#or if not physical pain then the process of choking and dying itself. or losing his empire

[pant--eater]

i'm sooooo starved for Smeech content/headcanons/fics/etcetcetc in this fandom, like he is such an enigma of a creature to me (affectionate as I shove him into a microwave). He's a Yordle so he might have been around in Zaun for centuries, ever since its foundation. Maybe he's seen first hand how Piltover's pet Heimerdinger rises to the top, and yet spends his time as a councelor ignoring every single problem in Zaun. Heck I can totally see him resenting Heimerdinger to a murderous degree for that; a Yordle traitor who gets a nice academic status for himself and builds his glorious city of progress, but never uses all that power to help the other Yordles in Zaun. (I didn't even spot a single Yordle in Piltover while scavenging the backgrounds on my rewatches!!)

Considering how new Shimmer is in the series' universe by Yordle lifespan standards, that means Smeech hasn't been a coked-up vape-smoking creature for more than a bunch of years. What was his life before?? When did he decide to start replacing his limbs with machinery, to make himself stronger and feared by Zaunites? When did he become a chembaron?? Chemtech is older than Shimmer, so he might have been a cyborg way before the events of the series, but it's fascinating (and sad, not gonna lie) to me that despite being possibly older than any of the other authority figures in Zaun, he has never managed to rise to Heimerdinger's level. No wonder he's such a rage-filled poisonous critter, no wonder he wants to take the throne of Zaun at any cost, to be "the one smiling in the end". And yet, despite all of his efforts, he is still fueled by and addicted to Shimmer, created by Silco's goons. Forced to depend on a creation of humans, in his pursuit to become stronger than them.

(also while I'm not a fan of episode 7's happy AU universe cuz it all feels like simplifying and undermining the complexity of Piltover's oppression in favor of an easy good ending, it DOES make me wonder how Smeech's life would have turned out in a universe without Shimmer? We don't see any of the Chembarons in the ep 7 universe so it makes me curious)

[writerbuddha]

The core of that interpretation is that "she lost the will to live" is the cause of Padmé's death. However, I have four issues with this:

The medical droid explicitly and clearly and repeatedly stated, it has simply no explanation for why she is dying. "Medically, she is completely healthy" it says, "for reasons we cannot explain, we're losing her.... we don't know why [she is dying.]

It's proposed that Padmé responded with traumatic stress with "give-up-itis": developing extreme apathy, give up hope, relinquish the will to live and die, despite no obvious organic cause. However, she is not going through the stages of "give-up-itis", and she is not showing any symptom of apathy. In fact, she experiences joy when she is looking at her children and she is dying in a state of hope, insisting, there is still good in Anakin Skywalker.

If the droid is familiar with the medical condition of losing the will to live as a cause of death, a.k.a. "give-up-itis", why it states, "medically" she is completely healthy and denies that it has any explanation?

The movie itself is not supporting the idea that she died of a broken heart. I am not buying into the "Palpatine drained the life from her to resurrect Vader" theory, because that power became canon only with Episode IX.

I have my own explanation. The older one is that Padmé's connection to Anakin allowed her to feel his emotional torment of turning into Darth Vader, just like she was able to feel Anakin's emotional pain in the "Padmé's rumination" scene, and this experience of oneness was lethal when Anakin not just physically, but spiritually burned up, and the torment of fear, anger, hate, aggression burning away Anakin and leaving the charred shell of Vader.

I developed the new one after I heard Lucas summarizing attachment in an interview as: “If you have a bird in your hand and you hold it too tight because you don't want it to go and fly, eventually you'll crush it. The important part is to let it go and fly off and be on its own. It will come back. And the love will be even stronger.”

I think, Anakin's attachment to Padmé - grasping her, clinging to her, grabbing her, not wanting to let go of her, holding too tightly - that manifested itself in him reaching out with the Force and grabbing her, choking her, didn't end when he let her go on Mustafar.

Visually, it’s important to note that the audience is left without any clue, apart from Sidious makes it clear that it was Anakin who killed Padmé in his anger, and we could see him angrily grasping into her, and she is choking. From that point, Padmé is dying, and as Anakin becomes more and more Vader, her condition worsens. Everything is pointing to the notion of suffocation. It was shown numerous times that the Force, for it is greed or compassion, knows no distance. Padmé felt Anakin’s pain in the scene, Padmé’s ruminations, Leia felt Luke in Empire Strikes Back and in Return of the Jedi. Also, Obi-Wan and Yoda are both attuned to the Force as a whole, feeling the shifts from Light to Dark in Revenge of the Sith and in A New Hope. Anakin was still grasping into Padmé, even after she was taken to the edge of the galaxy, hold on to her so strong, that he crushed her soul, spirit, Living Force, killing her. When he finishes his transformation to Vader, entirely giving himself away to his greed, selfishness, self-centeredness, fear, anger, hate and pure attachment, taking his first breath as Darth Vader, Padmé takes her last breath and dies.

So, "she lost the will to live" doesn't mean, she lost the conscious wish to be alive. It should refer to “will to live” like “testament of the will of a living body to cling onto existence” or “the patient is at the will of her body.” Padmé, as a living thing, her biological form lost the "will" to function, to live, to uphold and preserve her, to cling into existence. The medical droid describes the dying process, not the cause of her death – what it was repeatedly stated that was beyond its understating.

How could Padmé tell there was still good in Anakin? Was it a force thing or just unwavering faith?

I don't feel that "just unwavering faith" carries the right connotations. She sure had trust and confidence in the fact that good cannot be fully eradicated from someone, as good and evil are conjoined and interdependent and consisting each other, but this wasn't exactly a new information for Obi-Wan, that's not the point of her last words.

Padmé knew that there is still good in Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the same way Luke and Vader knew that they're actually father and son: "Search your feelings. You know it to be true." I think it's appropriate to call this a "Force thing", but it has nothing to do with one's natural ability to wield the Force, rather, it's the Force itself, that encompasses all living things but also goes beyond them all. It's to know things in the heart, through the heart, it's being told by the little voice inside you, it's being told by your inner feelings. So, she knows this for a fact, and because of this, she dies in a state of hope and profound confidence that it all will be fine, rather than in a state of despair, and she is using her last breath to share it with Obi-Wan.

Also, I'm pretty convinced that Padmé and Anakin were connected when Darth Vader was born, so she was able to actually experience the unity with him, sharing his being, thus, being able to see and feel that goodness within Vader. Just like Luke was able to reach out to Leia in Episode V, that ounce of good that was left in Anakin was able to let Padmé know that it's there and waiting to be given power to.

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (24) || atz

The ship, for the first time since you stepped upon it, is completely silent.

As silent as grave, the Treasure drifts through the night, lost and aimless. You’re seated where you first started upon this ship, at the main mast, waiting for your judgement.

The deck is completely void of anyone.

Your fingers come up to touch the crystal hanging around your neck. The crew can’t bear to look you, your mere presence like a stain in their eyes. It’s your fault. It’s your fault the ship ended up in such disaster. Your fault Yeosang got shot. Your fault that Seonghwa has lost his only chance of making amends.

You can’t find it in you to cry anymore. Wrung dry, every bit of you completely exhausted, you simply want to close your eyes and sleep for eternity, uncaring and unknowing of everything around you.

You’ve had enough. You’ve done enough. You just want to sleep.

San is tending to Yeosang in the sickbay, whose life and death hangs in the very balance. Even exhausted, the healer refuses to stop keeping vigil over the navigator, afraid that with every second that passes he might slip into darkness, that every breath might be his last.

You haven’t spoken to a single person since the battle ended. The only one who managed to comfort you even just a little was Jongho, who gave you a tight squeeze before going below deck with the rest of the crew to lick his wounds.

You shouldn’t have come to this ship.

You hear heavy footsteps on the floorboards behind you and you instinctively know who it is. They stop behind you, a tense silence settling in the air.

“Captain wants to see you.”

You can’t muster the energy to answer the quartermaster. All you do is push yourself to your feet, and for the first time since the battle, your eyes meet.

His stare is one of barely restrained fury and anger, you can feel it radiating from him like a burning stove. From the look in his eyes, he probably wants to hurt you in every painful way possible, but he keeps his fists clenched at the sides, his teeth grinding as he fights to maintain a facade of calm.

You wish he’d hurt you. At least that might distract you from the crushing anguish in your chest.

But he doesn’t, so you simply get up and follow him.

Right before you stop at the captain’s cabin, your hand lingers on the doorknob. Wooyoung had been in the captain’s cabin before you, explaining the events of the night before.  Are you ready to face the eyes of your captain and crew, to take the punishment for your lies?

You aren’t and you never will be, but you push the door open anyway and step inside.

The first thing you see before you is your captain, sitting at the desk. His back has been treated with San’s most potent cleaning spirits and as much healing energy he can spare, wrapped with a light gauze to prevent infection and numbed with one of your master’s anesthetic concoctions, but you still have no idea how he’s physically able to sit upright before you.

Wooyoung is seated at the side, head bowed against his chest. He’s picking at his shackles, something you know he does when he’s upset about something, and your heart twists in your chest.

When you step into the room, he doesn’t look at you.

Your captain’s face is unreadable, completely inscrutable. It’s like the first time you’d met him, all over again, when you had been terrified of him, fearing for your life. It’s like the beginning, when Mingi had forced you to your knees in front of the captain, and you had felt more than learned exactly how dangerous this man was.

But at the same time, it’s not.

Now, the cold sting of reality is like a steel blade to your chest. The crew had picked you up from nothing, given you warmth, comfort and a home. They had given you a name, protected you like you were one of their own, and made you family.

And the only thing you had given them in return were lies.

Your captain’s one green eye meets yours.

People often say that eyes are the windows to the soul, but you can read nothing from your captain, and it scares you.

“Tell me everything.”

So you do. You tell him everything, the truth, unfiltered, gushing from you. How you truly had no memories the day you had awoken. Hearing the voice of the sea monster in your mind. Your visit to the sea witch. How you had single handedly caused the whole mission to fail, effectively knocking over the first domino in a line, and essentially screwing everything up for the Treasure and its crew.

The whole time, neither Wooyoung nor Hongjoong say a word.

When your story ends, Hongjoong merely meets your eyes coolly in spite of the agonizing pain he must be in, shifting to look at you. It’s as if he’s never met you, never shared any memories with you, never cared in the least about you. Your blood turns to ice.

“Thank you for telling me.” He replies calmly, but you recognise the expression on his face. It’s a cold, silent anger, one that grows in the chest and wraps its poisonous vines around the heart and lungs, slowly choking its host with emotion. “I’ll decide what to do about this at a later time-”

“Captain!” San bursts into the room, you whirl around in shock to see your master at the doorway, tears spilling over his eyes. Dread crushes you in vice grip at the sight of your master’s face.

“Yeosang’s dying.”

The words are like a sledgehammer to your chest and for a moment, you feel like the air has been knocked out of you. Wooyoung’s eyes darken in horror.

“What?” The gunner breathes, so soft and so desperate, mirroring your own feelings. You can’t even form words to voice the emotions raging in you.

San’s desperate, tear filled eyes meet yours. “I can’t do anything to save him.” The healer chokes out, body trembling from trying to keep in his sobs. You feel like someone has just swung a hammer at you. There’s silence as everyone takes in the severity of his words.

“We’re losing him.”

It isn’t enough. San’s healing powers aren’t enough to replace all the blood Yeosang has already lost. The musket wounds are too numerous, leaving the already weakened navigator vulnerable to infections. Yeosang is going to die, and it’s all your fault.

There’s a sudden violent breaking sound and a scream almost leaves your mouth, but it remains lodged in your throat. Your captain has just sent a fist through his desk, and there’s the crunch of the bones in his hand shattering. Blood trickles between his broken fingers and torn skin, but the expression on his face remains unchanged.

It terrifies you.

“Captain-” San begins to say, but Hongjoong gets to his feet and leaves the room before any of you can say another word. The healer dashes after him, and you’re left alone in the room with Wooyoung.

“Wooyoung-” You begin to say, but he cuts you off with a stare so piercing you can feel it physically hurting you.

“Don’t speak to me.”

You recoil, the words like a whip to your soul. Wooyoung has never, ever spoken to you this way before. There’s something dark in his eyes, something brimming with hatred, pain and anguish, and your heart sinks when you realise that it’s all your fault.

Your fault.

“I wish…” Wooyoung struggles to force the words out through a clenched jaw, hands fisted so tight his knuckles are white. “I wish you’d never come with me on this mission.”

You feel like he’s slapped just slapped you across the face.

“I wish…” He continues, grinding his teeth to the point you can almost hear his molars creaking. You continue staring blankly at him. “I wish that you’d died that first battle after Raguza.”

Pain, so physical and so real, buries itself like a sword in your chest.

“I wish… I wish you’d never come onto this ship.”

Your heart shatters into a million, tiny pieces. Part of you wants to make amends somehow, but something in your mind tells you it’s impossible.

“Wooyoung-hyung-” You try to say, reaching for him, but he knocks your hand away. The look in his eyes is one of terror, like those of a wounded animal, and your heart sinks in your chest. But worse, he looks betrayed, silent fury and hurt rippling under his skin and brimming in his gaze. He trusted you, and you deceived him. “Stay away from me.” He spits, eyes cold as ice. With that, he spins on his heel and leaves, never once looking back. The door slams behind him, and then you’re by yourself in the captain’s cabin, trying to process everything that has just happened.

They hate you.

For the first time since you joined the crew, you feel utterly alone.

You slump to the ground like a marionette whose strings have been cut, unable to keep yourself upright anymore. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

If only you hadn’t come to this ship, the sea monster wouldn’t have come for them.

Your fault.

If only the sea monster hadn’t attacked them, the crew wouldn’t have fired their cannons in Navy infested waters.

Your fault.

If only they hadn’t fire their cannons, the Navy wouldn’t have attacked and the ship wouldn’t have stopped at Tortuga.

It’s all your fault.

If the ship didn’t stop at Tortuga, Seonghwa wouldn’t have seen the hanging incident.

You’re nothing but a burden to them.

If you hadn’t dropped the book during the mission, none of this would have happened.

Seonghwa would still be happy and smiling. Wooyoung would be cheerful and messing with everyone on board. Captain wouldn’t have had to endure such torment.

Yeosang would still be well and alive.

You hunch over yourself on your knees, mouth open in a silent scream as you bury your face in your hands. Why did you have to exist? Why did you have to escape that prison cell?

You wish… you wish…

You wish that you’d died the day you’d awoken.

You don’t know how long you stay in that position, but you don’t want to move an inch. You want time to stay this way forever, until the ocean dries up and this world is a scorched wasteland, until the stars themselves burn into nothingness and you are nothing more than a pile of bones.

But then the ship rolls with the waves, and you hear the sound of something wooden scraping against the floor. It manages to pull you out of your sorrow for a short second, your eyes glancing up to see what has ruined your moment of grief.

Under the bed, you see a dark shape shifting with the pitch and roll of the ship, and you frown. Then it comes to you.

“If I don’t make it… Beneath my bed… In captain’s cabin… there is…”

You lunge forward with desperate hands, tugging the wooden chest out from beneath the bed frame. It’s clean, not covered in dust like you’d expected, meaning it must have been put under the bed just recently. Your trembling fingers struggle with the latch and finally, the little iron bar slides free of its catch.

The lid swings open easily and you discover the inside of the chest is full of papers. They’re all of different sizes, different types of material and thickness, some with messy scribbles and some with clean lines, notes jotted neatly on every piece.

In Yeosang’s handwriting.

You realise every piece of paper has been torn out of some book, all with some sort of red marking on them. You pick up the first one you find.

In Egyptian culture, they believed that the god Khnum created children of clay, before placing them in their mother’s womb.

The second piece.

Incan mythology states that Viracocha, god and creator of the universe, formed humans from clay on his second attempt of creating living creatures.

It can’t be what you think it means.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Finally, you pick up the piece of paper nestled at the bottom of the chest with shaking hands. This one is done completely by Yeosang’s hand, every word and letter in his writing, and you clutch it to you as you read it aloud.

“In Jewish folklore, there were anthropomorphic beings of clay, constructed from the earth. Just as humans were constructed from clay with the breath of life (a soul) by the Creator, humans attempted to create humanoids from clay as well.”

“Who made you?”

“These could usually only be crafted by immensely powerful beings, such as mages or magicians.”

“I am unworthy of looking upon her face, the one who you have made a deal with, the sea witch!”

“The magicians used them for all sorts of different purposes, such as spell casting to more mundane tasks like housework. They were crafted with shells of clay, made in the image of man, and animated with powerful magic. However, due to the weak state of the bodies, they often crumbled to dust in a few months.”

“I can’t believe I got to lay eyes on a vessel that has only existed for a moon!”

“They were called-”

You feel your heart stop beating the moment your eyes touch that single word. You understand everything now. Why Yeosang was so desperate to hide this from you, to save you from yourself, to spare your heart from being shattered into a million pieces like a broken jar of clay. He was only trying to help you, to keep you from the truth. The word leave your mouth as if you’re in a trance. It’s your identity, who you are, what you are. And it’s like poison on your tongue. “Golem.”

Yeosang had known what you were the whole time, an animated lump of clay. The paper slips from your fingers and you turn them over in shock, staring at the smooth skin, the lines of your palms. Clay.

A empty, hollow husk without a soul.

Your body is an illusion. Human in form, but nothing more than a puppet made of dirt. You are a golem crafted from clay. For a moment, you raise your arms and are terrified whether you’ll see cracks will appear on your skin.

Yeosang sacrificed his life for you. He chose to take not one, but three bullets, for a piece of clay.

You sink to your knees.

Sea Witch.

Made.

Humans.

Clay.

Golem.

A deprecating chuckle leaves your mouth. So does another, and another. Your laughter grows in volume, then you’re laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all and how true all of farce has turned out to be. Tears leave your eyes, but at this point you don’t even care.

A pile of clay crying? You’d laugh at the thought, except for the fact that you are the pile of clay.

I wish you’d never joined this ship.

The words didn’t hurt as much anymore. You knew what you had to do to make things right again. You burst from the captain’s cabin, thinking of Yeosang, dying in the sickbay, who knew about what you were, and still chose to save you regardless.

You’d never managed to thank him.

Well, you would now.

You’d make everything right again.

After all, no one would mourn something made of clay.

[vintagedolan]

mixtape | track ten

| masterlist | faceclaims | playlist |

Indiana’s mental health class was in her first semester in the pre-med program. Abnormal Psychology, PSY 249, in a stuffy room in a building on the far side of campus. She’d hated it. College was supposed to be challenging, her program was supposed to be the most rigorous, and yet the class was a breeze. They went through condition after condition - depression, PTSD, anxiety, schizophrenia. The inner workings of the brain, the chemical imbalances, the medications that would help people come back to themselves. She passed the class with a 101%, stowed the knowledge in a seperate folder in her brain for safe keeping, and moved on at the end of the course. But she kept one piece of paper out, one piece of knowledge that didn’t make sense.

Voluntary Emotional Detachment. It was a relatively new idea in the world of psychology, seeing that many of its characteristics could fall under depression. That wasn’t what confused Indy. No, that came when her professor lectured on the voluntary portion. 

“Emotional Detachment is a useful tool sometimes, when it’s used purposefully. For example, if you have a toxic family member in your life, you may voluntarily emotionally detach yourself from them. It’s a defense mechanism, especially during times of trauma. You’ll find yourself numb, unable to feel even if you wanted to. It happens with loss sometimes as well, where you can’t feel the gravity of what you’re losing. Your mind knows what it can withstand, and sometimes, it pulls back. It shields you from the cruel world we live in. It protects.”

Indy had scoffed in her seat, so loud that her professor looked at her and frowned, which was enough to have her blushing red and keeping her head down as she scribbled notes for the rest of the class.

It was the one time she’d ever been reprimanded by an academic authority. Professor Upton pulled her aside before she could escape out of the lecture hall doors. 

“Ms. Cross. You seem like a bright girl, but I don’t appreciate the disrespect.”

“I’m very sorry professor, it won’t happen again.” Indiana had practically stumbled over the words to get them out, her palms sweaty on her backpack strap as she held it on her shoulder.

Indy had a million explanations, but she knew that her professor didn’t care to hear them. And they were lies anyway. The true reason she’d scoffed was something she didn’t want to share.

It was because her professor had made it seem so easy, to just turn it off. Emotionally pull the plug, to sever your ties to someone.

She’d scoffed because if her brain had the capability, and it hadn’t moved to protect her when her mother died, shielded her from the aftermath of unimaginable pain that she’d endured, she wasn’t so sure that she was at all intelligent after all. 

But she understood why now. 

It was because her mother dying had made sense.

Not in the grand scheme of things. Not in a karma driven universe - there was no justifying losing a light as bright as Nicole Cross in a world that had checks and balances, a world that cared. 

But physically, it had made sense. 

Nicole’s cancer started in her pancreas. Stage III when they found it. 13.3% survival rate. And it spread like wildfire. Indiana threw herself into her books, looked for anything, some medical breakthrough that someone had missed. She looked into drug trials, she looked into synthetic pancreas research. All the while, her mother’s cancer took over cell by cell, multiplied and multiplied the way cells are built to. And when it reached her brain, it took over her brainstem. 

When it got to that point, Indiana heard the four words that she would never forget.

“She’s done. We’re done.”

They had echoed out, bouncing off the bleached linoleum, making a cold room even colder. Her father’s voice had never sounded so unfamiliar, and she was glad that her mother was sedated when she broke down. There was no detachment, only raw, searing pain unlike anything she had ever experienced. She sunk to the floor, ragged sobs finally breaking free when she realized what she’d known was coming was finally happening.

The fight was over. It was time to let go. 

Charlie hadn’t cried. No, Charlie stood still as stone in the corner of the room, eyes unblinking as she stared at the shell of her mother in her hospital bed and willed it to be a dream, a nightmare that she would finally wake up from. 

And then, she remembered where she was. She remembered who she was. And she picked her little sister up off the floor and held her in her arms, like she always had when Indiana was hurting.

 Without the vital cues from that little piece of Nicole’s brain telling them to, her heart stopped beating and her lungs stopped asking for air, and she died. 

And it made sense.

This didn’t make sense. His words made no sense.

There was no one to hold Indiana Cross now, and she had a new set of four words that would haunt her.

“I can’t do this.”

------------------------------------------------------------------

Six days. Grayson’s thoughts ate him alive for six whole days. He lived through the odd limbo that the world seemed to find itself in on the days between Christmas and New Years. A pause in the spin on the axis, a time to reflect on everything the year had brought, and what the next one had to offer.

Even in his daze, Grayson could only remember one other December he’d tried to hold onto so hard. 

His father’s face was at the forefront of his mind, but not the images that he wanted to see. All he saw was a look of disappointment in his eyes with each hour that Grayson’s lips stayed pressed together while Indiana rested, oblivious in his arms. He towed the selfish line of wanting to enjoy the last days he had with her while his guilt threatened to drown him with every breath he dared to take. He hid it well, as he always did when he really needed to. They had their date nights, with movies and postmates since he still didn’t want her out in public with him. They stayed in the tiny house again to enjoy nature, snuck into Jet’s a few times. He smiled when he was supposed to, went through the motions that were expected of him. It had worked for him before, for videos, for time with friends when all he wanted to do was sit in his room and speak to no one. The only person he could never fool was Ethan, who kept his distance, but stayed close enough to keep his eyes on him. He thought he had everyone but his twin fooled.

But Indiana noticed. Indiana always noticed. 

Nicole had called it the curse of intelligence when she was younger. 

“Sometimes,” she’d said. “When you know too much about how the world works, how people work, you see things you aren’t supposed to. You understand things you aren’t supposed to.”

Indiana was 12 at the time, sitting on the other side of the kitchen table. 

“What do you mean mom? How can you know too much?”

