#man's unending search for freedom

[notbecauseofvictories]

just came off my shift as an election judge and I honestly think we should make people do this. I support abolishing the draft, and I even think that jury duty can get complicated, but everyone in the country should be forced to learn about election procedure, then have to sit around for 14 hours and practice being customer service for democracy. I think that would fix us.

[pinchofhoney]

be careful what you wish for

coriolanus snow x fem!reader

word count: 1.7k

warning: platonic relationship, quite angst-ish, text in italics is a flashback

summary: Turning in a district boy to the authorities felt like the right thing to do for Coriolanus. But what if, in doing so, he betrayed you as well?

a/n: absolutely no one asked for it, but i'll deliver it to you anyway<33 i'd say have fun but i'm not sure i'd be appropriate here

pages that may interest you: masterlist ♡ taglist ♡ who i write for

taglist: @watercolorskyy

gif is not mine, credit to the owner

The moment Sejanus shared Billy Taup's escape plan with you, there wasn't much hesitation on your part. It's not that you acted without thinking; it's just that you didn't need much time to decide.

The summer was scorching, feeling like an unending oven. The sun never let up, and even when you hoped for cooler nights, the heat lingered. You've gotten used to the coal dust that's practically become your second skin in District 12, but what truly got to you wasn't the clinging dirt. It was the musty scent of men's sweat, a scent that clung to the air, heavy with the hard work that defined your daily life.

Being one of the few female Peacekeepers among a crowd of men wasn't your ideal situation. Many other girls had come and gone, unable to stand the sacrifices the job demanded, but you stood your ground, determined to prove yourself in this role, even if serving in this particular district wasn't your dream come true.

At least until a certain point.

When you first arrived in District 12, your main goal was to pass your officer's exam as quickly as possible and secure a transfer elsewhere. But when young Plinth kindled the idea of a life beyond authority and rules, the seed of belief in freedom took root within you. The very thought of it resonated in your mind, sounding truly incredible, and you couldn't wait to leave the filthy district behind, escaping through a gap in the wire mesh fence.

But, of course, life wouldn't be too easy if everything just went as planned, right?

One moment, you were getting ready with Sejanus and the other rebels, gathering the basics for your escape north to the supposedly destroyed District 13. The next, you found yourself standing behind one of the empty houses on the Seam with Coriolanus. He held onto your shoulders, telling you urgently that you had to leave the District as soon as possible.

“What?” was the first word that slipped from your lips, your brows furrowed in confusion as you looked at your friend. ��Isn't that exactly what we're working on?” you added, slightly amused, pushing Coriolanus' hands off your shoulders.

Shaking your head, you were about to update him on your progress when he caught your forearm again. “I think you misunderstood me, Y/N,” he said, his face dead serious. “You need to get out of here now,” he continued, and seeing your raised eyebrow, he almost gritted the last word through his teeth.

“What do you mean, Coryo?” you asked, breaking the silence after staring at him for a while, tired of him speaking in riddles.

Now Coriolanus was the one staying silent, his cool eyes fixed on you. You couldn't decipher his expressions; it felt like he was betraying a hundred feelings at once and, at the same time, nothing at all.

“I… um, there's…” the blond man started, stumbling over his words, unsure how to share the information he needed to tell you. “There's a chance that the talk Sejanus and I had, which you joined not long ago, about your escape plan, might have been fully recorded by one of the jabberjays.”

You seemed not to grasp the gravity of Coriolanus' words, so you stared at him, searching for any hint in his eyes that he might be joking.

“Okay, so what?” you eventually asked, once again furrowing your brows, this time with a bit less intensity.When a twig snapped around the building's corner, you quickly turned, thinking it might be someone eavesdropping, but finding only a small hedgehog, you shifted your attention back to the boy in the bluish uniform.

“So what?” Coriolanus repeated your question, unable to believe your difficulty in connecting the dots. “Y/N, these birds are headed to the Capitol. To the lab of the woman who’s the Head Gamemaker of the Hunger Games. And do you know what the Capitol authorities do to rebels?” he asked the question, not waiting for your response. “They hang them on the hanging tree, Y/N.”

You stared at Coriolanus, steadying yourself with a hand against the wooden building. With every word he spoke, you felt the color drain from your face.

“How… How did this happen?” you asked, trying to keep your emotions in check.

Coriolanus happily took care of the mockingjays, moving their cages, tagging them, and passing them along. As Bug left with the fiftieth cage, Sejanus burst into the room, full of excitement. He shared the good news about the upcoming package from his mother with his friends, watching Bug leave with a smile before turning to Coriolanus, who had just finished dealing with the bird marked as number 1.

The bird chirped in its cage, mimicking the last mockingbird, but once Bug was gone, Sejanus' cheerful expression faded, replaced by a troubled look. He glanced around the hangar to ensure they were alone before speaking in a quiet voice.

“Listen, we've only got a few minutes. I know you might not like what I'm about to do, but I need you to at least understand it. After what you said the other day, about us being like brothers, well, I feel I owe you an explanation. Please, just hear me out.”

This was the moment, the confession.

Now was the time for the pieces to be explained, especially about the alliance with rebels and money that he found in Sejanus' belongings. Once Coriolanus heard it, he'd be as good as one of them, a traitor to the Capitol.

Panic, running, or trying to silence Sejanus could be expected, but Coriolanus did none of these things. Instead, his hands moved instinctively. His left hand adjusted the cover of the jabberjay cage, while his right, hidden from Sejanus's view by his body, reached for a remote on the counter. Coriolanus pressed RECORD, and the jabberjay fell silent.

Turning his back to the cage, Coriolanus leaned on the table with his hands, waiting.

In the middle of Sejanus' explanation, you dashed into the hangar like a hurricane itself.

“There you are!” you exclaimed, both happy and a bit annoyed to find young Plinth. “Why didn't you wait for me? I said I wanted to go to Coryo with you,” you added, crossing your arms on your chest as you closed the gap between the boys and yourself.

It seemed that Coriolanus, noticing you in the hangar, tensed up a bit. He glanced briefly at the cage with the bird recording the conversation on the table, but neither of you or Sejanus noticed, and together, you continued explaining your plan to him.

During your report, where you and Sejanus competed over who could give Coriolanus more details, he lowered his head and rubbed his brow with his fingertips. It looked like he was trying to gather his thoughts, unsure how long he could stay silent without seeming suspicious.

But Sejanus rushed on, “I couldn't leave without telling you. You've been like a brother to me. I'll never forget what you did for me in the arena. I'll find a way to let Ma know what happened to me. And my father, too. I'll let him know the Plinth name lives on, even if it's in obscurity.”

The mention of the Plinth name was enough.

Coriolanus's left hand found the remote, and he pressed the NEUTRAL button with his thumb. The jabberjay resumed its earlier song.

Something caught Coriolanus's attention. “Here comes Bug.”

“Here comes Bug,” the bird echoed in his voice.

“Hush, you silly thing,” he scolded the bird, secretly pleased it had returned to its normal pattern. Nothing to alert both of you. He quickly covered the cage with a cloth and marked it with J1.

“I swear, I have no idea,” Coriolanus lied, wearing a worried expression. “While rearranging the cages, one of them must have snagged the remote control.”

You lightly bit your lower lip, eyeing your friend. Without any reason to doubt him, you finally let out a shaky breath.

Gazing up at the sky, you counted to three in your mind to steady your nerves. Then, you looked back at Coriolanus.

���Does Sejanus know?”

“Of course, I told him first,” he lied again, his gaze fixed beyond your shoulders without losing the concerned look on his face.

“God, what are we going to do now?” nerves took over every cell in your body as you asked another question. You leaned against the wooden building, slowly lowering yourself until you were sitting on the ground.

You lifted your head to meet Coriolanus's eyes, and he crouched in front of you, placing his hand on one of your knees.

“Hey, don't stress. You're heading back to the base now. Pack what you need, and tonight, you'll slip out of the district just like you planned with the rebels. You'll meet Sejanus at the lake, alright?” he spoke with a calmness, almost like talking to a kid, trying to reassure you.

Even though Coriolanus despised rebels — those who went against the Capitol's rules — he didn't want you to suffer the consequences that would surely befall Sejanus. He had nothing against you; in fact, he genuinely liked you. Your innocence about a better life beyond the Capitol's control wasn't his concern because you hadn't caused him any trouble, unlike young Plinth who had stirred up problems more than once.

“But won't it be suspicious if I suddenly vanish? They'll be searching for me, Coryo. They'll find me and punish me,” you said, placing your hand on his.

“I told you not to worry, remember?” Coriolanus replied, a bit sharper but still maintaining his reassuring tone. “I'll figure something out. No one's going to harm you.”

“But Coryo, you-” you began, but he quickly cut you off.

“Enough, Y/N,” Coriolanus said firmly, standing up from his crouch. “Get up. We're heading back to base,” he reached out a hand to you, which you took after a moment's hesitation. He helped you stand, silently conveying to act naturally before stepping out from behind the building.

You had no choice but to go along with Coriolanus' questionable plan, clinging to the hope that he knew what he was doing.

Little did you grasp the reality—that he was the cunning architect behind the recorded conversation. Sejanus wouldn't show up at the lake beyond District 12's boundaries. Instead, his fate would take a dark turn as he dangled lifeless from a tree in a matter of days.

[j1nxers]

the clip of gert dying came up and my heart is BROKEN.

the way she so frantically searches for something to hold while she's actively dying, probably choking on her own blood, bleeding internally. chest heaving with a mix of her trying to breathe, to no avail, and because she's scared. terrified!!

gert has always held up a tough front, ever since she was a kid. she IS tough - so it's not entirely a front. but that's mainly physically. time in the stillwater, and the pits, meant she could both throw a punch and take a punch without so much as flinching. her seemingly unending confidence, stoic demeanour and dry humour give the illusion that she's strong in every aspect. that she has no fears, no worries. just a crushing desire to be free from piltover. being so willing to fight for her freedom - everyones freedom - with no hesitation??

having spent so long hiding all her stress and fears of being inadequate when she came to be the sole provider of her little brothers means she's gotten used to pushing everything down. shoving aside all personal feelings, even her own needs and wellbeing, to make sure they survive. it's only when there's a real chance to make good on everything her parents wanted that she is truly dragged from the pits of her despair.

but she doesn't tell anybody about her brothers, ever. despite them haunting her. not unless they're close enough to witness a recurring night terror that entails her finding their smouldering bodies on an endless loop. and parents?? it's not hard to figure that out, but she never talks about it outside of telling people they're the reason she's rebelling. even to herself she refuses to admit weakness. to show it in any capacity until it's gotten to a point where its spilling in periods of avoidance and isolation. she feels that she owes it to her dead family to be strong: that she has no right to be weak when she's still standing and they aren't.

she's always put herself in dangerous situations - going as far as standing up to enforcers before her age had even hit double digits. the most prominent memory being stopping them fucking around with the sweet, elderly man who owned the store that sold her favourite sweets. she got a nasty beating for the interruption but helping others means so much more to her than anything else. she's incapable of remaining silent in the fact of injustice. so it's nothing new for her to be putting her life on the line for, what she believes to be, something greater. something more important than herself.

yet through everything she has clung to her strength and her resolve as though it was a lifeline. convinced herself that it will keep her alive. but now she's dying. actually dying, rather than just brushing death. and the strength she's so desperately clawed at to keep her sane over the years is gone in its entirety. completely drained. it's something she knew would happen eventually, but had never prepared herself for. she knew it could happen at any time, given the life she lives, but it's never really sunk in because?? her strength has brought her out of everything alive - if not a little worse for wear.

but she's in agony. legs kicking out, entire body convulsing, blood filling her lungs, spluttering up her throat and out her mouth. it isn't how she wants to go. she hasn't done everything she wanted to do, be what she really wanted to me: couldn't say goodbye to the community that had grown to be a family to her. couldn't do her parents proud, witnessing the undercity's independence. she's dying and she's alone and it's happening so quickly she can't process anything other than how fucking terrified she is that she's willing to seek out anybody in an attempt to stop it.

