#nor is St Paul [knuckle crack sound]

[raspberryzingaaa]

Fake quote people attribute to Lewis: "i have a body, I AM a soul"

Real Lewis: "Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those acetic Pagans who called it the prison or the ‘tomb’ of the soul, and of Christians like Fisher to whom it was a ‘sack of dung’, food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans (they seldom know Greek), the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body ‘Brother Ass’. All three may be – I am not sure – defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.

Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body."

[feyreofthewildfire]

We’ll Go Together - Chapter 11

Hello lovelies!

1) Before we even start I’m going to share a little spoiler: these next few chapters are going to very, very heavily be inspired by ‘It Hurts to Become’ by valamerys. It’s one of my favorite fics in this fandom and I’m going to be pulling a lot from it.

2) Warning: Mild Body Horror

3) I posted something that’s NOT this! It’s a oneshot called Wasteland that I vomited out in one evening. It’s Nessian centric featuring one of my most favorite OCs I’ve ever created. I’d love if you headed over and checked that out once you finish this.

4) Please enjoy!!

Chapter 1

Your voice follows like an echo

Won’t someone wake me from this dream?

The bluest skies turn to black clouds

And the wind is drowning out my screams

Mor just wants answers.

The bouts of visions have become more consistent, more harrowing since she met with Feyre and the other version of her cousin. She’ll see something—like a red dress or deep blue gems—and be assaulted by what Feyre’s told her to be memories of another life. The jilted, inconsistent explanations her best friend texts her almost make sense, but so many pieces are missing and she doesn’t know how to go on without at the very least looking for them.

It’s the reason she’s in the baggage claim of an airport in a city she’s never been to, attempting to use the high-tech vending machine to get herself one goddamn drink. She just wants a lemonade. It shouldn’t be so hard. Eventually, the bottle falls into the slot after the machine’s sucked away four and a half of her dollars—an utterly ridiculous amount for a single bottle of lemonade.  

The taste is just as unsatisfactory as the flight had been, she decides as she texts Feyre. They’re trying to figure out a place to meet, but neither of them knows the Twin Cities well. They eventually agree to meet at a Thai place in St. Paul that the Cassian she had yet to meet had apparently mentioned once. From the distance, she knows that the cab fare will be astronomical, but dammit, she wants a bowl of pho.

It’s just over a twenty-minute drive when the cab pulls up to the restaurant. It’s a small, obviously local establishment that excites her. She strolls into the place, the chimes twinkling above the door as she does, and immediately spots Feyre and Rhys sitting in a booth on the same side, hands intertwined and speaking lowly to each other.

Thank the lord. The eye-fucking they’d been doing a week ago had been too much for her—especially between her best friend and the guy that was some sort of reincarnation of her dead cousin.

She gives a small wave to the hostess and sits on the opposite side of the booth, not missing the way the both of them back away but don’t detach. In fact, the grip only tightens. “I missed you,” She smiles, directing it at Feyre. Her eyes fall to the table, lighting with delight. “You got me an iced coffee!” She grins, mixing in the condensed milk with the straw.

Feyre’s smile is tight-lipped, “We haven’t gotten Thai in a while.” She absentmindedly stirs her own drink, the different colored jellies swirling in the coconut milk. Mor resists the urge to cringe—she’s never liked tricolor or boba. She’s always preferred her drinks to be just drinks.

They discuss their new findings, Rhys chiming in every once in awhile when they can’t get a certain memory together. They fill in the timeline Feyre’s been composing in her phone and discuss her sisters.

By the time the food comes—Mor’s steaming bowl of pho, Feyre’s bowl of Kao-poon and Rhys’ plate of papaya salad—a radiant smile the blonde’s never associated with Feyre has bloomed across her face. Rhys almost dies eating the papaya, having specified a few too many peppers, and goes through four glasses of water before his face is anywhere near a normal color again.  

