vaguely recalls requesting you make one room of this place into a giant terrarium once, a silly request he’s sure he’d make again if he could just speak to you, for no other reason than to hear you laugh.  But, he supposes as he slips himself into your bed reaching out towards the in between as if he can pull you from the here and there with the sheer force of his longing; he is already sort of doing that.  Just like the Sea Witch keeping creatures in glass bottles he’s trying to replicate the perfect environment for you.  

“Jade?”  

“I’m here.”  he murmurs, not daring to open his eyes just yet, instead reaching for where he thinks your face should be.  “Do you hear me?  It’s past your bedtime, prefect.”

“Jade.”

“It’s awfully lonely here.”  He hates the way he sounds.  It’s too raw, too clear with his intent to be the tease he wants it to be.  “Won’t you come to bed?”

“Jade!”  His eyes open, his hand lands on you, the real you, not a shade made up of his memory, he manages to crush the urge to cry and pulls you up into his embrace. Your eyes are unfocused, confused but moving towards his touch as if you were searching for it.  “W-who.. I have to find…”  You move, on instinct towards his heartbeat, as he slowly strokes your arms to soothe your shaking.  “Jade… I’m looking for-”

“You found me.”  Jade is gentle, careful as he searches over you for any sign of distress or injury, sighing in relief when he only finds confusion. It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember specifics.  It doesn’t matter to him if you’ve forgotten your own name, Jade’s known and loved you for three timelines now, he’ll remind you of who you are if that’s what you want.  In the meantime, he slowly encloses you in the safety of his embrace and tries not to smile too wide as you naturally relax into him.  He will build you a beautiful garden in this world, and nothing will ever harm you this badly ever again, he swears it.

Leona Kingscholar

How many times has he been forced to watch you die?  He’s not sure, his memory clearly doesn’t want to cooperate with him out of fear he’ll consider the failures a waste of energy, consider you wasted energy.  Give in to the self-sabotaging part of him that never wanted to love you in the first place and abandon you to your fate, and yet no matter how many times he held your limp form in his arms he never had.  There was something mildly addicting in the realization that you chose him in every lifetime.  Not that stupid lizard or stuck up diva, him the second born, grumpy, lazy lion.

“Leona?”  Your shade has always been able to speak, and Leona’s always been able to hear it.  It’s like you’re trying to retrace your steps through time, starting with your meeting in the botanical gardens up to your stay in his room.  He tries to tell himself you’re like a flea burrowing its way into his skin, irritating in your presence, unwelcome.  He tries to tell himself if you didn’t mean enough to this world to keep a corporeal form that you shouldn’t mean anything to him.  If Twisted Wonderland rejected you then so should he.

“Leona.”  He hates how alone you sound.  He hates how he can see you around the gardens but can’t hear footsteps, see you sitting on the edge of the balcony but not smell you.  He really wants to hate you.

“I have to… promised… Leona…”  

“I’m here you know.”  he mutters, half asleep under the heavy curtain of vines in the botanical gardens.  “You wanna keep your promise?  Then quit runnin away.”  Silence.  Always silence, even in his dreams no matter how hard he tries to will you back into existence.  He wants to stare you down, he really does, but how is he supposed to be anything but shocked when it's really you in front of him, listless and confused.

“Leona?”  You’re confused, that much is clear.  He wonders, smugly as he rises without complaint for once, if his name is the only thing you remember.  The flicker of fear in your eyes is something he can do without, but if you know his name then somewhere inside that empty head of yours should be the same memories that have been plaguing him.

“I hope you’re prepared.”  his tail swishes in excitement, and though you remain confused he delights in how you remain unafraid.  “For just what you signed up for by callin my name.”

Riddle Rosehearts 

Your shadow likes to sit in the Heartslabyul rose garden.  Riddle is thankful for that, his gaze is hard to avoid here.  He can keep an eye on you this way while he tries to find a solution for… whatever this is.  It’s sickening, really, how useless he is without a rulebook or a study guide to follow.  His memories of the past time loops might be blurry but he wonders if you ever felt frustrated with him in any of them.  Someone as beautiful and wonderful as you constantly choosing someone as boring as him, he wants to be proud.  He wants to point out that he is clearly in the right, in some sort of way, he has to be if he was loved in any way by you.  It hurts him all the more to be so useless to you, to find so little concrete about the here and there and be told by every adult he reaches out to that the only thing they know is that no one who goes there ever comes back.

His dormmates like to keep a degree of distance from you.  Riddle knows that they don’t know it’s you, he’s tried to explain to them multiple times and seen as they fight hard against whatever magic is trying to erase you from Twisted Wonderland to remember clearly who you were.  It’s especially hard to watch Ace and Deuce loop through their worry over you and their anger at having forgotten only to get lost in the fog once again.  He had to stop himself from trying, causing your best friends pain wouldn’t bring you back to them, to him.  Riddle’s stubborn, he can take the confused looks of his house when he insists they let him have a private tea party with the strange ghost that’s taken up residence in their maze.

“I’m uncertain if our professors remember what happened, but I can say with certainty some of the material has changed.  It’s a relief that the quality of our education hasn’t regressed.”  He pours you a cup of tea, working off of muscle memory he can’t recall the context for anymore to make it in a way you must have liked.  “I’ve been taking detailed notes on what my freshmen have been learning, when you return-” his voice cracks in panic as your shadow’s outline flickers “when you return…” he tries, softer this time focusing on gently setting down the tea pot “I’ll make sure you aren’t left behind.  Ace and Deuce will keep their memories this time and we’ll all get to hang out together again, you’ll always have- you always have had a place in Heartslabyul, so please, please come back.”  Riddle likes to think of himself as an adult, but he pouts and cries so easily.  He can feel the tears bubbling up and obscuring his vision.  Hiding the view of your shadow’s shape filling in.

“Riddle?”  He hiccups, undignified, unbelieving the sight he’s seeing.  You look so small, so confused but still so concerned for him, pausing to reach for a napkin to wipe his tears despite how unfocused you otherwise seem to be.  You reach for him, shaky but still determined. “Are you Riddle?” you whisper.  “I’ve been searching for him, I promised not to let go of his hand.”  Riddle reaches for your hand with both of his, leaning into you.  “I’m worried he’s lonely.”

“I was.”  He isn’t crying anymore, Riddle likes to think he never will again as he presses a kiss into your palm.  “You can rest now prefect, you’ve made it home.”