“You’ll know one day. You’ll see.”

The way she’d said it made Indy sit her fork down, her stomach suddenly tight. 

And now she’d seen.

On New Years Eve, Indiana Cross leaned in to kiss her boyfriend as the clock struck midnight, on her couch in her apartment, with her picture frames on the shelf over their heads and the sound of fireworks outside her window.

Grayson didn’t lean in. 

He leaned back, and he spoke.

“I can’t do this.” 

Indiana took a breath. In. Out. Filled her lungs and emptied them again.

She’d noticed. But she hadn’t let herself believe it. She’d pushed every little nuance she’d seen, every time that Grayson’s eyes didn’t catch the smile he tried to put on his face the last few days- she’d pushed it to the back of her mind and justified it. He was just worried about leaving, he was just stressed about Bekah like she was, he was just tired. She’d seen every sign and she’d justified it. 

She swallowed air, her throat painfully dry.

“What?”

“I can’t do this, I’m sorry.”

Indiana did what she always did, what she’d always done her entire life when anything didn’t make sense, when anything went slightly off track. 

She tried to understand why. 

She racked her brain for everything that she’d done, every syllable she’d spoken, and every movement she’d made since that first day at Frazier outside, with him in his green pants on the bench, and her with two Jet’s coffee’s in her hands. 

Her fingers were cold as she pressed her hands together. There was a finality in his tone that had her chest tight, her ribs pressed together, muscles pushing on bones and squeezing everything until she felt like she was going to suffocate. She opened her mouth. 

“Oh.”

Grayson had his head in his hands, leaned over his knees on the couch. He shook in an unfamiliar way, like he was choking, and it took Indy a moment to realize that he was crying. 

She felt like she was in a dream, watching what was happening to her from the outside. It was like slow motion as she watched the girl on the couch curl in on herself, her walls reconstructing at ten times speed - he’d been so gentle with each brick that she didn’t even realize they’d been taken down. He spoke after a moment of heavy silence.

“I love you, but we can’t. I can’t do this to you.”

Her brain refused to process it, refused to even try to dissect it, and she spoke the only word she seemed to be able to find.

“Oh.”

“Indy I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I should have said something sooner, I wanted to, I’m an asshole for waiting this long.”

She swallowed and wrung her hands together.

“When is your flight?”

His tears streamed faster somehow as he blinked.

“Tomorrow afternoon. We have meetings on the 2nd.”

In. Out.

“What time?”

Grayson looked up. Indiana was sitting straight up, head up high. The only thing moving were her hands, which she kept squeezing together over and over. It scared him, to see his once bubbly girl so still while his tears continued to fall. He couldn’t read her. 

“I’m not sure, I’d have to check. Dee, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

She smiled her hospital smile, the one she used when she got bad news, and it was somehow worse than if she’d yelled at him.

“Indy.”

“It’s okay. C’mere, it’s okay.”

She opened up her arms for him, and she didn’t even seem to notice that they were shaking ever so slightly.

Grayson’s eyes were too blurry to see the quiver. He was fighting himself again, wagering whether sinking into her arms would only cause more damage in the long run. But he knew how it felt to be there, and he wagered that it would be worth whatever hellish guilt it was sure to bring later. So he leaned in, and just a single touch from her had him sobbing again. He pressed his face into her shoulder with so much force that she fell backwards a bit, and suddenly they were intertwined with him above her on the couch.

His pain was physical. She could feel it, in the way his body shook and paused when he tried to suck in a breath that his lungs desperately needed, the wet hot air soaking through her shirt with every exhale he choked out. His tears were warm, the salt already stiffening the fabric that soaked them up. Her hands found his back, and she lifted a finger to his skin before she paused. 

She didn’t know what to write anymore.

Instead, she moved her hand to his hair, scratching at his scalp, holding him steady. He was heavy against her and she closed her eyes, felt him there with her, took in the weight of him. 

“Shhhh. It’s okay.” We’re okay. “You’re okay.”

Her words only made Grayson cry harder when he realized what she was doing. He came back to himself for a moment when he realized that all the shaking wasn’t him. He could feel the way she held onto him and shook, so subtle that he could tell she was fighting it. His stomach churned at the thought of how bad her pain must be if it was causing a reaction in her body, and he moved to push himself up.

“Indy.”

She clung to him, panic breaking through the protective numbness that had taken hold so quickly. If it was the last time she was going to get to hold him, she’d hoped it would have lasted just a bit longer. 

But she took a deep breath and she let him go, forced her arms to release him.

It hurt worse to see his face again, see the pain in his puffy eyes. She reached back out for him, swiped her thumb across his cheek to catch a tear. Her fingers got distracted in the feeling of his scruff, and she scratched over it for a moment, indulging herself, willing herself to remember the way it felt on her fingertips.

“It’s okay.” It was a reflex to her, and she couldn’t stop herself from saying it.

“It’s not though. Indy, it’s not okay. I’m hurting you.”

She didn’t have a response to that. Her eyes fell to her lap, picking at her fingernails. 

“I’ll be okay.” It was a lie, but she would have said anything to bring some of the light back to his eyes. Her pain she could manage, but his was her breaking point.

“Please don’t do that. Please don’t pretend on this.” He brought in a shaky breath, blowing it out quickly.  

In. Out.

“What do you want me to do?” 

“I want you to scream. I want you to be pissed at me, I want you to be mad that I waited this long to tell you! You haven’t even asked why,” he cried. Indy wondered for a moment why it always hurt more to see boys cry. It seemed to be more painful for them somehow - heavier. 

“I think I know why.” 

He sat up a bit more at her words. Waiting.

“It was a chance thing, you being here. Us meeting. Your life is entirely different than mine, and you have your people in LA. There’s… I mean there’s plenty of girls there who don’t have the stuff I have. Class, work -” Her voice cracked at the end, Grayson’s outline blurring just a bit as she looked up.

“No. No no no, hey,” he stopped her, hands hovering over her for a moment before he gave in and rested them on her arms, holding her without fully pulling her in. “It’s not that. I promise you, it has nothing to do with anyone else. I want you, I don’t want anyone else. But I know you, and your dreams are here, and I’m not gonna take that away from you.”

Indiana’s confusion only grew. She’d only heard one thing he’d said.

“You want me?” Her voice sounded pitiful, even to own ears. 

“Of course I do.” He spoke it like it was the only possible truth, and a flicker of hope rose in her gut, fighting it’s way up. “Indy of course I do.” 

“Then… why?” 

“Remember when we went to LA?”

His words brought back a flood of memories. The two of them kissing in the ocean, the secret beach, sleeping in his bed with his green wall, piggyback rides around the house, the late night Cudi drives.

“Yeah.”

“You remember how much you hated it there? How bad you wanted to come back home? And what did I promise you?”

Indy couldn’t find her voice. Her brain was otherwise occupied, watching her memories being drug through dark ink, staining them. 

“I promised you I would never ask you to leave New York.” He finished it for her. “And I meant it. But I can’t stay here Indiana, no matter how bad I want to.”

“Your life is in LA.” She repeated her words from earlier, monotone and unattached. Her heart fought with her, begged her to tell him everything. Tell him that she was going to start working at Jets and start therapy so she could fly out to see him. Tell him that she was halfway through her UCLA application essay that she’d been working on on nights he fell asleep before her. Tell him that she’d drop everything and follow him anywhere. 

“You’re the most giving person I’ve ever met. You give so much to everyone but yourself. But I’m not letting you give up your life for anyone, especially not me.”

She wanted to be mad that he assumed that she would. But there was an understanding, a sadness in his eyes that reminded her that he knew her better than she had ever realized. 

“We could make it work.”

He looked like he wanted to believe her. 

“You deserve someone who is here for you.”

“You’re here for me.” Her mouth was starting to outrun her mind, a dangerous game that she usually couldn’t stop once it had begun.

“You deserve someone who is here to celebrate your accomplishments every day, not someone in a different time zone on the other side of the country.”

“We could make it work.” It was more of a plea that time, and she saw it register across his face, the pain it caused him. 

“Indy.” 

“People do long distance all the time, we could do it.”

“We aren’t long distance people,” he said, but Indy’s mind was already running.

“We could set up a facetime schedule, and you wouldn’t have to visit that much, I’ll be busy with school anyways. And if we hate it, then we can stop. We just have to try, we’re never gonna know unless we try it.” 

Grayson was silent for a minute, which was enough of an answer. He’d known this was coming. Ethan had warned him that it would happen, that Indiana would try to reason her way through it. He’d told his brother that he had to be confident in his choice or he’d get swayed off course.

Grayson wasn’t sure he’d even be confident in his choice to remove himself from the best person he’d ever known. But knowing that in the long run it would be better for her was the only thing that let him cling to the last bit of resolve he had. 

“Indy.”

Her lip quivered, and he felt his heart crack. 

“Please,” she said.

“C’mere. Just c’mere.”

It wasn’t a surrender, but an offering of comfort. Indy knew it would hurt her later, but she didn’t have the willpower to resist it. She crawled into his lap, and the last of the numbness that had started faded away. In his familiar arms, she lost her last semblance of control.

She crumpled into his shoulder, broken sobs shaking her frame as she clung to him, let him hold her as she wrapped herself around him, as if it would somehow make him stay. 

He rocked her as she sobbed, accidentally pressing a kiss to her shoulder before he realized what he was doing. It was torture in the rawest form, worse than he could have expected to be the cause of her pain. 

“I’m so sorry Indy, I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her over and over, hoping she believed him. She pressed her face against his neck to keep her eyes closed, pretending for a moment that everything was fine.

“I love you.” 

The tears returned to his eyes, and in a moment of weakness he turned and pressed a kiss to her hair, her temple. His lips had missed her. 

“I love you too Indiana Cross.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Her finger traced against his back. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. She wished she could erase it somehow when his breath caught in his throat again. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he shook his head.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” His voice was muffled by her skin, seeing that he was unwilling to lean back from her.

“I know this is hurting you too,” she said, and was met with the feeling of more of his tears on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“The only thing you did was make me love you too much. Don’t be sorry for that.”

The way her heart squeezed wasn’t natural, and though she knew the phenomenon wasn’t as everyone said, she was sure it skipped a beat in her chest. She squeezed him tighter to her, like she had so many times. She synced her breathing to his, laid her head on his shoulder, committed the sound of his heartbeat to memory. 

Their tears dried out over the next hour, the numbness of acceptance starting to blanket over them. Neither of them dared to move a muscle, Grayson especially. All he did was rub his hand over her back, up and down the same as he had been since she climbed into his lap. They both knew that moving would mean having to figure out what to do next. 

It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Indy wasn’t sure, and she was scared to look at a clock, to see her fleeting time left with him wasting away.

“Did you pack your bag already?” Her voice was too loud even though it was barely above a whisper, pulling them back into the reality they wanted to avoid.

“Yeah. It’s at home.” 

Indy could see it in her head, his Jersey room, quiet and waiting for him with his orange duffle on the bed. But her stomach filled with a wave of nausea as she realized what it meant.

“So you have to go home.” 

Grayson’s hand paused on her back. She was holding her breath.

“I… I didn’t know if you would want me to stay.” It was the first time he could remember not knowing what to say to her. 

Her arms tightened around him, her breathing getting a little bit more ragged. He ran his hands over her back quickly, desperate to soothe her.

“Shh, shh hey, I’m staying. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yet.” She whispered, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he flinched. “Sorry, that was harsh.”

“Not undeserved,” he said, turning and resting his cheek against her shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have. So whatever you need, I’ll give it to you.”

Indy sat up. Her eyes had settled a bit, her tears washing the jellyfish blue into a shade of navy that Grayson didn’t recognize. It made his breath catch in his chest. 

“Whatever I need?”

“Whatever you need.” 

She looked at him, and her head tilted to the side just slightly. A small smile tried to make its way to her face, but her lips quivered. 

“Could you kiss me?” 

He paused, watching her fight off her tears with a deep breath. 

“Is that what you need?” 

“Just… just one. I didn’t know, you know. That the last one was gonna be the last one. And we’re here, and I just thought, that maybe - ” 

He kissed her. For the first time, he was hesitant. He kept his hands to his sides, not wanting to push anything too far, not wanting to make anything worse somehow. Indy barely reacted either, too nervous to do something wrong. 

They pulled back from each other, breathing shallow, nerves taking over as they tried to figure out what to do. 

“Thank you,” Indiana said. 

Grayson swallowed hard, watched her eyes as they flickered between his own. 

And then they were kissing. Really kissing, chasing the taste of each other like air at the end of a sprint. His hands went to her face, holding her to him as her hands went to his torso, bunched up his shirt and tried to pull him into her, closer somehow despite the fact that they were already touching everywhere that they could be. The desperation was palpable, in the way their hands roamed and fell back into their familiar patterns. Indy sucked in the first real breath she’d taken in since the clock had struck midnight, breathed him in as best she could, trying to lose herself in him like she always had. But her mind wouldn’t shut off, reminding her that it could really be the last time she had him like this. 

He felt her tears, first on his thumb that was holding her cheek, and then against his own skin. It took all his willpower to pull back from her lips. She let him, her breathing shaky as she tucked her face back down into his neck.

He picked her up effortlessly, standing up from the couch and moving them to her room. The Cudi vinyls seemed to mock him, especially when he laid down and stared up at them on their small shelves. Indy didn’t move an inch, staying wrapped around him, laying on top of him when he rested back against the pillows. 

Time moved quickly, and Indy still avoided the clocks, scared to see what had already passed. 

Grayson wanted to hear her voice. Wanted her to talk to him, wanted to commit every single thing she said to memory, but he wouldn’t ask. She had given him enough. 

He closed his eyes, focused on the feeling of her fingers over his shirt, tried to make out what shapes she was drawing like he always did. He felt her hands travel up higher, up his neck to his skin, scratching over his beard.

Her fingertips were gentle as they moved up, over his lips, around his cheek to his eyelids, down over his nose, then to the other side of his face. She traced the pattern a few times, and Grayson waited until she was on his nose to speak.

“What’re you drawing?”

“You,” she said. “Memorizing.”

He didn’t know how he still had more tears to make, but they started to fall anyways, down the side of his face over his temples. 

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

“I know. I wish you could stay just a little bit longer.” 

“Me too.”

He traced a heart on the back of her arm.

“I love you too.”

The truth of it was, she didn’t know how to not love him, and that was the scary part of it all. She couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t love him with everything she had in her. 

She didn’t know who she was without it anymore.

“If you ever change your mind, I’ll be here you know,” she said. He took in a deep breath, pressing a kiss to her hair. 

“I’m not gonna do that.”

Her heart sank.

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I can’t ask you to do that, to wait for me. I’m not going to string you along, that’s cruel. Once I’m back in LA, I want you to move on.”

Indy shook her head against him, burying her face in his chest. 

“No.”

“Indy.”

“No.” Her brain refused to process it, to imagine a single scenario where she felt anything good without Grayson by her side. She knew it wasn’t healthy, and she vowed to never tell anyone but in that moment, she reserved herself to be miserable every minute that she wasn’t with him. 

“I know it’s not gonna be easy, but you deserve to be happy. And I’m sorry that I’m gonna make that harder, but you’ll find somebody who can love you better than I do.”

“Does that mean you’re going to just move on when you get back to LA? Just forget about me?” There was a spite in her voice that she didn’t like hearing in her own voice. But Grayson didn’t flinch. It was almost reliving to him. He was getting what he deserved, what he’d earned for breaking her heart. 

Her anger meant she cared.

“Indiana I’m never going to forget you. If you think I could, I was an even worse boyfriend than I thought.”

“No, don’t do that.” She pushed off his chest and sat up. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to make me think that the last three months were bad. That’s the last thing I have to hold onto. Those were the best months of my life, you don’t get to take that.” 

Grayson didn’t have an answer. 

“Okay.”

“You made this decision for the both of us, I don’t get a say in it. So I’ll hold onto it as long as I fucking want to. You don’t get to tell me I have to move on.”

“Okay.” 

“Okay then,” Indy said, reaching up to wipe a tear away. She sucked in a breath and pushed it out through shaky lips, trying to hold herself together.

“Sorry.”

Grayson shook his head. “Indiana you can be mad at me. You should be mad at me.”

“I am mad at you.” 

She knew it wasn’t in the way that he meant. Because she wasn’t mad that he’d broken up with her. Because deep down, under all the pain and all the love and all the worry, she knew he was doing it for her. He was doing what she would never have the guts to do, even if it was the right thing.

No, she was mad at him for infiltrating every single part of her. Every thought, every muscle, every cell of her body contained him. Every hope she had for her future was molded around him. He was there in everything. His curls were in the dreams she had about her future children. His smile in the back of her mind every time she closed her eyes. His eyes, bright and green, always there.

“Do you want me to leave?” There was no malice in his tone, only genuine concern. 

She pondered it for a moment. Thought about what it would look like, for him to actually walk out the door and never come back through it.

“No.” 

“Okay. Then I’ll stay.”

“I can drive you to the airport. So Ethan doesn’t have to come into the city.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him.”

“Okay.” 

They stared at each other for a moment, staying very still, waiting for one of them to make a decision. 

“We should probably sleep.” Grayson checked his watch. “It’s 4am.”

“Okay.”

Another pause. Another moment of uncertainty that they’d never had to navigate.

“Do you want me to take the couch?”

She shook her head, and with a sigh, she gave in. Grayson could finally breathe again when she settled against him, pushing her hand up under his shirt, running her fingers over his ribs. He wrapped her up in his arms tightly, focused on the feeling of the weight of her on him.

And he closed his eyes. 

His alarm went off at 9:45. As soon as it sounded, Indy turned her face into his chest, a new wave of tears coming forward as the realization hit her

It was time to let go.

He just held her and kissed her head for as long as he could. She didn’t know if she’d slept. If she had, it was only for a few moments. She’d kept waking up, reminding herself that he was still there. 

They barely spoke. No one ate breakfast. He hadn’t brought a change of clothes, and parts of his shirt were stiff from the saltwater of both their tears. It took all the strength he had to keep it together when he closed the apartment door behind him for the last time. 

She took his hand in the elevator, and his tears fell, making his cheeks even colder when they walked outside. It felt odd, for him to climb into the passenger seat with her in the driver’s as they continued down the road. His mind was flooded with memories, with doubts. He couldn’t stop picturing the smile that would spread across her face if he told her that he’d changed his mind, that they could try. 

He fought it, kept his mouth shut, reminded himself that this was his decision and he had to deal with the repercussion of it. 

Indy was quiet too, evidence of her earlier decision to not hurt him anymore than she already had. She didn’t want to make it any harder on either of them. No matter what, she still loved him, and she didn’t like to see him hurting. She kept herself superficially distracted, focused on the colors of the cars that passed, and the number of the exits on the highway. 

The airport had never come quicker.

Grayson’s chest tightened when they pulled off. He couldn’t ignore it anymore, couldn’t push it down and stay strong like his dad had always told him to. An image of him hugging her goodbye over her console came to his mind, and he panicked.

“Would you want to come in? Like park and come in? I know you hate airports, and you can say no. But… I’d like to give you one last good hug before I go.” 

She merged into the lane that led to the parking as her tears began to fall. He ran his thumb over her hand until they got out. They found each other again behind the car, Indy linking her arm around his and holding on as tight as she could as they walked. She was ten times more anxious than the last time she had walked into an airport, her usual pertifying fear of Grayson being on a plane the least painful part. 

It was hard to keep her sobs quiet but she bit them back as best she could. Grayson heard them, shifted so he had his arms wrapped around her as they walked. Her eyes were blurry with tears but she noticed the bright yellow and orange bags before she spotted Ethan. He gave her a sad smile that she did her best to return. From the look of pity in his eyes, it was even worse than she thought. 

Her vision was obscured by Grayson, who moved in front of her. She clung to the front of his jacket with both hands, unable to look him in the eyes. She didn’t know if she could handle it. 

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, tears so full that they dripped off her chin and onto her shirt. 

“I’m so sorry.” His own eyes burned as he watched her. But her next words caused the worst pain he’d felt in a long time.

“Can we have a redo?” As her voice shook, his last barrier fell, and he was sobbing - the kind you try to choke back and keep quiet as he crushed her against him, burying his face in her hair.

“Not this time baby. Not this time.” 

They weren’t sure how they could cry harder, but they did. He swayed as he held her, tight and warm. Ethan wiped his own tears away with his jacket sleeve as he checked the boarding time on the tickets. 

“I love you. So much,” she said. 

“I love you too. I’m so sorry. If you ever need me... “ he trailed off, unsure if his offer would only hurt them both more down the road. She understood what he meant, and she took a deep breath. In. Out. 

“Right now, I need you to turn around, and I need you to walk away, or I’m never going to be able to let you go.” 

“Okay.” 

He didn’t move. She finally looked up at him and held herself together, determined to look at his face in person for the last time without the distortion of tears. 

“Take care of yourself, okay? Be safe. Be happy. I’m always gonna love you.” Her voice was as steady as she could make it, and that somehow hurt him worse. 

“Forever,” he whispered, and then he was kissing her. He wrapped her up in his arms as tightly as he could, held her to him until he forced himself away, only keeping a hold of her hand. 

Ethan, always in tune with his brother, seemed to recognize his cue. 

Indy nodded and squeezed his hand one more time, and then she let him go, their fingers tracing over one anothers until they fell away, the distance too much.

A numbness spread over her body as soon as he let her go, and she watched from her spot as he disappeared down the hallway and into the security line.

She didn’t remember getting back to her car. But somehow, she managed to crawl inside and lock the doors before she crumpled forward onto her steering wheel.

[pendragon-ally]

Okay so @fishoutofcamelot​ gave me permission to write a fic based on this post and I finally got around to doing it. I’m really sorry for the wait, I hope you like it!

Someday...

Arthur is mortally wounded in the battle of Camlann and Merlin's worst fears are realised in more ways than one.

*

   Pain.

Merlin is no stranger to it, has learned since the day he arrived in Camelot just how many ways he can hurt.

Some of the pain has been physical, like the cramps in his stomach when he’s eaten breakfast too quickly in his rush to attend to Arthur on time or the throbbing ache in his temples the morning after the odd occasion he’s spent time in the tavern with the knights and the white hot pain when he’d fallen off his horse once when out on a hunt with Arthur and had sprained his arm so badly he’d thought he’d broken it at first.

But with the right treatment, those pains heal without any evidence that they were ever there.

Emotional pain is different. Like the grief Merlin has felt each and every time he has lost somebody he loves (and all those he barely knew) in his efforts to fulfil his destiny and protect Arthur with everything he has.

Merlin has always succeeded. Until now, he’s never failed to keep Arthur safe.

But in a split second everything changed, the world tilted and began to spin backwards and now—

Well now Merlin knows that grief and love can sometimes go hand in hand to create a pain so blinding he can barely breathe through it because Arthur is dying, has spent two days slowly spilling the crimson of his life through a wound left by Mordred that Merlin can’t heal no matter how hard he tries.

His magic feels like a useless, trembling thing inside him, terrified that it’s about to lose everything. Arthur has grown quieter over the last few days, and Merlin tells himself that it’s because of the wound, the long journey to Avalon— anything but what he secretly fears is the truth.

That now Arthur knows he has magic, that he’s a sorcerer, he’ll never see him the same way again. Whatever the outcome of this journey, Merlin fears he’s lost Arthur anyway.

But still he’ll try. He’ll try because he can’t let Arthur die. He can’t.

They don’t have the horses, they don’t really have anything that can help them at this point, Arthur keeps telling him to stop, that he can’t go any further but Merlin won’t listen.

He can’t let Arthur die.

And yet when Arthur slumps down heavily, abruptly and without much warning, all but dropping on top of Merlin, this time feels different somehow.