They’re rowdier than a group of teenage boys with no supervision, and Mor is positive that they’re gonna get themselves kicked out—especially when Feyre accidentally elbows Rhys’ boba off the table.  

Then Feyre’s phone rings.

Mor and Rhys are still making jokes and going back and forth, causing the blonde to miss Feyre’s growing look of concern. When the brunette sets her phone down on the table and they both look at her, it’s as if the entire room tenses.

“We have to get to Elain’s hotel room.”

Azriel’s used to pain, but this is new.

It lashes across his back in waves, a strangled, near silent groan escaping him as he’s yanked from his previously peaceful sleep. Somewhere in the background, he can hear the sound of the shower in the hotel room going, and given the fact that the queen bed adjacent to his is empty, he can only assume it’s Elain.

He resists the urge to claw at his bare back and turns onto his stomach, the only sign he’s in any pain being that his fists are white-knuckled around the pillows. He doesn’t even realize he’d using the same breathing method he had used as a child until the bathroom door creaks open and he stops, attempting to center his breaths in an attempt to seem asleep once again.

It fails, of course, when Elain timidly calls his name, concern etched in the word. He can only see the pair of jeans she’s wearing—light wash with rips in the knees, the same ones from the day they’d flown out—when she approaches, laying the back of her hand across his forehead. “What’s wrong?” She frowns, pulling her hand away when she finds no fever, only a thin sheen of sweat.

Her eyes fall onto his back and widen, shock and something akin to horror in them. “Oh my goodness,” She gasps, stumbling back. Her hands fumble for her phone, which had been charging on the nightstand. He shuts his eyes with the pain, no longer trying to hide it now that she’s noticed. He makes out snippets of the conversation, though not enough to realize who she’s talking to.

He hears her set the phone down and feels the bed bend when she sits on it. He cracks his eyes open to stare at her, noting that her hair is still wet and without any flowers in it. His eyes shut once again when she starts to comb her fingers through his short hair, the soothing gesture a nice distraction from the pain.

She starts to speak to him and he forces himself to focus long enough to process what she’s saying. “Rhys and Feyre are coming. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

He nods once, another wave of pain washing over him.

“You get them in and out again, shadowsinger. I don’t care how many of them you have to kill to do it. They both come out.”

“I swear it, High Lord.”

He recognizes his own voice in the answer, though it’s colder—a hard determination laced in the words that he doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t recognize the formal words nor the title he’s addressed with. At least, not at first.

Shadowsinger.

A bell rings within him, a big blinking sign going off that proclaims ‘LOOK HERE’. He can’t tell where it points, only that it’s to the scattered pieces of what he now knows to be memories he’s been carefully gathering and sorting through with Elain the past day or so.

“Grab onto him!”

It’s Elain’s voice, commanding and filled with desperation.

“If you want to live, do it now!”

He manages to tear himself away long enough to hear Elain talking to Rhys, desperately asking his brother what was happening. He feels Rhys’ hands on his back, a warmth radiating from them as he runs them over his skin in a clinical fashion. He sees Feyre’s silhouette and another person with tumbling blonde hair. If he had still believed in them, he would’ve thought her an angel.

He has wings. Something’s clawed through them. He’s carrying two people—Elain and a young girl—and flying. The only thing keeping him from falling is pure will and some sort of magic. It hurts. It doesn’t hurt as much as the thought of what he knows will happen if he fails.

Someone places a hand on his forehead, a warmth different from the one on his back emanating off of it.

He tumbles off into sleep, plagued by perverted nightmares.

Or memories. He can’t tell the difference anymore.

Cassian can’t breathe.

The threadbare apartment he technically presides in hasn’t been occupied in months. He’d been spending all his time at the mansion, protecting Nesta.

The remembrance of her name makes the pain worse.

He claws the soft t-shirt he’d thrown on earlier off of him, launching it somewhere across the room before reaching around his back, trying to find the source of the pain. It emanates from just underneath his shoulder blades, the skin pulsing as if it’s about to pulse open.