[nicklloydnow]

“It’s not hard to imagine how badly Vitale’s question must have wounded Shklovsky in his dotage. This was, after all, the same Shklovsky who had waged an artistic revolution—one that paralleled but did not always coincide with the Bolsheviks’—with no less at stake than the liberation of human consciousness; the same Shklovsky who had seen at least two brothers and most of his friends (an illustrious literary crew including Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelstam and Yevgeny Zamyatin) disappeared, executed, or driven to suicide or exile by the Soviet establishment; the same Shklovsky who had twice been injured in battle fighting for a revolution that had already begun to hunt and humiliate him; who endured cold and hunger and exile and squirmed through years of silence under the censor’s heavy thumb; the same Shklovsky who spent most of his intellectual life championing the emancipatory power of the novel and fighting to blast it—and all of literature and even, yikes, reality—out of subservience to a host of dumb and arbitrary masters.

The establishment, him! Shklovsky had from the start fought for a notion of art directly opposed to socialist realist pieties, one that hinged on the need to push beyond established models, to make things strange so that we might see the world afresh in its cruelty and splendor. He had been at odds not just with the bureaucratic state that congealed in the wake of the revolution, but with stasis itself, with the crust that the world of things deposits on our senses, with routine’s unending murder of the real. Innovation must occur in art, Shklovsky had written as recently as 1970, “because humanity fights for the expansion of its right to life, for the right to search and attain new kinds of happiness.” But age had mellowed the insurrectionist. Shklovsky called Vitale a few hours later to apologize: “My God, I made you cry, forgive this crabby old man.”

(…)

What emerges from these works is a group portrait of Shklovsky’s Formalism—even the name dries the mouth—that bears little resemblance to any school of literary criticism that has arisen in the West in the last century or, well, ever. It was born not in the academy but out of the literary avant-garde and alongside the Russian Revolution. Ironically, given the Formalists’ insistence on literature’s divorce from worldly events, it arose without even a hair’s distance from the tumult that rocked Europe for most of the early twentieth century. When the revolution erupted in February 1917—“it was like Easter,” Shklovsky would recall, “a joyous, naïve, disorderly carnival paradise”—he was already an insurrectionist, though of a different sort from Lenin or Trotsky. Years later, when Vitale asked him what the revolution had meant to him, Shklovsky would answer, “the dictatorship of art. The freedom of art.”

At the beginning of the 1910s, Shklovsky had befriended the young Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovsky and, while still a student, had become the Futurists’ theoretical champion. The world was sick and palsied—who can now deny it?—so thoroughly smothered in vestigial tradition and used-up forms that it couldn’t even be properly perceived. “Do something undreamed-of,” demanded Khlebnikov, “strictly new, you horses pulling the hearse of the world!” Out of the radical poetics of the Futurists, Shklovsky and a few comrades founded Opoyaz (an acronym for “Society for the Study of Poetic Language”), the nucleus of the critical movement that would later be called Russian Formalism, in the kitchen of an abandoned St. Petersburg apartment.

(…)

These and other sundry obstacles, all of them oriented toward rupturing the smooth flow of narrative, are tools in the service of what Shklovsky called ostranenie, which is variously translated as “estrangement,” “defamiliarization” or simply “making strange.” In Theory of Prose, Shklovsky would distinguish between “recognition” and “seeing.” Ordinary perception falls into the former category: we don’t see objects so much as recognize them according to pre-existing patterns of thought. The world arrives “prepackaged” and passes us by without a graze. “And so, held accountable for nothing, life fades into nothingness. Automatization eats away at things, at clothes, at furniture, at our wives, and at our fear of war.”

The point for Shklovsky was to find a way to shake ourselves out of this collective stupor so that we might see the world in all its startling brightness and, presumably, act on what we see. (An unacknowledged politics hides behind Shklovsky’s poetics, a quasi-anarchist insistence on permanent revolt, but that is an argument for another essay.) For this, “man has been given the tool of art,” which—and this is where ostranenie comes in—employs various tactics to defamiliarize the world, to allow us to see it as if for the first time. If it is anything, art is oppositional and insurrectionary, and literature an authorial conspiracy to overthrow anachronistic modes of thought. “Art,” Shklovsky wrote in A Sentimental Journey, “is fundamentally ironic and destructive. It revitalizes the world.”

This position leads him to some surprising places: first, to a notion of literary change based on rupture rather than influence and inheritance. Art changes not out of fashion or habit, but because it must. New forms are created when the old ones become as sclerotic as the ones they replaced. (No wonder Shklovsky made the Bolsheviks edgy.) Second, the practice of literary criticism involves a quest for ostranenie that parallels the artist’s. (In 1972, the Marxist literary theorist Frederic Jameson would somewhat snidely call Shklovsky’s critical works, of which he had not read many, “little more than an endless set of variations” on the idea of ostranenie.) If the critic is to see the object of his study sufficiently to analyze its workings, he must “extricate” it “from the cluster of associations in which it is bound.” So while language may be subject to all the usual social and economic forces, literature, if it is to be seen at all, must be looked at on its lonesome.

From there, Shklovsky leaps a few wide boulevards and, post-extrication, tosses out all the scraps from which the work emerged: “No more of the real world impinges upon a work of art than the reality of India impinges upon the game of chess,” he wrote in Theory of Prose with characteristic modernist élan. This means that any erstwhile “content” we might imagine clinging to the work (whatever a book is ostensibly “about”) is no more than a function of “form,” of whatever combination of stylistic devices the author has brought to bear. Plot is mere structural play.

If this sounds counterintuitive, it was—and remains—an intensely fruitful insight. Shklovsky’s audacity gave him the freedom to take apart Cervantes and Sterne, Gogol and Tolstoy, with a brilliance that still dazzles ninety years later. And it allowed works of literature to become visible, not as natural objects like fingernails or trees, but as complex creatures of artifice, as purposeful forms of play. This notion did not go down smoothly. As the ’20s dragged on and Soviet aesthetic attitudes became more rigid, art had only two options: it could be an organic growth of proletarian consciousness, or counterrevolutionary poison. Shklovsky’s Formalism made him, in the words of an unnamed KGB interrogator quoted by Vitale, “an enemy of the real world and [of] socialist realism in literature.”

(…)

But literature, the young Shklovsky insists, is its own planet, bound by the rules that it creates. “Art,” he wrote in Zoo, “if it can be compared to a window at all, is only a sketched window.” Its point is not to accurately reflect this same old cruddy, shrink-wrapped world, but to steal us new sets of eyes, to forge new and unimagined senses. This is art’s one virtue, its promise and delight. And the novel, call it dead or alive, is not a thing among things of a certain weight and size, obliged to obey established formulae. It is a weird box of almost bottomless openness, a compact revolution in a cloth and cardboard binding. Or, if you prefer, in pixels.

(…)

But Shklovsky lived long enough (outliving many of his persecutors) to do some rethinking. By the time Vitale knocked at his door in 1978, he had published Bowstring, in which he displayed an earnest effort to sort through the contradictions of his youth. “Back then I used to say that art had no content, that it was devoid of emotion,” he marvels, “while at the same time I wrote books that bled.” Through analyses of Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Rabelais, Updike (yes, him) and, as always, Sterne, Cervantes and Tolstoy, he lays out a heretical, softer and less formal Formalism. Ostranenie, Shklovsky writes, “can be established only by including the notion of ‘the world’ in its meaning. This term simultaneously assumes the existence of a so-called content.” He holds tight, though, to the importance of contradiction, anachronism, disharmony, which provide the needed tension from which art derives its powers. “If one can say that imagination is better than reality, art is even better,” he explained to Vitale, “because it’s the dream of every structure’s collapse and at the same time the dream of the construction of new structures.”

(…)

None of it adds up. But that’s OK, that’s the whole point, that’s what we’re doing here, even if it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Shklovsky reassures us:

Unity, reader, is in the person who is looking at his changing country and building new forms of art so they can convey life… Browse through our works, look for a point of view, and if you can find it, then there is your unity.

I was unable to find it.”

“September I5, 1988

Dear Ken,

Do you know anybody who can translate Russian to English? (I am thinking of your faculty friend who sent you - and me - the info on Viktor Schklovsky.) What I need to know is how he would translate the two famous opposed literary devices of Schklovsky. The words: obnazhenie and ostranenie. I suspect they mean defamiliarization and overfamiliarization, but don't know. How about a hand? Ain't no Russians here. I greatly prize "Pragmaticism is an Existentialism?"

All best,

Walker [s]

P.S.: The reason these Russian words are important to me is that they fit in well with my notion of the evolution/devolution of symbols, so that a thing/event can come to be cancelled by a symbol/word, hardened through over-familiarity into what Gabriel Marcel called a “simulacrum” - same event/thing can be recovered in times of disaster or great poetry - simulacrum broken, being revealed as being, etc. Thanks, WP”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings--not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand--without rancor or hatred--how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it. That law is the product of months of the most careful debate and discussion. It was proposed more than one year ago by our late and beloved President John F. Kennedy. It received the bipartisan support of more than two-thirds of the Members of both the House and the Senate. An overwhelming majority of Republicans as well as Democrats voted for it. It has received the thoughtful support of tens of thousands of civic and religious leaders in all parts of this Nation. And it is supported by the great majority of the American people. The purpose of the law is simple. It does not restrict the freedom of any American, so long as he respects the rights of others. It does not give special treatment to any citizen. It does say the only limit to a man's hope for happiness, and for the future of his children, shall be his own ability. It does say that there are those who are equal before God shall now also be equal in the polling booths, in the classrooms, in the factories, and in hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, and other places that provide service to the public.

—Lyndon B Johnson, remarks on signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed on this day 59 years ago

[Robert Scott Horton]

[mariacallous]

its both the late great Barbara Jordan and the late great John Lewis' birthdays today

Two great Americans, and two people I've admired for a while.

“What is it about the Democratic Party that makes it the instrument the people use when they search for ways to shape their future? Well I believe the answer to that question lies in our concept of governing. Our concept of governing is derived from our view of people. It is a concept deeply rooted in a set of beliefs firmly etched in the national conscience of all of us.

Now what are these beliefs? First, we believe in equality for all and privileges for none. This is a belief -- This is a belief that each American, regardless of background, has equal standing in the public forum -- all of us. Because -- Because we believe this idea so firmly, we are an inclusive rather than an exclusive party. Let everybody come.

I think it no accident that most of those immigrating to America in the 19th century identified with the Democratic Party. We are a heterogeneous party made up of Americans of diverse backgrounds. We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power; that the authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.

This -- This can be accomplished only by providing each citizen with every opportunity to participate in the management of the government. They must have that, we believe. We believe that the government which represents the authority of all the people, not just one interest group, but all the people, has an obligation to actively -- underscore actively -- seek to remove those obstacles which would block individual achievement -- obstacles emanating from race, sex, economic condition. The government must remove them, seek to remove them.

We -- We are a party -- We are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future. We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed. We believe that.

This, my friends is the bedrock of our concept of governing. This is a part of the reason why Americans have turned to the Democratic Party. These are the foundations upon which a national community can be built.”

We were beaten, tear-gassed. Some of us was left bloody right here on this bridge. Seventeen of us were hospitalized that day.

But we never became bitter or hostile. We kept believing that the truth we stood for would have the final say.

This city, on the banks of the Alabama River, gave birth to a movement that changed this nation forever. Our country will never, ever be the same because of what happened on this bridge.