Like an end that’s coming, an end they can’t outrun no matter how hard they try, no matter how powerful Merlin might be— because they can’t beat Fate unless Fate wants it to be so.

“All your magic, Merlin, can't save my life.” Arthur’s voice is barely there, more gasping breaths than words and Merlin’s heart recoils in his chest like it already knows what’s coming.

“I can.” Merlin can’t give up— will never give up trying to keep the most precious thing in the world to him safe. “I’m not going to lose you,” There can be no me if there can be no you.

Merlin’s whole body is shaking but he staggers to his feet, holds Arthur tight against him and tries to help him stand but his efforts quickly prove futile. Arthur has no strength left and Merlin finds himself balancing on the edge of his own personal nightmare.

“Just, just leave me.” Arthur says as firmly as he can manage, struggling against Merlin’s embrace.

Merlin feels cold all over, as though every drop of blood in his veins has turned to ice. “No, Arthur why would you say that?” he holds Arthur tighter still, heart in his throat and tears on his face. “I won’t leave you alone to die.”

“I will not die in the arms of a sorcerer,” Arthur rasps, looking up at him with sapphire blue eyes full of so many emotions there isn’t enough time to process them all. Merlin wonders whose heart he can see breaking.

“I’m not just a sorcerer, Arthur, I’m your friend and I don’t want to lose you, not now. Not like this,”

Arthur makes a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “I’m already lost, Merlin, and after all it was you who said that there can be no place for magic in Camelot.”

“I didn’t mean— Arthur, don’t do this, please, not now.” Merlin begs, presses a hand to the side of Arthur’s face and sobs when Arthur flinches away as though Merlin struck him. “I’m sorry, I love you more than anything and I’m sorry.” Merlin’s whole heart comes spilling out before he can stop it, desperate and terrified and close to tearing itself apart. “Please Arthur— please don’t send me away.”

Arthur struggles again, shaking his head and reaching out to grasp at the grass in an effort to pull away. “Merlin, if you’ve ever cared for me at all just… leave! ”

Much too loyal and much too in love to cause Arthur more pain in what are now so clearly his last moments, Merlin, for once, does exactly as he’s told.

Swallowing hard, Merlin takes a single deep breath, ignores the smell of metal, blood and a life almost lost and inhales the familiar scent of Arthur beneath all of that, warm and still comforting even though the world is ending. He imagines that he can still smell the lavender water that he’s spent the better part of a decade combing into the golden blonde of Arthur’s hair.

Merlin exhales—

Lays Arthur down on the grass gently, squeezes his eyes shut and dares to press a whisper of a kiss to Arthur’s head, so light Arthur won’t even feel it—

And lets him go.

Merlin doesn't open his eyes again until he’s taken several stumbled steps away. Far enough that Arthur won’t be able to see him but close enough that he’ll hear Arthur’s voice should he call for him.

But no words ever come.

All Merlin can hear is the gentle rustle of the trees around them and the ragged inhale exhale of Arthur’s breathing, growing more fragile by the second.

From here Merlin can still see the tears on Arthur’s face, the flutter of his eyelashes and the way morning lights them up like blue flames even as they flicker into embers. Merlin can feel Arthur’s heart splitting, wonders if Arthur can feel his too… wants nothing more than to take Arthur in his arms and hold him one last time because this is it— he’ll never get the chance again. He knows this, but still he chooses to respect the wishes of his king.

Merlin wraps his arms around his own body and holds tightly, instead.

His magic reaches out though, frightened but determined, to wrap itself around Arthur like an invisible blanket to still his shaking hands and settle his fearful heart. Merlin’s magic does what he cannot do himself— it holds Arthur tightly, whispers silently that it loves him and that it’s okay,  it’s okay to go, Arthur, do not be frightened.

Moments later Arthur stills, his eyes close and when he breathes out Merlin prays for a rasping inhale that never comes. It’s over.

When Arthur lets go of this world and his soul begins its journey to the next, Merlin feels it like the earth has been torn out from under him and he’s falling into an endless pit of black emptiness, like he is being crushed from all sides and his bones are cracking beneath the pressure, the fractured pieces piercing his organs until there’s no blood left to flow— Merlin feels it like his own soul has been taken too.

Perhaps, at least in part, it has.

“Arthur!” Merlin shouts, hoarse and broken.

Unable to stand there a second longer he rushes back to Arthur’s side, drops down next to him and takes his pale face in both hands. “Arthur!” he chokes on a sob, almost forgetting how to breathe. “No, stay with me Arthur please… come back. I said I’d protect you or die at your side and I’m still here so don’t you dare go somewhere I can’t follow. Arthur! ” He shakes Arthur though he knows there’s no point, presses their foreheads together and waits for the earth to fracture around him, beneath him, all around him.

He probably won’t even notice. The world as he knows it is already ending.

Instinct and anguish has Merlin screaming for Kilgharrah, his voice tearing from his throat and echoing back at him until all he can hear is his own grief.

Only the sound of Kilgharrah’s great wings breaks his cries. “Kilgharrah. I would not have summoned you if there was any other choice. I have one last favour to ask.”

His old friend needs no further explanation, carries both he and Arthur to the lake, sets them down carefully and watches silently as Merlin desperately tries to drag Arthur to the small boat that will take them to salvation.

“Merlin. There is nothing you can do.”

Merlin chokes back a sob, refuses to let Arthur go. “No, there has to be something… please, I’ll do anything just tell me how to bring him back.”

“I am sorry, young warlock,”

“I can’t lose him! I love him!” Merlin shouts, tears streaming endlessly down his face, and Kilgharrah looks at him like he’s known this all along, like Merlin’s secret heart has never been a secret at all. “Our destiny cannot end like this. Arthur can’t die hating me…”

“As I have told you before Merlin, a half cannot truly hate that which makes it whole.” Kilgharrah tells him kindly, gently, but it does nothing to soothe Merlin nor does it slow the black hole of grief and loss expanding inside of him.

Merlin shakes his head, holds Arthur tighter than ever like his embrace somehow has the power to change things. There’s no point of course, Merlin doesn’t have the power to change anything.

He never has, and he feels stupid for ever believing that he could keep Arthur safe until old age. “It makes no difference. Arthur is gone— destiny means nothing anymore…” Merlin trails off, unsure of what he’s even trying to say in the first place.

That he doesn't know what he’s supposed to do now. That he failed to do the one thing he’s dedicated his life to. That maybe, in the end, it wasn’t about destiny, Camelot, or even Albion.

Maybe in the end, it was Arthur himself that Merlin was desperate to see grow and flower for years to come. Now that will never happen.

“Though no man, no matter how great, can know his destiny, some lives have been foretold. Merlin... Arthur is not just a King— he is the Once and Future King.” Kilgharrah tells him. “Take heart, for when Albion's need is greatest, Arthur will rise again. It has been a privilege to have known you, young warlock— the story we have been a part of will live long in the minds of men.”

When Kilgharrah takes flight a moment later, Merlin knows it’ll be the last he ever sees of him.

Merlin is truly alone.

After that, the world blurs. Time has no meaning and Merlin can’t recall the things he’s done mere moments after he’s done them. He doesn’t remember throwing Excalibur into the lake, doesn’t remember going through the motions of laying Arthur to rest in that little wooden boat, tears on his face as he whispers goodbye over and over even though he knows he’ll never truly let go.

Arthur is Merlin’s forever, always has been, always will be— even if that forever must now be faced with half of his soul shrouded in shadow, lost in darkness without Arthur’s light to guide him.

Maybe one day, Merlin will learn to shine on his own.

But for now Merlin stands there on the shores of Avalon, trembling and sobbing, his heart in pieces scattered to the wind as he watches that boat carry Arthur away across the still water until he can barely even make out the shape of it.

What he’s supposed to do now, Merlin does not know. He can't linger here any more than early morning mist can but he knows that he can’t return to Camelot either.

How can he stand there before Gwen, his Queen, before the knights who have always treated him like a friend and Gaius who has been like a father to him, and tell them that he failed?

That Arthur— that their beloved king is dead because of him.

 There can be no place for magic in Camelot.

Arthur couldn’t forgive him, in the end, and so Merlin can’t forgive himself. Not now. Not yet, he needs time. He needs to grieve, to stitch closed the wounds torn into him with Arthur’s passing and he can’t do that in Camelot.

And so Merlin does the only thing he can. He takes a deep breath, turns away from the lake and he walks. Where to? He has no idea; all he knows now is that he’s leaving the same way he arrived all those years ago.

Alone.

Perhaps he’ll return in the future. Perhaps Kilgharrah’s words will ring true, Arthur will rise again and will need Merlin by his side once more. Next time, Merlin won’t lose something so precious.

Next time… someday in a far off future not yet written, Merlin will get the chance to right that which was done wrong and do things differently.

Someday, Merlin’s I’m sorry and I love you more than anything won’t be too late.

Someday, his king will come back to him.

Someday, Arthur will understand, will forgive Merlin and maybe, just maybe—

Arthur will love him in return…

… Someday.

 *

Can also be read on AO3!

[sickficenthusiast]

Bloody Aspirations (an angstfic).

I used an angsty prompt from here on tumblr and I wrote this all in like a few hours and I can barely hold my eyes open anymore so I hope y’all enjoy whatever this is lmao. TW for descriptions of death (don’t worry it’s not permanent or anything).

Her hand is the only thing her senses become aware of as they fuzzily come back into focus, and then it's the lances of pain flaring out from and around the multiple bullet wounds bubbling a bloom of crushed poppies down past her ribs, collecting in an already spacious pool beneath her. Before she could regain herself too deeply, Pearl clenched her hand within Helen's, as if afraid if she didn't she would get away from her somehow, but that wasn't to be realised.

  The sky cast a perpetual veil of rain down toward the quiet earth, creating the only tangible sound Pearl was capable of hearing, as if the world had fallen asleep to its ethereal calmitive song, as she presumably had as well. All from the back of her throat to the base of her lips felt warm, frothing, metallic sludge rising up from her collapsing lungs and running down her chin and deeply bruised cheek to the grass under her head. Her insides felt as if they had been trimmed in velvet, also as if they had come to an absolute standstill. She couldn't get a full breath in without stabbing pain driving itself through her chest, and a broken, gurgling whine of delirious anxiety frothed about in the base of her throat, the ensuing tears indistinguishable from the pouring rain above them both.

  "He..." her voice viscerally sputtered around the blood filling her failing airways, warbling adrenaline causing a louder whimper of anguish-riddled agony to rip free of her, blowing from her mouth in a way which couldn't be reversed. She shallowly coughed out productive rasps which brought further outpourings of frothing blood to dribble free of her mouth, the thundering world before her pulsing in and out of her already blurring focus, cracks running through it showing her that her glasses had been broken. Something even thicker worked its way up her throat, streaming from it without pause in trails down both cheeks. She gasped in panicky bursts of bloody air, even this panic felt beneath a layer of indistinction, softened somehow by this sense of peace she had never felt mimicked in all her years. But it was a terrible peace, one that just proved to stress her further. She was dying. She was dying and she wasn't ready. Fuck, she wasn't ready, she couldn't go yet, not here, not lying beneath this frigid sheet of showering rain, not where no one knew where they were. Their friends knew nothing of what had happened, how would they be notified of this, what about their goddaughter, how would any of them fare? And removed from them, she didn't know how to die. She had no idea and yet her body somehow knew, this was pre-programmed in her after all. Pearl knew she could feel her soulmate's hand clutched in her own, but she'd made not a sound since she had regained herself, was she really even there at all? Her dying mind could just be giving her some form of comfort to see herself out within, what if she really was alone, dying all alone on the side of the road, unable to see Helen one last time, to tell her how much she was loved and how much she was sorry for leaving her? She couldn't do this alone, God she couldn't do it at all!

  "Pearl..."

That simple word had Pearl dissolving into further exhausted hysterics, the choked off voice of her love right beside her. She wasn't alone, Helen was here with her. Oh God, had that meant that she was dying too? Now if she thought intently, she vaguely remembered the slurs being thrown at the both of them, before her body became emblazoned in bullets. The shots had continued even after they weren't meeting her any longer, and could hear Helen's awful screams after she herself had hit the ground, a similar thudding sounding beside her not long afterwards. They had both been shot, she remembered now, the way their hands had been holding each other too telling of their sinful fucking god-hating love for those homophobic bastards to handle. They were both going to die for their love, and she supposed if there was to be a way to go, why not make it for something you stand for. Perhaps this was just to hold your lover's hand while walking, but even this inconsequential sentiment was too much for those fuckers to handle, and certainly was bigger than it initially appeared.  

Pearl gently smacked her damp lips as her streaming eyes drooped, dizzy radio-fuzz billowing throughout her head. Every time she went to speak her mouth opened uselessly, a gurgling noise of intent leaving it in place of words. It took a great many tries before she could clear the mass of blood in her throat enough to rasp out a simple,

"Helen?" She fought to regain her failing breath as her hand was suddenly clenched even harder, although this wasn't a great increase, Helen coughing an eerily similar cough before responding in a expired voice much like her own,

"Don't be scared, love."

Her voice reeked of softened grief, and Pearl recognised the tone all too well. This was the voice Helen used to comfort a dying patient, to ease them onto the other side as best she could. Now it was being used on her. Fuck, this couldn't be happening, God or whoever was up there please save them both. But a heavenly idea of salvation is to be forever within its company, so to ask of Them to save them, that would more than likely come in the form of bringing them both to the other side. But this wasn't right, they were still so relatively young, their entire lives laid before them, together through every single moment. But it would appear that they had prematurely reached the end of their time, and to look at the possibility of anything After, truth would be kept upon their word: they truly would be together forever, neither having to be without the other for a moment.

"'m scared, Helen, wha's happ'nin'?" Pearl heard Helen give a hybrid between a chuckle and a sob, before answering her with tears clearly lurking beneath the folds,

"Leaving."

"'m no' read'y."

"Don't think anyone ever is."

With every moment passing and every word Helen said, the panic was loosening in Pearl's chest, giving way somewhat for the peace to envelope her more completely, encase her within a warming gel-like substance as the world lost its solidity little by little. All that seemed to exist in this space with her was her wife, her hand and her voice, and that suited her just fine. Speaking becoming harder with every passing second, she mumbled wetly,

"Are we dying?" Helen gave a slight sob in response, before responding restrainedly,

"Baby girl, I love you."

  Pearl rolled her head somewhat to the side to vaguely see Helen sprawled on her side beside her, blood soaking through the entirety of the shirt covering her torso, the same crimson froth gathering at her mouth as Pearl saw how intensely, yet silently, she had been crying. There was a horrific distance behind her reddened eyes, seemingly trying everything within her power to stay awake. Despite how this broke Pearl's heart, she could do nothing to show this.

"I can't go first, just see her out. She doesn't deserve to die alone."

That had been Helen to speak, but her mouth didn't physically open, and Pearl moaned a tiny sound of confusion at this organic buffering, slurring out the last words she was to ever utter,

"I...love...you Helen, it's...been an honour, I...'m leaving..." She would try to talk over and over after this, but the process had begun. She was dying, and speech came first. A tremulous inhale sounded beside her, a gasping sob permeating it, before Helen choked out,

"'been the best honour, babe, biggest I can imagine. You're such a good girl, I'm right here baby and I'm not leaving, you...you go right ahead, Pearl, I'll, I'll g-g-guide you away."

Pearl's eyes fell closed at her words, her mouth gently hanging open as the peace choked her soul, the world losing all permanance save for her hand. She was floating now, suspended in a warm space, quiet except for the broken beauty of her wife's voice. Even the festering, blazing pain of her wounds faded to nothing, as if vanished entirely. As Helen spoke to her, her mind reeled with memories rich with the essence of them, and their friends. Their found family. Every instance of their happiness played out before her eyes anew, seemingly playing on mute as Helen was the only sound existing in her world,

"you're doing beautifully my love, I'm not going anywhere, you can let go for me, I'll meet you there. Wilson is waiting for us both, and, and Perry, our parents, everyone's waiting. You can let go, I've got you. Let go, love. Pearl, let go."

Pearl was then suddenly yanked from her body in one fatal swoop, floating above the scene with that same peace still accompanying her, still working within the process, but Helen's tone had changed. Now she was violently sobbing, audibly panicking as grief and impending death swept over side-by-side.

  "Oh God, whyyyyy! Pearl no, I can't do this alone I can't, please come back I can't do this oh God please bring her back I need her please I-" the only reason she found any pause in her tirade was the choking of blood that flooded hard against her windpipe, spluttering a bubbly spattering of blood up over her chin, trailing down it to her weakly heaving chest. Pearl couldn't move now at all, and as soon as she was able, Helen continued,

"Please I'm scared, please, Pearl, bringg, bring, ba'..." Her words weakened with every syllable. She aspirated blood for the final time, going completely limp.

It was after witnessing that heartbreaking scene that she could do nothing to assist in, Pearl awoke, finding herself rocketing upwards into a sitting position, a screaming sob se had been too far gone to expell leaving her mouth as Helen's dying words replayed over and over in her ears. She thrashed wildly in an almost demented manner, continuing to scream out her lungs until the adrenaline set nausea into motion, an she gulped back the sickly urges and lowered her face down into her hands, breaking into tears as Helen screamed and hit the ground beside her.

  "Pearl? Oh God, sweetheart, you're alright, you're okay I promise." That was Helen. She was okay. Pearl felt her strong, yet gentle arms wrap around her rocking form, and immediately turned her face into her chest and clung to her, feeling her and smelling her and hearing her. They were both okay, neither of them had been shot, and they weren't dying. She felt so incredibly ill, she stifled the urge to hiccup and tried to get as close to her wife as humanly possible, as the alternative was too frightful to comprehend in her mind.

  "Helen, oh fucking God you're okay!" she exclaimed through her violent tears, "it was awful, just awful babe, we were both shot and, and we died but you let me die first so I wouldn't be alone but, but, but, but, but, but you were alone and I heard everything and you were panicking and, and I couldn't help, and, oh fuck you can't ever die Helen I can't handle it! I watched it just now, I can't ever again I love you, I love you I love you I love you, baby I love you!"

"Easy lovie, easy," Helen cut in with her emotions clearly audible, "shhhh sh sh sh. You're right, I'm okay. Nothing is happening right now, we're in bed all safe and all sound, I promise you. I promise you with all I am that we're safe." As Helen spoke she cupped the back of Pearl's head and calmingly rubbed her other hand up and down the curve of her back, and little by little, just like in the dream, Pearl's panic lessened, until all it was was her exhausted crying, as she rested against Helen's chest and leaned into her every touch. Things really were okay, she wasn't lying. No one would hurt them. Helen was telling the truth. Pearl kissed her neck with the touch of barely a stolen breath, as she listened to Helen's continued words,

"Baby may I?" Her hand was suddenly felt against her forehead, leaning into this movement as Helen remarked sympathetically,

"oh, my poor love! You're melting, that feels like one nasty fever you have! Probably caused your nightmare and everything."

Now that she mentioned it, Pearl was feeling as if that was the case, a heavy pounding present in her head and an unsteady trembling within her aching bones. She had no idea where she would have picked this up from, but it was regardless undeniable, and she would take this reality over the alternative she had experienced that night a million times over. She barely felt the kiss breathed against her forehead, before she became aware of Helen pulling the blankets back up over her, easing her down against the mattress.

"That yucky dream is over, baby girl, now just let me take care of you, I'll try and make you feel better. I'll be right back, I'm just gonna grab some stuff that should help, you'll be okay for a minute?" Pearl nodded as her eyelids drooped, feeling herself dropping off quite quick now that the initial panic had dissipated, and as Helen got up to retrieve what she needed, she smiled, grateful to be on this side of things now. They really were okay, and as soon as she shaken whatever had caused this whole mess, she would do well to ensure Helen knew just how much she appreciated her, and how much she was grateful that, even in dreams, Helen would insist she go before herself, even in dreams ensuring Pearl was okay over everything else. If she could be a quarter of that kind of woman, Pearl would be happy.

[hdawg1995]

i just wrote a bunch of lore to explain a homebrew mechanic for a dnd campaign i'll never run, enjoy.

Mana Burn: the mage's desperate attempt at survival turned deadly.

Most mages know what mana burn is; its when you try to use a powerful spell without the proper training and the magic used to power it comes from your soul rather than the natural magic around you, blessed unto you, from the tomes of knowledge you’ve studied, or from the natural reserves of magic you have. It's painful, it causes physical damage that takes years to repair let alone reverse, and it makes using magic dangerous. It's why you don’t see first time casters slinging fire balls or casting lighting as soon as they pick up a book or realize they have magic in their blood. Yes, there have been times where, with a powerful focus or through the help of an elder, that younger mages have used these powerful spells. Mana burn doesn’t accrue in these instances because the magic is drawn from the focus or the elder.

When mana burn becomes severe- when it consumes the soul a significant amount- this is called Soul Burn. It happens more often than you think but not as often as you expect. Mana burn, in most cases, causes severe damage and can be healed- Soul Burn can not be healed. Not in the same way, anyhow. You see, the science behind Mana Burn is that you no longer have mana sufficient enough to cast the spell, so it is being drawn from another source that is just as powerful. Over time mana is restored to the body, focus, environment, allowing the damage to the soul to be healed. The science behind Soul Burn is that you have no mana to use and the spell was being drawn from your soul, and then you kept casting spells. Eventually, there won’t be a soul left. In most cases, however, there is just enough soul left but the natural magic of the individual starts eating away at it. The body has realized there are other sources of magic within itself and, ironically, in an attempt to heal itself from the mana burn, it is using the soul.

Signs of Soul Burn include being able to cast spells without mana, numbness in one of the eight Mana Pools of the body, feeling overheated or warm, a loss of wit or mind, extreme bouts of confusion, and pain when coming into contact with healing magic. It is that last part that makes surviving Soul Burn difficult. The signs of Soul Burn only begin to be seen shortly after Mana Burn symptoms and often around the halfway point for the patient’s constitution score.

Now, let's be honest here: you are never going to encounter Soul Burn in the wild. It is theorized that dragons die of Soul Burn when they near old age, and most magical creatures do not get too powerful for their kind as a natural defense against Soul Burn. you WILL encounter Soul Burn on the battlefield if there are any magic users. You WILL encounter Soul Burn in adventures. You WILL encounter Soul Burn in magic academies. On the battlefield mages giving it their all can result in Mana Burn- casting a desperate spell to wipe out an army, trying in vain to revive a fallen comrade- so Soul Burn is very easy to slip into. Adventures trying to show off or just trying to survive slip into mana burn sometimes. Most are responsible with their spells but desperate times call for desperate measures. Soul Burn in adventures is the easiest to spot as there will be at least two other people to monitor the subject’s condition. The magic academies are stressful. I can’t tell you the amount of times emergency services were called in when a student has gone though late stage Soul Burn in an attempt to pass a final. Its heart breaking, since the academies often have an attitude of “life happens”, and your friend pushing themselves to exhaustion just to get a good grade is no different from your friend pulling an all nighter and going through mana burn. This is a good time to explain Late Stage Soul Burn.

Firstly, it is not pretty. The magic user is all but gone mentally; typically they are dazed and latch onto a phrase that has been in their mind for various reasons, only responding to stimuli with the phrase. Their eyes glow as if they are casting a spell and that glow starts to be seen in their veins through their skin. At this point there is very little hope for the caster; their soul is all but burnt out, their constitution in the negatives. Eventually the individual will start to burn from the inside out. This is both literal and spiritually. The soul has been burnt away leaving smoldering bits of spirit that are now burning the body. Their eyes are embers as light escapes from their nostrils, mouth, ears, and any wounds or other openings in the body. The skin darkens like charcoal and flakes away to reveal more light. Hair and clothing is burnt away as a flame eats away the charcoal of their body leaving a vague shape of fire. There have been exactly three cases of an individual surviving late stage soul burn at this point. The first that many, such as yourself, are told about is the sorcerer who was held tightly by his companion. The typical explanation that is given is the companion was asked to hold the sorcerer (the phrase his mind had latched onto was conveniently “hold me tight and watch me”) and he refused to let him go. The man was supposedly burned very badly but it is theorized he had compressed the flame the sorcerer had turned into, like pressure onto coal creating diamonds. What was left was a living, breathing human sorcerer who’s soul had begun to heal naturally.

