#lookitme queue

[goldendivinewrath]

[From here, since I am playing with formatting and cursing, and cursing, and cursing--]

@misplacedreporter

Can someone be so tired they get honest? Is that possible? Having the thought and distantly wondering if he's going to have to swallow back a laugh probably proves the tired bit, anyway. Not being used to traveling with company for such a long period of time, he's usually only honest with himself when he's alone. Often out on a sand dune, gazing up at the stars, spent and exhausted and talking to himself.

He didn't mean for the words to be heard, but it's old habit and too late to take them back. It's also too late to play them off, divert, knowing Meryl's too sharp and determined to allow it. He can just get up and literally run away, he supposes--

Vash feels the exhausted smile on his lips, crouched down as if he could just curl into a little ball and hide in his coat if he tries hard enough. He might, later. Especially because he knows he offers too much with so very little, but he's... tired enough to be honest, just for now. "I wouldn't want anyone to understand."

[calamitysshatteredson]

"Not... intentionally? But I know the nurks raided my apartment after we left and I'd left the cd there, so..." He pauses, then asks "uhm. Why?"

There's another long, thoughtful pause before Sephiroth decides to just come out and say it. "I've heard that song before, what you were playing. No one was ever identified as the artist... Angeal or Zack would know the rumors more than I would, but it was quite a popular mystery for a while."

Sighing at the situation now that he knows more about it, he ventures, "Not much to be done about that, I take it?"

[goldendivinewrath]

@full-of-mercy

Watching the man watching him. Vash always hated being stared at, being perceived, but with Wolfwood it's... fascinating. The easy ability to stare back. The layers. Like a series of doors that creak open and then snap shut, over and over. Open, exposed, offered up one moment, locked up tight the next. Sometimes artificial, sometimes accidental, sometimes it almost... almost... seems like an invitation.

"Yeah, maybe we need better air flow in here. I have a delicate constitution, you know." He says and then sniffs, sounding almost convincingly aristocratic for the whole of a single second. It's interrupted by a cough, smoke ring waved away in offense. Shame he hadn't taken the opportunity to tease about singed fingers, in hindsight.

A request... He knows he should laugh it off, change the subject and likely make a show out of being tired. Going to bed nice and early like a good, mild-mannered little outlaw. It's dangerous to give in to every urge that Wolfwood inspires, even if it seems perfectly harmless at the time. He's old enough to have learned better by now, right?

Well. Yes. But knowing better and acting on the knowledge are two different things. Especially when he's partially peering down at the man from above, and Wolfwood looks game for nearly anything. Again, inviting. He probably knows something about temptation if Vash might only have it in himself to ask; but he's not going to let himself think about other requests, because he can and he has and he will again.

"Oh, nothing special. Any old song would do. Singing, humming, anything really..." Despite an actual, honest attempt not to sound exactly as needy about the matter as he probably (definitely) does, it feels like something that he can't just leave to chance or play off with feigned disinterest. Once you find a good thing it just makes sense that you'd want more of it, right? Donuts, for example.

A very nice voice. Getting lulled into purring... but being aware if it and the chair underneath him this time. Very, very important.

Wolfwood just... observes, head canted and eyes narrowed, something waggish on the tip of his tongue. His lips have parted in incredulity, the tips of his teeth stark overall. It isn't quite a grin. It could become one. Closer to a smirk, maybe.

Watching Vash try to stand like he isn't sure of the length of his own legs is something else.

Nicholas considers himself to be a perceptive individual. He has had to be; it is requisite for survival out in the wastes, not to mention with his profession. He is by no means a flawless study, of course, because he is human—at least close enough to human.

But it does not take much to ascertain that something is off. More over, he realizes that he missed something in his preoccupation, and that plucks at a thread of vague irritation.

"You been huffin' it or something, Needles?"

The lubricant. The— the gun oil. The mineral spirits. For his firearm. Fuck. Shit. Damn it. And nice, how dare the spikey-headed idiot catch him off guard like that, leave him scrabbling for something. Anything.

Grease-smudged fingers perch the cigarette between his lips. It's a gamble to ignite the vice, but it is a gamble he finds worthwhile, even as he singes his fingertips. Grunt-hiss flick-flick, lighter pocketed, he squints.

Inhales.

And then exhales one cheeky smoke ring. It drifts lazily toward Vash's reclaimed perch.

Deliberate.

Because just as deliberately, it darkens his timbre, lending it a touch of husk as he shifts closer—from crouch to one knee on the floor, the other lifted as a proper (improper) perch for his elbow.