Eight days after Bloody Sunday, the President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, delivered one of the most meaningful speeches ever made by any President on the question of voting rights.2

He said, "The time of justice has [now] come. I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back."

He went on to say, "It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come."

He said, "At times, history and fate History and fate meet at a single time and a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom."

He went on to say, "So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was [a century ago] at Appomattox. So it was [last week] in Selma, Alabama."

Each of us must go back to our homes after this celebration and  build on the legacy of the March in 1965. The Selma Movement is saying today that we all can doing something. So I say to you, don't give up on the things that have great meaning to you. Don't get lost in a sea of despair. Stand up for what you believe. Because in the final analysis, we are one people, one family, the human family. We all live in the same House, the American House, the world House.

We're black. We're white. We are Hispanic, Asian-American, Native-American. But we're one people.

[wingspiked]

ㅤㅤㅤ𝐢𝐧   𝐭𝐡𝐞   𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞   𝐨𝐟   𝐭𝐡𝐞   𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥   𝐨𝐟   sinner's   -   there   is   always   jubilance,   for   how   could   a   great   evil   being   defeated   not   invoke   joy?   but   all   his   life   -   he   had   been   raised   for   this   -   a   concrete   belief   system   that   had   been   built   upon   order   -   and   order   alone.   harmony   -   while   a   beautiful,   splendid   thing   -   was   never   merely   enough   for   the   likes   of   humanity   -   for   the   flocks   of   sheep   that   led   themselves   into   the   maws   of   proverbial   wolves   or   off   the   end   of   cliffs.   sunday   had   believed,   in   his   heart   of   hearts,   that   his   recourse   was   right   -   that   all   the   choices   he   had   made   were   for   a   perfect,   unending   dream.   only   in   that   final   defeat   did   halovian   learn   that   perhaps   -   perhaps   the   universe   was   meant   to   be   disorderly   in   it's   own   way.

ㅤㅤㅤwhat   they   did   not   realize   -   what   the   people   did   not   know,   was   sunday   had   propped   the   dreamscape   up   on   his   back   for   far   too   long.   the   power   of   order   had   kept   them   safe.   death   had   been   that   impossibility   that   was   now   entirely   probable   -   and   without   order,   there   would   be   freedom,   but   without   order   -   there   would   be   strife.   and   yet   with   it   too   -   there   had   been.   he   had   caused   it,   in   enacting   his   master   plan   upon   that   grand   stellaron   stage.   sunday   knew   the   methods   were   incorrect,   he   knew   the   teachings   to   be   fundamentally   flawed   -   but   he   also   knew   nothing   else,   he   also   had   nothing   else.   

ㅤㅤㅤat   the   end   of   his   pitiful   song,   he'd   disappeared   before   robin   could   ever   think   to   awake   -   intent   on   not   sullying   her   presence   with   his   own.   the   reverie   had   been   perpetually   under   construction,   and   (   former   )   oak   family   head   knew   well   of   the   nooks   and   crannies   where   he   would   not   be   found,   so   stealing   supplies   like   a   common   thief   (   quick   fingers,   a   talent   born   from   childhood   ),   the   halovian   had   holed   himself   up   in   a   storage   room   deep   in   the   reverie's   bowels...   where   none   would   think   to   find   him.   

ㅤㅤㅤor   so   he'd   thought.

ㅤㅤㅤhe   woke   with   a   start   -   body   having   evidently   succumbed   to   a   brief   bout   of   unconsciousness   on   the   dusty   cot   in   the   furthest   corner.   he   doesn't   know   why   he   wakes   -   only   that   something   calls   to   him.   for   a   moment   -   he   thinks   it   might   be   robin,   reaching   out   through   their   attunement,   but   sunday   had   thought   he'd   blocked   the   connection   -   whether   by   his   own   volition   or   xipe's...   he   does   not   yet   know.   but   it's   a   feeling.   it's   something   else.   something   other.   this   strange,   burning   sensation   at   the   core   of   him,   a   magnetic   pull   that   has   him   almost   breathless-

ㅤㅤㅤthe   door   swings   open   with   a   squeak,   and   sunday   gasps.   

ㅤㅤㅤboth   sets   of   wings   flare   wide   -   brilliant   ebony   alongside   the   silky   dove   grey,   and   normally   calm   halovian   looks   stricken.   ❝   aventurine?   ❞   confusion   pulls   at   him,   but   so   does   that   connection   -   so   strong   that   he   feels   to   be   a   puppet   beneath   THEIR   hand   again,   weak   form   pulled   upright,   briefly   stumbling   towards   the   avgin   until   poise   returns   to   him   and   he...   goes   rigid,   wings   folded   in   tight   and   illuminated   gold   searching   the   lines   of   the   other   man's   lovely   face.   sunday   should   be   terrified   -   should   have   tried   to   obliterate   him   on   the   spot,   or   sunk   into   the   shell   of   himself   that   barely   existed   anymore.   wouldn't   it   be   more   than   likely   that   he   was   here   to   bring   him   into   the   ipc's   clutches?   would   he   be   a   prisoner   now?   no   worse   than   this,   he   supposed...   but   instead,   instead   of   trepidation...   

ㅤㅤㅤsunday   felt   like   that   he   had   been   drowning,   and   aventurine   was   beautiful   life-giving   air   in   the   pressurized   squeeze   of   his   lungs.   

ㅤㅤㅤ❝   how   did   you   -   ❞   he   breathes   deep,   and   he   stares,   gaze   unflinching   as   the   muddled   warmth   of   his   brain   begins   to   catch   up   the   moment   their   gazes   truly   meet   (   his   eyes,   his   eyes,   his   eyes).   ❝   you   -   ❞   left   hand   trembles,   possessed   by   an   unseen   force,   and   sunday   grips   his   wrist   to   stop   something   from   occurring.   a   deep   breath,   as   the   halovian   fights   -   fights   to   maintain   the   shattered   bits   of   his   dignity,   despite   everything   crying   out   to   him   to   allow   aventurine   to   see   and   tend   the   wounds   of   his   self-flagellation.   he   resists   though,   and   simply   swallows,   letting   loose   a   shaky   exhale,   ❝   how   did   you   find   me?   ❞

@wingspiked

It was over.

Time had become a blur over the last day or two, and it felt as though it had been far more than that since the gambler first arrived on Penacony. But it was over, and after enduring and surviving what could have easily been his final curtain call, he'd made it out the other side. How typical—not that he could complain this time, in hindsight. It was surreal, yet incredibly refreshing to feel even the faintest bit happy that he'd survived.

And now, after all his hard work, he can rest. Perhaps an actual vacation in the Land of Dreams is in order. He could enjoy it while it lasts; let Topaz and Jade take the reins for the last leg of this mission and prop his feet up somewhere in the dreamscape instead until they all return to Pier Point. He hasn't allowed himself to simply relax in a long while, and that sweet dream holds an allure that he can't deny.

After everything, he's back in his room within the Reverie, gloved fingers trailing across the surface of the iridescent liquid within his dreampool. His thoughts wander, still thinking over the events of last couple days and all those involved. He owes much to the Nameless for that recording, and they and all the others who lent him a hand are safe this time around—a rarity that almost makes him laugh out loud.

But then his thoughts shift to contemplate a certain Halovian's fate, and his hand stills, an odd sensation suddenly prickling at the back of his neck. Sunday, he thinks, and the feeling grows stronger, almost like some force has a lead attached there and means to pull him along. For a moment, he wonders if it might be some remnant of that 'consecration,' but no—the Emanator had already done him a great service in removing it for him. She wouldn't have left any trace of it behind.

Immediately following the initial resolution of conflict, he'd heard talk the Order and its connection to and influence over Penacony, but only in snatches of overheard whispers and conversations; nothing concrete yet. His gut tells him now that THEIR influence could explain what he's currently feeling, but with no clue how or why, he hesitates.

Yet he can't turn his thoughts away from Sunday, and the prickling sensation continues, growing stronger; becoming more of a tug. Sunday, that winged bastard whom had, on more than one occasion, expressed interest in him—oh, it wasn't fair. The interest was mutual; it still is, in spite of everything.

Aventurine's feet begin to move before he realizes it, and he follows that tug, the sensation quickly spreading to envelope every part of his body. He leaves his room, walking past other rooms and down corridor after corridor, the number of guests and employees nearby thinning out to become less and less. At one point, he pauses to observe his surroundings before quickly stepping over a rope barricade meant to keep guests out.

Through another hallway and around another corner, he spots an elevator—clearly older than those the guests have access to, and surprisingly rickety in its appearance. It stands in stark contrast to the opulence of the majority of the Reverie, and it's impossible to know where it might lead him. He's not even entirely sure it will function enough to take him anywhere, but ever the gambler, he steps into it anyway, pushing the button for the lowest possible floor on impulse.

The elevator whirs to life, mechanisms creaking and groaning from disuse and neglect. For a moment, he wonders if it might break, but it soon comes to a stop once more, opening to a dark hallway. His phone retrieved from his pocket, he steps out of the elevator and turns on its flashlight to see a few doors at the end of the hall, as well as an opening to another corridor about halfway down. He chooses the corridor one more time, and at the end of it is a single door.

The feeling that has lead him this whole way suddenly swells, so pronounced that he doesn't think twice at all before opening the door and slipping inside. The interior of the room is dimly lit; just enough that he turns off the flashlight and pockets his phone. At a glance, it appears to be a large, old storage room that's fallen into disuse, with a few boxes of supplies off to one side and a few decommissioned spheroids on the other. Within one, he spots a bit of movement, and his heart skips a beat. Instinctually, he knows who it is.

"Mr. Sunday," he calls out, his voice soft but still echoing a little in the quiet of the room. "...It's you, right? What are you doing down here?"

[virtual-insanity28]

Ethereal

Chapter I

Scaramouche Balladeer x Reader

Warning - not proofread, quick-read

yo, people of the internet! i’m doing this as a quick first chapter just to see if i like writing actual stories(of fan fiction) on here! nothing too special unless you guys want more~!

Eternity. A fragile wish that none achieve so easily. No god nor mortal has graced their fingertips across the infinite wonder. It is the keeper of desire, the bringer of demise, and the corruption of life. It is unending, grueling, yet pleasing. Eternity is the loop of mankind, the everlasting want for sameness. It makes room for hope in lost souls, only to demolish their kiddish dreams of honing its power. Obtainable, some call it. Others say it is something meant to be alone. In the end of it all, though, Eternity is ethereal.

The wind was lukewarm. It blew in a single direction every few moments. Pushing through the rocks and valleys of Liyue, it passed by a particularly lonesome girl sitting on the top of a tall boulder. The large mineral stuck deep in the white sand, and listened along with the girl to the subtle crashes of the sea’s waves. It was as peaceful as a life in Liyue could get. Nature was the best sight to see in any part of Teyvat, yet it was especially beautiful in the middle regions.

With her hair having to be swiped behind her ear so she could see, the girl sighed solemnly to herself. A book rested in her lap; closed and waited to be opened so she could start where she left off. The edge of its pages glimmered with gold, making it clear that it was some book related to magic. Now, the girl was nowhere near to being a catalyst. If anything, she would be a regular swordsman, but even then, she was too sensitive to fight like a knight in Mondstadt.

Her mind pondered outside of the simplicity of the book below her, though. She directed her gaze to the setting sun which rested above the ocean. Its reflection scattered on top of the waves, settling in for a relaxing scene often described in poems. The girl’s left hand was behind her, keeping her propped up, as her right hand swiped random specks of dirt and sand off the rock she sat on.