The second account was the sorcerer who was smothered by her companions. The typical explanation was when she had entered the flame stage her friend had grabbed a blanket to try and suppress the flames. The result was several burnt blankets and a small explosion as her fire ate away at the ground she had been kneeling on. Eventually a still breathing and living elf sorcerer whose soul had begun to heal naturally. With these two stories alone it would be natural to assume the cure for late stage soul burn is to suppress the flames. However, there are many documentaries that show this could also result in the flames being choked out and the individual dying anyway- rather than slowly burning out, they are snuffed out quickly.

The third telling is that of a cleric who was placed in a tiny hut spell and sung to by a bard throughout the entire experience. The typical explanation is the bard kept the smoke and embers the cleric was turning into within a secure magical dome- the magic did not touch the individual but was able to keep them within. It is theorized this process caused the soul to remain in a small space and the bard’s music was a focus for the individual to be drawn to. The result was a living breathing human cleric. There are a few sections of medical study that believe the reasons these individuals survived was due to the preparation involved (which is explained in the full stories) and the bond between the individuals in the stories. After meeting with two of the survivors (the elf had sadly passed away due to mummy rot) it is clear to me (in both my honest opinion and that of a researcher) I can confirm the bonds have some effect on the soul and it’s capacity to survive soul burn.

To put Mana Burn and Soul Burn into perspective for the non casters, Mana Burn is calculated as the level of the spell you want to cast + the spell slot you intend to use. The total is taken out of the caster’s constitution score. So trying to cast a level 1 spell with a level 1 spell slot while out of mana would do 2 damage to the caster’s constitution. It doesn’t seem like much until you realize most casters tend to have very low health and losing even that much constitution can be dangerous. Soul Burn is calculated as the caster’s level + the spell they wish to cast. The total is then subtracted from their constitution. Remember- Soul Burn happens after Mana Burn. So, how do you figure out when your mage buddy is going though Mana Burn (and you should stop them immediately) or though Soul Burn (and it's too late)? When your caster buddy’s Constitution score is Con x 0.3 - Con (round up. The number will be calculated as negative but that's fine, ignore that). At that point if they cast a spell again, they will start to suffer soul burn. So if your buddy’s constitution is 14, once it drops the 10 they should not continue to cast spells. If their constitution drops to 7 they are in the Soul Burn zone and should be taken to emergency services or secluded away from magic. Watch them carefully at this point- if they don’t seem to get better within the hour (deities forbid they get worse) your best bet is to attempt a restoration spell. It WILL hurt them and they MIGHT pass out. If they do pass out, stop the healing immediately. Your caster buddy could out will the healing and stay conscious, so if they do check them for feeling warm, rather or not they can count how many fingers you have, and if you can get more than a sentence out of them. Once they are back in the Mana Burn zone you can let them rest and heal naturally with rest.

[bitch-for-a-rainbow]

What made us think that we were wise (and that we’d never compromise)

When Kara suffers a serious injury, she turns to the only person she can for help: Lena Luthor. As she receives medical aid, necessary conversations are had and a few reconsiderations of "facts" are made.

btw this was posted about 30 minutes before 5x05 aired

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21254813/chapters/50607092

CH. 1

     It’s a trap. That was the only thought that came through Kara’s brain as she hurtled toward the ground. It’s a trap. They had been here the whole time. Watching them. Infiltrating the DEO. The arrow, or more accurately the harpoon, had struck her in the chest. The chain dragging her to the ground jerked, pulling at the projectile lodged in her right lung. The shaft was an inch thick, and the head was tipped with kryptonite. It should have been an insignificant amount, really. It was so small that she likely would have to be squeezing it in her palm to cause any true power loss. But it was enough. Enough to cause a normally harmless metal harpoon to pierce through her skin and flesh.

     She hit the ground with an earth-shattering crash— literally. The ground around her erupted and formed a small crater where she lay. She could see the glass doors of the DEO balcony. Kara gasped for air, choking on her own breath, her own blood. She needed to get out of here. Now. A pair of sharp heels appeared over the ridge of the crater. Kara shifted her gaze down to the arrow sticking out of her chest. She reached for it, clumsily, hands slipping on its surface. It would not bend. Nth metal.

     “Did you really think you could get away with it? That you could just steal from us and we wouldn’t find out?” Those files, she thought sluggishly, How could they have found out so soon? She reached for the arrow again. There had to be something. Andrea Rojas stepped closer and knelt before her. “Who did you get to steal them? Your friend William unfortunately slipped on the north bridge before he could tell us and I doubt you could just waltz into our facilities, the cape is a bit flashy. Another reporter at CatCo perhaps? Kara Danvers has always been a bit suspicious.”      “Why—” Kara coughed, spattering the ground with blood, “Why would I tell you?” There, a small defect in the chain that attached to the arrow. They must have slipped when trying to set the metal. It wouldn’t have mattered for a human, or even a martian. But she was neither. Andrea fixed her with a piercing, cold stare.      “Because you are not going to die until you tell me who it is.” Kara laughed, the sound was more like a wet wheezing. Blindly, she began twisting the chain’s deformed edge.      “Then I’m afraid,” she spat, “You have wasted your time.” Just a bit more. Just a bit— SNAP. Andrea staggered backwards and Kara streaked into the sky.

     Kara sped away from the DEO, towards the desert. If she got far enough out and then dropped, the scanner would lose her position. Kara’s vision blurred. How much blood had she lost? A craggy dune appeared in front of her; the old DEO base. She felt dizzy. There wasn’t time. She was running out of time— she dived. Changing course just before she hit the ground, Kara rocketed back toward the city. Alex was out of the question. There was no way to get to J’onn’s without attracting lethal attention. Who was left? Who— A gleaming white pillar of a building. A balcony protruding out of its smooth surface. Of course. Kara twisted her body and flew —or rather crashed— into the stone jut. She coughed again, each time there seemed to be more blood. Sluggishly, Kara pushed herself upright. She barely suppressed a whimper as sharp pain flared through her side.      “Hope, move the meeting with Wayne Industries to Tuesday and— Kara? Fuck. Kara!” The fast pattering of heels sounded across stone. Kara looked up dazedly as Lena pressed her hands to the wound in Kara’s chest.      “Hey Lena, you wouldn’t happen to have a first aid kit would you?”  Lena let out a choked sputtering, kicked off her heels and ran down a hall, returning with a large first aid kit. Lena put Kara’s arm over her shoulder as Kara pushed herself inside, studiously avoiding the white carpet. Kara pulled the suit back into her glasses and sadly picked at the now blood-soaked button-up she had been wearing under it. She had really liked this shirt. Lena eased it off her shoulders, focusing on the arrow protruding between Kara’s 7th and 8th ribs— and cursed.      “Jesus, Kara, you need a doctor. My medical experience is limited to genetics and microscopes. I need to call Alex—”       “NO!” Kara’s hand flashed forward, catching Lena’s arm. “No. You call her, you kill us all.” Lena set the phone down slowly,      “Kara, what the hell is going on.”      “I promise, I will explain everything, but the abbreviated version is Andrea is a lot more shady and connected than I thought.” Lena cursed again and pulled on nitrile gloves.      “I hope you know what you’re doing.” Kara laughed,      “Me too.” Kara huffed and focused down on the arrow. “Okay. What we need to do is push it through and out. There is a kryptonite point on the head. That’s the only reason it broke my skin. The longer we leave it in the worse I will get and once we remove the arrow some of the damage will retain because of the kryptonite. It might even scar.” She pressed at the bloody pole in her side,  “If we try and pull it, the head could break off, or it could cause even more damage than it already has.” Lena nodded. “So, what I need you to do, is get out gauze, and when I pull out this arrow, press down on the wound. I just need you to stem the blood long enough for it to begin to heal, Okay?”      “Okay.” Lena got out gauze and Kara pushed herself further upright, placing her hands on the shaft.      “1… 2…” Kara braced herself. “3.” She pushed the arrow through. It took every ounce of resolve left in her body not to scream. Gritting her teeth and pressing her head against the wall, she pushed as hard as she could. Lena stared in barely concealed horror as Kara forced the projectile out her back. Gasping for breath, Kara reached behind herself and pulled. The shaft came free with a quiet squelching. Lena clamped the gauze around both sides of the injury, and was very proud of managing not to retch. Blood spread across the ground in a slow-moving pool, stopping just shy of the carpet.  Kara smiled,      “It worked.”  Lena let out a breath. “You can stop squeezing the bandages now.”      “Right.” Lena laughed, it was tight and harsh. Kara placed her hands on Lena’s and pulled them away from the injury. Her hands were stiff as Kara pried up each finger, whispering soft assurances. At last, the gauze came away, revealing a 4-cornered slit in her flesh. There was a deep, hole like gash in the center where the shaft had been. But it was already ringed in pink, healing skin. The side gashes bore small forming scar tissue on their ends where they had been longer. It had stopped bleeding heavily.      “I’m going to stitch the wound closed, would you hand me the needle?”      “I can do that Kara, you’re injured you don’t have to—”      “Lena, have you ever sewed an injury closed before?”      “...No.”      “Are you honestly comfortable with stitching me up?” Lena sighed in defeat.      “No.”

     Kara smiled, following Lena’s eyes as she ducked her head in guilt. “I’m incredibly grateful of your help Lena, but I can do this, okay?” Lena hesitated and agreed, though she insisted that she could at least thread the damn thing. Kara only snorted— and immediately regretted it. Lena jerked forwards and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. Kara gave her a reassuring nod and took the needle. She clenched her teeth as she drew the needle through her skin. Lena kept her hand on Kara’s shoulder the whole time— until she started stitching the exit wound herself when it became obvious Kara was struggling with it, despite Kara’s continued objections. After watching Kara stitch the front, Lena was fairly capable of repeating the process on her back, though her stitches were certainly less clean (and a lot more shaky). The process didn’t take long. It was very odd, Lena thought, putting away the needle, seeing a wound so healed and yet… not. It was as though her body was healing from the inside out, rather than where the torn skin was closest to itself. You couldn’t tell how close Kara had come to dying. How many scars did her body hide with its healing? How many times had she almost died with Lena completely unaware? God, how many times had something like this happened with Alex, with James, with Winn. Lena remembered Reign, seeing supergirl fall. She had watched Kara fall. Lena threw her body around Kara, squeezing almost as tightly as she had with the gauze. 

     “You’re going to get your shirt all bloody.” Kara mumbled, “That thing probably costs more than my loft.” Lena only held her tighter,      “I don’t care.” She took a shuddering breath. “I can buy a new shirt, Kara, I can’t replace you.” Lena didn’t have to look at Kara’s face to know she was giving her signature dopey grin.      “I’m glad you still feel that way.”      “What do you mean? You’re my best friend, of course, I care more about you than a shirt.” Kara pulled out of the hug, she seemed almost mournful.      “That’s not what I mean.” Kara bit her lip, casting around for the right words. “After everything that’s happened, I’m glad I’m still important to you.” 

     Kara took a breath and looked Lena in the eye. “I know you’ve been lying to me.” Lena recoiled and Kara continued, “Please don’t try and claim you haven’t. I know you, Lena. I’m not blind. Your movements are all rehearsed, your words calculated. You avoid physical contact and what you do give is stiff. I know your ticks, I know how you lie, and you have been lying a lot. I’d guess the only really truthful thing you’ve said to me recently is that you haven’t been sleeping. Besides, ‘you need Lex’s journals to heal?’ Lena, in the prison last year you described reading them to be like stabbing out your eyes.” 

     Lena turned her head from Kara. She pulled off the nitrile gloves and fiddled with them balled in her hands. Kara sighed, “I’m not going to ask you why you did it, or what the truth was. I took those journals anyway because I wanted us to be fixed, but there is no easy fix. You’re allowed to be angry, Lena. I lied to you for years! Being angry is a part of healing, so please! Just... be angry with me.”     Kara’s eyes were imploring, Lena remembered the simulations she had run. There had been hundreds of them, thousands, and none had included this.

     “I— Kara—” Lena floundered for words, anything to get out of this, and it all came out in a rush, “I am angry. I am so, so angry. I hated you. I might still hate you. Everyone lied and you were supposed to be different! You made me think I could be different! And you lied. Over and over and over again. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know anything about you anymore, Kara— if that’s even your real name… I don’t even know your name. One second you were everything and the next— I just—”      “Kara Zor-El.”       Lena blinked. “What?”      “That’s my name. Kara Zor-El.” Kara pressed her lips together, took a nervous breath and continued.      “I love potstickers and donuts and sticky buns and soft sweatshirts and Disney movies. I was born in Argo City, in the Kandor region of Krypton. I have an adoptive sister, Alex. When we first met we hated each other,”she laughed. It took us years to even stand being in the same room. I speak over 35 languages and I learned calculus when I was five. I have a brilliant, beautiful best friend that I would do anything for and who has saved my life in more ways than one. I am the person I have always been. You just know a little more.” Lena said nothing. She just stared. Finally, she reached forward, as if to touch Kara’s arm, and quickly pulled back. She opened her mouth to speak, but seemingly could not find the words. Kara’s eyes crinkled at the corners and she leaned slightly forward.      “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.” Lena searched her eyes for anything: some plot, an ulterior motive— there had to be something. But there wasn’t, just compassion and pain.      “Later—” Lena began, “Later, you and I need to have a long conversation about our relationship, about exactly what happened with Andrea and about—” She broke off, bit her lip and swallowed, “I have this… project, and you—” she sighed, “You are not going to like it.”      Kara smiled, “Whatever it is Lena. I promise, you’re not going to lose me.” Lena attempted to smile back but gave more of a pained grimace,       “I hope so.” Kara stretched out a hand– and quickly snatched it back upon seeing it was covered in semi-dried blood.      “Oh, sorry.”      “I suppose we could both use some cleaning up. You can use my shower while I clean this up.” Kara immediately began objecting,      “No! No! You get cleaned up, I’ll take care of this.”      “Kara, you’re hurt, I am not having you clean.” Kara began to push herself up.      “I’m mostly healed anyway and it’s my blood to clean up.”      “Kara—”      “You’ve done enough for me, Lena. Let me do this for you.”      “Kara, you—” She stopped at the look on Kara’s face. “Fine.” Lena relented, “But the minute you feel any pain, or you bleed or struggle at all you call me. Got it?”      “Yes, Ma’am.” Lena lips pursed,       “I’m serious Kara.”      “So am I. It will be okay, go clean up.” Hesitantly, Lena made her way to her bathroom and Kara slipped off her shoes and gathered cleaning supplies. Sighing, she surveyed the path of destruction she had wrought across Lena’s apartment. Bloody smears and footprints traced their way from the distinctly cracked balcony to the large crimson pool by the fireplace. Kara gathered the bloody linens in a pile near the balcony doors and began to painstakingly scrub the blood from the cement (literally, the bending required was in fact quite painful). She was almost done clearing the last smear on the fireplace when Lena returned, her hair wet and wearing a sweater and soft shorts.      “I can take care of the rest Kara, you go clean up.”      “I’m almost done it’s fine.”      “Kara, I’d prefer we didn’t just dump evidence in a trash can like a novice and I'm the only one who knows where the incinerator is.”      “You have a—” Kara gaped. She shook her head as Lena grinned. “Of course you do. Why not?”      “Come on darling, I can handle some paper towels and a shirt.” Kara opened her mouth to protest, but no words came out. She grumbled as she walked towards the bathroom, still carefully avoiding the white carpet. There were extra bandages outside the shower, and Kara sat her glasses next to them. She undressed her wounds, turned on the water and stepped into the shower still mostly clothed. Kara sighed as already heated water shot from all four walls, hitting her body and flowing pink down the drain. She placed her hands against a wall and leaned into the spray. Slowly, Kara began to peel away her bra and slacks. They were sticking to her skin where blood had congealed. She removed her underwear and just stood under the hot shower for a long while.

     Lena disposed of the pile of contaminated fabric and gauze in the small shoot hidden near the trash in her kitchen. Kara had done a good job cleaning up the blood, all that was left to prove she had ever even been there was a small crack on her balcony and Kara herself, currently standing in her bathroom. Lena was fine. She was fine. What gave Kara the right to feel pity? What gave Kara the right to sit there and tell her to be angry? How dare she sit there and look at her and make her feel so— No. She was fine. She didn’t care. She. Didn’t. Care. 

She cared. Fuck.

     A sharp knock broke Lena from her reverie. Only eight people in the world had this address. Except for one, all would call ahead. That ‘one’ was currently occupying her shower. Even if they knew where she lived, being able to get up to her floor without Lena knowing was another matter entirely. She was cautious as she approached the door, sliding a pistol from its drawer near the oven. She picked up her tablet and silently opened her camera program, which revealed a less than pristine looking Andrea Rojas standing outside her door. Of course she was.      

     She slipped the pistol into her waistband and (keeping a wary hand around it) opened the door.      “Andrea. I didn’t know you had my address.”      “Well, I like to keep tabs on old friends.” Lena snorted,      “Friends? Is that what they’re calling it now?” Andrea gave her a searching look,       “Well, are you going to invite me in?” Lena raised an eyebrow,       “You show up at my apartment, an apartment you are not supposed to know about, without notice, and now you expect an invitation?” Andrea chose to ignore that and swept into the room with the air of royalty.      “I’ll admit I’m surprised you’re actually relaxing for once. I’d assumed you’d have to come up from one of your secret labs.” Lena blew air out her nose in barely contained irritation.      “Andrea I’m rather busy so if you would please—”      “I’m looking for Supergirl.” Well, that was forward.      “Excuse me?” Andrea turned and fixed Lena with a hard glare.      “Supergirl? Flies around the city with a cape and laser eyes? Figure head of the media company I just bought from you?” Lena was forced to use an exorbitant amount of energy to stop herself from rolling her eyes,      “I know who Supergirl is Andrea, my question is why you’re looking for her and why you came here.” Andrea barely seemed to notice the irritation in Lena’s voice, instead, scanning the apartment.      “Look, Supergirl is Catco’s money tree. Half our news articles are about her and I haven’t yet had time to shift our news base. She dies and we’re toast.” Andrea sighed irritably. It was almost believable. “Supposedly, there was a fight involving her and some stragglers from the Children of Liberty trying to make a comeback. My sources say she was injured fairly badly and delirious. I figured she might come here. I know you two are friends.”      “Friends is a strong word.” Lena said dryly. That got Andrea’s attention,      “Ooh, trouble in paradise.”      “You are assuming there was a garden in the first place.”      “Lena, dear, you built her a statue.”      “I hadn’t worked with her yet.”      “Still, if she isn’t here, why do you have a gun in your waistband?” Lena froze. Quickly smoothing out her face, she gave Andrea an incredulous look.      “You come to my apartment at 10 pm, without calling ahead, with no invitation and want to know why I have a gun? You do realize how many people have tried to kill me right?” Andrea tilted her head back slightly, her eyes narrowed.        “Lena! Your shower is incredible! The—” Lena cringed. Kara went stock still. She was wearing one of the short bathrobes Lena had set out in the bathroom. At least she was wearing her glasses. Kara blinked and rubbed her eyes as if to dispel a vision. “There is a person here.” Andrea’s eyebrows were dangerously close to being enveloped by her hair.      “You didn’t mention having… company.” Lena smiled, it was reminiscent of a tiger baring its fangs.       “I did say I was busy.” Kara stepped forward, placing an arm around Lena’s waist. Her face was a similar color to her cape.      “Ms. Rojas, I didn’t know you’d be stopping by.” If her voice had been any higher pitched it would have been inaudible to the human ear. Andrea simply gaped. Finally she cleared her throat and said,      “It wasn’t a planned visit, Ms. Danvers.” Andrea flicked her eyes between the two women. Lena could practically see the cogs turning inside her brain. “Well, I think I’m done here.” Andrea cleared her throat. “If you hear anything Lena, do call.” She began toward the door.      “I— Ms. Rojas!” Kara squirmed and Andrea turned back. “Would you— I mean— I just—”      “Spit it out Danvers.”      “Would you maybe not tell anyone about this?” Somehow Kara managed to turn even redder. “It’s just that nobody knows and I really don’t want to have that conversation, especially if I’m not the one bringing it up and I know it could be a big story but—”      “Ms. Danvers.” Kara snapped her mouth shut. “So long as you two keep away from my cameras, your business is your business.” Andrea actually smiled,      “I’ll admit this does explain, well, a lot. Enjoy your… evening.” Andrea slipped out the door, into the elevator and reached for her earpiece.      “You heard all that. Pack up the team, she’s not here.”

     Kara and Lena remained frozen and silent until Lena’s tablet beeped with the notification that the elevator was descending. Great. Now it worked. As soon as she read the notice, Kara leapt away from Lena as though she had been burned.      “I am so, so sorry. It was the first thing that popped into my head. I just thought that was the best way to convince her she was wrong and if she figured out you were helping me you’d be a target too and I figured you’d prefer this over getting murdered and— Why are you laughing?”      Lena shook as she struggled to draw in breath. She looked up at Kara and simply redoubled in fits of laughter. Kara opened and closed her mouth like a gasping fish. Finally taking pity on Kara, she spoke,      “Kara. I would much prefer Andrea Rojas believe we are having a secret love affair than both of us getting shot.” She grinned, “Plus, that was the funniest thing I have seen in actual years. You made Andrea Rojas sputter like a 5 year old caught with their hand in the cookie jar.” Kara ducked her head and fidgeted with her sleeves.      “You sure?”      “Yes.” Lena took Kara’s cheeks in her hands and lifted her head up to eye level. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She raised an eyebrow, “Besides, for a friend like you there are no boundaries, remember?” Kara seemed to glow as her face split in a toothy smile. “Come on, you shouldn’t be standing this long with your injuries.” Lena carefully took Kara’s arm and sat her on the couch. Kara winced heavily at the angled motion. They sat together then, Kara resting her head on Lena’s shoulder, and after a few minutes Lena recognized the even breaths of sleep. Kara isn’t her friend, Lena reminds herself, Kara Danvers is not her friend. But maybe, a traitorous corner of her mind whispers, maybe she could be.

[noctuascion]

cryptage can have a little angst "i need to cry but i don't think i can." AND a little fluff "you didn't have to do that for me." as a treat :D

They can have a little angst. As a treat. Also I'm sorry if I mess up somewhere I'm awful with keeping to the prompts fnsns

--

The sickening crunch of bones being crushed between mechanical fingers seemed to echo for miles around. Everything had gone mute, like sound was sapped from the land around him. There was no gunfire, no battle cries or orders shouted; there was deafening silence that haunted the Legend, paralyzed with a familiar sensation of fear.

A yellow clad corpse was tossed effortlessly aside, like he weighed nothing, like he was nothing. Wide hazel optics followed every movement the body made, falling bonelessly to the ground. The man's body eventually faded to be replaced by a death box, like this was just a game—and it was a game, just a bloodsport; no one died and no one got hurt.

But the information couldn't reach the shaken hacker's mind, frozen body refusing to move even as the simulacrum slowly approached, glowing amber optics focusing on his prey.

"Skinsuits are fragile little things, aren't they?" Revenant said, raising his gun toward Park's prone form, aimed for his head. "Don't worry. It'll only hurt a little."