All the better to dig himself deeper.

Why the hell not.

"Mmm... just 'bout done," he veritably purrs, propping his chin on his fist. "Why, you have a request?"

[goldendivinewrath]

"I'm— I'm so sorry. There wasn't time. There— I didn't get a chance to say it. I'm sorry. I don't ever expect you to forgive me but I'm going to try, I swear."

There are too many emotions warring in him, a lightning strike of light and pain and energy. He wants to smile, makes the effort to, but he isn't sure he is. Or can. It's a mix, a play back and forth, trying to look reassuring through the still too raw wound that feels like it will never close up, never heal, a scar he'll never get because it won't stop bleeding--

And all at once, Vash takes a breath and tries again. Sure, maybe his watery smile looks like it's going to break down any second, and he certainly feels that way, but needs to try. He has to try, because... "No, I-- Please. You really... you really don't have anything to apologize for."

He's important. He was so important to Wolfwood, and-- It isn't that Vash feels the need to make himself guardian of all the things Wolfwood held dear, but there's a willing obligation. There's a need to protect, to honor a devastating choice, that hasn't faded. He's family, after all. Well, they're all family, in a sense, but Livio is... family-family. One of very few in his long life, even if maybe a little distant by circumstance.

"You, um. You did him proud." He can't say his name again yet, can't imagine he could keep his voice steady enough. "And you gave... more than I could ever know, helping me. S-so. Please don't apologize. Let's just... sit down and eat together every once in a while. Okay?"

[goldendivinewrath]

"I get how human reproduction works. Mostly." The casual sincerity to Vash's words and tone made it absolutely impossible to know how serious he was actually being. "What I don't understand is, where do they keep the eggs while they're being incubated?"

[calamitysshatteredson]

The pen is shoved even more firmly into his face. Maybe it's a hint?

"I'm not--" His half-annoyed protest is interrupted when his own analytical mind kicks into play. He's certain he has to be wrong, really, because it's just too easy, but at the same time...

"Penny?" Sephiroth tries quietly, eyes focused on the empty space behind the pen as if he might see someone there. "Is that your name?" He's only ever so slightly concerned about having the pen thrown at him if he's wrong...

[goldendivinewrath]

@millionsnife

He listens. It feels like bleeding. Not the wound part of it, just the... heaviness. Leaving a trail of himself behind in a way that feels inherently wrong. Absorbing words like glass shards in near silence as he slowly curls his prosthetic arm against his chest, as if there's a real wound to bleed from. He doesn't have a defense for Rem. And he doesn't have one for himself, either. He just... remembers. Turning the memories over, the ones they shared. The first ones he had apart from his brother... and all of the unpleasant ones they had together afterward.

"We were. We were children, too." He agrees with more transparent ache in his voice than he really cares for, but it's too late now. So much feels that way. Still, there's a raw vehemence in his words as he insists, "But that's exactly why-- We shouldn't have let any more suffer." He knows he might well be alone in trying to insist that Plants and humans could ever be on equal ground, could ever be thought of as equals, but they can all hurt. Every one of them.

No human has ever hurt me more than you have. It's not a thought he wants. It's certainly not something that he wants to project, and he absolutely will not allow his mouth to form the words. He pointedly pushes the idea of it far beneath all of his other thoughts, swallowing hard and not so much as glancing over until he's satisfied that it's buried. Deep. Far below.

Only then does Vash chance looking over again, eyes pleading. "I don't-- I didn't see it as picking the humans over you. I thought... you were wrong to kill them." The Great Fall was one thing, impersonal in ways, but to have seen his brother use his blades to cut so many humans down and expect him to do the same... "And if-- Given enough time, they won't need to use our sisters anymore. Luida has her flora project, and I've heard about people trying to store energy from the suns, so--" He bites his lip, cutting himself off. Holding his artificial arm even harder against his chest.

The humans still need Plants now, is the thing. There's a future where they won't, but that seems so far away sometimes. Lifetimes. And he's already seen so many of those come and go... and many of their sisters sacrificed.

"I don't want anyone to hurt, Nai." That name again, making Vash wince a little with the slip. "I don't want you to hurt, either. And I didn't... I didn't realize..." Do words even matter anymore? Apologies? "I don't want all the suffering that's happened to have been in vain, but I don't want any more suffering to happen."