His searching hands find something that most definitely shouldn’t be there.

Two bumps, roughly half the length of his spine, protrude from just beside it. He can almost feel whatever’s in them moving and forming, utterly unnatural and not of this world. His first instinct is to call Nesta, only for him to quickly throw that option out the window. His second thought is to call Rhiannon, but his foster sister doesn’t need to know that his life has turned into a poorly plotted TV show with sudden, unexplained magic and a weird chick who holds all the knowledge.

Amren.

He’s only met her twice, maybe another time, but she’s the only one besides Feyre who seems to be willing to tell anyone what’s happening. He supposes that he could also call Rhysand, but he’s not sure if he wants to confront his brother with this.

When had he started referring to the stranger as his brother?

The thought quickly washes away with the rest of him as another wave of pain carries over him. His training from the military is the only thing that gives him the ability to even get out of bed and grab his phone, dialing the new contact that the silver-eyed woman had forcefully put in a few days before.

She answers with a curt, annoyed What? before he starts spitting out obscenities and attempts at describing the pain he’s in. She asks a few questions and he attempts to answer them before she swears—the filthiest thing he’s ever heard, which is quite a feat—and hangs up.

Not even a moment later he can hear his front door snap open, alarming him enough that the burst of adrenaline overrides the pain and allows him to move into the hall. It’s only Amren, having somehow appeared out of nowhere, though he’s in no position to ask how when he doubles over again.

She mumbles something under her breath that he doesn’t comprehend before lifting one of his arms over her shoulder and, in an alarming show of strength, drags him out onto the untouched, still new couch and unceremoniously drops him on it, stomach down.

 When she places her hands on his back Cassian nearly turns over and restrains her wrists out of pure instinct, only for her to bat him away like a child and return her hands to where she had originally placed them—directly over the bumps.  She pushes and prods at them with clinical efficiency and complete disregard for his comfort.

“You’re growing wings.” She announces, backing away and perching herself on the coffee table. “You’ll truly be the same bastard from before again soon enough.”

“What?” He spits out, turning to face her. “Wings?”

“Yes, wings.” She deadpans, obviously not amused. “You weren’t born with them this time, so you get to grow them. I’ll have the Emissary come over to watch you once she’s been discharged.”

He’s not sure what she means by Emissary, but he can tell she’s talking about Nesta. “No. Don’t.” He can only get out a few words at a time with the pain. “Just… grab me some pain—” He has to grit his teeth with a new wave, “—painkillers.”

“Suit yourself.” She states as a bottle of said painkillers stutters slowly into existence beside her. He pretends not to notice the bead of sweat that drips down her temple. “Call if you need anything.”

With that she breezes out of the room, leaving as if she had never been there. He can almost hear his teeth grinding together as he reaches over to grab the bottle, cracking it open and chucking two of the pills in his mouth.

He shuts the bottle and drops it onto the carpet, resting his brow on his forearm. His eyes flutter shut with the pain. A groan does escape his lips this time.

“I have no regrets in this life, but this. That I did not have that time with you, Nesta.”

“I will find you again in the next world—the next life. And we will have that time. I promise.”

His eyes snap open, the memory barreling over him.

He had still loved her; even in another life, another time.

The thought is enough to make him close his eyes, willing sleep to take him once again.

It doesn’t, of course.

He’s not sure how long he lies there, the box of memories that he’s had since the supposed spell had been cast now thrown open. A life lived five hundred years floods through him—from sleeping in the dirt of the Illyrian training camp to fighting in the First War, from leading the armies to brawling with his brother in the mud after he’d returned from his romantic cabin getaway, from bickering with Nesta to what he thought would be his last moments with her.

He manages to grab his phone, opening his messages and typing up two. The first is to Feyre, asking to meet with her and Rhys. The second one is to Nesta.

I did promise I’d find you in the next life, sweetheart. We can have that time.

His finger hovers over the send button, hesitant.

In the end, he supposes it doesn’t matter.

Next Chapter