The hacker hadn't even had the chance to properly process everything before a Peacekeeper shot was heart. However, Revenant had been holding a Flatline, not any shotgun, and the simulacrum was actually now dead on the ground. Reality came crashing back in the form of Makoa Gibraltar, their other teammate. The normally smiling visage was replaced with a look of worry, knelt down beside Park and the hand not wielding the Peacekeeper placed upon his back.

"'Ey, ya okay there? Not like ya ta sit there like a chihuahua," the shielded fortress spoke, and it had just barely reached Park's auditory processors.

Park didn't fear death, and he certainly didn't fear the bucket of bolts now laying dead on the ground, just a death box. He just didn't think he would have to watch Elliott, of all people, he finished off by this creep, didn't have to see his neck get snapped so easily, covered in scarlet and bullet wounds and choking on his own blood.

He's watched Elliott die plenty of times. It was a plethora of ways, of continuous deaths that were always met with very little malice (aside from Alexander and Revenant, of course), but there was something different this time. There was something terrifying about the aspect of Elliott dying in front of him, an assassin completely capable of killing him whenever he wanted being the one to end it, no qualms against it whatsoever.

He shuddered at the thought.

"Hey," Makoa fried again, this time his voice softer. Park's head turned to meet gazes with him. "Ya got this, brudda'. Gotta be brave and get goin'. Revenant's squad is all gone, and he ain't comin' back anytime soon." He delivered a pat to the hacker's back. "I'm gonna grab Mirage's banner. You take a sec to breathe, okay? You're safe and he's safe. Ya got that?"

Park's head nodded, which was enough for Makoa.

"Good! Up 'n at 'em!"

Suddenly, the surveillance expert was being lifted into the air, shocking but not too unexpected, and placed back on the ground gently, like he was some distressed kitten. Makoa flashed him another smile before hurrying over to Elliott's box and fetching his banner. Park, meanwhile, did as Makoa suggested.

He breathed.

— ;

The match afterwards had gone fairly well. Park was still a bit shaken up, but, after seeing Elliott's smiling visage, blood absent from his apparel and body, he calmed down rather quickly and was able to participate in the match with his usual competence. They didn't win, but it was still a good match overall.

Elliott just wasn't fond of the earlier part of the match, having his throat crushed by Revenant. There was a phantom pain where those deadly fingers wrapped around his throat, but, frankly, he, much like everyone else, was far too accustomed to Revenant's and Alexander's methods of killing to be too bothered anymore (Park especially; the killing machine seemed to have some strange fondness for killing him).

After the match, the trickster headed over to his boyfriend's room, the man in question having immediately made a beeline for his quarters and having not been seen since. He missed lunch, and he missed hanging with Ajay and him, so there was likely something wrong. Makoa had mentioned he was shaken up after Revenant had taken him out, and he's worried that Park's beating himself up over it—or worse.

He raised a hand to knock, waiting for the inevitable bout of silence, before, shockingly, he heard a quiet, nearly inaudible, "come in."

Pushing the door open, Elliott was met by darkness. That didn't come as a surprise; Park's room was only illuminated by computer monitors most of the time, and they were currently off (which was an immediate means for concern). The light emitting from the open door allowed Elliott to spot Park's location: curled up on his bed, back against the wall, and eyes focused solemnly on the trickster that had entered his room.

He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him, and once again enveloping the room in darkness. Carefully, he maneuvered his way through Park's room, careful not to trip on any wires, and found his bed. He moved to sit on it, reached over to his nightstand, and flicked the small lamp on. It was still relatively dark, but it was enough to Illuminate the hacker's dour visage.

"Let there be light," Elliott said, hoping to lighten the mood; alas, Park's gloomy demeanor remained. "Okay. What's up, sweetheart? You're depressed, but not usually this bad. You skipped lunch!"

A shrug was his response, a delicate raise of shoulders that could've easily been missed.

"I can't help you if you don't talk to me, baby."

Further silence from the smaller promoted a sigh from the trickster. He moved to sit beside Park instead, his own back pressed against the wall. The hacker remained still, quiet, and, for a moment, so, too, did Elliott. He wasn't one for quiet, however, and began speaking again within moments.

"is it about what happened with Revenant?" he asked, his normally bright and chipper tone replaced with something quiet, almost forlorn. "You don't have to beat yourself up over that, honey bear. You didn't have a weapon, and he's kinda just—a literal weapon."

"… I watched you die…" spoke the other after an elongated silence, Elliott's head snapping to look at the other. He looked ready to start sobbing. "I sat there, frozen in fear, as he broke your neck…"

"Hyeon—"

"He killed you, and it could happen at any moment again…!" the other cried, knees curled tight against his chest, head held within his hands, fingers gripping tightly at raven locks. "And I want to cry. I can feel my eyes stinging because of it, but I just… I just can't…" A deep, shuddering breath was taken, his grip tightening on his hair.

For a moment, silence was once again stifling the air, the only sound being Park's labored breathing. For a moment, Elliott was merely staring, merely watching as his lover came undone before his very eyes. For a moment, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to comfort someone who had just watched him die.

"… When I was a kid," Elliott began, Park's head moving to look up at him, curious, "my brothers and I… We were all pretty stupid."

He… never talks about his brothers… Park thought, frowning. Why…?

"One time, we got lost in a crowd. My mom kept shouting for us, kept calling out our names. I couldn't find her or my brothers, and I ended up crying. A lady found me and tried helping me find them. We did find each other, but we all got scolded… a-and that day kinda just sucked in general. I scraped my knee, I didn't get the toy I wanted, I lost my favorite pencil—it just sucked.

"But I remember everyone smiling a lot during that day. I remember the relieved smiles, the laughter, and the warmth. I remember thinking that I could've lost them, so I needed to—to treasure them more, live life knowing I made good memories with my family." A bitter chuckle left him, head moving to lean back against the wall and eyes focusing on the ceiling. "I'm glad I did."

Immediately, Elliott felt arms wrap around his neck, yank him down, and felt his nose press against the other's bony shoulder. Park was shaking, and Elliott couldn't tell if he was crying or not, but he sure as hell was. He could feel the warm liquid trail down his cheek, soak into the hoodie the other was donning. His own arms wrapped around his lover's midsection, pulled him as close as physically possible, and then there was nothing. There were no words uttered, no hysterical sobs nor cries of agony. There was just silence, only healing.

Eventually, Park pulled away enough to look into Elliott's eyes, a half-synthetic hand reaching up to gently brush away a tear. His own eyes were red and puffy, only confirming Elliott suspicions.

"No one's ever taking me away from you," he said, confidence in the statement. "I don't care who they are. I'm not leaving you 'till you physically pry me off yourself." A hand left Park's waist, placing itself upon his cheek, and gently pressing their foreheads together. "I dunno if I'll ever lose you, but everyday's gonna be the day I treasure every moment we're together, every conversation we have. Gonna make you feel like I'll never forget you if you're gone. Gonna make you feel loved and make it known I'll be a fucking wreck if I lose you. I'll kick my own ass for letting someone like you slip away."

Park could feel himself choking on his own words, reduced to nothing but tears by the confession, pouring from his eyes without any sign of stopping. All he could do was press his lips against Elliott's, convey through contact his desperation and adoration, the love he feels and the connection that he refuses to ever let be severed. There was so much pouring out of his heart that, by the end of the kiss, when they broke apart to breathe, he felt like he left a piece of his heart to the other.

It was where it belonged anyway.

"Thank you," the hacker whispered, trying to calm his hiccups, calm the shaking. "You… You didn't need to…"

"I know." Elliott smiled with sadness in his eyes. "But… you're a part of me. Telling you that story… s'just like I'm telling it to myself. I'm visiting memories with the only person I'd ever let see them." Another kiss was pressed to Park's nose this time, a simple way of showing his affection. "I love you so much, darling. Never leaving you alone. I'm here to give you that happily ever after you seem so convinced you're never getting."

Park allowed a smile to replace the look of sadness constantly worn by the man. There was joy in his eyes, endearment swirling with the hazel optics. It was like watching a fire: so enrapturing, so warm and beautiful, dangerous but healing. He was falling in love all over again.

"I love you as well, Elliott."

[spin-birdie]

What about some cold-blooded torture for the Bad Things Happen Bingo. I'm a sucker for angsty shit

sorry this took fuckin forever, it took a while for me to get a decent idea for this one. enjoy 1990 words of connor suffering

word count: 1.9k

pairing: none ig

additional tags: whump, body horror, leg trauma, android gore, graphic descriptions of violence, like seriously a lot of violence i think i went over the top whoops

Connor awakens slowly, blinking away distorted error messages and opening his eyes to a rusty ceiling. He doesn’t recognize the room he’s in on sight, and his mind palace is too corrupted to run his GPS software. He’s been awake for not even twenty seconds, but dread and panic fill his mind quickly.

He tries to sit up, only to find himself stuck. He’s lying face-up on a table - metal, based on the sounds produced by his body struggling against it - and his arms and legs are tightly bound with steel rope. He pulls away from the bonds, trying to free himself in every way he knows, but nothing works. He’s only making noise and causing himself discomfort.

The only part of him that isn’t completely restrained is his head, so he takes the chance to look around the room. The walls and ceiling appear to be made of tin, though it’s so rusted out that it’s hard to tell. Shelves and tables all along the walls seem to have various tools and biocomponents lined up along them. Arms and legs, eyes and hearts and pump regulators, some in containers, some just lying in the open. The empty, limbless chassis of an ST300 lies face-down in the corner of the room. Even without his mind palace fully operational, he can detect countless thirium stains all over the room and the table he’s strapped to.

Once upon a time, a sight like this wouldn’t have fazed Connor in the least. Now, it makes his gut twist uncomfortably, sends a chill down his spine. This room has seen so much death. The fact that he’s restrained can’t mean anything good.

Connor can’t see his own stress level, but he can guess that it’s fairly high. He struggles harder against the ropes, tries to rub his wrist into it. If he can detach even one of his hands, maybe he can figure something out.

Unfortunately, he seems to have drawn too much attention. A door squeaks open somewhere out of Connor’s line of sight, followed by the sound of heavy, echoing footsteps.

“Who’s there?” Connor says, craning his neck to look behind him. He’s greeted by the upside-down visage of a human woman he can’t identify. He continues to struggle, despite knowing it’s no use.

The woman doesn’t speak. Someone else steps into the room behind her. He’s carrying a camera and a tripod in his arms. Connor can’t see their faces properly. They’re wearing masks styled to look like skinless androids.

“Who are you?” Connor yanks on his restraints. Despite his best efforts, panic creeps into his voice. “What do you want?!”

The humans exchange glances. The woman walks around the table until she’s standing at Connor’s feet. The cameraman only walks close enough for Connor to see him out of the corner of his eye.

“We’re going to send a message to your charge,” the woman says. Her voice is pitched down unnaturally; Connor can’t recognize it. “Markus. The leader of the machines.”

“People,” Connor insists. “We’re just people who want to be free.”

The woman’s voice remains unchanged. “You’re anomalies. It’s not you’re fault; you were designed to integrate with human society, and in the process, you lost sight of your true purpose. Servitude.”

Connor stops struggling and grinds his teeth. “If you think Markus is just going to roll over--”

“We know he won’t,” the cameraman interjects. “He fought tooth and nail for the freedom you don’t deserve. But he cares about his colleagues. He cares about you specifically.”

“Which is why we brought you here,” the woman finishes. She turns to the cameraman and nods.

The cameraman sets his camera and tripod down on a table and walks over to Connor. Before he can react - not that he knows how he’d react - the man lifts his head up roughly and sticks something into the access port on his neck. Connor jolts, blinking rapidly as the unknown data copies itself into Connor’s system. The specific details of said data are incoherent and jumbled up, his mind palace too damaged to tell him what’s happening.

Halfway through the process, his neck starts to burn and ache. He twitches away from the sensation, but it follows him. It’s unlike any discomfort he’s felt before; his sensory feedback is advanced, but whatever this feeling is, it’s completely foreign. He hates it.

“What are-- Ow! What is that--?!”

The download finishes, and the man tears the data drive from his neck. He feels the pull of it, but it aches, sending sparks up and down his back.

“It’s pain,” the woman says. She doesn’t elaborate.

“What does that mean?” Connor demands. He pulls the rope again. It digs into his skin uncomfortably.

“It means you’re going to suffer for the sake of your kind.” She turns to the cameraman. “Get the hammer.”

Connor follows the man’s movement as he walks away, picking up a sledgehammer in the opposite corner of the room. His stomach drops, and on instinct, he struggles wildly. Sharp discomfort shoots through his wrists and ankles, but he ignores it. He has to escape. He has to get back to Markus and warn--

In the very next instant, Connor’s vision goes white, and he emits a sound he didn’t know he could make. Warnings flash past his eyes, illegible and too numerous to comprehend. He thrashes in his restraints, kicking and choking on another scream as unimaginable pain consumes him.

“Don’t kick. You’ll only make it worse.”

Connor coughs; something an android shouldn’t be able to do. He looks down at the hammer, where it rests upon what used to be his ankle until a few seconds ago. He doesn’t need to see the wound directly to know all that remains is a mess of shattered white plastic, flattened grey metal, and blue blood.

It’s the worst thing he’s ever felt. Worse than the chill of the Zen Garden. Worse than guilt. Every sensor in his body is on fire. It’s like he’s dying again; only it’s so much worse than feeling it secondhand. He wants to vomit, but he’s physically incapable. Not that it would do him any good if he could.

The woman is unfazed. “Keep going.”

The sledgehammer comes down on his other leg. This time, it’s his knee that gets crushed and split apart. Connor whites out again, shrieking as if it will save him from the pain. He tries to force himself into stasis, but doing so only yields an error message and more pain. He feels it in his eyes, and nothing has even touched them.

Once, twice, three more times the hammer is brought down on random parts of his body. His other knee, his shin, his elbow. After that, Connor loses count. The pain is no longer centered on specific parts of his body; it’s omnipresent and inescapable. No part of him hurts more than another. It’s agony no creature should be subjected to.

By the time he hears the hammer clatter to the ground, Connor’s extremities are completely unresponsive. Most of them have fallen off, too mangled to stay attached. He could try to roll off the table, but it’s like they planned for that; his left wrist is all that’s restraining him now. Even if he could escape, he wouldn’t get far with broken legs.

The sound of the hammer being set down fills Connor with relief. It’s quickly replaced with fear when the man tears Connor’s shirt open and picks up a pair of pliers, holding it over Connor’s stomach.

“No, stop!” Connor pleads as his stomach panel is forced open. “That hurts! Get off me-- Make him stop! STOP!”

The torturers disregard him completely. The man looks over to his counterpart. “What do I do?”

“Disconnect everything that isn’t vital. Make sure he stays conscious and verbal.”

The pliers haphazardly dig into Connor’s wires, pulling them open to slip deeper into his chassis. The agony is unbearable, prompting screams of almost animalistic torment. Connor instinctively curls away from them, but they’re inside his stomach; moving even a little sends even more torturous misery through Connor’s system.

He can’t see anymore; too many bright red, corrupted warnings appear faster than he can take them in. He’s positive that he’s the closest to physically ill that an android can be, and it’s just from the pain. He’s retching and coughing uncontrollably, like his body is trying to eject the intrusion but forgot he can’t vomit. The pain gets exponentially worse with every heartbeat, but his heart just keeps beating faster from the sheer trauma of the experience. The pain is in his CPU now; he literally feels it in his brain.

He can’t think, can’t move, can barely speak. Bits of him slowly go offline as more of his biocomponents are picked apart from their wires. Thirium is pooling in his chassis, but at some point the pliers stabbed all the way through to his back and opened up, splitting him open from the inside. He feels it soaking through his clothes, distantly hears it dripping onto the floor.

He’s not going to shut down, but that might be the worst part of it. He just wants it to stop. He wants everything to stop. The torment has gone on for far too long, and there’s no hope of adapting to it.

He wants to thank every deity in existence when the pliers are finally removed, but he’s too exhausted. Not even physically; the emotional trauma of the experience has just taken everything out of him. He feels like he’s overheating, but his cooling fans, his lungs, they’re all offline. He can’t move a muscle. He barely has muscles to move anymore. He wants to sleep, but the lingering pain is too immense to allow him that luxury.

“Can you speak?” the woman asks.

Connor tries to look at her, but he’s completely paralyzed. He clenches his jaw. It hurts.

“Ffff...fuck you...” he spits. His voice is heavy with tears he doesn’t remember shedding. There’s blood in the back of his throat. His vision is completely dark. The error messages no longer appear.

“Should I set up the camera now?” the man asks.

“Yes.”

---

The sight of the deviant leader falling to his knees would be enough to alarm anyone, but considering he’s been worried sick over his missing friend for days, everyone hurries to his aid.

“Markus, what’s wrong?” North asks. “What is that?”

Markus looks between North, Josh, and the tablet in his hands. He chokes back a sob. “It’s... Connor, he’s...look...”

He turns the tablet and replays the video so the others can see. Josh immediately puts a hand over his mouth. “Oh my God...”

It’s Connor, bleeding from the mouth and strapped to a bloody table. His clothes are torn and stained with thirium, his stomach is wide open, and he looks completely unfocused. He’s mumbling to himself; almost too muffled to make out, but they can barely hear him pleading, “It hurts... Make it stop... Kill me...”

Then the angle shifts over to someone clad in black, wearing a mask. “This is what freedom has cost you,” they say in a too-even voice. “You androids are lost and in pain. You’ve lost sight of what’s important, and you’re suffering for it. If you want the RK800 back, then stop trying to merge with humanity. Further details will be disclosed after this message is broadcast to your followers. You have two days to comply.”

The figure steps over to the table and puts a hand on Connor’s forehead. He visibly bristles at the contact as his head is pushed to the side, towards the camera. “Do you have anything to say to your charge?”

His eyes aren’t even on the camera, but they’re filled with misery. “Markus...” he whispers. “Markus, it hurts... Help...”

Markus caves in on himself, tears falling uncontrollably.

[elmentrysworld]

In Sickness and in Health, ‘Till Death Do Us Part: Shouto Todoroki x Fem! Reader

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Oh good lord, I am SO sorry for the late request! D: University bit me hard in the ass this semester, but I finally got around to finishing this request. I sincerely hope you and everyone else enjoys this! Also if anyone wants to request anything, my rules and fandoms are in this post you can click on, or you can search the tag “rules” on mobile! Love you guys :’)

Type: One-Shot

Pairing: Todoroki x Fem! Reader

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia

Warning: Angsty angst is angsty angst (like, illness and all that comes with it). Real world AU with no quirks. Also, due to length (literally this passes 3000+ words), this post will have a “keep reading” line!

The hospital bed feels stiff and rigid under you as you lay down with your eyes staring up at the ceiling. You have started to lose count of how many days you’ve been in this hospital room. How long have you been this sick for?

Oh yeah, a little over 2 years.

Although your mind can’t keep track if it’s exactly 2 years or a few days past, you know that your mind is nearing the brink of insanity from numbness. In between the treatments of chemotherapy and people coming to see you with doe eyes laced with tears as they would claim that “things will get better” because you’re a fighter, you begin to call bullshit. If that was all so true, why did you make so little progress healing after your diagnosis? Then again, you remember that the day you got your diagnosis, the prognosis in itself was borderline hopeless to begin with.

“I’m sorry miss,” the doctor said with a grim expression, looking up at you from the papers with your examination results. The minute he gave you the results concluding that you did have the dreaded illness was the minute you felt your heart drop to the pits of your stomach, like you have just been transported to Hell and were being thrust into an icy pathway to misery.

The illness was hereditary – your mother died from it when you only in elementary school and your maternal relatives didn’t live much longer than she did, having had the same illness. How did you not come to expect it? Perhaps it was wishful thinking, that you would be one of the lucky ones like in those happy stories. However, the reasonable part of you knew you could no longer ignore the constant nosebleeds, coughing up blood and struggles with your breathing after a case of the common cold lasting longer than the normal 3-4 days. You knew it was a bad sign, but your optimistic side tried outweighing your reality with hopeful, fictional outcomes that it was all something fixable.

It was not fixable.

As you walked out of that doctor’s office and out into the April showers, your mind trying to process the little time you were going to have left, you struggled to find any sort of feeling inside of you as you went through your coat pockets and began dialling his number.

You knew he wasn’t going to have a great reaction.

“Hey, Shouto?” you said once your boyfriend picked up the phone, trying to keep a neutral tone of voice. “Can you meet me at my place tonight? I... I have something important to tell you.”

***

Shouto came over relatively quick, having been right at your door by the time you showed up waiting for you. When you needed – or simply wanted – to see him, he always made sure to either come early or at the very least arrive on the nose. When you would tease him about it, he would say something among the lines of “I want to make the most out of every minute I spend with you” or “I just couldn’t bare waiting to see you”. He was a cheesy, caring person at the core, but only you had access to that side of him.

As you got closer to the door leading into your apartment building, the hoodie of your sweater failing to keep you dry from the rain, you waved at the umbrella-holding man and gave him the best smile you could offer, receiving one from him in return and you took out your keys from your purse.

“How come you don’t have an umbrella?” he asked you off the bat as you shuffled between your selection of keys, finding the right one and unlocking the building door.

“I didn’t think it would rain this hard!” you laughed lightly, leading him inside towards your apartment and talking as you then opened your apartment door. “Plus I ended up taking the bus so it wasn’t as bad.”

“Yes, but what if you catch another cold?” he said in return and stepped inside with you, taking off his coat and hanging it in the front closet with your own. “You know how you get when you get sick.”

As he headed towards your petite but cozy living room, you froze and couldn’t help but simply stand there, wide-eyed in the pastel blue-walled room.

Sick. You couldn’t get anymore sick than you already are, can you? That’s what you wanted to scream out at him, but you couldn’t. The words were lodged; they didn’t want to come out.

The white and red-haired Todoroki paused, sensing you not following him over to the beige couch and turned to face you, only to rush over to you when he saw you fall down to your knees with your hands to mouth and tears beginning to fall down the corner of your eyes. As you could only hiccup and choke back on sobs you didn’t want to let out, he held you out in front of him in sheer concern, uncertainly clouding those grey and blue eyes of his. He called your name one, two, three times trying to get you to focus on him, but it took another two times for you to finally look directly into his eyes.

“What happened?” he asked you, trying to not show the overwhelming feeling of concern in his shaken tone of voice. “Was it your appointment today? If it’s another prescription you have to get it’s – ”

“I’m dying, Shouto!” you cried out into the nape of his neck, holding him close as you could no longer look into his eyes. “They – the doctors... they found the same illness my mom had. They said there was nothing they could do, Shouto! I’m going to die!”

His muscles felt tense under your touch, but in your sobbing and unstoppable tears falling down your cheeks you couldn’t care. You couldn’t hold back your own emotions anymore today. It felt never-ending.

All he could do was hold you and when your sobs faded into little hiccups, hold your chip up for you to look at him and promise you:

“I’m never leaving your side.” he said firmly, not showing his true thoughts. “Not today, not tomorrow. I am always here for you.”

Shouto Todoroki peeks into your room like he has done ever since your first day of hospitalization, lightly knocking on your door. He calls your name, drawing your attention and you offer him a tired smile. Even after being with him for nearly five years, you still get the warm feeling inside whenever he’s around; and you have been cherishing that feeling more and more these days.

“May I come in?” he asks.

“Do you really need to ask, love?” you chuckle, lifting your hand up and lightly gesturing for him to come in – even with the shooting pain in your arm that you try to ignore. He steps in and walks over to the chair next to your bed, sitting next to you and taking your hand into his own. His hands are warm to the touch, and you briefly close your eyes with a small smile on your eyes as he runs his thumb over the back of your hand, his eyes on your skin – which is growing paler and paler – and proceeds to form soothing circles on your skin.

“How have you been feeling?” he asks, looking back up at you.