Naive. Idealistic. Accusations that he can't really disagree with himself anymore, but there's another ache surfacing. Not a completely new realization, but one that he hasn't been looking at. Always kept at the edges, never focused on, but now... "I know so much that was done before we were even alive was wrong. And I know... you were trying to protect me. You thought you were. I think I'm just realizing now that I should have been protecting you, too." Instead of running. Or maybe he should have turned back and taken his brother's hand...

It's always devastating when he knows he's failed. When he feels it. This time, it just... starts to feel a little numb.

He remembers it too, though perhaps differently than Vash does. Laughing, desperately clinging to pride over what he'd done because otherwise he'd have screamed himself raw. Betrayal and sheer terror at the realization humanity survived, and Rem wasn't there anymore.

Couldn't protect them anymore from the humans she'd saved, because she was dead. They were alone and vulnerable and he hadn't even managed to kill the threat.

"I didn't hate them." No, that's wrong. He had. Still does. But that hadn't been–it'd been secondary, far further down the list of reasons for what he's done than Vash seems to think it had been. "They tore her apart. And Rem was one person, would have to go back into cold sleep herself one day. Would have to rotate out with another crew member eventually. How would she have protected us from them then, asleep and unaware?" His eyes follow a worm in the distance, flittering back and forth across the sky. Zazie, likely keeping watch over him. Probably wondering when he would be coming back home to entertain them some more.

I was afraid.

He doesn't need to say it; it makes itself at home between them, curled around everything left unspoken between them. Makes itself obvious in the way his shoulders curl inward of their own accord.

"She abandoned us." Quieter, nearly dragged out of him against his will. "You abandoned me." And so he'd made what had been, to Knives, the only rational choice he'd had left. To protect himself, and Vash, the only way he knew how to do. And once he'd started, he hadn't known how to stop.

He doesn't tell Vash that he remembers them; every child that went through Conrad's lab. Whether they'd left it or not, somewhere he kept a list in the back of his own mind. Why, he'd never quite been sure. Some of them had survived, the partial successes, but many had not. Most. Failures, according to the good doctor. He hadn't approved, not really. Barely tolerated the medical experimentation and only because it had, supposedly, been necessary.

Doesn't think about needles in his own arm, DNA extracted over and over in the name of science and perfection. (He'd been just another Tesla in the end, hadn't he? Alive and intact, not scattered through jars under the floor but he'd still managed to replace her. Funny.)

"None of us ever had a fucking choice, Vash. We were children too."

[goldendivinewrath]

❛ it'd be great to find a place we could escape sometimes. ❜

Hozier lyrics prompts | accepting but slowww

Vash looked over, regarding Wolfwood with mild surprise, remaining quiet for a handful of seconds. In one of those very rare cases when there was a bench outside a charge station, situated where it was all too temporarily located in the shade of the building, and neither had complained about sharing the space. Or maybe they both felt too hot and tired to waste the effort, not taking the moment's rest for granted.

"Yeah? Where would you go if you could go anywhere?" Okay, silly philosophical question, but he was curious all of a sudden. It distracted him away from taking the comment itself as anything deeper than a minor complaint, and distracted them both away from the inevitability they'd be told they'd have to buy something or leave much too soon. "And I mean anywhere. Doesn't have to be practical."

[goldendivinewrath]

“ i thought you knew. ”

Angst and Post-Angst Starters | accepting but still slowww

"I'm not omnipotent, I can't know everything." He argued. Or maybe reasoned. Or maybe he shouldn't have taken on the challenge of all those shots lined up in a row, but it was fun!

"Okay, so Earth had oranges naturally produced from trees, right." He made sure she was following. "And Earth had orange juice. So the juice had to come from oranges. And. We can get plants -- not tree-plants, but the, like... plant-plants -- to produce oranges. And probably orange juice? Is anyone doing that? They must be. It's like water but better. I think. But, can you make synthesized orange juice from synthesized oranges? Will that work? It has to, right? But synthesized oranges must be more expensive than the juice because they're more complex!"

Oh, no, he was sobering up already, time for another shot. Had to stay in the philosophy zone.

"And can you put the juice back in an orange? Does that sound like a crime? Or just kinda... wrong?"

[goldendivinewrath]

“  i’m not leaving you.  ”

More Prompts for Your Feels | accepting but the slowest

"No, you--" He was vaguely aware that he needed to try and keep his voice calm, not to make matters worse by showing his own panic...