Liyue was far different than any other place she had heard of. The traditional outcome in the port city was overbearing, yet it remained as proper as could be. The people living at the harbor were kind, genuine, and determined for their work. It was a free region that believed in having order. It was opposite from Mondstadt, the region of freedom, claimed by the anemo archon. In Inazuma, Snezhnaya, and other remote locations of Teyvat, they were just as different.

Out of all of the locales in the world, Liyue single-handedly lived up to be the girl’s most favored one.

“The sky and stars are nothing but false imagery.” A voice interrupted the serene moment the girl was having, causing her to turn her head to see behind her. Nothing but pillar stood where she looked. Was she going insane? “Speak to me, illusion. What do you tell?” The voice sounded distant and unfamiliar to her. Her (e/c) eyes darted across the area. She searched high and low, left and right till a figure came to view above her. A young-looking man stepped close to the edge of the small cliff behind her. She couldn’t make out his face. His large hat and indigo hair was she could see. Even then, she did not want to be caught peaking at a stranger. He drew closer to the edge and eventually sat down on the ground. His legs clothed with shorts and long socks dangled over the cliff’s peak.

From what she could see, the girl found him to be daunting. He seemed as though he cared about his image, his appearance, more than to acknowledge someone listening into his personal conversation. He glanced down and gasped as he finally saw the girl.

“I-I’m sorry,” the girl mumbled. She averted her gaze and grabbed her book off her lap. Sliding down the rock, she didn’t expect the man of indigo to leap from the cliff’s edge and land behind her. Her body tensed when she heard his feet slam into the sand. Was he going to kill her? She knew that bandits and enemies of many lurked by the walls of Liyue Harbor. Even if she was quick to run, she found herself paralyzed; not by fear, but by bewitchment after hearing the man’s voice, calm and high, speak up.

“You study alchemy?” The tone he had was soft like a child’s. The girl looked at her book glittering in the resting sunlight. She moved her head over her shoulder, and gasped quietly when coming eye-to-eye with the stranger. For a man, he was placed on the shorter side in height. She rivaled his height, actually. In spite of that, the stern expression he had was enough to let her understand he took no joke. He seemed to recognize his natural expression as well, for, when he saw the girl look at him and flinch, he loosened his furrowed eyebrows and frown.

As he reshaped his outlook, the girl was facing him completely. She held tight to her book but spoke back nonetheless. “I’m…I’m reading this to pass time. Nothing makes much sense to me, though…”

The man of indigo stepped forward. “But you’ve read it?” He pressed.

“Y-yeah,” the girl answered.

A wave of silence feel between the two. It was awkward for the girl, yet the man was thinking too hard to pay attention. His large hat covered the thoughtful look on his face with his hand under his chin, but the moment he came to a conclusion, he looked up and demanded the girl as if they were acquaintances. “Come with me.”

In shock, the girl stood still, unsure if she should trust the man, a stranger. He was focused and obviously knew what he was doing; something that the girl couldn’t bring herself to trust too well. People had their own goals, their demotions that allowed them to strive farther than they expect, yet the girl had only just met the man by an accidental and random encounter. How could she possibly go with him to who knew where for who knew what? She shook her head and stammered backwards once the indigo-colored man glimpsed over his shoulder.

“I-I can’t. Not with…Not with somebody I do not know,” she girl declared.

At that, the man quirked an eyebrow, the side of his lips curving into a smirk representing his dumbfounded moment, and turned to face her completely. He felt like a doll being dragged by a child with how much he had to hold her hand in explaining his situation…despite not telling her what his intentions were in the first place. “Aha, how big of a fool I must be for not introducing myself,” he chuckled.

The girl swallowed a dry clump of spit down her throat as she listened to him ramble. “Who are you, then?” She questioned with a bold tone that made herself flinch.

The man lifted his head to stare at her with a sharp and threatening gaze. It was obvious that the grin on his face was not out of joy, but out of spite and irritation. It scared the girl to here core to have met a stranger who was that intimidating. Although he was selfish in making her wait for his name, he had eventually came to claim his title as ‘Scaramouche’.

“But around here, the people call me…the Balladeer.”

[ddarker-dreams]

A Still Beating Heart. Yan Alucard x Reader [COMM]

warnings: isolation and mentions of blood word count: 2k

To free yourself from the clutches of your room means to explore this archaic mansion, in search of some form of solace. 

The hallways are long-winding, foreboding. Drawn curtains block out sunlight’s kiss, leaving naught but sinister shadows at the end of each hall, indecipherable to the naked eye. Wood in colors consisting of rich hickory are present at every turn, impeccably clean and detailed in their carvings. Atop antique sideboards sit various trinkets, surely a finding any archaeologist would die to examine. You’ve been told that what’s his is yours, to help yourself to any treasures that capture your eye. What use are the finest, exotic luxuries from centuries past in a prison like this? 

Candlelight guides you on your way, though you worry it’s damaging your eyesight. Squinting has become far too common for your liking, to make out where it is you’re going is a challenge when natural light is forbidden. Old floorboards creak underneath your tentative steps, leading you to inhale sharply. Does it even matter if you make a noise that could possibly alert him? Even now, your gut warns that there is another set of eyes set upon your figure. Watching as you weave in and out of rooms in search of entertainment, internally snuffing out sinister intentions that you draw out like water from a well. 

The fear of being watched, studied like an animal in a cage while remaining none the wiser to the horrors in the walls has faded with time. Birthed from a primitive drive centered around preservation of the self, to keep your sanity in a delicate balance. Every flicker of candlelight, that cast shadows upon its surroundings, used to frighten you. To the point any sign of movement, any sound without an immediately identifiable source, would render you inconsolable. Now, you choose to pay it little mind, having grown acquainted with the unknown. 

Your destination has been reached, lithe fingers wrapped around the silver candlestick placing it down on a nearby wooden console. The door is unlocked, opening easily at your prompting, candlestick back in hand to illuminate the seemingly unending maze of bookshelves. A sigh of relief makes its way past your lips, grateful for the reprieve before you. Entertainment is sparse, reading one of the few reliable sources of passing the time. How thoughtful of him to grant this sparse freedom, bitterness growing inside you like a thorn covered vine. 

Fingertips brush over the spines of numerous books, and you closely examine the detailings of each one. The languages you can recognize are few and far between, from Romanian to Turkish. Reading in a language you can’t understand will do you no good, so you settle upon one of the few English titles. The Castle of Otranto, a seemingly fitting read for the macabre atmosphere that surrounds. Making yourself comfortable on a nearby love seat, you once again place the candlestick down and open the book on your lap. The sensation of hardened paper against your skin brings with it, among other things, familiarity. Black ink captures you, sending you into a world far away from here. Some realities are too good to be true, and your little escape is spoiled before it ever truly begins.

“I never seem capable of guessing which one you will pick.” 

A natural reaction to a new sound, your head lifts in search of identifying the direction it reverberates from. The deep, rumbling voice has no single point of origin, instead encompassing you from every corner of the library. How many times has Alucard played this game with you, and how many times will you allow him to? It’s not entirely possible for you to control every aspect of human biology, you’re incapable of stopping how your pupils dilate and the goosebumps that dot your skin. He goes beyond any understanding, transcending into the throes of unnatural. An uncanny valley, where you can almost place your finger on it, but it remains far too murky to know for certain. 

In his presence, there will be no enjoying the pleasures of reading, so you shut the book. “Then you must not know me as well as you claim.” 

His laughter starts softly. An unholy sound that colors the depths of your soul with dread, like a single drop of dark ink into formally purified water. With every second that progresses at a sluggish pace, his amusement corrupts you further, until there’s nothing left to do but glare defiantly at the empty spaces around. If he wants to play coy, taunting you from a distance, then so be it. Exchanges like this that left you a nervous wreck have become commonplace. In the recesses of your mind, a temptation blooms to slander him as a coward. For not materializing into physical form, in fear of the onslaught of your scrutiny that would lash out. But you know the unpleasant truth, he has nothing to fear from the likes of you. 

It's for the sake of your fragile psyche he often chooses to remain out of sight. 

How belittling, you think. That he should place you on a pedestal high enough to consider your mental well being, but still sees fit to keep you under lock and key for himself. Lamenting about your predicament has never filled the void in your heart he tore out, so you push the thoughts as far down as you can. Your mouth is settled into a straight line, head resting atop your fist. If he’s going to poke and prod from afar, the least he can do is dignify you with eye contact. 

Looking at the last spot his voice resonated from, your eyebrows knit together with irritation. “Come out already. Stop playing these trifling games.” 

The loose strands of hair that frame your face are pushed back, by wind of no identifiable origin, chilling your body to the bone. You hug the sides of your bare arms, cursing yourself for picking a flimsy nightgown to wear, the temperature of the room dropping unnaturally. Flicks of ebony and crimson appear by your side, slowly but surely taking the silhouette of a man. The height difference between you two is always unsettling, no matter his claims of never harming you. Eyes that have seen centuries of conflict blink, pallid flesh becoming a physical reality and filling out into a face. This sight is one you’ve bore witness to many times, and each time you feel further from God, like you’re seeing something you shouldn’t be. A deeply forbidden and imposing evil. 

“I’ve done as you’ve asked, there’s no need to glare at the wall anymore.” 

Not seeing an advantage in offering a response, you choose to ignore the comment. “What is it you want, Alucard?” 

Your own tone is exasperated, words cutting straight to the heart of the issue. He takes note of this immediately, and you come to regret your uncharacteristic impatience. Eyelids fluttering shut for a moment to regain your composure, you see him staring down at you with an unreadable countenance once they reopen. There’s a pressing issue on his mind, you know as you’re the centerpiece of it. He must not intend on bringing it up just yet, instead paying heed to the book you picked out. 

“Do you find the selection agreeable?” 

A low hum leaves your lips at the question, and you consider it, before offering an honest opinion. “I can’t read most of the books here.” 

“Should I translate them for you? Or, perhaps, teach you the languages themselves?” Alucard offers after a moment’s deliberation, and you find it strange. The version of him that sits beside you now, consulting you like it’s a normal conversation. As if the hands that stay by his side haven’t been tainted with the blood of thousands, instead taking an almost considerate approach in speaking with you. You can’t claim to understand how a monster such as Alucard became so beguiled by your existence, and something tells you he doesn’t understand it himself.

“There’s no need.” 

Your voice lacks the force it normally exerts, body feeling as if it’s growing further from you. Subconsciously, your hand raises to the side of your head, grimacing at the pounding ache that’s growing stronger by the minute. Acting like nothing is wrong is a feeble effort anyways, he’s already caught onto your dilapidated state. It doesn’t matter how cautious you had been in disposing the blood set aside for your consumption, it was only a matter of time until it’d catch up with you. The hand that remains free goes to the cushion of the couch, fingers entrenching themselves into the fabric and ripping it in the process.

“How long have you gone without it?” He finally stops dancing around the sore subject, much to your chagrin. Alucard sounds exasperated, and if it weren’t for endangering predicament, you might feel a hint of pride. To procure any reaction from him that goes against his wishes is a victory, as far as you’re concerned. Petty as it may be, he himself is far worse. So you relish in the knowledge that you’ve made him miserable, even if it can never match the amount he has inflicted on you. 

The world as you know it is growing unsteady, even as you sit perfectly still. A taboo longing constricts your body, muscles taut and chest heaving. “I lost track.” 

It’s an honest admission. Your little sideshow of rejecting what keeps you alive -- if you can even call this state of being that -- has been ongoing for a while now. An act of defiance to spite Alucard further, that still doesn’t fill you with enough satisfaction. It’s a regret to know that nothing will ever fulfill you, nothing but the ambrosia of freedom, too sweet and out of reach for you to taste. The shadow of a life you now live has ensured that, a nightmare bestowed upon you by Alucard’s innate need. 