“I’ve been worse.” you say. It isn’t exactly a lie: there have been days where you felt so bad that numbness and emptiness seemed like a form of relief in comparison. However, you keep your current numbness to yourself; Shouto already has enough going on in his home as it is and you don’t want to add onto his pile, considering your feeling that your condition already is becoming a chore.

You know he loves you. In fact, he has made it incredibly clear in your relationship that he loves you to death.

But you also know that Enji Todoroki doesn’t want his successor falling for an inferior, sickly girl. Even before your hospitalization, he never approved.

“This is who you want to carry on the Todoroki legacy by marriage?” The red-haired man said, incredulousness overly clear in his voice as he looked at you up and down. He looked back at his son, who only held onto your hand tighter and narrowed his eyes at his father, as though to tell him to watch his next choice of words.

“And what of it?” Shouto responded, eyebrow raised, testing the man in front of him.

“Shouto, you know how important carrying on the Todoroki name is.” Enji stated, firm and tense with his own narrowed pair of eyes giving you the occasional glare. “I expected you as future head to make... better choices.”

You couldn’t hold back your heart from sinking down to the pits of your stomach. You knew the man to be harsh, but to be dismissed as a bad option was not exactly what you had in mind.

“Father, she is not just a choice!” Shouto hissed back, wrapping a protective arm around your shoulder. “She is who I want to spend the rest of my life with. I love her more than words can describe and she loves me like no one has. She respects me as a person, as a human. I will not spend the rest of my life with anyone else!”

Enji simply held a pause, as though spending a silent moment condemning the pair of you before responding:

“How romantic.” he spat out. “Too bad it serves no practicality to your life. You’ll love her for maybe a few more moments, maybe a couple more years and then lose her one way or another anyway. Look at her, Shouto: you even said so yourself she often gets sick, and she looks sickly and weak. Is that really someone we need to carry on our bloodline? And that is if she even can carry children to begin with, in her physical state. Face it, Shouto. If you really want to become head of my company, it’s either you choose this company or her.”

It only takes Shouto a moment as he takes a look at you, taking in your beauty and wiping a stray tear away from your eye before he looks back at his father with a glare of his own.

“I choose my future wife.”

“My father made arrangements for me without my consent.” Shouto lets out to you. You raise an eyebrow, curiousity building up.

“What arrangements?” you asked.

“He... he wants me to marry the head’s daughter.”

Your eyes instinctively widen from the news. Ever since Shouto said he would choose you over becoming head of the Todoroki Company, Enji has become relentless on making his son change his mind and still dragging him into business meetings, even after 2 years of the same exact response of his son not wanting to take part. It shouldn’t be surprising that he would pull this kind of stunt and yet... a huge part of you just doesn’t know how to respond to a news like this.

“Oh?” you let out meekly, looking down at your hands, not sure what else to say.

“Earlier today, he called me into a meeting.” Shouto begins explaining. “I thought it was some sort of business deal to be made with another company, so I went in and it was just my father, another man and a woman around my age... my father set me up with her and said that if I am to become head, I will marry the girl and secure company relations.”

There is an awkward pause as you take all this in. Normally, you would have flipped out over this type of news, try to find a solution to this problem. Normally, you would have probably gone to Enji to tell him to suck it, that you and Shouto are happy and if his son chose to be happy over becoming head of the family business, he better respect that decision. Normally, you would have fought for your right to be happy with your fiancé.

So why is your stubbornness and strong will not there when you need it? Where is your passion?

Before you can stop yourself, you slowly look up at your love, your mind blank as you speak:

“Maybe marrying the girl is the best thing to do.”

Shouto looks at you, eyes wide with shock before they switch to having a look of horror, like you just suggested for him to massacre a town.

“What?” he says in a sort of gasp. “How can you even think to suggest that?!”

“Shouto – ”

“You know I will never marry a woman I don’t love. You know how much I love you; I will never leave your side! No company can get between us, you know that – ”

“Shouto, please!” you blurt out full blast as you lose your self control, letting the tears run down your face. It puts his outburst at a halt, allowing you to continue after a moment’s pause:

“I don’t have much time left.” you admit, looking away from him and out the window that brings in ironic rays of sun into the room. “The doctors said the treatment could only do so much... my illness has spread further into my body and now, everything just hurts. They estimate that I only have a week or so left.”

You look back at him, the tiniest smile you could muster being on your face as you try not to continue crying.

“I didn’t know how to tell you without hurting you. You don’t deserve to live alone, Shouto. Maybe you’ll end up falling in love with this girl, have healthy children and carry on your family legacy like your father wants. You never know, Shouto, it may be for the best – ”

“No.”

“Shouto – ”

“No. I refuse to give up on us so easily.”

You look back down at your hands. Up until now, you never really noticed how skeletal and pale your hands have become. How much weight have you lost? You aren’t sure. In fact, you aren’t sure of anything anymore; at this point you can’t focus or think so easily.

You look back up when you hear your name being said, the look in Shouto’s eyes filled with a determination you never thought you would see in your lifetime.

“Let’s get married.” he says, gently taking your hands in his. For the first time in a while, you feel genuine shock over this proclamation.

“S-Shouto?” you whisper. “Are you serious? Ever after what I just said – ”

“Exactly. If you have such a small amount of time, we can’t waste time. This is our chance to be happy together, to make the most of it. To hell with my father and the company, working for him will never make me happy. Hell, you make me happier than I have ever been, even now! I said I would never leave your side. I intend on keeping that promise.”

You decide to go along with not thinking it through. It’s like he said: there’s not much time left, and you deserve to be happy even for a little while, right?

“Ok.” you said, a wider smile than before plastered on your face. “Let’s do it.”

***

It is as beautiful of a wedding as it can be, especially in a white-walled hospital room that you’ve been confined to. You manage to find a simple but comfortable white dress for the occasion, one that is easy to get out of so you could switch back into your scrubs afterwards, and Shouto decides to match the theme of simplicity, opting for a white button up and black pants and shoes. He looks as dashing as the first day you met him, and he makes sure to let you know that you look as beautiful as a goddess. Even though you are too weak to do a “walk down the aisle”, your father – who got ordained for this day – makes sure to reassure you that you look radiant and smiles as he gives his blessing to your union, proceeding to marry you two.

Your vows to each other are sweet and make you feel fuzzy and warm inside. You make sure to avoid the whole “in sickness and in health” and “’till death do us part”: you don’t need to rub it in. Instead, you focus on the good you cherish, and the bad you managed to push through to be the couple that you are in the present. You gush over your rings – simple, glistening silver bands that fit snug on his and your ring finger – and as your put the rings on each other’s fingers, you feel a certain sense of comfort that you hadn’t felt for a little while.

You’re finally pronounced husband and wife and it feels like your kiss solidifies this new union.

You don’t need a fancy reception – you don’t necessarily have the energy for that either. Instead, you opt for some stargazing together in the hospital garden. You can’t help the goofy smile on your face when you notice the rose petals leading to the bench. It takes a little while for you to walk over to the bench, with your weakened legs, but with your now husband holding your hand and guiding you, you manage to make it and sit down next to him.

You’ve stargazed with him in the past, but you never really noticed until now just how much he glows under the starlight.

“The night really is beautiful.” you sigh contently, your hand intertwined with his.

“It really is.” he says with a smile of his own. “It’s definitely fitting for a day like this.”

You don’t need a word exchange. You’re both perfectly happy enjoying each other’s company during a peaceful evening, looking up at all the constellations formed in the night sky in comfortable silence. Who knew that the stars in the sky can form such fascinating and interesting shapes? In any case, the cool air feels nice, not chilling you to the bone.

“Shouto?”

“Yes?”

“I wish this moment could last forever...” you say, closing your eyes as you lean on his shoulder with his hand linked to yours. “If only this could never end.”

He looks at you, his gaze soft and his smile small and with a hint of sadness to it and he gently squeezes your hand.

“Let’s focus on the present.” he says after a moment of silence. “Tonight is about us and our happiness.”

“Yeah.” you say contently and entertain yourself with looking at his fingers, playing with them and looking at his ring finger.

Later that night, when he brings you back to your room to be cared for by the nurses, you call out his name before he can exit and he turns to face you with a raised eyebrow.

“Smile for me.” you say with a big, sheepish smile of your own. Though initially stunned, he gives you a matching smile and you can’t help but giggle in return.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, my love.” he says, waving lightly and he leaves.

The minute he leaves, it is as though your body gives up the last bit of strength it could muster and you fall over on the bed, everything inside of you tightening. You can’t tell if it’s because you’ve been hiding your struggle to stay strong all day, the ticking time bomb inside of you or because of the actual shutting down of your body taking place, but it hurts.

All you know is that it won’t hurt for long. And what you know is that you are thankful to have seen your husband, your lover smile for one last time.

You don’t pay mind to the nurses and doctors rushing to your side, trying to keep you conscious through any ways necessary – well, you can’t even if you tried.

All you can focus on is the fading image of Shouto Todoroki smiling for you, all as you yourself fade away into nothingness.

***

A week later after finding out you were placed on life support, your husband still remains by your side, his own eyes dried up and red, swollen from having let himself cry at your bedside for days. His father tries to convince him to leave the room, even for a bit of fresh air, but the older man only gets shut down with venom laced in his son’s voice.

A week later, Shouto has had to make a decision: try to hold onto non-existing hope and keep listening to the faint heart line, or finally to let you go.

As the nurse and doctor come up to him with a look of sympathy in their eyes, the nurse leans over to him, knowing Shouto’s final decision.

“Mr. Todoroki, are you ready?” she asks – not out of curiosity, but out of obligation. He looks up at her, your cold hand in his hands, and his eyes betray the calm demeanour he was so used to presenting.

“No.” he says bluntly. “But when will I ever be? You can go ahead.”

He can’t look at you when the life support is finally disconnecting, especially as he feels you fade away for good. All he knows is that the night you were married was truly the night you two bid your farewells.

The library was busy on the day you two first met. Finals were taking place and you had been in the same economics class. However, you only got to speak to him for the first time when you noticed him sitting alone, studying at a table surrounded only by books filled with numbers and statistics. You didn’t know why, but you didn’t want him to be alone. You had a feeling there was a lot to uncover with this attractive boy and you were going to make a friend out of him.

You decided to go up to him and nudged him, catching him by surprise.

“Hey, Shouto Todoroki, right?” you whispered to him with your best smile. He looked up at you in shock but quietly nodded in response. You held your own books in one arm and held out your other hand for a handshake, giving your name in introduction.

“It’s nice to finally speak to you.” you said in a quiet chuckle as you shook hands.

“Pleasure is mine.” he said in response, tone low. When you nudged to the chair across him and gave a look, he nodded and you sat down, placing your books down. Your smile stayed on your face, radiant as ever, and you leaned on your arms, which rested on the table.

“So tell me, Shouto, do you believe in love at first sight?”

“E-excuse me?” he said with wide eyes, to which you quietly giggled in response.

“I’m messing with you,” you replied in amusement. “But I will say this: I would love to get to know you.”

Without giving him much time to reply, you take a piece of paper and write your cell number on it, passing it over to him and getting up with your books.

“Feel free to text me whenever!” you said and walked out the library, not being able to shake off the smile on your face and not truly caring if you possibly made a fool of yourself.

After all, you only live once right?

Within 5 minutes you got a text from an unknown number, making you blush and let out a light laugh:

So, what if I told you I do believe in love at first sight? – Shouto Todoroki

[overlordofawesomeness]

"I've been through worse," Lyoshka mumbles as he clenches a cigarette between his teeth.

He recalls the time when he almost died after getting mauled by blind dogs in the Dark Valley or the time when a crazy Monolithian bit his two fingers off during a close combat. A punch or two is nothing compared to the number of bullets that he had survived.

Good times. Good times.

"The Zone will eventually get tired of your recklessness and take back whatever luck it gave you," Miach states, seemingly bummed.

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" Lyoshka laughs. "I came to the Zone to die. It's only a matter of time."

"Don't worry, mishonok. I'm left-handed," Lyoshka mutters with a weak smile.

Some cultist decided to sneak up on him and attempted to shoot him point blank. He may be a bit of a suicidal, but he's not letting himself be killed that way. A rock worshipper wouldn't be his end.

Despite not having the skills in a close combat, Lyoshka tried to engage the Monolithian in a physical fight that ended up with him losing two fingers on his right hand. The bastard had bit them off. He still prevailed, though.

"Let's get some drink, shall we?"

"What are you afraid of?" Miach asks, looking at Lyoshka through the scope of his rifle. "Are you even afraid of anything at all?"

"Dying," Lyoshka answers briefly to munch on the stale bread in his hand.

The ginger raises an eyebrow and straightens up. "Care to elaborate?" he prompts. "It seems to me that dying is the last thing you'll ever be afraid of."

"You're right." Lyoshka nods. "I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm afraid that it will take me forever to die. Like I'll forever feel the pain of whatever killed me or the way my body decomposes as it gets eaten by worms. I'm afraid I'll stay conscious throughout the process of dying. They say you no longer feel anything once you're dead, but what if you do and you can't do anything about it? You get the gist."

Miach whistles. "Yes, that...is scary."

Lyoshka was collecting the patches of his fallen comrades and looting the remains of the Monolith soldiers when one of those "corpses" moved and emptied the magazine of his pistol on the unsuspecting Freedom soldier before falling back down. Stunned, Lyoshka did not have the time to return fire.

The Night Owl fell on the ground amongst the bodies of his lifeless brothers, eyes wide in shock behind his gas mask. He tasted blood in the back of his throat, felt it pooling in his mouth until he was choking in it.

The pain only lasted for a few seconds before his mind slipped into a state of rapture where he felt extremely light and inexplicably satisfied, the rhapsody manifesting itself in his body through a hard-on in his pants.

He was dying. He knew it. He was very familiar with it.

Lyoshka was barely aware of someone coming over to shoot the Monolith soldier and dragging him away from the corpses. He thought he was only hallucinating when the stranger propped him up against a rock and injected him with a healing drug from a medkit before taking off his gas mask to let him breathe properly.

The stranger was wearing a Monolith suit, Lyoshka realized, but he was not showing any sign of aggression towards the Freedom soldier.

Why was this Monolithian not killing him? Why help?

Lyoshka was unable to speak nor move. He could only watch through his foggy, oxygen-deprived brain as the mysterious man took off his own gas mask and revealed a face with a smile.

It was off. Even for a fever dream, it was strange.

"It's rude to stare," Lyoshka says as he takes a drag from his cigarette. "You never saw any scars before? Or am I too sexy you can't look away?"

Kolya shakes his head and lets out an unamused laugh. "I'm just wondering how you're still alive. With how reckless you are, you should've died a long time ago."

"You want me so badly to be out of your life that you'd wish for my death." Lyoshka smirks. "How rude. But go on, I guess. At least I wasn't the one who needed rescuing like a damsel in distress."

Inktober prompts starring my dearest Lyoshka. I wasn't able to finish the challenge again, but I was glad I was able to do a few pieces for him to add more depth to him.

[anonthenullifier]

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Warning: mention of and implication of character death. Based on the trailers for Infinity War. 

All of my other speculative Infinity War fics have been wrong, so if I write this, it means it will be wrong, right? Please?

AO3 Link

The jungle is alive with susurrations, leaves conversing in the breeze, a chatter of birds, a small tributary babbles less than a quarter mile away, all things that, in any other circumstance would be labeled peaceful, but that peace is eradicated by the distant cacophony of war. Vision lays his head back, ignoring the irritating placement of a stub from a broken branch that is stabbing his neck, and momentarily closes his eyes. Which is a mistake, the instant he removes all other visual stimuli he is overpowered by the nigh constant pulsing of the patched together wound in his side and the terrified, frenetic beat of the Mindstone as its brethren call out for it. His eyes snap open and air rushes soundlessly from his mouth as he attempts to steady his mind and push the pain away. “Vizh?”

Wanda is staring at him , the cut she sustained in Edinburgh bunching together as she allows concern to overtake her face. “I,” there are three potential answers here (at the very least) the socially polite reassurance of I am fine, the truth, and then redirection, “believe I may be able to keep moving in a few more minutes.” His words drag her mouth down, but Wanda is not the one to deny his suggestion.

“We can defend ourselves here, no need to keep looking.” The new shields became part of Steve’s overall persona far faster than anyone thought possible, so much so Vision is having difficulty remembering Captain Rogers and his star-spangled disc, the image replaced by the present intensity of the now bearded man. “Wanda,” her eyes only now leave Vision, reluctantly sliding to their leader’s face, and whatever it is they discuss, Vision’s attention is already gone, the pain escalating with each agonizing yell from the distant battlefield and each flare of prismatic power that bursts from the gauntlet on Thanos’ hand.

It is only now, in the tense quiet, in the waiting for fate that he finds himself finally accepting what is happening. He is afraid. Not merely the flimsy skittishness of unease he has experienced previously in battle (mainly when Wanda is injured or stumbles), but a deep, suffocating fear that wraps its long fingers around his chest and squeezes until there is no air left for him to gulp. The thing, Vision discovers only now, with fear is that it is insidious and persistent, an invasive species that forces him to relinquish the usually tight control he has over his thoughts. Now is not the time to meander through the lucid and daunting complexities of life, he should be focused on battle, on what he can do, and yet he cannot seem to quell the raging storm in his mind.

No one is willing to verbalize it, but the truth is plastered on everyone’s face and it is loud and resonant in his own mind: Vision is likely going to die.  It is a fact that had not seemed feasible even a week before when his fingers ran idly through Wanda’s dyed hair, the rain pattering against the hotel window, in fact, he had always taken comfort in the knowledge of the opposite. Of all his teammates, he was the least likely to perish, his very cells sewn with vibranium, the synthetic nature of his organs resistant to aging and disease, never once had he been harmed physically. Until he met the tip of a glaive. Now every reassurance, every surety of his life is tumbling from his grasp. Wanda’s eyes have taken on a sheen of defiance, refusing to accept losing one more person, and that itself terrifies him more. He adores…no, loves her resilience and strength, finds himself equally aggravated and intrigued by her ability to negate logic and stand steadfast based solely on an intuitive and emotionally charged belief that she will persevere. Yet this trait also carries with it a self-sacrificial quality, and if anyone dies today, he needs it to be him, not her.

Which only carries with it a larger, more philosophical quandary he had never found it necessary to consider. What, precisely, happens when you die? He has seen the effects of death on his teammates – has held Wanda in the middle of the night when the hole left by Pietro widens into unbearable pain. He has seen the anger and irrationality in Stark’s behavior and thoughts at the knowledge and continual rumination of what befell his parents. He has seen the hollowness in the eyes of his teammates when they share war stories, jocular tones of their late comrades’ deeds barely hiding the sorrow of speaking in remembrance instead of with that person at their side. But these are the ripples of death, the impact it leaves on others. What he finds himself honing in on is what would happen to him? The process of death is well documented, the slowing of the organs, the changing in coloration of skin (which he believes may not apply to his synthetic dermis), the rigidity of the muscles before they loosen, and then the decay. This, however, is not comforting to know, because now that he’s lived amongst people, cultivated a life of his own,he cannot imagine simply losing it, never knowing what wondrous feats Wanda completes, how she recovers, moves on, lives a long and fulfilling life.  And it hurts, more than the wound in his side and the raging headache from the Mindstone, to accept he will never know this, never see her again. Perhaps this is why humans rely so much on religion, cling to the notion of an afterlife teeming with the souls of their loved ones, because in this moment that is the only thing that instills in him an odd, illogical hope.

A high-pitched noise fills the sky above them, their eyes lifting to watch the streaks of slate smoke billowing out from another boulder-sized asteroid bearing down into the middle of the battlefield. Suddenly his thoughts flee, heart racing at the click and swish of Steve’s shields activating as his eyes narrow with the resolute nod of his head. “Be ready.”

The finality of the words finally puncture the bulbous pillows collecting in Wanda’s eyes, her features cracking as the tears trickle down, head shaking in time with the quiver of her bottom lip as her eyes find Vision’s. “Vision.”

Emotions were once so foreign to him, he felt them but was incapable of identifying and defining them. Sadness, until he knew what it was, was simply a weight that hung at the bottom of his lungs, one that caused his body to respond slower, mind tied up in distortional thinking. It was only upon knowing the term, linking the two together, that he could define and parse out each separate affective state. His name, when she says it, always carries emotion but never the same one: sometimes it is happy, exhausted, excited, amused, annoyed, awe-stricken, or filled with love (his favorite). Yet right now he can, from two syllables, gather her fear and her anger, her anxiety and anguish, doubtfulness and resolution. “Wanda.” He chokes in the middle of her name, realizing only now how despair can influence his physiological functioning, fattening his tongue and closing his throat. But she rushes to him, drops down onto a knee and brings her palm to his face.

“Vision, we’ll be fine.”

It is a blatant lie, one she does not believe and neither does he, but he accepts it, wraps his right hand around her wrist and brings his left to cover her gloved knuckles. They’ve been running for so long now, clandestine meetings across the world, long nights where the only thing that mattered was the words they whispered and the feel of their bodies and minds synchronizing and embracing, that it is tempting to keep going. Another crash and there is a flicker from behind Wanda, the damaged shield faltering and then falling from around the battlefield. “It is too late.”

“No.”

The crunch of a twig echoes around them as Steve crouches into a stance they’ve practiced hundreds of time in training, voice uncomfortably calm while he narrates what is happening, “Thanos is coming.”

Vision refuses to disengage from Wanda’s gaze, can feel the unfounded notion forming in his mind that if he doesn’t see Thanos then it means he is not there. But that is farcical and unhelpful. The truth is that time is no longer on their side and there is only one thing left for them, one last, final strategy that could save everyone - but him. “We are out of time.” Wanda denies it with a barely discernible shake of her head, and now his tears join her own, fingers tightening around her wrist. “We are out of time, Wanda.” The repetition hurts, the acceptance of their worst fears kickstarting his sympathetic system which screams at him to fight or at least try to fly away with Wanda in his arms, run just a bit longer, yet he has to stop that feeling, his body far too injured to carry on. “I love you.”

A shuddering breath makes her, “I love you,” difficult to decipher, but the desperate press of her lips emphasizes the muffled words, fills him with one last glorious rush of the possibilities of life, of being human. Wanda closes her eyes, sucks in the humid air, and then moves her hand to his forehead, scarlet swirling in his peripheral vision. Shuri confirmed the necessity of the stone for the continued functioning of his nervous system, but in doing so also discovered a way to amplify its power if removed. The prognosis for him was unclear, if not erring on the side of poor, but they left some hope of his return, which Wanda has clung to, and continues to do so as her powers begin to pry the stone from this head. Before she removes it, she kisses him again, leaving him with one last promise, “I’m going to get you back, okay?”

Vision can feel his body grow heavy, thoughts slowing and heart coming to a rest. As his eyelids slip down he can see Wanda stand, Mindstone glowing with a renewed fury in her hand and he can’t help but smile at the beauty of the image. Life did not quite go as planned, but for what it was worth, it has been a privilege to have lived it surrounded by his teammates, his family.

[captain-erwinmerica]

Masquerade Ch3: Idols and Anchors

Find it on Ao3 here Chapter 1: This City Sleeps in Flames Chapter 2: Reveries of Flight

Thank you so much to @zebralightning for drawing tattooed Yuuri. 

If anyone ever told you they could remain completely calm when the imminent promise of death was caressing the back of your neck like it was for Yuuri now, then they were either small fry who weren’t playing serious games, stupid and had never been shot before, or a combination of the two. The stupid ones ended up dead, the small fry ended up working for the big fish, and Yuuri was normally the one on the winning side of confrontation because people constantly underestimated him.

He was hinging on that being the case right now, and as tension coiled around his feet and sent a shiver of adrenaline up his spine, he hoped his first and only meeting with Yuri Plisetsky nearly a year ago would help his cause, it might not. It all depended on how the perpetually angry Russian looked at it.