A little too late for an impossible task anyway. "Listen. Listen to me, please. You have to go. You have to get out of here, get as far away as you can and hide. Get behind-- I don't know, something solid. I can't--"

Vash couldn't feel that particular feature with complete accuracy, but he was sure at that point that his eyes had to be glowing a good bit brighter than they usually were. More than he could play off as a trick of the suns or simply hide behind glasses. It wouldn't stop there, and that was all he knew for sure.

"I can't promise anything. Except that you need to go. If you want to live, you have to leave. Now."

[goldendivinewrath]

@angelictyphoon

"Seismic activity could be involved." He answers almost petulantly, but he does understand what this other self means. He supposes there are simply times when he embraces being a bit of a brat.

The idea that he might be the lucky one makes his blood feel like it freezes, a cold dread washing over him. It wouldn't be-- It's bad to ask for details, isn't it? It could do harm or something; but then books are just books. Ideas. Theories without enough evidence to make them laws. Maybe it doesn't matter, but the cold dread sticks. Hangs on. Sometimes he feels every year he's lived and can't imagine how many more might well be in front of him. Or... them. Collective. Coalesced. Somehow.

He looks. He tries, seeing a form that is him and not and something altogether different, but his eyes won't focus entirely. His emotions won't settle, either; horror and comfort, curiosity and revulsion. The words aren't comforting. They keep pulling at his thoughts, digging claws in.

"Are we changing things right now?" Should he be afraid of that? He isn't sure, but he is certain that everyone else should be afraid of him.

Should he be afraid of himself...?

"No, we-- We don't know for sure one way or the other, do we." If he tries, tries, if he forces his way through, he could grasp the threads that bind him, them, together. Tug, weave it into something else maybe. Weave it into a trap, a net--

Catch and keep. Stay. Make others stay. Could he? Is that possible?

"Can I save everyone? Can I ever save everyone?" He feels like a child again. A child having a terrible dream that hasn't yet turned into a nightmare.

“No one stares at the walls of a desert ravines and thinks, ‘It will change tomorrow.’”

That wall took millions of years to get there, but it did get there. 

“Who knows how many years it’ll take us. If we make it that far.” Vash tilts his head, considering. “Just because we won’t be there to see it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Maybe you’ll be the lucky one.” 

Death-seeking is not atypical, but always it is a craving with purpose. Always, or so he thought. He lived with his own thoughts and with his own experiences well enough. But not in every place, in every time, and therein lies an ugliness he has come to fear. 

The extent branches are not limitless. At their very ends, they bear horrid fruit. He wraps his arms tightly around himself, self-comforting, and shudders. “There are terrible odds and ends out there.” 

He relaxes his grip, confused to find the body he hugs is suddenly not his own. It makes sense, it doesn’t. He accepts what is.

“...Well, we could be worse off,” Vash muses. “The ones that decided you meant something. Who did you lose? Who did you save?”

[goldendivinewrath]

“  what did they do to you?  ”

More Prompts for Your Feels | accepting but the slowest

There were different ways to tell the truth, Vash had learned. Through demonstration, through trial and error, through stories told that he'd only caught pieces of. There were so many experiences that he'd listened to, directly and indirectly. Stopped to try and understand the reasons, the intentions, the motivations. Sometimes people would explain, sometimes they didn't know, sometimes...

They lashed out with their own hurt and fear. They could hurt by accident, or on purpose, because it was all they knew or felt that they had to, or just. To hurt. But there was a reason. There was always a reason. Usually more than one, many interconnected. Complex, complicated. He knew that his body had become a map where the hurts were easier to see than the soothing, the understandings, the kindnesses offered. People who'd helped, who'd been grateful. Offered and given instead of taking.

He knew what his brother must be focused on to have asked the question. He knew what was easiest to see. Just as he knew too many answers he wanted to give would sound like an excuse, dismissive, ever defending.

"They helped me understand what it means to be human." It was the most honest answer, he thought. The simplest.

[goldendivinewrath]

" for once in your life, what is it that you want."

More Prompts for Your Feels | accepting but the slowest

Vash frowns slightly. Tempted as he is to paste on a smile, to let the question roll off his back and laugh it off, push it as far away from him as he can get it so he can't possibly dwell on the answer...

It's that look. The rasp in his voice, his tone, the way Wolfwood looks squared up and ready to physically fight him if he dances away from the question. It might be worth it, really. The fight might feel good, might be just the thing they both need.

Except that he doesn't really feel up to it, winning or losing. Blood or bruises or just the burn of his muscles all sound... exhausting. It is exhausting. "You ever read old books from Earth?" He knows it sounds like a distraction, putting his hands up for a moment to still any possible frustration-fueled attacks.