“This isn’t even the worst of it,” he lowers his voice, speaking with such delicacy it makes you sick to your stomach. “Should you choose to stay like this, you’ll feel misery beyond words. Give up this futile act of defiance.” 

He speaks right next to you, inches from your ear, but it doesn’t properly register. Emotions haunt you like a curse, a spectrum of despair to raw want. You want blood. You want the taste of iron to lavish itself upon your tongue, temporarily filling the hole of animalistic hunger that you can no longer push down. It’s a flame that’s lit within you, and there is no further hope in extinguishing it. Your own thoughts are replaced by a need to survive, your hands moving without your prompting. 

By your side, he has nicked his finger, liquid crimson falling like a waterfall from heaven. There are no signs of your own self, autonomy thrown to the side. Your soft, paling lips, latch onto the source of vitality. Alucard watches wordlessly, an emotion that can almost be defined as regret flashing through his eyes. This is the fate that he had inflicted upon you, a lifetime of being a vampire like himself. It isn’t what he wanted for you -- to burden you with the weight he has carried for centuries past -- but you left him no choice. Having seen you lying, seconds away from death’s door, he had to act. To preserve your life, to keep you with him. 

You pull away, mouth smeared deep vermillion, eyes growing glassy. There’s no point in holding onto the shreds of honor that left you a long time ago, and you collapse against his solid frame. Alucard has never been capable of comforting you, not beyond melancholic touches that seem to pain him more than you. Sniffling against his shoulder, your hand raises, threatening to strike, before losing strength and falling down. Humiliating as it may be, you don’t care, holding desperately to any form of consolation this world may offer you. 

Alucard, the one who clipped your wings in the name of love, can only watch as you curse and cry out to him. 

[knifeathers-archive]

I won't always be around to protect you. She hadn't wanted it, never asked for it. Feelings changed when she woke up with a yelp. Body jolting out of bed. She curls herself up tight. Legs close against her chest. The lamp at her bedside is dull , but it's lit. Its light illuminating a small space around it.

Inej wraps herself up in the flat sheet upon her bed. It lingers on for a moment before she flings it to the side. Nothing seems to console her tonight. At the Menagerie, she'd be too tired, too humiliated to dream at night, and if she did, Tante Heleen had something to keep her girls asleep. None of those things are here. She knows it's better that way. It's freedom. It's away from the Menagerie. The work might not be exactly honest, but it's hers.

She hears another voice on the other side of the door call out to her. Hands search for the knives Kaz had given to her. She clutches onto them, one in each hand. Kaz trusts the Dregs, but Inej is still a girl all alone, a girl from the Menagerie at that. They don't know who she is, or what she's doing here other than that Kaz said so. She has a reputation of her own to make amongst them.

"Who is it?" she questions. Inej takes careful steps closer to the door. Fingers grip tighter onto the knives. "Jesper?" She gives her mind a second to recall the name. "Jesper." Inej recalls quickly. The way Kaz introduced him was different compared to all of the Dregs. He's special, important to Kaz in some way. "There's no murder going on in here. I'm fine."

Inej walks her way closer to the door and away from the bed. She can hear Jesper's movements on the floorboards. He isn't going anywhere, and his presence just happens to be a lot warmer than her bed. Maybe his stubbornness on this front would help her get some decent rest after all.

"You'd think he'd really do that?" she questions. She can't tell what Kaz is like - all furrowed brows and business. In her gut, she knows he's a good man. Why else would he free a strange woman from an unending indenture?

@esotericdescent

@knifeathers | Starter from JESPER — offering a comforting presence ... even if it's through a door <3

It wasn't unusual by any means for Kaz to recruit people for the Dregs without anyone's knowledge until they were already among them. So, when the Suli girl had arrived and Kaz had said she was one of them now — Jesper had accepted it without question. Despite his lack of questioning, though, what Kaz did tell him was more than enough; he'd convinced Per Haskell to buy out her indenture, she was as silent and graceful without a hint of effort, all thin, lean lines and a small stature. Her name was INEJ and Jesper took a liking to her immediately, despite how quiet and seemingly distant she seemed to be.

He only truly understood the meaning of the distance she kept after one night when he'd heard a scream from behind her closed — and locked, no doubt thanks to Kaz — door. Of course, his instinct had been to try to open the door, but he hadn't been expecting the knob to be locked in place. ❝Inej? ❞ Jesper's voice carried easily, as doors and walls were still incredibly thin at the Slat, despite Kaz's efforts to improve the place.

❝Inej, it's Jesper — ... please tell me you're not fighting off a murderer in there? ❞ He waited, but after receiving no response ... he thought he heard the muffled sound of a sob, but he couldn't be sure. A long, quiet sigh escaped him and he glanced around, as if his gaze alone could banish any prying eyes, but ... he didn't have Kaz's natural, vicious looking scowl to scare anybody anyway.

Jesper turned and pressed his back against the wall next to the door and, gradually, he sank down to the floor. He brought his knees up and rested his forearms on them, twining his fingers together, fidgeting with the rings that adorned his fingers he needed to get the antsy energy out somehow. Eventually he rested the back of his head against the wall and glanced up at the doorknob, as if he focused long enough, he could seek Inej's gaze that way.

He could get in if he really needed to, but ... Jesper had a feeling the only option was to give Inej the agency to invite him in when she was ready. If she wanted to. Another sigh escaped him. ❝Well, it's not like I can just leave now, can I? ❞ He said, loud enough that she could hear him through the door. ❝If I did and you really were in trouble, we'd both end up dead, because Kaz would kill me. Then he'd be the only one avenging your murder and, well ... you must already know how much fun he isn't. At least I hope so — you'll be solely disappointed if you think he's just having an off week. He thinks if he smiles, it'll be his downfall. Maybe he'd just die on the spot himself, who knows.❞

[notbecauseofvictories]

What Do You Call

You know, the white guy In the film version of Raisin In The Sun, Pudgy balding head, Who comes to tell The black family Not to move to the White Chicago suburb. The man who smiles With the knife, Who IS a knife, But fools them for A second, because They’re looking at him The way he expects Them to look at him. Later, as they mop Up the blood, they replay What he said: that he Was elected by his neighbors, Because he’s the guy that Can get his foot in the door, Whipped and rumpled, Like he’s been apologizing Since he popped out of his Mother’s womb, like he’s a Close, personal friend of sorry. He’s sorry now, in his wilted suit. This is the way the knife Gets through the door, and He sits there, as they Think, maybe he ain’t a Knife in sheep clothes, baaa Baaa, baaa; such a foolish-looking, Goofy little white guy. A small part of them, quietly Embarrassed they’re even Thinking that about him. They can barely hold their Manners in check, and that’s His trick, the trick of the knife You don’t see until you’re cut. And the strangest thing About this, the damn thing Is how meek he still looks After he cuts, and cuts again. Dun as a female robin, His tongue slices and whittles. He is singing the song of his Brood; money if you stay, Fire if you come, as they think: How did a white robe, a tinder cross, And goon’s club trot through Their door? A pack of Dobermans Couldn’t have done a neater job, Except that Dobermans of course, never Apologize.

.

CORNELIUS EADY

[drxwsyni]

Fault in Honesty︱Yandere Chisaki Kai/Overhaul x f!Reader

Anonymous asked: “Hi! I love your work! Do you think you could do a scenario with yandere overhaul and fem. Reader where she tells him she hates him?”

a/n: Ngl I’ve been having some writers block lately so doing a good ol’ sfw (or at least in yandere standards) oneshot was very refreshing. Also the section in italics represents a flashback! Thanks for the request babes <3

Warnings: implied stockholm, captivity

1.9k Words

_____

If you could hazard a guess as to where exactly you went wrong, it would be the day you let the comfort of his security first outshine the red flags. To an outsider, they’d be unavoidably obvious. But for you, someone experiencing a side of Chisaki reserved only to make appearances in your presence, they became muted. Vibrant and glaring warnings were but a momentary afterthought, given no more than a few seconds of contemplation before you returned to focusing on the ideal in front of you.

The ideal is still present now, only it’s being held together by the constricting realities that overlooking those red flags have brought about.

Walls seemingly inescapable, corridors twisting and unending. Perpetually trapping you underground, without an inkling of an idea as to which door would lead you to salvation. All coupled with the pain shooting up your legs with each time your bare feet collided with the tile, a dress airy and doing little to shield you from the deep set chill running past your exposed skin.

You shivered, both from the discomfort of the cold, and from the anxieties riddling your system.

By some form of chance luck, your frantic searching lead you to a stairwell, from one door to another, and into an all too familiar room.

The setting was by far more comforting than the bleak hallways below you. Once dull and sterile surroundings faded, your focus favouring the warmth. You spent many an hour in Chisaki’s study mere months ago, keeping the young boss company without question. Sometimes you’d simply exist alongside him, the copious amounts of work keeping Chisaki from indulging himself in conversation with you. Those moments were regrettable, as you could never stay with him all day. So you would leave him to his devices sooner or later, returning home while he continued to manage his ‘business.’

You suppose he detested the fact that you would inevitably take a leave of absence more than you originally perceived. And while his first move to initiate a more domestic closeness with you was endearing at the time, it only served to muddle your thoughts with regret now.

•  •  •

Your hand in his, seated close enough to him that your knees were touching. The leather couch situated in the study was always your go-to spot when waiting for your lover to fulfill his duties as a leader for the day. He managed to do so before you left this time, much to your appreciation.

“Anything you could possibly need is already in place, angel. With you living here we’d be able to spend more time together. And…” Pausing, as if to gather his thoughts while absentmindedly squeezing your hand gently in his, Chisaki soon continued. “...It would be beneficial if I were able to monitor your health more closely.”

You regarded the man with a warm and loving smile, finding slight humour in his predictable ways. For one, your wellbeing was always at the top of his concerns. It felt like such a passive occurrence at this point, Chisaki keeping those interests in mind like it was second nature. And you supposed, with how he so clearly treated you on another level of appreciation compared to everyone else in his life, that the quality would only be expected in a man who ensures such a high level of diligence in everything he does.

Chisaki also had a tendency to rush things with you. So naturally, his offer wasn’t something you were entirely surprised to hear. But unfortunately for him, there still resided some resistance in you.

“Don’t you think it’s a little too soon to be moving in together? Don’t get me wrong, Kai. I’d love to spend more time with you. It’s just―”

“This would be good for you. It’s dangerous for you to be living on your own, so you understand why I’m worried about you, right?”

Although he didn’t explicitly state it, you knew what Chisaki was referring to. The unavoidable fact of your quirklessness. He would never say that it made you weak, but you knew it was the root of his anxieties. You living alone was far more risky than he was willing to accept.

But you loved him. So, perhaps the change wasn’t something you should fear?

You let out a small sigh, still unsure, but resigning yourself for now. “...I suppose, if you think it would be best.”

In an act of tenderness, Chisaki took your hand that he was still holding, raising it to his lips. He planted a feathered kiss to the back of it, maintaining a gaze filled with adoration the whole time. Your heart fluttered at the gentle affection, feeling your face warm with a certain bashfulness.

He was pleased with your acceptance, albeit hesitant and largely unsure. “You’ll come around to the idea.”

And with the way Chisaki’s words and actions―not only now, but also in times before―left your better intuitions molding to match his, you thought you’d come around to it too.

•  •  •

The heavy wooden door behind you, a dark oak cut hand carved and lavish, opened in a swift motion. The abruptness of it earned a startled flinch from your body, you quickly turning around to view the culprit of the commotion in fear.

Like a deer in headlights, your whole being froze in place. Chisaki stood in the doorway, only he didn’t appear to be nearly as surprised as you.

If anything, he was calm.

His eyes trailed up and down your form, taking in your uneasy state. Slowly, he stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. “It’s not good for your health for you to be up so late, my love.”

The dismissal of the situation sent a wave of frustration through you. Knowing he didn’t regret any of his actions, what he had put you through, and the reason why you were here―it was infuriating. The possessiveness, withholding your freedom like it wasn’t a necessity, because to him wasn’t. None of your misgivings resonated with him.

You regarded the composed leader, feeling your resistance begin to crumble from his mere presence. “Is this what you wanted?” Regrettably, your voice cracked midways through the question.

He almost looked disappointed, the fact of your apprehension being an unwanted outcome of the decisions he’d made for you. But he was nothing if not steadfast in his ways, a quality outshining the sorrow he felt for finding you so distressed. “All I’ve wanted is to ensure your health and safety. That’s what I’ve done, and I will not apologize for it.”

Another bit of your resolve faltered, your lower lip trembling as you fought to hold yourself together. “Even though I’m a prisoner?”

Chisaki let the words hang in the air for a moment, more so to let you process them instead, hoping you’d understand as much as he did that the statement couldn’t be farther from what you were to him. He moved across the room, taking his black dust mask off while he spoke, placing it on an end table. “I could hardly call you that. You live quite nicely―comfortable living quarters, balanced meals―everything you need and more to get by.”

“Everything except for my freedom, Kai. I mean...can’t you see how wrong this is?” In truth, you knew trying to reason with the man would get you nowhere. It wouldn’t change his mind, and it certainly wouldn’t help you in your now failed attempt to leave him. The thought of the uselessness of the whole thing wore you down, knowing putting up a fight would be for nothing in the end. You’d lost not from the moment he’d stepped into the room, but from the moment you agreed to be his all those months ago.

He faced you once again, mask and gloves removed, able to expose himself in such a way to you only. “It’s dangerous for someone with your connections to live outside of my compound―you know that. There are people who wouldn’t hesitate to use you as leverage against me.” He drew closer, an approach slow, as if trying to ease your nerves. “Tell me, have I ever hurt you?”

You inwardly cursed the man for knowing exactly what to say. His words were meditated, aiming only to lead you into compliance. The question was doing exactly that, because there was no other answer than the one he wanted to hear. The fact that no, he hadn’t. At least not physically. He truly did care for all of your needs. And even when it came to the mental anguish you went through, he always gave you space when you needed it. So really, you had no other choice but speaking that admittance.

Quietly, you did, “N-no, but―”

“So, you can’t deny that everything I do has your wellbeing in mind?”

As he took steps forward, you took some back. Soon enough you were hitting the front of his desk, unable to put any more distance between the two of you as he came closer.

“I can tell you understand that, angel. All I wish is for you to accept it.”

You shook your head, saltine tears falling down your cheeks. Confliction riddled your body and soul, part of you wanting to keep up those feeble forms of resistance, while the other part yearned to finally give in. It would be so much easier if you did, which was the worst part about it. Before you found yourself trapped by him, you truly did love Chisaki.

And somehow, even after all he’s done, those emotions never quite vanished.

“I don’t...I don’t want to be okay with this. Or be okay with you…” Your gaze fell, sniffling through your words. “I hate you―or at least, I’m supposed to hate you. But I fail at even doing that.”

You didn’t have to look up to know he was standing in front of you. Not when the uncharacteristic sound of a softness in his voice was in such a close proximity.

“That’s not a failure…”

Carefully, Chisaki cupped your face in his hands, prompting you to lift your head. Through a blurred vision you regarded his piercing amber eyes. Those set intently on yours, concerned but stern, matching his words to a T.

“You know this is what’s best for you. It’s just taking a while for that to sink in, but you’ll come around to it.” He delicately wiped away your tears as he spoke, the action soothing the torrent of discouragement inside of you. “Now, I’ll get you something to help you fall asleep, and we can forget this ever happened.”

Like always, nothing he did was a simple offer. His statements were final, and you were forced to comply whether you wished to do so or not. Only now, the notion of yearning for free will against his demands was unclear in your mind.

As it stood, and would continue to stand forever, agreeing with Chisaki was the option that had been growing on you as of late. Tonight’s events happened in a spur of the moment. In all honesty, you were unsure of yourself the moment you stepped foot outside your room. It always lingered in the back of your mind that your efforts wouldn’t get you anywhere. So, now that you were faced with that truth, resigning yourself to his whims wasn’t as hard as you thought it would be.

You let him guide you back to your room. You accepted the medication he gave without a second thought.

And soon you fell asleep, sorrows replaced with the calm and comfort Chisaki provided.

[imaginedhaven]

Reluctantly Rooming: Part Eight

Link to Masterpost

A prompt-heavy update, to be sure! This one combines three:

“What are you doing?” “Impromptu dance party.” “It’s three in the morning.”

“You’re weird.” “Or maybe you’re just basic.”

and

Person A is cooking breakfast and sets off the smoke alarm waking up Person B who was still asleep

Enjoy!

~*~*~

Aelin grinned as she quietly closed the door behind her and stepped into the living room. She had just finished her first shift at work without that awful boot that had been a part of her life for eight long weeks, and she couldn’t be happier. Yes, her ankle was aching slightly after a long night on her feet, but it was better than she had feared it would be.

Better still, she knew that she had replaced her stash of snacks just the day before, and Rowan wouldn’t have had time to relocate or get rid of them yet with how busy his work had been keeping him.

Heading for the kitchen, she thumbed open her phone and scrolled through her playlists, selecting one with a smile and pressing shuffle. Upbeat music filled the kitchen as she dug through the cabinets, foot tapping with the beat.

A few seconds later she grinned triumphantly and emerged from the cabinet, fingers clutched around one of the bars of chocolate she’d slipped into the groceries. She had just opened it and was about to take her first bite of sweet victory when she heard a rough voice behind her.

“What are you doing?” Gods, Rowan looked awful, dark circles under dull eyes and hair a complete disaster. She hadn’t heard him come down the stairs; perhaps he had fallen asleep at his desk now that she’d given his office back to him.

Regardless, her hips didn’t stop swaying along with the music as she turned to him and smiled. “I’m having an impromptu dance party, obviously.”

“At…” Rowan’s eyes narrowed as he checked the time. “Fuck, three in the morning?”

“I am celebrating my newfound freedom,” she replied seriously.

“You’re going to break your ankle again if you keep stressing it like this, and then where will you be?”

Aelin winked and slid closer to him, still moving to the beat. “I guess I’ll have my big, strong roommate helping me again,” she purred.

Rowan rolled his eyes as she rested her hands on his hips. “You are so weird,” he muttered.

“Mmm, maybe,” Aelin allowed. “Or maybe you’re just basic.”

A single eyebrow lifted on Rowan’s face. “Basic?”

“Yeah, you know. Boring. You have to be aware of the concept, unless you’re an even grumpier and older man than I thought.” It was quite possibly a dangerous thing to say to him, but it was late and she was riding the high of having survived a night without that damned boot. Hopefully he’d understand.

“There’s a difference between being boring and not dancing at three in the morning.”

“Says you,” she grinned. “I bet you don’t even dance when it’s not three in the morning.”

“Of course not,” he replied. “I work when it’s not three in the morning.”

“Seems to me like you were working at three in the morning,” she accused. “I know that’s normal for me, but it can’t be for you.”

“It depends on the work. I’m covering for someone else right now, so I’ve got more on my plate than normal.”

“How long have you been awake?” Aelin asked, suddenly curious.

Rowan frowned. “Long enough to hate everything about this.”

“So, what, twenty minutes?”

He snorted. Gods, he must have been exhausted for her to get an actual laugh out of him. “Try ‘since about this time yesterday’,” he admitted.

“What? No, Rowan, that’s way too long for people who aren’t either in college or working weird shifts. Did you fall asleep at your desk? Because you look like you fell asleep at your desk.” Without even thinking about what she was doing, Aelin ran her fingers through the tangle of his hair to start taming it.

His fingers encircled her wrist, and she stopped and looked at him. “I didn’t fall asleep at my desk.”

Just then, the music playing from her phone switched from something that was merely suggestive to something that was outwardly dirty, and she broke away from him and fumbled with the device, hoping to stop it before he noticed exactly what the lyrics were.

She was obviously unsuccessful, though, for he almost doubled over laughing. “I didn’t realize it was that kind of dance party.”

Gods, she hoped he couldn’t see her blushing. “It wasn’t. The playlist was on shuffle.”

“Aelin, that means you had to have picked that playlist. You’ll have to try harder than that.”

Fuck, but she hated living with a man who analyzed word choice for a living. “I forgot that was on there. And I’m not having this argument with you right now.”

“So when are we having this argument?” he grinned. “I want to be prepared.”

“When you’ve slept, Rowan, for fuck’s sake.” With that she began physically herding him up the stairs. “Come on, go.”

When they reached the doorway to the room he had taken over from Aedion, she leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded against her chest. He moved toward the dresser and opened a drawer, glancing back at her. “Do you mind?”

“No, not at all, as long as you’re getting to sleep,” she replied.

He cleared his throat. “Aelin?”

“Yes?”

“Get out.”

“Oh!” Gods, she had completely misinterpreted what he was saying. “Oh, I’ll, um…”

She shifted away from the door, and before she could figure out what on earth to say to him he had closed the door—surprisingly gently—in her face.

“Um, good night, I guess,” she finally managed.

“Good night, Aelin,” he called through the door.

Well, fuck. With that embarrassment behind her, she turned to her own room to hopefully settle down for the night and not replay that conversation for hours on end.

~*~*~

Aelin woke up earlier than usual the next morning to a silent house.

The silence in itself wasn’t unusual; Rowan was a very quiet housemate even when he was home. A check of her calendar reminded her that it was Saturday, meaning he was likely either on one of his habitual runs through the neighborhood or holed up in his office pretending that working on weekends was a thing that normal people in his position did. Just in case it was the latter, she made sure to keep as quiet as she could while she slipped into a t-shirt dress and crept down the stairs.

The office was silent, the door opening to an empty room, which meant that either he was out running or he was somehow still asleep. A glance at the doorway showed his running shoes tucked exactly where he always left them.

Stunned, Aelin sat on the couch to collect herself. She couldn’t recall a time she’d actually woken up before Rowan; the opposition of their schedules usually meant that he was the early bird and she the night owl. However, this meant she had a chance to enact a plan she’d been idly thinking about for weeks now.

Rowan had done so much for her the past few weeks, picking up the slack in the household chores without once complaining about it and regularly cooking for her as well. She’d wanted to do something in return for so long, and now that her ankle was healed and he wasn’t awake to stop her an idea came to her.

She silently slid into the kitchen, carefully opening cabinet doors until she found a nonstick pan with a quiet noise of triumph. That went on the stovetop, and a small bowl and a whisk were next on her list. Soon those were sitting on the countertop beside the stove, and she was looking up video tutorials on cooking.

She had watched Rowan scramble eggs so many times now. How hard could it possibly be?

The pan went over heat with some oil in it, and then she pulled the eggs out of the refrigerator. He always made two for her, but should he get a third? Would he even want a third?

Aelin realized she was now staring at the carton and didn’t know how long she had been staring at the carton. With a sigh, she shook her head. She’d barely begun and she was already overthinking it. How typical. Two eggs it was.

She cracked them into the bowl, cheering silently when she managed to do it relatively neatly, and soon she had whisked them up into a unified frothy mass of yellow liquid. Perfect. Just like the video, and just like when Rowan did it.

Belatedly, she realized she would need a spatula on hand to stir the eggs, and searched through the drawers until she found one. Then it was time to add the eggs to the pan.

She stifled a yelp as the pan hissed angrily with the addition of the eggs, steam rising hot and fast—or, fuck, was that smoke? She poked at the eggs timidly with the spatula, revealing the already-blackened underside of them in a hissing release of—yes, that was smoke. Fuck. She’d ruined it.

Time seemed to slow almost to a halt as the pan hissed and sizzled before her, pouring out amounts of dark grey smoke that really shouldn’t have been possible for such a small amount of—

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sound entered her awareness dimly at first, as fixated as she was on the pan in front of her. When it finally registered, though, she yelped and tossed the pan at the sink, hoping that would stop everything from getting even worse. It landed with a clatter, but even that couldn’t outdo the piercing shriek of the smoke detector. Fuck, it would wake Rowan up, she had to figure out how to stop it.

She dragged a chair over from their little dining nook and clambered on top of it, frantically waving underneath it to clear whatever little sensor had gotten overloaded. The air was slowly clearing, and she was just starting to hope that she might actually succeed in this futile venture until she heard the sound of running feet and a shout from the stairway. “Aelin!”

Shit. She was in deep and unending shit, with no way to talk her way out of it.

~*~*~

Tagging:

@ireallyshouldsleeprn @queen-of-glass @fangirlprincess09 @sassys-world @morganofthewildfire @superspiritfestival @perseusannabeth @sis-it-dont-add-up @jlinez @julemmaes @emilyoftheshadows @thegoddessofyou @mymultiversee @swankii-art-teacher @rowansfirebringer @rabodocardan

[andhumanslovedstories]

the old guard, 2k words, nicolò in the earliest days of immortality. cw for suicide attempts and self-harm. 

The promise of heaven is life unending after death. What then is life unending without dying? It is suffering eternal. To be a body in this imperfect world is to be ground by the millstone. Death is the temporary liberation from the frail and tortuous flesh. Even the bodily resurrection of the end of days promised the spirits of heaven to return to the earth only when the earth was made at last perfect again. Jesus Christ, both God and Man, was His body and inhabited His body, offered His body, endured His body, and eventually vacated His body. 

That Jesus Christ returned to His body no longer seemed, to Nicolò, miraculous. It seemed to Nicolò, who despised himself for the blasphemy and yet blasphemed regardless, intolerable cruelty torture a man to death and then refuse to let him die.

What would you call such a thing? Nicolò called it Hell. 

In his agony, he found relief by listing his sins. They slid like beads in place, the endless flaws and crimes of his mortal life; they explained his suffering. Here he acted in anger, here pride, here disobedience against his betters. He counted up lusts and vices, finding new perversions and indecencies in each memory he revisited. He flagellated, paid penance out of his accursed flesh, and watched those wounds, his offerings to God, seal up without an answer. Determining that he must not have atoned in full, he searched his life and repented new crimes. He wept for the times he lowered his eyes from God to the jawline of a handsome man. He whipped himself for the mornings of prayer when he resented leaving the warmth of his bed. The tears dried. The wounds healed. Nicolò remained. 

Even now in Hell and burning, he still could not cease his sinning, his blasphemy. He would think, God has placed me where even He cannot reach, and sink further into his heretical misery. 

It is worth auditing his accounting. Nicolò was not an impartial observer of his own life. Who is? We none of us stand outside ourselves looking in until our bodies have given up the ghost. And Nicolò’s body gave up nothing. What crimes then did Nicolò neglect? 

Do you think the crusader thought, My sins include the butchered Turks, my sword buried in corpses of its own creation? We know the disappointing answer. Nicolò was not yet what he would someday be. 

He did not yet think, My sin is this burning land, the torch set to the raided field that our enemies will know no succour. Here is a body, there and there and there as well, killed if not by my hand then by my cause, the liberation of a holy dream that I found was inhabited by men of matter. I killed a Turk as one would a rabid dog incapable of reason or love. He was a man as I am a man, and therefore surely if I am beloved by God (although I cannot, as I once did, believe that), then he must be as well. God made man in His image and then made Himself in the image of man. God is in any man and every man. I have killed this man in hate. I have killed God. 

He did not, he could not, or rather could not allow himself to think such a thing. It is no simple thing to look upon the suffering Christ and understand yourself to be the Roman soldier. And when he did, when he could, despite the impossibility of such fancies, he cursed the treachery of his weak heart. Those thoughts were not his own. They were the whispers of the demon. 

Oh yes. We come now to sleep, as Nicolò came to sleep: haltingly, reluctantly, with terror in our hearts. How cruel of his body to refuse death but to demand this nightly dying. 

The demon visited Nicolò nightly. After too many failed killings at each other’s hands, they had fled each other in waking hours only to find themselves shackled together in dreams. He was, as all temptations are, too sweet and too rich and too fine. He was a Turk with a handsome face and cold eyes and cold steel. In dreams, sometimes Nicolò watched him, and sometimes Nicolò was him, and sometimes the demon was Nicolò, and sometimes they were two women in a distant land, two women who were walking closer and closer and closer. 

“I think sometimes,” the demon said to Nicolò one night in dreams, “that those two women are the only people who can kill us. And that is why they come.” 

“You’ll die at no one’s hand but my own,” Nicolò replied. 

He flayed his back with self-flagellation and when that gained him no results, he found other ways of punishing the flesh. But these methods proved imperfect in their efficacy. How to torture without executing? One day in his zealous repentance, he sliced too deep. He knew he was dying when he suddenly felt cold underneath the noon day sun. A sin, a sin, an unforgivable sin, he thought, cut again, and let death happen. The blood left him, running out of his arm like the plagued river of Egypt, and on the other side of this horror, this punishment, Nicolò knew, there would be the long desert, yes, but there would be freedom, there would be peace. His numbed fingers dropped the knife, that key of liberation, and embraced eternity. 

When he woke, he was hot again. The sun had baked him and his skin burned. But his skin would heal. It would heal that it might burn again and again and again.

“I felt you die today,” the demon said that night in dreams. 

Nicolò’s laugh filled his mouth like sand. “But here I am.” 

The demon touched his own neck. There was no scar there--never, Nicolò thought bitterly, any scars--but there was a line in the beard like a skilled tailor’s seam, visible only with the closest observer. As though a blade had once sliced through cloth now repaired. “You have to try. It was with this dagger.” He held up the dagger. Nicolò recognized it, had been impaled and sliced by it for all the good it did. “In the fire of Hell I will be punished with this dagger for what I have used it for. And yet I did not die.” The demon looked at Nicolò, and while his steel remained cold, his eyes were not at all. “Is that suicide, Frank? If I cannot die but hoped I would? Will I burn?” 

Every man, no matter how aware of his own sins and failings and culpability for his woes, in the lowest and darkest hour of his life finds himself in Job, that blameless man tormented by God. And in Job’s misery, his friends arrive and dissect in all the ways Job deserved his agony. And Job protests, no, no, I did nothing but my children are dead, my wife is dead, my fortune is gone, my health is gone, I am defenseless before God and I do not understand why. 

Nicolò, too aware and still unaware of his failings and faults, cast himself as Job and Job’s friends: both the blameless victim and the accuser of blame. And Nicolò lamented and hated himself for lamenting, repented and believed he had nothing left to repent. And where was the whirlwind? God sweeping down to answer questions with questions? Were you there at the foundation of the earth, God asked Job. If God asked the same of Nicolò, he could not hear. What was the story of Job? What was the point? Why did Job suffer? Why had God done this to him? Why could Nicolò not submit to the mystery? 

In the face of Nicolò’s silence, the Turk turned cold again, cold as steel and more painful somehow. Perhaps Nicolò had grown too accustomed to the pain of steel. “Why do I ask you? Of course you think I will burn. You have made clear what you think I am, what you think my countrymen and my brothers in faith are. Get out of my dream, Frank. I am sorry to have felt you today in my waking hours. Give me the privacy of my sleeping ones.” 

“Elihu tells Job that God speaks in two ways,” Nicolò said. He did not know why he said it. The Turk looked as if he did not know why Nicolò had said it either. “He speaks to us in dreams when our eyes are closed and in calamities when our ears are open.” 

“What do you mean to tell me with this?” asked the Turk after a moment. His face was still cold, still sharp, and Nicolò could not look away from it, like running his thumb along the edge of a blade. 

What was intolerable about Job’s friends? Their certainty. Their certainty that they understood God and suffering and the reasons for the universe, as if there was reason understandable to mortals, as if God need explain Himself to the world He created.  

“I don’t know,” Nicolò said.

The Turk looked at him, and Nicolò looked at the Turk, in the strange world of dreams where God talked and no one understood.  

Nicolò woke. He woke and thought about the undying Turk. He woke and thought--allowed himself at last to think--of the Turks who died. Whom he killed, and wished to kill, and believed should be killed, in the name of God and glory. Those men allowed to recieve the gift that Nicolò was denied again and again, and he thought, as Job thought, as Job’s friends thought, what his crime was. If I am innocent, Lord, release me. If I am guilty, tell me my crime. The men I killed died and are dead. The men I killed alongside died and are dead. I died and am living still. The Turk is living still. What crime have we both committed that our sentence is the same?

What good have we both committed to have earned this boon? 

Nicolò had never before this moment thought that their undying lives might be a gift. 

Two days later, the Turk found him again. This time, in the waking world. Their swords remained in their sheaths. They emptied instead their boots, and sitting in silence side by side, they sat on the bank and let the river wash their feet. 

“I am tired of dreaming of you,” the Turk announced to the buzzing insects of the encroaching night. “When I followed you to slit your throat, I never dreamed of you. Nor did I dream of you when you were stalking me.” The Turk almost smiled, and Nicolò’s skin burned again, a burn that would not heal for it was no injury at all. “I knew you were near, those times. When you are near, my sleep is easy and punctuated by nothing but a blade.” 

“I am tired. I am confused. I am, I think, more wretched than I ever dreamed, and I understand nothing.” Nicolò said. “I will not kill you again.”

“Our problem is that you have not killed me yet.” 

They sat together, feet in the river. They said nothing and understood nothing. The sun went down and the moon arose, and too the stars. Job had asked God why he suffered so, and God had asked Job if he could bind the chains of the Pleiades or loosen Orion’s belt. Job could not and neither could Nicolò. Nor could the Turk, whose name was Yusuf and who smiled at last in the surprise of being asked. 

[bibliocratic]

dark!AU, alternative S5 - Elias wins

There are content warnings in the tags, or here on A03 in more detail. Let me know if any further need to be added. 

Upon the Sighted throne, Martin’s presence infringes upon Elias’ knowing. From the clusters of eyes that sprout from the ornate seat like berry plants, he watches Martin approach slowly. The man has taught himself not to react to the multitude of pupils that flicker and swivel in his direction, and he stops a suitable distance from the throne itself. Elias is not ready to grant him the honour of his attention, and Martin knows he will have to wait as long as Elias wants him to.

There are no days here, nor time to measure his tempered impatience. Martin waits, as Elias indulgently observes the horror of the world he has reckoned into being, visiting pockets of terror to glut himself on the visions of the wretched there.

“I trust you have a good reason for demanding my attention, Martin.”

A shiver along the stalks of his many eyes is the only warning the other man gets as Elias sinks back into himself and gazes upon his visitor with his human sight. Martin schools his body still, aborting the shaking that has started up in his legs from how long he has stood.

“He’s been up there for too long,” Martin says. His voice is intentionally flat, stripped of demands, all its edges sanded off to quiet. He can be quite biddable when he tries to be, this wayward servant of the Eye. “Let him down so he can rest, just for a while.”

Elias studies his tamed prisoner carefully. His posture bowed deferential. Servitude has always been a good look on him for all he chafed and strained at his yoke in the beginning, and he will confess he has enjoyed turning his hand personally to this particular task. It took longer to break him in, longer than it took his treasured Archive, but he learned eventually.

He considers refusing him again, to feel the disappointment crumple in him no matter how much Martin tries to disguise its passing on his face. Elias does so delight in hearing him beg.

“And where are your manners?” he asks instead. Idly, studying his fingernails.

“Please.”

“What was that sorry?” he responds, indulgent and toying. He watches a muscle jump in Martin’s jaw.

He sometimes hopes for the defiance of yesteryear, the frustrating spark of refusal that Elias had spend so long trying to snuff out.

“Please, Elias,” Martin says in his flat, defeated voice. “Let him down.”

“And I suppose you’d beg for some time with him? To fuss and dote and play house?”

Martin doesn’t answer.

Elias sighs as if he is granting a great boon, a tax upon his time and energies. He snaps his fingers, the sound sharper in the hollow throne room, pointing at his feet like he’s summoning a dog to heel.

“You know how to ask.”

It’s a small pity, a frivolous, mildly rankling loss, that such humiliation doesn’t summon a flush to Martin’s cheeks any longer. It was quite a sight, in the early days of Elias’ rule, the man’s pathetic desperation to see his beloved warring with the dregs of his shame.

Martin walks forward to the foot of the throne and goes to his knees without a word.

Elias reaches down to comb his hair from his face, fixing some of the longer strands back. Martin used to flinch, his shoulders high, his mind flickering bonfire bright with all the things he feared Elias might do to him. He tenses now, his gaze directly ahead, and Elias knows that whatever he might choose to do, Martin wouldn’t stop him.

“What will you give me?” Elias murmurs. “To make it worth my while?”

“Whatever you want,” Martin replies. The words learned by rote, a dutiful call-and-response.

“That’s right,” Elias hums pleased. “Whatever I want.”

He moves his hand to Martin’s throat, his fingers splayed in a loose grasp, and uses this grip to raise Martin’s head up, force him to make eye contact.

Martin bites down a gasp as Elias slips easily into his head.

Elias buries him. Has him on his back like he’s coffin-bound, trying to open his eyes only to find them fused shut with the weight of the soil above, the burden of the earth around him like a second skin. Martin sucks in panicked inhales, and he swallows dirt in crumbling chunks, and he gags and coughs to expel it but the greedy earth slides further down his throat. Martin might have learned that it’s better when he doesn’t struggle, but his thrashing body doesn’t know that. Elias waits until he’s twitching with airlessness before the pressure eases, and he is suddenly able to pant thin huffs of air, the oxygen deprivation making him woozy and spiked with delirium, and Elias knows just when to retract this respite and let the earth choke him again. This goes on for some time. Sometimes, feeling fanciful, adherent to fickle whims, he allows Martin to see a poky patch of light, permits him to worm and writhe, his skin rubbed raw with the friction, his muscles burning and his impacted nails ruined, moving inch by inch exhausted and degraded to potential freedom before the earth gulps him back down again, shrieking and screaming in muffled terror.

Elias allows his torment to continue until Martin’s convinced he’ll die here, that no one will save him, that he’ll be abandoned in the dark and the crush. It takes a long time; Martin is ever such a hopeful soul.

His pitiful mewling fear makes for such delicious entertainment, a gourmet delicacy for the Eye.

Elias withdraws, feeling full and sated, his attention already drifting away. His eyes observe the trembling wretch at his feet, gasping and coughing, as his addled mind comes back to itself, recalls that there is more than the clutch and the cold.

“What do we say?” Elias asks.

Martin’s too drained, too shattered to hate him. Attempting to rise to his knees from where his body dropped against the hard marble of the floor.

“Thank you,” he croaks out.

Elias is feeling merciful today. A magnanimous ruler of his nightmare kingdom.

“I’ve let him down.” He waves a dismissive hand. “Go.”

Martin does not need telling twice.

-

Elias leaves them alone, as much as they ever are at least.

Cut down from his moorings at the centre of the Panopticon that marks the focal point of the Eye’s gaze, the eyes that scar Jon’s body flex and roll back into his skin. Martin lifts him and carries him the short distance to their sparse quarters as he returns to himself, his endless recitation of horrors quietening into a burble, like the drying up of a river. Martin settles him on the bed, gets a damp cloth to wipe away the sweat that’s sprung onto his face.

“Hey,” he says encouragingly. His voice is dry from screaming. “Hey, you with me?”

Jon looks up. Blinks slowly. Frowns. His mouth moves without sound. This goes on for some time, and Martin had known it would.

Eventually the tight line of his body relaxes. His frown loosening into a wincing confusion.

“Martin?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Martin says, and he can’t keep the relief back. “It’s me.”

Jon’s hand flops around on the bedcovers, searching before Martin grasps it. After so long in the dirt, the warmth of skin shocks him. The grip faint before rousing to anchor their palms together.

Jon squints at him.

“Your hair’s longer.”

“You’ve been up there a while. Every time I asked he said no.”

Jon’s hand reaches up to cradle Martin’s face.

“What did he do to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Martin…”

“Please. Jon, please. Don’t.”

Jon stores his questions back into silence. He strokes away the faint tear marks he finds under Martin’s eyes, the only evidence of the price paid for these moments together.

“I’d kill him, if I could,” Jon says. Martin nods and replies ‘I know’ as if that were at all possible. If we kill him. If we escape.

They’ve tried. Elias would have disposed of him without a second thought when they first came here, if Jon hadn’t pleaded for his deliverance. But Martin’s continued existence is no kindness, nor a testament to Elias’ benevolence; rather, he is a perfectly made shackle, a stick to beat an unwilling Archivist with. The last time they tried to escape, Elias made Jon watch Martin’s punishment, a hand-crafted nightmare borrowed from the Desolation. All his eyes forced open, feeding on Martin’s agony even as he begged Elias to stop. Jon had stopped talking about escape after that. In a small section of Martin’s mind that he hopes Elias has overlooked, Martin thinks of nothing but.

There isn’t a lot to say to each other. Jon shivers and quakes with the aftershocks of Seeing, the last vestiges of his humanity brutalized into the service of the Eye. Martin’s mouth tastes of dirt, and his skin crawls where he is hemmed in, but he makes himself push through that discomfort, to lie down next to Jon and hold his body against his own like mooring two sea-shattered pieces of driftwood.

Martin kisses his temple. His cheek. Makes his words whisper against skin, as if they are lover’s recollections should Elias be watching.

“Jon?”

“Hm?”

“Do you remember when I was working with Peter? And you offered me something, and I didn’t take it?”

Jon stiffens. His hand in Martin’s clenches, any hope he might have felt poisoned with such reasonable terror.

“If I made you the same offer,” Martin continues into the hollow of his throat. “Knowing what would happen to you now. What would you say?”

“The same choice?”

“Exactly the same.”

Jon’s grip is bruising.

“You think there’s a way?”

“I know there is. I found something.”

Jon turns over so they are face to face.

“What about you?” comes the whisper.

If Martin succeeds, there will be no forgiveness. If Elias loses his Archive, there will be rage, pitiless and unending, the unendurable that he will be made to endure and an endless world within which to suffer it.

“Like you offered,” Martin promises. “Together.”

Carefully, he moves his hand to cover Jon’s eyes, a gentle blindfold. Without breaking eye contact, he takes Jon’s fingers, and brings them up so they run a line across Martin’s throat.

“Do you understand me?” Martin asks.

His limbs tremble more often than not nowadays, but Jon mimics Martin’s gestures – his hand held flat over his own sight, before tracing a shivering line across Martin’s neck.

“Yes,” Jon whispers.

“Even if it hurts? Even if it doesn’t work?”

“Yes,” Jon repeats. His eyes wet, the light in them calmer and clearer than Martin has seen in a long time. “Together.” He buries his face into Martin’s chest, bringing his arms around form them into one tangled mass. “I love you. I love you and I wish I could have given you better than this.”

“I love you,” Martin replies. “Just a bit longer, yeah? Just a bit longer.”

Jon leans in and presses their lips together. And Martin knows when the time comes Jon will look at him as kindly, with such compassion as Martin releases him from the Eye, and the thought almost rocks him to tears.

“Just a bit longer,” Jon confirms, and Martin folds into the embrace and prays they can both last till then.

[novemberandmay]

Daminette December

Day Nine, Book

Marinette had a secret she has never told anyone- she is a comic fanatic. Any free time she had was used to read comics she secretly bought online. She scoured all around the web to find her precious comic books, only to hide them under her bed when she was finished reading them. She was embarrassed. But there was a certain series that she didn’t hide there, it was the series of her beloved. One day, when searching the web for a new comic, she stumbled across a new Batman release. She opened it up to review it before she wasted her money on it, when she saw him. Damian Wayne- the latest Robin. When she saw his character design, she freaked out. Omg, omg, how can a simple character be so hot?! She immediately bought the issue, uncaring of the plot; she had to get him. When her phone pinged, notifying her of comic’s delivery, she rushed down stairs. As she was given weird looks, she snatched the book out of the man’s hands, shoving the money towards him. She ran back upstairs, ready to admire the artwork. As she delved deep into the story line, she fell head of heels for the Robin. She would hug that issue to sleep whenever she could. Her beloved was amazing, if only he was real.

Why couldn’t you be alive, my love? She could only sigh.

Damian was a painter, a fighter, an assassin, and an overall short kid. He lost his temper easily, raining chaos around those near him. He would threaten those around him with a sword, he would hiss and scream. He was an awful child. So when his brothers threw a book at him, he would obviously be upset, right? But, for once, he wasn’t. He initially was about to stab Grayson for hitting him in the head with it, but he didn’t. He looked at the cover art and found something interesting, alluring to a point. He would grab the book like it was his precious treasure, and send a pout death glare towards his eldest brother. Grayson would take one look at this situation and do a good old nope, I’m outta here. Damian would take the book a plop down on a nearby chair. He would read in awe about “The Miraculous Adventures of The Youngest Bug; My Lady” and actually connect to a story for once. As he read about the female lead, Marinette, or Ladybug as Paris knows her, he would daydream about her. Her gorgeous dark blue hair, her clear, loving gaze, and her unending kindness. Since birth, he was taught that kindness was a weakness, something that should be discarded. But Marinette- no. But his Angel made it seem like a dangerous weapon, one that would always help her on her journeys. He knew it was stupid, that life wasn’t some fairytale- but god, does he wish it was. He would read the whole book, start to finish, in the matter of only a couple days. It would’ve taken only one if Alfred didn’t send him to eat. At one point, it seemed like his life revolved around that stupid book. He held that book in his arms while he slept, his dreams nightmare free. As the book was ending, he let out sigh. He was disappointed, Chat Noir was unworthy of his Angel, his habibti. Honestly, he, himself, would have made a better male lead. But if only.

If only..I guess we can only meet in my dreams, my love.

But they would never meet. Their universes didn’t respond with each other, they weren’t part of the same world. While Marinette was being killed by akumas again, and again, Damian would be off fighting villains like the Joker or the Riddler. They couldn’t protect each other. They could only morn their unrequited love and try to move on. But as their creator willed them to be, they were just puppets. They forgot each other completely, their love faded forcefully. They would never remember the feelings of love they felt with each other, only playing the part the writer assigned to them. They were just characters in their own individual book, where they undoubtedly, didn’t truly feel. They could feel nothing as their creators tugged them on a string, until they were forgotten and left hanging. They would never understand the concept of freedom, as they just felt only what they were told to feel, touched only what they were told to touch, spoke only what they were told to spoke. Everything was artificial.

Everything was only a tall tale, a book with some words written in it, nothing alive.

But what are we, if not puppets on a string?

.

Taglist: No one has asked to be apart of it.

@daminette-december2019-2020 

(Notes: So I rewrote it with the attention to attempt to make it sadder, did it work? After rewriting, I haven’t done any editing except bolding and stuff, so yeah. Is it angsty? >;3c )