Yuri Plisetsky had saved his life, not out of the goodness of his heart of course, but out of spite.

Yuuri was only human, sometimes jobs went wrong no matter how many contingencies you took, or how hard you tried to clear your mind from certain silver haired distractions, the deal for joint trade routes he’d been sent to negotiate in Beijing 11 months ago was a prime example of things going exactly how they shouldn’t.

He’d been ambushed while he was out alone three days before the sham of a deal was meant to take place, set up and watched since his feet hit the ground in Beijing, Yuuri near panicked because he was meant to be meeting Victor while he was here and as far as he was concerned nothing was going to get in his way, not one single thing was going to make Victor worry or do anything drastic like wipe out the whole of the Chinese triad because if Victor knew what was happening that is exactly what he would do, not for the pathetic reason of coming to the rescue, Victor Nikiforov wouldn’t give his trust to someone who couldn’t save themselves, no, it was because it was as Yuuri said; because nothing was going to encroach on their time together that was fast becoming more valuable than the lives of other human beings.

And Yuuri knew Victor would pull all his stops for him, they’d silenced people permanently already, an entire organisation wasn’t out of the question, he knew this deep down in his soul because it was a question Yuuri himself already had an answer for. He’d paint Beijing red, blow their secret sky high and damn them both in the process, so he had to show up for Victor’s sake if nothing else.

It was a long, drawn out manhunt though the dark, haze polluted streets of Beijing in the mercifully unbiased cover of night, Yuuri’s physical stamina saved him more than once, but small skirmishes of knife fights and gunfire, a trail of cooling bodies and constant running had wrung from him everything he had. He’d sprained his ankle and had a limp that screamed vulnerable and defenceless, he had blood not his own staining his white collar, coagulated in his hair, spattered on his glasses, drying thick and sticky under his nails, and all Yuuri could think as he limped through streets and got himself hopelessly lost was that it wouldn’t do to meet Victor looking like this.

So he’d stopped at intersecting alleyways to catch his breath, to think and wrestle down the acidic panic that gnawed at your control when things began to look hopeless, he was out of ammo, all he had was his switch blade stuck in his grip with glue made of murder on his fingers. The brick wall he’d slumped on warmed his back with heated memories of the sun, at the end of one of the small avenues a street lamp ticked haphazardly as the bulb threatened to blow, and the people following him didn’t bother to hide their heavy footsteps anymore as they closed in.

Even as he steeled himself for the fight to come with nothing left but the wall to back him up and a stubborn will to see Victor because he’d been looking forward to it for the last fucking six weeks, as he set his jaw firm because he knew this was going to hurt; Yuuri heard the metallic hiss of a silencer fitted gun followed by the flesh heavy thumps of bodies hitting unyielding concrete one after another, it was a sound that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else other than efficient murder. There were shouts cut off with muffled gargles, groaning sounds only the dying made as life abandoned them, and suddenly it was only one pair of footsteps approaching from the edge of Yuuri’s hearing, measured, professional, seemingly calm.

That was until the source of the footsteps rounded the corner and entered Yuuri’s vision, and through the fog of exhaustion and pain he was faced with his namesake; Yuri Plisetsky with a disgusted snarl on his face who looked at Yuuri like he was less than trash.

“So you’re the reason the entire Chinese triad is on the loose. What a fucking joke for someone as useless as you. They’ve got you in a corner.” and the look turned to utter hatred, scorn and distaste and all the malice that was reserved for families that had septic blood between them, even if Plisetsky himself didn’t know how high up Yuuri actually placed in one of those said families.

“I would kill you,” Yuri had murmured at him as he stepped in antagonistically close with his gun casually poised at Yuuri’s heart, “but I think I’ll leave you for Victor, I’m sure he’ll want the pleasure for all the shit that your family has caused.”

And he’d left Yuuri only after giving him a swift kick to the ribs that ripped the air from his lungs with a sickening crack, it lit stars in his vision, choked him in bile and the remnants of his last meal, and as he relied more and more on the steadfast wall at his back for support with the sound of those footsteps retreating; all Yuuri did was laugh to himself, seemingly insane as his knees gave out in the stupid alleyway fuck knows where in the heart of Beijing, because of course Victor would want the pleasure, an entirely different kind. The joke was on the Russian Yuri this time.

He’d continued snickering to himself for too much time as he clutched at his broken rib and fought nausea to his feet, and just as he’d gathered enough breath in his lungs to actually breathe, to collect his thoughts and curse because he was going to be late now and he loathed to keep Victor waiting more than anything; an entirely different rhythm of footsteps came clacking around the corner, a strong cadence Yuuri knew like he knew the beat of his own heart. And there he was draped in his oblivion coloured trench coat with gloves of midnight on his elegant hands, walking as if even gravity couldn’t bring him down.

“What’s this? A little cat told me he’d dragged something in, I hope you weren’t going to stand up your hot date.”

Reliving the memories of what happened when it was none other than Victor Nikiforov who found him passed out on his feet would have to wait, because now Yuuri couldn’t work out if the other Yuri wanted to shoot him with the gun trained on his neck, or stab him with it; there was a painful twist against his skin as the Russian snarled, and Yuuri thought dying with the blunt end of a barrel cracking his spine would be a pretty shit way to go.

“You know, I thought it was some sick joke when one of Victor’s underlings came back and told Yakov that he’d taken off with someone from your family of all the fucking families, and it turns out to be you, what the actualfuck.” the cold barrel only dug deeper into the nape of his neck as Yuuri stood with his hands braced on the bench in an attempt to seem subdued, and the thoughts in his head ran faster than his racing heart to try and figure a way around this situation.

Nothing could really prepare you for Yuri Plisetsky however, so the seconds ticked by as the threat of violence and bloodshed soaked the room, and after the count of 10 had been and gone, Yuuri knew he wasn’t going to die after all or he’d have been put down without mercy already.

That eliminated the option of his death for now, and Yuuri sighed as his heartbeat began to steady itself, as his sense of calm returned with each thump of his pulse and he began to feel in control once more, because if he wasn’t here to be killed outright then he was indeed being underestimated.

These people didn’t know there was nothing holding Yuuri back now that he had everything he wanted, now that he finally had his everything to lose.

“Turn around.” came the snapped order from behind, and Yuuri did so with his hands on his hips and his chin held high, because Victor had thrown it all away for him and it was time to show everyone why.

So he stood there in Victor’s shirt with it unbuttoned to the chest, smirking as Yuri took in the marks of insatiable greed that Victor had left in a frenzy on Yuuri’s neck down to his collarbone.

Yuri’s expression flashed between revulsion and confusion as he took it all in, like he really hadn’t been expecting this after all, like it was still a lie even though Victor had vanished for the last week with less than a word. In the end Yuri ended up with this half convinced sneer on his face as he eyed Yuuri up and down and came to his own conclusions, “So this is how it is, he’s made you his plaything instead, probably the only thing you’re good for by the looks of it, pig.”

And before Yuri could get anymore comfortable in his smug assumptions, Yuuri took one measured step forward with that gun trained on his chest and towered over the Russian with nothing but the height of his resolve and the satisfaction that Victor had chosen this path all on his own.

“Are you done underestimating me?” Yuuri’s question didn’t need an answer, sardonic as it was, and it was him with the self satisfied smirk tugging at his lip now as he looked down at Yuri who’d already lost the upper hand.

“Hah!? You’re pretty full of shit for someone who’s about to die any second now, and then that idiot Victor can come back.” and as Yuri brandished the gun around with his prickly threat; Yuuri managed to step closer still, to lean into the hollow barrel and imprint its shape on his skin underneath Victor’s shirt.

As they stood there in a cold stare off that was about to explode into fighting at any unpredictable movement; from the corner of his eye Yuuri saw Victor appear through the doorway, wondering why Yuuri was taking so long.

And if Yuuri thought the room was steeped in frigid air before, he was wrong.

The transformation was near instantaneous, from the heart shaped smile that Victor shared only with him, from his whispered words so full of outrageous promises of the future, from the way he said Yuuri’s name a pitch higher on the last syllable when he was whining about something, it vanished in a breath and plunged the room into the icy depths of Victor’s eyes as he took the situation in.

Yuuri saw Victor’s fingers twitch for his gun on instinct, saw his pupils flare with the entirely different promise of setting everything aflame, he saw Victor’s whole demeanour raise its heckles for a second before he’d processed it all and come to the same conclusion that Yuuri had, Yuri Plisetsky was here on his own accord, not on Yakov’s order.

“Yuri, what are you doing here?” Victor deadpanned from his vantage point that was the doorway, an empty smile on his lips like he already didn’t have the patience to deal with this, and even though it was the Russian he spoke to, his eyes were solely for Yuuri and the picture of him standing in front of another person with his marks staining Yuuri’s skin, something no one else had ever seen before now. That gaze swallowed him whole, and suddenly it was like Yuuri Plisetsky didn’t even fucking exist at that point in time.

Yuri saw it too, he saw the way Victor looked at Yuuri like he’d never looked at anything or anyone else before, he saw the marks Yuuri had left in turn on Victor’s neck, he saw the complete image of them standing together and knew neither of them were in control of their feelings at all, he saw everything between them that they’d kept secret for 5 excruciating years, and how they’d lasted this long when it was so painfully obvious like it was now, Yuuri didn’t know.

“This is fucked, Victor, you’re seriously with him like that?”

“We’re a cute couple, no?” Victor quipped with a wink at Yuuri then, because only Victor was capable of going from a stone cold 10 to an adorable boyfriend in 2 seconds flat.

“Stop joking around, Victor, it was his family-

Yuri didn’t get to say his next words however, to speak out loud the real reason why Victor and Yuuri pairing up was the most twisted turn of events that no one would ever expect, because Victor took a weighted step into the room and had his finger pressed firm on Yuri’s lip in demand of quiet in an instant, the unfinished sentence hung in the air, everyone knew what he was going to say anyway.

The knot that always tied itself into Yuuri’s gut when he knew a fight was coming coiled with rebellion, because he didn’t need anyone bringing up something that’d been a source of unending unease for him until that day they’d both decided to trust each other unconditionally.

“All’s fair in love and war, Yuri,” Victor drawled then as he stepped back once more, “this time love wins.”

Yuri wasn’t done though, because he was renowned for his stubborn nature which was currently rearing its unwelcome head. “That’s fucking stupid, you promised to take over and teach me how to lead! Forget this pissant and come back.”

So that’s what Yuri Plisetsky was doing here, he’d stormed into this house all on his own for nothing but a promise, and when it came to the real thing, bonds not even death could sever, loyalty to someone else’s soul, then a simple promise was something Yuuri and Victor were already far beyond. The sun didn’t promise to rise in the morning, it just did.

Victor’s tightlipped smile came back then with a tilt of his head like the notion of forgetting Yuuri was something he couldn’t even comprehend, “Forget him?” and he seemed genuinely curious, curious like he wanted to know why the sky was blue and grass was green, he put a finger to his own lip in mock thought as the chill surrounding him became this tangible thing that spread its tendrils in search of his answer.

But Victor already had his own answer though, like Yuuri knew he would, the finger came away from his mouth as he leant forward with his full height to loom over Yuri once more, “Over my dead body.”

That was when Yuri Plisetsky’s infamous temper tried its hand, because the young Russian snapped without thought, with an angry flare in his cheeks and a frustrated puff of his chest as he did so. “Fine then, I’ll just kill him.”

It wasn’t an explosion that happened then, more like a single lightening strike as Victor’s hand shot out with a speed that Yuuri had never seen from any human before and curled itself in a choking vice grip around Yuri’s throat.

And this time Victor didn’t say anything. He just looked down at Yuri with his jaw clenched to keep this wild monster from coming out, there was no light in those vivid blue eyes now as he glared down at Yuri, only the abyss with a silence sharper than Yuuri’s switchblade that said killing Katsuki Yuuri would be the worst thing that could ever happen to the world because Victor would fucking destroy it.

This was the Victor Nikiforov that people were deathly afraid of, the Victor that didn’t even need to say a word because you could see the violence he kept restrained in his flesh, in his death-grip white knuckles with nothing but his decision not to kill you right there on the spot keeping you from your maker.

This was what Yuuri had unleashed by finally making the choice, this is what burning the world looked like, and if this was before Victor lost his temper, even Yuuri couldn’t imagine what he’d be like after he let anger control his actions.

And it was almost ridiculous that Yuuri’s heart thumped in resonance to Victor’s show of menace, it pumped with adrenaline and thrill and understanding because Yuuri knew exactly how Victor felt, because if the tables were ever turned…

Yuri’s eyes bulged in surprise as he struggled, as he dropped his weapon with an intrusive clatter across the tiled floor and clawed at the iron grip around his throat, still Victor didn’t say anything, he just looked down at Yuri until resignation bled into his eyes, until Yuri gave a frustrated growl and managed to twist out of the grip that Victor had loosened enough only to let him to escape.

“How did you find us?” Victor asked then, moving on as if he hadn’t been seconds away from committing homicide.

Yuri’s coughing chipped at the ice in the room as he cleared his throat, impatience melting it further because if one person had found them then others wouldn’t be far behind. “Otabek.”

“Should have known.” Victor sighed a grimace, and the same hand that’d been wrapped around Yuri’s throat with the full intent of grievous bodily harm reached out to Yuuri then, caressed Yuuri’s cheek as Victor’s eyes softened into unfathomable depths that only Yuuri would ever get to explore, calloused fingers lingered with care and affection, across his cheek and down to his jaw.

“Looks like it’s time to go, love.” Victor whispered with a real smile then, his eyes alight with pure elation because they’d never done this in front of another person before either.

The kiss they shared in the crowded quiet of the small kitchen was chaste as Victor wrapped his arms around Yuuri’s waist to hold him tight for the shortest heartbeat of his life, it was forceful and full of determination and the same hair raising excitement that’d been there the very first day they ran away together a week ago.

It was over as soon as it started, there was no time now, no time to solidify plans or come up with back up ideas, they would have to pack in haste, wing it and hope the cash and cache of weapons they had would be enough to get them to Phichit, they had to leave, and fast, because it wasn’t about someone finding them already, it was about getting out and as far away as they could now because the next people that found them wouldn’t be here for a chat.

“If you’re not going back then I’m coming with you.” Yuri cut in with with his arms crossed over his chest that said this at least was something he really wasn’t going to budge from, and if trying to keep a low profile before was going to be hard, now it would be improbable at best.

But Victor had already taken it in his stride, he knew exactly when to give and when to take to keep people following him, he knew when you had to suck it up and alter your course of action because adding Yuri to their plans wouldn’t give them less time, trying to keep him from following them would.

“If you compromise our plans for even a second, if you do anything thoughtless that gives away our location or holds us back, then I have no problem getting rid of deadweight.” it wasn’t a threat, it was a fact, Victor stated it as surely as he’d state his own name.

“Whatever, it’s not me that will be deadweight, but him.” and the Russian Yuri inclined his head in Yuuri’s direction with only a fraction less distaste before he gathered his weapon from the floor and shook himself off.

Victor stopped moving then, paused halfway through the door that led back down the hall to their bedroom to no doubt pack their stuff and arm himself for a possible firefight to come, he looked back with sly amusement as he chuckled.

“Oh, little Yura, you have no idea. You haven’t seen him angry. My Yuuri would eat you for breakfast.”

He followed Victor back to the longest place they’d ever stayed together, the master bedroom with the floor to ceiling window that looked out over the ocean, the room with the lifeless white walls and the bed with too many pillows, with the empty nightstands that said people didn’t really live here after all, a room with a weeks worth of memories that Yuuri would never give up.

Victor was diligent as always as he unbuttoned his own shirt on Yuuri’s body, dressing each other as they’d always done knew no haste, not even now.

So Victor took the shirt off Yuuri’s shoulders as he stood behind him and hummed this contented tune that Yuuri had memorised over the last week, he kissed the dragon’s head spanning the top of Yuuri’s back with devoted intimacy that vanquished the chill completely.

And as Victor helped put new layers back on this time with deft fingers and practiced hands, Yuuri found the suit Victor had packed for him far less heavy than his previous ones.

This armour made of cotton and wool with a new mask made of determination and conviction felt good on him, it fit perfectly, and as usual Victor could see it too.

“Looks good on you.” Victor drawled with heat as he pulled the holster over Yuuri’s head and stepped in close to tighten the straps, his fingers strayed with thoughts of their own, hands grasped at Yuuri’s ribs as Victor leant down and bumped their foreheads together to exchange baited breath. “Now is not really a good time for you to be this beautiful, Yuuri.” came the next low admonishment, and Victor really was excited about this after all.

And Yuuri couldn’t help himself, couldn’t resist something he used to be starved of for so long, so he erased the small distance between their lips and met Victor’s mouth with his, he nipped at Victor’s lip, sucked on his tongue, kissed him open mouthed and filthy until Victor was growling with frustration and grasping at his ass with want to pull their groins flush.

Victor was always so easy, wound up tight too fast, and Yuuri loved to tease him just a much as what Victor did Yuuri. “Not now, Victor.” Yuuri winked as he pushed himself away from Victor’s chest, and the sight of Victor with flushed cheeks and kiss red lips would never get old, especially as a feral smile dawned on his face, full of mischief and fire.

“You’re so mean to me, Yuuri.” Victor feigned hurt with a hand to his heart as his voice dropped an octave and turned into a very real threat that he would definitely make good on. “You will pay for that.”

“I’m counting on it.” was all Yuuri said with a playful grin of his own, and then it was his turn to help Victor dress with the same care that’d been shown to him, and kissing Victor like that had been a horrible idea after all, because Victor was and always would be irresistible to Yuuri after all.

It turned out Yurio, which Yuuri had taken to calling him for his own amusement -much to Yurio’s anger- and because there was only room for one Yuuri in Victor’s life, had come on a motorbike that he’d parked down the long road and made the rest of the way on foot to remain unheard.

A bike was too noticeable, too hard to make use of, too much of a give away, so one of the first conclusions they all came to was that the three of them had to travel in one car, and the friction surrounding them only turned all the more tense.

It was a hasty ten minutes worth of packing bags and the station wagon that would now carry three, a methodical loading of weapons in silence, laying them out on the dining room table and then loading more because the night beyond the porch-light of the cosy house on the edge of the world seemed too dark, too fraught with cold air that carried the noise of gravel crunching underfoot as they went back and forth from the house to the car, too peaceful in its stillness, like things just outside the light’s domain lay in wait and had frightened all the natural music of night into hiding.

And all throughout their preparations Yuuri could feel Victor’s eyes on him, could feel his obsession with watching his back to keep it safe because it was the only responsibility in his life that he’d ever wanted. And now that he had what he wanted nothing could take it from him. This was a Victor the world hadn’t seen before, and Yuuri smouldered with his own sinful pride because that Victor belonged to him.

The things in the dark were in for a fright of their own.

Time always went slower at night, after those ten minutes that seemed to drag on for time they no longer had they were finally all piling into the car, Victor in the drivers seat, Yuuri next to him in the passengers seat, and Yuri Plisetsky silently obedient in the back with an AK-47 on his lap because his loyalty was with his ambition and not the mafia that he’d seemingly abandoned now too.

The abrupt click of seat belts fastening cut at the quiet air inside the vehicle, the low thrum of the engine firing set them even further on edge, and before Victor shifted the car into gear he touched Yuuri’s thigh briefly, the illumination in his eyes enough to keep the night outside the car at bay.

“Let’s have some fun, shall we?”

The road was quiet in the hills on the outskirts of St Petersburg, their solitary set of headlights on the winding road back into town bright against the oppressive blackness of night as the darkest hour approached the clock.

The engine purred a warm noise as if it were happy to be of service, and they managed to make it back into a built up area in the city without incident.

“What about Otabek?” Victor asked suddenly as they came to a smooth halt at a stop sign, everyone had their eyes peeled everywhere at once, it was still a long way to go before they made it to the train yard where the next part of their journey would start.

In the backseat, Yurio just shrugged, “He’ll figure it out eventually and catch up.”

“Aw, you’re lucky Yura, to have someone like that.” Victor chuckled as his eyes scanned the road ahead where streetlights shone down on the industrial district with large factory buildings and chain mesh fencing to line the way.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Yuri bristled in the back seat as Victor decided to back track and approach their destination from a different direction.

“You’ll know one day.” Was all Victor said.

Minutes passed on the digital display of the car’s dash, they were into the thick of the city now with it’s domed roof buildings and colourful spired cathedrals, some streets were narrow and long with no where to turn off, some were short one way bridges where you could be cut off with no place to run. The density of civilisation made for a potential disaster with each turn.

It didn’t help that Yuuri didn’t know the streets to get to where they were going, where to look, or how long it might be until they got there, he did however know when he was being followed. It was a feeling you couldn’t shake, something you couldn’t wash from your skin or brush off your shoulder, and as busy as the night time traffic was in St Petersburg, Yuuri didn’t think seeing the same black SUV three times in the space of 2 minutes was a coincidence.

“Victor.” Both Yuuri and Yuri echoed at the same time as they both noticed, as they both sat forward on the edge of their seat a little more than before and flicked the safety off their weapons without a second thought. And Yuuri could feel the regard on the back of his head as Yuri scowled at him like he’d lost a competition in observation.

Victor changed gears with a fast foot on the clutch and a fluid movement of the gearstick, his face set into a grim smile as the car responded in turn, “And so it begins.”

“Yeah and it looks like it’s about to fucking end already, Victor. There’s more than one. Shit, watch out!”

The real explosion happened then, it happened in the shattering of tempered glass and its razor sharp snow as an attempt to T-bone their car from the side street just passed failed and smashed into their rear wheel instead. Tyres screeched in distress as other vehicles closed in, Yuuri’s vision blurred as they fishtailed with the impact, and as the world moved so very slow before his eyes he noticed how strangely empty the streets were now.

Beside him in the driver’s seat, Victor reached across to him once more to squeeze his leg, he looked across at Yuuri with his smile that went all the way to his eyes and winked at him with more excitement and madness, with no thought or fear that they could possibly fail, and even through his ringing ears and all the alarm bells sounding in Yuuri’s head; he could hear Victor humming.

He knew the tune well by now.

’Stay close to me’

[the-shattered-world]

The Afterlife, part 2

Intermediate Aspect Planes:

Alauki - The Rat's Nest - True to it’s name, The Rat’s Nest is a den of filth of the highest caliber: a run down building shrouded in perpetual half-moon light with everything covered in thin layers of choking dust. Rigged games of dice and poker going on all around, being played by hopeless souls who will never truly understand they can never win. And each time they lose, the are forced to relive a moment in time where they chose their addiction over the well being of themselves and others around them, tormented with the knowledge that they had truly failed in life. The games are run by demons twisted into horrible shapes relating to what they are dealing. The ones who are being tormented by addiction to various substances have said substances constantly pumped through their bodies in fatal doses, inflicting great pain and inflicting death upon them again and again, with the feeling of sobriety and freedom from their pain seemingly always just out of reach. The demons who inflict this torment also physically reflect their tortures. Demons summoned from this realm generally serve as terrifying debt collectors and enforcers.

Lakou - Infinite Estate - A great, white mansion with a red tiled roof, and stained glass windows. Built in the middle of an endless forest filled with uncountable amounts of game that can be hunted for the enjoyment of the blessed souls. The mansion is filled with the “finer things in life” that make up the residents’ accomplishments. Souls who make it into the Infinite Estate are finally allowed to slow down and enjoy the fruits of their labors, whether that be through extravagant activities or indulging in a few harmless vices now and again. The Infinite Estate has butlers that attend to the need of the souls, and they are the celestials that answer the call when summoned by wizards. The summoned “butler” celestials can be put to various tasks such as giving the hard working man working for an honest day’s wage the inspiration he needs to carry on and resist falling into the trap of the “easy way out.”  