"Not, like, 'the classics', the ones people say are the important ones. I mean just... regular old ripped-up novels. Covers lost, binding cracked, pages falling out. The kind that are still really cheap because no one wants to read them and no one's used them for kindling yet!" He pauses to laugh, to give himself time to gather up the words. "The ones about... boring people doing boring things. People just lived. They lived and they worked and they didn't have to fight. They didn't have to run. They just... fell in love and settled down and lived. And it was enough. It felt like enough, and nothing else was expected from them."

He doesn't answer the question, not really. Not directly. But there's a catch in his throat that won't let him talk beyond that for a little bit. Long enough, he hopes, to end the conversation outright.

[goldendivinewrath]

“  for once in your life, what is it that you want.  ”

More Prompts for Your Feels | accepting but the slowest

The temptation to tack on a practiced smile and gently wiggle his way out of answering the question entirely is overwhelming. It's something he's tried not to think about for so long, failing at every turn, trying not to focus on desire but what's become a sense of duty--

Vash heaves the kind of quiet sigh that leaves him looking and feeling deflated. He can deflect questions when it's a group of them, or indirectly asked, but Meryl is every bit the "up and coming reporter" and he knows, he knows trying to squirm his way out from under the weight of the question will get her to double down. She'd stop if he asked, but he just can't bring himself to do that, either.

But he can't answer directly, not really, because-- "I wish I could just... go back. When it was just Nai and Rem and me. I want to do it over again, figure out what I missed. What I did wrong. Silly, I guess." Fake smile. Fake laugh. He knows, but it's so ingrained. "I want to make things right. For everyone. Humans and plants and even worms. I want to make sure certain things can never happen again."

It's too much and too raw and too real, but it's also too achingly far away and feeling slightly impossible. It's not, though. He can't let himself believe it's impossible. He has to keep trying. Clapping his hands, he shoves the subject aside with as much strength as he can manage. "Ah, but what I want right now? A donut would be great!"

[goldendivinewrath]

@surevive

Unfamiliar familiarity. Something he knew, could recognize, but had never encountered before; a note in a melody that he knew by instinct alone.

That wasn't reassuring, somehow. What, who, Vash's softly glowing eyes focused on only encouraged his lips to curl back from too-long, too-sharp teeth, something that felt like static energy building in him--but controlled. Controlled. Like the thrashing beneath his coat, slowly calming. Still a form there, something that pulled at the fabric a bit above and behind his shoulder, but it was being soothed.

He tried to ease his breathing, tried to ease everything back into the easy rhythm he'd learned to keep himself moving with, close enough to "normal" and "human" to move amongst them with ease. The sense of a threat remained, however, voice calmed further, but the warning rumble and his fangs weren't completely withdrawn. "Are we?"

It was undeniable, though. Letting himself look. Something had happened to the prosthetic, it seemed, and space where an earring might have rested was torn. The sight of the vine, how it moved, made something uncomfortable coil in his own gut. Something yelled threat in the pit of his instincts, danger, but there were too many questions underneath it. Curiosities. The need to know.

Another breath, and a swallow. A softly clattering tremble beneath his coat before it went still again. It was alright. Alright. "I don't suppose you'd want to sit down and talk? Like, uh... distant family does..?" He ventured, friendly. Openly, honestly, it was just also... cautious.

This particular one was different from the others. Oh yes, Vash could see the barely-restrained ferality behind those eyes. And that voice? It rumbled within his own chest as much as it did the other's. The sight was . . . beautiful to him. Perhaps, maybe, he wasn't the only one who had been turned by the truth.

The thought made his pale eyes shine.

Stay back?

"Alright," his voice echoed in reply, the static-like inflection drawing out the word. "I'll stay back. But you don't need to hide yourself from me." Beneath the bruise-colored skin of his left arm something undulated, like a muscle with a mind of its own. The deep violet vine grew out from the arm and coiled around Vash like a protective python.

"We're quite similar, you and I."

[calamitysshatteredson]

((Still around and alive and checking in and playing FFXV and maybe allowing myself to get really distracted by chocobos.  Definitely looking forward to caps yelling with some of you about "happenings" after I finally stop my denial questing and finish the game.  Wishing you all a lovely weekend and a good week in general, regardless.

I should feel so much worse about being able to make the main/baseline FFXVverse!Seph work with a few tweaks.  ...Actually that's kind of terrifying.))