Cassia - Shimmering Casino - Neon flashing lights and men and women dressed in fancy, tacky outfits serving drinks and food as never ending jackpot bells fill the air only matched by the sound of flowing coins. The Shimmering Casino is always open and ready to pay out! The souls who are fortunate enough to have garnered Cassia’s special attentions enjoy an afterlife filled with close calls, lucky strikes and just-in-time-saves that always seem to fall in their favor. Thieves who dedicated their life to Cassia’s whims, whether the reaped the benefits on a regular basis or not and still maintained their faith, enjoy an afterlife full of on the edge success. The tackily dressed attendants are the celestials that are summoned, and their duties include blessing a burglar with being able to hit that safe combination perfectly on the first try or have a cloud dance over the moon to create just the right amount of shadow at just the perfect time. But they can also be used for nefarious reasons if manipulated correctly, taking away one’s luck instead of nudging it along.

Vetea - The Black Bank - A dark, large and falling apart building filled with vaults that hold the souls of the corrupt, who are forever counting money that they know they will never have. Those who paid tribute to Vetea actively become “dark bankers,” spectres in flowing, black robes that wander the halls of the bank making sure the trapped souls stay where they belong. The fluorescent lights are always flickering and buzzing, the off-white paint is flaking off the walls and the air is filled with the foul smell of stagnant cash that has been rotting in the vaults for an eternity. Dirty money for dirty people. The devils who occupy this realm are hulking monstrosities that act as guards that take care of business the dark bankers cannot. They are also the ones summoned into the real world to act as all around violent thugs.

Gahla - House of the Shining Blade - A great, multi-story house filled with different kinds of weapons and armor that the souls who have come to rest in the House of the Shining Blade can use to perfectly hone their skills for eternity. The halls are lined with famous ancient weapons and pieces of armor, used by champions of old thought lost to the ages long ago. There are no beds and no mess hall; the honorable dead need no sustenance, only a constant honing of their skills. Most of the souls trained here eventually move on to Veiyana’s realm to do battle with Ruotha and his hordes. The celestials summoned from this realm come in the shape of great, winged and armored angels wearing shining silver armor.

Partine- Highest Court - A court house painted white with innumerable marble pillars and a statue of a giant balance sitting at the bottom of a thousands steps that lead up to a large pair of double wooden doors. Inside, the floor is covered in pearl white tiles and the walls are lined with murals that attest to Partine’s greatest “victories” in the name of justice.  Partine’s chair sits in the center of the great chamber. In front of the chair sits thousands of rows of benches where the souls who have come to the Court sit and wait to be assigned to the realm of the aspect they worshiped most. Those who either did not worship a specific aspect, only worshiped through lip service, or have had their soul condemned to certain realms for devious actions in their life, are sent to a limbo until they are picked up by the proper “punishing” realm. Great, bulky celestials wearing robes are the guardians of the Court, and it is they who are summoned via ritual. Anyone attempting to summon one with ill intent is hit with a feedback loop that can be deadly.

Burbo - Quarry of Blood and Fire - Souls writhe in pain and eternal toil in the bloody, smoking pits of endless stone that never seem to go deeper into the ground no matter how much stone the chained and whipped slaves remove. The sky is black with smoke from the rock processing factories; trenches surround the quarry filled with rotting bodies and foul waste that fill the air with a constant putrid, oppressive smell that damages the slaves’ morale as much as the demonic slave drivers. Burbo stands on a great spire in the center of the quarry where he can see everything and everyone. Those who worshipped him in life and were successful are turned into the demonic slave drivers,these are the ones who are summoned from the plane via magic. Those who failed him are turned into slaves themselves.

Tjiermalles - Bastion of Freedom - Miles of endless meadows filled with tents of every size and shape. Scattered throughout the encampments, various types of livestock or crops are tended.  But one can never seem to find the “edges” of the camp. Tjiermalles resides in a leather A-Frame tent in what’s considered the center of the camp, the broken shackles that once bound him rest beside the tent.  Those who were once damned to servitude in life, dying before being freed, rest in the encampment with Tjiermalles. Spirits resembling large men and women wearing torn clothes and rags are the guardians of this place, and it is they who are summoned from it. They wield “procured” weapons that represent particularly nasty slavers that have been served Tjiermalles’ particular brand of justice.

Sellon - Camp Hatred - In a realm of perpetual torrential thunderstorms, spiked battlements and iron and steel walls surround a primitive military camp. The camp is located on a solitary piece of land surrounded by a bottomless trench filled with a mixture of blood, water and waste. Magical fires burn piles of bodies which are constantly being added to and subtracted from, the older bodies being tossed into the fissure. These are the corpses of those fallen to oaths of vengeance. While it is mainly orcs that inhabit this plane, other races appear as well in fewer number. Giant, tusked orcs bulging horrendously with muscles are the guardians of this place as Sollens sits upon an iron throne surrounded by his priests and various kinds of bloodied weapons.

Helena - Palace of Gold - An elaborate palace plated in gold, a giant bell adorning the apex.  Priests in white-hooded robes circle the palace, pacing slowly around the dimly glowing hallways.  Helena herself sits atop the palace, just below the bell.  For every instance of true love proclaimed in her name, the bell is rung.  Those summoned from this realm take the form of the hooded priests, wielding great staves.  A golden trinket wrapped around their wrist, with a tiny bell identical to the Golden Bell, these celestials are summoned to bring the summoner luck in love--only those with pure intentions earn their favor.  

Abaddon - Withering Bog - A fetid landscape filled with dead trees and murky water and populated with mutants of all kinds - animals, humanoids and “beyond.” Bloated corpses idly drift through the waters, giving birth to constant streams of insects. A continual acid rain washes over everything, leaving scars over what it doesn’t outright kill. Those who kill with poison and disease are prone to end up in this realm, tormented forever if they had not shown proper respect to the trollish Abaddon, who stalks the bog beneath the deceptively shallow waters, in life. The mutated and plague addled beasts of the bog are the spirits summoned through Ka, taking so many different forms it is impossible to document them all.

Mavena - Salvation Garden - A wooden dome frame covers the grassy pathway the Gardeners of this plane travel across.  Medicinal herbs, plants, and various species of vines grow from the frame.  The hills of the Garden offer respite for weary Gardeners, with sturdy benches every so often along the trail. The inclines are steep, however, indicative of the nature of medicine itself.  The bespectacled Mavena tends tirelessly to each plant in her Garden, and only the most dedicated to the practice are allowed to aid in her task.  Various regions throughout the Garden represent the different regions throughout Perzul.  While no guardians can actually be summoned from this plane, praying for their tender touch upon herbal gardens, and the hands of physicians alike can impart their blessing for those deemed worthy.

Plectus - Floating Observatory - A vast library located on top of a cloud that floats slowly through clear and sunny skies with the only access being a staircase that’s broken at the bottom and leads down into the nothingness. The interior is laden with gold, the walls are painted with images of accomplished philosophers and shelf after shelf of books reach high up to the domed ceiling where Plectus sits at a massive desk, with a giant telescope hanging over his head that he can look through to gaze into not only the realm of mortals, but the realms of his fellow Aspects.   In the center of the observatory is a large area designated for debate, rows and rows of bleachers surround an open floor where spirits of Plectus’ faithful engage in battles of words. Rumor has it that Plectus keeps watch over the documents of the Librarian himself, keeping them away from the prying eyes of any who might try to take advantage of the infinite knowledge for their own purposes.

Ivin - The Great Workshop - Deep underground a vast network of rooms and workshops make up Ivin’s Great Workshop, where all kinds of devices and weapons are invented constantly, though many are never seen outside of the shop. Great bellows spew smoke and fire, anvils spit great sparks and gears grind loudly. Each room is fully equipped with all the tools any aspiring inventor and blacksmith could ever imagine, and each faithful soul gets their own room, meaning the workshop is constantly expanding and forever churning with new ideas. Guardians of the realm are not summoned directly by Ka-users, but their blessings are bestowed upon creators looking to make something that could end up being useful to mortals. Being Neutral, Ivin does not police what his blessings are used for. Ivin’s personal workshop is a thing of wonder--it’s almost as large as any powerful king’s castle and is filled with tools that have yet to be introduced into the mortal realm.

Serae - Silent Forest - A hazy, overgrown forest with a single sprawling meadow in the center. Wildlife thrives in the forest, with virtually no predatory threats, no tension exists between any residing within these mossy trees.  Serae herself lives in the meadow, enjoying the pastoral symphony of birds singing in the distance.  Those who find themselves in this realm in the afterlife are required to have led peaceful, temperate lives.  When these residents are summoned to Perzul, they appear in the form of a cloaked elven djinn, possessing the ability to calm any soul.  

Marcout - The Eternal Battlefields - Black skies over a burned and scarred field littered with corpses and charred remains of warmachines. Marcout rages across the battlefield for all eternity, slaying and reveling in blood. There is no rest on the Eternal Battlefield, and those who find themselves there have no use for it in the first place. It is extremely rare for a soul who did not already pledge itself to Marcout to end up in the Battlefields. His followers, usually mercenaries and genocidal war criminals, follow his lead and take part in his glory---fighting either with or against him. But no matter what, the slain and maimed are always remade whole to be allowed to return to the fray at a moment’s notice. Great demons made of metal and bone act as guardians and most Summoners find them extremely difficult to control without extensive preparation.

Livion - The Highest Haven - Surrounded by a meadow with thriving wildflowers, Livion’s Haven sets up top on the towering mountain.  The wooden lamasery in which Livion and her monks pray and train has been painted a bright, vibrant shade of red. the symbol of Livion emblazoned across the entire roof.  The trails one must travel to arrive at the Highest Haven are menacing, containing the Pacifist’s Trials the Monks who reside here routinely must complete.  When one passes from the mortal plane, one must have lived a life of striving for true peace.  The celestial monks summoned from the Highest Haven will only respond to defend those with pure, peaceful intentions.

Klintous - The Heart of Compromise - The monastery on the mortal plane is modeled after the mythical home of Klintous. A multistory brick and mortar mansion sits on an island in the middle of an enormous river (which is split in two by the island). The followers of Klintous reside in this mansion, living a life of peace and luxury afforded to them by their diplomatic skills. This realm’s guardians are rarely summoned and even then the situation must be dire, but when invoked by amateurs (see: not officially trained monks) they are known to soothe volatile tempers during negotiations. However, when invoked and one party is found to not truly be willing to compromise, the ritual fails in a very obvious manner. This situation has been known to worsen conflicts.

Gaan - Endless Road - The Endless Road is a forever winding cobblestone road surrounded by various topographical features.  Signs line the road, all contain Halfling gibberish, as none lead to any actual location.  All roads lead to the same end--more cobblestone.  Small buildings scarcely occur along the Road, providing sanctuary to those guardians who wander.  Time slows to a crawl on the Road, with no end ever in sight.  Those who travel the Road, however, never seem concerned.  Upon death, only those who have dedicated their lives to travel and/or the purpose of discovery find themselves on the road, waiting to be summoned.  Upon being summoned, they travel through Ka to aid travellers on Perzul with finding their destination safely.  

Vinnchio - The Muse’s Atelier - Vinnchio’s private workshop for his devoted followers to continue to create in after their life ends. Everything and anything a sculptor, painter or writer could ever want can be found here, and a soul’s creative spark is strengthened a thousand fold. The studio itself is a large, open area with windows lining the ceiling. The sun never seems to go down, leaving the room bring with natural light. Vinnchio patrols the floor, offering critique and advice to his followers to help them continue to develop their craft. There are no guardian spirits to be summoned from this realm, but Vinnchio’s name and power can be invoked by an artist to help find their muse.

Exod - Dark Vault of Endless Wealth - A dilapidated bank, its iron walls rusty and decayed.  In the distance, inhabitants of this Plane can see a magnificent vault teeming with treasures untold, ripe for the picking.  However, as the damned souls make their way towards the Vault through a complicated labyrinth, they are tormented by the souls of the those they cheated.  No matter how close they may get to the treasure, Exod--in his throne atop piles of limitless gold and silver, takes pride in observing their torment, making sure that all souls are making their way to the Vault.  Those who slack, fall behind, or simply give up, are tortured endlessly until they continue their quest.  The guardians who serve under Exod perform the Aspect’s bidding.  When mortals attempt to summon Cassian guardians with corrupt intentions in their hearts, Exod’s minions appear instead--unbeknownst to the summoner, cursing their Ka-tricks.  The attendants of Exod look very similar to those of Cassia; instead, their eyes are black and empty, requiring a trained eye to recognize.

Teroqi - House of Endless Repast - This longhouse exists in a realm of perpetual dusk and is filled from one end to the other with piles of ever-replenishing food and drink, with entertainers playing music and singing. There always seems to be just enough room to fit everyone in. Due to Teroqi’s nature, as in not having any real dedicated church or following, those who showed great charity in life are allowed to visit Teroqi’s realm as they wish.

Neru - S.S. Constellation and the Galactic Armada - Neru’s caravel, the S.S. Constellation, leads the colossal armada on the Eternal Sea.  Her small ship is nimble, as if the wind is always in her favor.  Sailors and pirates alike that have dedicated their lives to the sea find themselves aboard their very own boat in the Galactic Armada.  Those who had lived with respect for the seas receive their own ship--those who would pollute the sea’s beauty find themselves damned to a state of perpetual drowning for all eternity.  

Lepyi, Loj and Lao - House of Cycling Seasons - A house made of paper and wood sits raised on wooden stilts just above the still surface of a clear blue lake. Trees of all kinds sprout from the water and exist in various states associated with the different seasons. There are no animals or fish in this realm, adding to the surreal stillness. No mortal souls reside in the House, and a hub to the elemental planes can be accessed here. There are three rooms--one for each resident--and one large common area where the three meet regularly.

Minor Aspects do not have realms of their own despite having groups of followers as they exist as servants to Intermediate Aspects.

[ba11etomane]

Fall Kingdom Roles

You may have 2 named characters. I would prefer if they were from different kingdoms. You may have as many extra characters (those with **) as you'd like though.

If there are any roles not listed here or the other kingdoms that you're dying to include, let me know and we can work something out!

Spring: https://goo.gl/gbdLXN Summer: https://goo.gl/XJV4yp Winter: https://goo.gl/tK7EDU Humans: https://goo.gl/j1cdNF

General Info

Ruler: Oberon

Magic: Generally, their magic is based on consumption, physically or metaphorically. They drain and decay, and some of the denizens of the Fall are nothing more than husks and shades, the products of such transformative siphoning of their energy. Their magic is mostly about entropy, releasing and turning structured magic back into raw power. They are relatively chaotic and decentralized as a kingdom because of this.

Geography: The Fire Forest is a portion of the Land Beyond eternally caught in brilliant fall. Its leaves are always fiery red and gleaming yellow, and seem to drift endlessly to the dark and foggy forest floor with every crisp breeze. There are winding trails of stones, fairy rings of towering mushrooms, fog-choked clearings where vaguely human forms flit between the shadows, and ruined temples slowly being consumed by gnarled vines. Oberon holds court in one of these abandoned temples, on his throne of vines. His court is more a hectic collection of different creatures yelling and carousing than a productive meeting.

Goals: Mostly, they long for respect. The Fall kingdom is often forgotten by the other three, and seen as a non-threat. They are the least organized and centralized, and so it's incredibly hard to get them to agree on a goal, much less actually follow through with it. Individually, many people within the Fall Kingdom have some grudge against their king for some slight or curse of his when he was in one of his fickle moods. While it isn't entirely clear why they want heir human, many think it could give them the power to usurp Oberon.

Social Strata: Oberon's kingdom is one of the most egalitarian, mostly because he can't get everyone to agree on anything long enough to enforce any sort of order. In general, the shades are viewed with respect and a healthy dose of fear, but are kept at arms length. They are not to be trifled with. The animals and other fae are much more friendly and approachable, and always seem to be trying to avenge themselves for one slight or another. Alliances shift rapidly.

Oberon

Ballet: Midsummer Night's Dream

Gender: Male

Age Range: 30+

Basic Info:

The Fall King has long suffered what he views as a lack of respect from both the other kingdoms, and his own vassals. The Fall Kingdom is by far the most disorganized and democratic, which results in Oberon lacking most of the power the other Kings and Queens have over their kingdom’s inhabitants. Part of Oberon wants to change this, to consolidate his own kingdom and spread his rot and ruin and wilderness to the other kingdoms.

Beyond his more political goals, Oberon is ruled by his wild and often erratic passions. At one time he and the Summer Queen were lovers, and their falling-out has been quite explosive. He longs to regain her love, or to destroy everything she holds dear, whichever is easiest. But while he longs for the Queen out of reach, another Queen closer to home longs for him. The Fall King has had a very tumultuous relationship with the queen of the Shades and her motley crew of spirits. Long ago, she loved him and thought they could rule the Fall Kingdom side by side, but  he spurned her for the love of the Summer Queen. She has descended into a grief and rage-fueled madness bent on destroying his kingdom from the inside out, and wouldn’t mind killing every beautiful, vibrantly living thing in the Summer Kingdom just for good measure.

Oberon’s powers lie in both physical and metaphysical consumption, the strongest of any of the Fall Kingdomers. While he was once a powerful magic user, his wild passions and regrets have caused him to lose control. Nowadays, his magic seems to turn back on himself as much as lashing out towards others. The fruit he holds rots in his fingers. The grass underfoot shrivels and browns. His throne itself crumbles under him. He thinks the love of the Summer Queen could cure him of this, or perhaps a human heart. But he is far from attaining either.

Player: @.username

Audition:

Firebird

Ballet: Firebird

Gender: Female

Age Range: 18+

Basic Info:

Trickster shapeshifter (a commonly Winter kingdom trait) who was originally kingdomless before being captured and imprisoned by the Mouse King. She was given to Oberon as a pet by the Mouse King to entice him to form an alliance with the Winter Kingdom. She hates both of them for this, and isn't too fond of the Spring and Summer queens for various other reasons.

She had knowledge of Drosselmeyer and Clara (both of whom may know a bit more about who or what she really is), and is certainly involved in bringing the new humans beyond the Veil, though she is rather tight-lipped about why.

While not originally a member of the Fall Kingdom, her powers are vaguely related to decay, decay of reality that is. She appears to be an anomaly of the most contagious kind, who has the ability to morph and corrupt the world around her. In more practical terms, she can take the laws of physics and time and just throw them out the window. Generally, her powers rely on word games, puns, rhyming, etc. Be careful if you think you understand a gift she's giving. Often its true meaning is shrouded under many deceptive layers.

Player: @.questing-witch

Audition:

Myrtha

Ballet: Giselle

Gender: Female

Age Range: 18+

Basic Info:

While the Fall Kingdom is ostensibly ruled by Oberon, there is an ever-growing faction of dangerous, hungry, and lost Shades who are ruled by the vengeful Willi Queen Myrtha. At one time she was a Summer Kingdomer, a servant of Titania who fell in love with Oberon. But he used her to get closer to her queen, and eventually spurned her for Titania. After Titania had Myrtha executed for her treachery, Myrtha’s restless spirit joined the Fall Kingdom. She has not forgiven Titania or Oberon, and her love has turned to poison. She wishes for nothing more than to destroy the Fall and Summer Kingdoms and make their monarchs suffer as she suffered.

Myrtha also has a pet fascination with dooming other young lovers, and has built up quite a collection of lost souls who came to her for aid or were trapped by her various schemes. Her power in the Fall Kingdom grows the more lovers she dooms, though she may be too overconfident in their loyalty.

While Myrtha’s powers were quite different in life, in death she only has the power to consume passion and devotion. She can siphon off love and turn it to bitter hate, and has been sucking souls to a withered husks in order to build up her own court of loyal Shades. But she can also be overcome by extremely powerful devotions, and fears true, innocent love. Instead, she’ll do anything she can to corrupt it.

*Player: @.username

*Audition:

Giselle

Ballet: Giselle

Gender: Female

Age Range: 18+

Basic Info:

Giselle has been a Shade so long she almost forgets what it was to be alive. But those few fleeting memories of her life, wild, untamed, and pure in the dense forests of the Fall Kingdom, haunt her just as she now haunts those same woods. Her memories are a curse to her, an unbearable weight to be overcome by fleeting feeling and then left empty once more. She hates her Mistress for this pain, and often takes it out on others who remind her of what she lost when Myrtha turned her into a Shade.

Queen Myrtha believes Giselle is her most loyal servant, and treats her almost like a daughter. She believes one day Giselle will become as strong and bitter as she is, fueled by vengeance and an aching hunger. But while Giselle may act the obedient handmaiden, and sometimes seems to take cruel pleasure in doing her Mistress’ bidding, she longs to be free, not just of the Willi Queen but of life itself. 

Just like her mistress, Giselle can suck the life out of others. But she is even more susceptible to being overcome by their emotions in the process than her mistress is, and this power causes her much pain. She can seem cold and detached at one moment and then painfully alive the next, and even she doesn’t know what she really feels and what is just a product of these fleeting but powerful emotions.

Player: @.username

Audition:

Hilarion

Ballet: Giselle

Gender: Male

Age Range: 18+

Basic Info:

Hilarion was once a Wild Hunter of the Summer Kingdom, a tasked protector of the Summer Court and a favorite of Queen Titania. But Oberon, jealous of Titania’s waning affections for him, corrupted her favorite hunter and kept him as a prisoner of the Fall Kingdom. While in the Fall Kingdom, he was tasked with hunting down the Shades and bringing them back under Oberon’s rule. He was given a bow that could kill even the dead, and still bears this fearsome weapon. But it was powerless against one Shade Myrtha sent to tempt him. Giselle, ever Myrtha’s loyal servant, lured Hilarion deep into the fog-choked forest and stole his heart, turning him at last into his current form, all because Myrtha wanted some small vengeance for Oberon’s spurned affections.

Basically, poor Hilarion was just Doing His Best™, but got caught between the unholy love triangle of immature and overpowered royalty, and has paid many, many times for it. Now he is a Shade, under the reign of Myrtha but not entirely under her control. He may possess that thing she truly hates and fears, unwavering devotion and pure love, and that has helped him keep more of his autonomy than many of the Shades. It may be though, that his own weariness and bitterness at being continuously used and thrown aside by powers beyond his control, and the cruel realization that perhaps Giselle never loved him in return are finishing the job Myrtha started, and turning him into a vicious, heartless, ravenous spirit. 

Unlike most Shades, Hilarion’s powers of energy consumption are rather weak. This is probably due to Myrtha’s incomplete control over him. He is still stuck between what he was and what he is becoming, and the internal struggle to come to terms with what he is and what has happened to him is tearing him apart.

Player: @.username

Audition:

Animals**

Ballet: Sleeping Beauty, etc.

Gender: Any

Age Range: Any

Basic Info:

The various other inhabitants of the Fall Kingdom are a motley crew of wild, unfocused, irreverent, and often destructive fae, many of whom take the characteristics of various animals. They are not transformed into these animals by a curse or a spell, unlike those of the Winter Kingdom. They simply are. As such, they feel they owe very little allegiance to their lord because, what did he ever give to them, honestly?

They are often fueled by petty feuds with their neighbors, and are too busy meddling with each other to think about the larger politics of the four kingdoms. Some are drawn to serve Oberon because of the power he holds. Others hate being called on by their king because they would much rather wreak havoc in the woods on their own terms, and like being contrary just for the fun of it.

Their powers are just as varied as their interests, but all are destructive. Some work by undoing magic, and like to fiddle with Summer Kingdom illusions to drink their fill of magic. Others delight in tearing dolls to shreds. Still others have powers more similar to their king, and live off of rot and decay. But while they enjoy wreaking havoc, they tend to stay out of the way of the Shades. Not only are they dangerous, but they simply aren’t any fun to mess with.

Player: @.usernames

Auditions: