#sitting there in my heartache (MODERN.)

[the-midnight-blooms]

ᴍᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴍʏ ʜᴜꜱʙᴀɴᴅ

pairing: CEO!park seonghwa x scientistwife!reader

AU: modern au

word count: 6.3k

masterlist

In the midst of a fragile soul dwindling under the aches of animosity, the married couple laid in bed with their backs facing each other. The husband, Park Seonghwa, an esteemed CEO of a pharmaceutical company ‘Park Pharmaceuticals.’ had the front board of the book lodged into the silk casing of his pillow with his other hand steadying it so he could still, quite painfully, scan his eyes over the text. Agitated, he got up with a grunt before sitting up to finish the chapter of his book. With his scientists publishing reports on the latest medicine they were developing, he immediately rushed back to his university textbooks to affirm he was still equipped with the necessary knowledge to understand the science. Meanwhile, Mrs Park- a research scientist at Park Pharmaceuticals' rival company, ‘Kim Pharma.’ was battling against her insomnia despite motherhood knocking her straight off her feet. Their daughter, Park Dami, was fast asleep in the room next door to Seonghwa’s study cuddling the little Toothless toy he had gifted her when she was still a cherub. It had seemed that Mrs Park was prone to falling asleep at the most odd times of day, whether it be during dinner or cleaning the home.

Perhaps it was the heartache she was suffering from. The love that she had held for her husband was a permanent fixture, a vow that she had promised not to break, and one she had not and never would for as long as she lived. However, the increasingly distant behaviour from her husband in light of his burgeoning role as CEO had her heart yearning for him. Being a mother was difficult and of course, so was Seonghwa’s job. Yet, he also had duties as husband and a father, which he seemed eager to abandon altogether.

“Why can’t you try to understand how difficult it is for me to do all of this? So much pressure at work, then I come to you going on about some stupid dinner with your parents!” He shouted, she flinched at the dissonance of his noxious tone reverberating off the walls of the small study- biting down at her lip.

“I’m sorry, I’ll leave.”

“Sorry, my arse. If you were sorry, you wouldn’t be fucking nagging in my ear all the time, would you?” He barked, as she sped out of the room. It had been three weeks since she had, politely and quietly, asked her husband if he was free to attend her mother’s dinner party. He refused, erratically, and despite having apologised with saccharine kisses and diligent promises, he didn’t turn up to dinner in the end.

“Oh he’s busy Mum. He’s seeing to some of the lab work, you know how stressful it was for me.” Her father complained light-heartedly, raising how unfair it was of him to neglect his family.

“Do you want to me have a chat with him? I can give him a good word.” Hastily, she steered her father away from that direction. The last thing she needed was Seonghwa to turn around and blame her for the earache her father would give.

With a relentless sigh, she sat up reaching for the bottle of water on the nightstand. His eyes flickered at her movements, lips moving up and down to form the shape of the words as he silently committed them to memory, forming judicious links between the knowledge and application.

“Seonghwa.” She called out for him, he hummed in return, barely reeling his eyes off the page. Please look at me. “I was thinking about going back to work again. I contacted my manager about restarting and at the moment I would only need to go in for about two days or so.” Shutting his book close, he finally met her stare, deep in contemplative thought.

“Do you think you can work and take care of Dami at the same time?” He questioned. She had thought about this several times before she dialled in her manager’s number. As much as she had inherited her father's kind-hearted nature, stunning beauty, and soft-spoken voice in the end it was the passivity she had drawn from her mother naturally rendering herself subservient to prioritise ones needs over her own. Essentially, if she had told Dami to keep her lips on a tight seal and remain of the sofa the whole day: she would.

“I’m sure I can as long as she's in sight. She'll be in nursery from September, so I'll be able to start work.” He fell a little quiet, turning to drop his book onto the night stand.

“Ok, if that’s what you want. If you need me to come home earlier, I mean I can’t at the moment, but in a few weeks time if you need me to-then I will.” Nodding, she sent him a grateful smile before sliding back under the covers to turn her night light off.

Her heels clicked, exasperatedly, on the porcelain white floor dashing straight through the double doors; her heart pounded furiously against her chest, a violent ache gnawing at her arteries. With her body almost barging into a number of figures, her anxious apologies echoed into the swamped corridors, in which her colleagues shook their tired heads in annoyance. Finally, reaching the top floor she scuttled out of the elevator catching the eyes of Mrs Lee.

"Lab coat, darling, lab coat." Squealing, she unbuttoned the off-white coat, scowling at the permanent pen marks and splashes of iodine before handing it to Mr Kim's assistant. Mrs Lee, threw the coat onto her seat, gesticulating for the young scientist to follow her. After a short knock, the heavy glass door was pushed open; several pairs of eyes darting their way.

"Ah, Miss Cheong! How nice of you to join us!" Hongjoong exclaimed, a teasing glint in his eyes that wanted to make her wipe the smirk of his lips.

"My apologies, Mr Kim, we ran into a problem down at the lab." She explained, a blush forging on her cheeks as a grave set of eyes burned into her skin.

"No worries. This is Miss Cheong, she will be our project lead on the next Kim-Park program." The Kim-Park program was founded by Kim Hongjoong of Kim Pharma and Park Seonghwa of Park Pharmaceuticals. With both companies leading the pharmaceutical industry, both founders decided in order to produce a greater economic boom, and serve an excellent supply chain of mandatory medicine; both of their greatest minds could work together to create poignant breakthroughs in the scientific sector. After all, the two companies had the countries top scientists working for them but together they could very well improve the nature of modern medicine. Hence, today both CEO’s came together for a kick off meeting establishing the blueprint for their next, biggest projects.

"'No worries?'" A derisive voice arose from across the room, where she snapped her head to find a man with wide eyes and thin-rimmed square glasses that sat at the bridge of his long nose, staring back at her. His long, slicked back hair that fell past his ears as he, mockingly, cocked his head to the side in amusement. "I didn't know Kim Pharma tolerated tardiness, Mr Kim." Returning his stare back to Hongjoong, he raised an eyebrow anticipating his answer.

“What was the problem down at the lab?”

“House fire." She retorted, "And I had to assign interns some lab work. Kim Pharma doesn't tolerate tardiness Mr Park but your project manager doesn't seem to be here? We'd have valued him being present at the kick off meeting." His face heated red in embarrassment as he gritted his teeth.

Park Seonghwa was insufferable.

The worst thing about him wasn't even that he was pedantic and scrutinised her work with a keen eye, or that his sharp attention-to-detail left her wanting to force him to chug a beaker of concentrated hydrochloric acid. It was that under his strictly co-ordinated demeanour, he was a beautiful man blessed with an angel's aura. It was that he was tall and that his voice could hypnotise her; send her lunging over a precipice into the expanse of uncharted oceans. At times his allure had her wanting to excuse her pathetic hatred. They bickered at every meeting, every email was sent with 'Regards' rather than 'Kind Regards'. It wasn't long before the bickering had transgressed to shouting in the boardroom as he began to question her teachings, snickering at every intellectual point she made as if she had not graduated from university with the same degree as himself.

"You forgot to add that cisplatin is a cis isomer." He stated, as she sat across from her in his office. This time, she didn't bother to retain herself from rolling her eyes. "A problem, Miss Cheong?"

"Who's reading this report, Mr Park? A high school student or the manufacturer? Any man with common sense and college level chemistry knows that cisplatin is a cis isomer. Do you want me to also write down that it has a square planar shape with a bond angle of 90 degrees?" She snapped, leaning back in her chair with a disgusted look. He smirked taking off his glasses, cleaning the lens with the hem of his blazer sleeve. Dear god. Sedate me.

"No, but you do need to explain how cisplatin works in detail. It only works as cis isomer, not trans. You didn't specify that."

"You're incredibly pedantic." Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his perfectly defined nose, the smirk remained fixed on his lips. "I'm not surprised people are handing in resignations, at your company, every week."

"They can leave if they wish, lazy people don't contribute to Park Pharmaceuticals' success." Oh and he was cocky too. As well as being a pretty face full of wits, Park Seonghwa was also wrought with egotism that made her want to wrangle his gorgeous, slender neck. "Have you ever considered joining our company?" A snicker escaped from her lips which eventually transcended into a laughter that wholly baffled him.

"I'm afraid I'd be a part of that sorry statist-,"

"I'm sorry for being an arsehole, Miss Cheong. Can I make it up to you?" And when she questioned him how he would make it up to her, he proposed the idea of a date. All he wanted was her, regardless of her much she was everything he was not. “Go on a date with me, please.” He blurted, with her feet rooted to the ground and lips falling into a thin line his heart palpitated within his chest. He sought the way her hair fell over her shoulders in light waves having ripped it from its knot after she walked out of the lab. Her pink lips were practically begging to be touched by his, he wanted to soothe the symphony of weary sighs that dispersed from her, and the headache that wracked her brain from his abstruse behaviour. Above all, he was falling in love with Miss Cheong because he despised her in such a paradoxical way. He hated the way she was smarter than him and beautiful in the way that she must have been carved from the clouds of heaven.

It often made her giggle at Hongjoong's astonishment when she handed him the wedding invitation. His excitement when he ripped open the seal to read Seonghwa's name as the groom, dropped the smile from his face as he looked at his college friend.

"You're marrying the enemy?" She shook her head at him, almost scolding him for deeming Seonghwa the 'enemy'. "This isn't what I meant when I said 'Fuck Park Seonghwa." Lobbing the pillow at his head, he dramatically sunk into his sofa as their childlike laughter eructed into the blithe atmosphere.

It had felt like a distant dream now, to be loved and adored in the ways that he once did. To be held as if every touch was their last, to be kissed as if their lips would never meet again and they were lovers in the midst of an age-old war that would tear their nimble hearts apart. To have her husband again and not a dispassionate demon who tore past the gates of hell and inflict all the condemned’s curses on her.

Giving you my all, giving you my everything. Laying my life down at your feet, stripping myself of my own honour just to feel something by you. A glance, a breath, a sigh. You tell me to leave- I don’t mean anything to you anymore.

"Hwa, you could have at least told me you weren't going to go in the first place. Then I wouldn't have gone to the company party." Sat at the foot of the bed, he pulled the jumper over his torso, pulling his trapped hair out from the neck hole. He bit his tongue as his wife rebuked him for his absence, once again. "Do you know how humiliating it was for me to be the only one sat without her husband there?"

"I told you I was going to run late."

"You were four hours late, and you're a half an hour drive to the office! Why didn't you say no, in the first place?" Tearing the earring out from her lobe, she sunk into the chair trying her hardest to not slip into tears; the sympathetic stares of hundreds etched into her memory. How stupid did she look for being dressed so ostentatiously, when the real jewel was not even in her possession? The clatter of pearls emptied into the drawers, hands buried into palm of her hands closing her eyes to relive the myriad of dejection. They never said marriage was this painful. Hard, yes. But not painful. "Hwa, do you love me?" She inquired, turning around in her seat.

"What?"

"It's as simple as you think. Do. You. Love. Me?" Her voice wavered as she asked him, the distant stare in his eyes revealed answers to the questions that she did not want answered.

“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t have married you. Or given you a beautiful daughter. I miss one, silly, company event and you start throwing a tantrum.”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve completely abandoned me!” Her shout restituted off the thin light blue walls, jumping from her seat at his petty arguments. “You are such a terrible husband and you make me feel trapped in this marriage!”

“And you fucking suffocate me! You suffocate me!” He roared across the room, his strident tone penetrating through her, grazing down the surface of her heart. Rupturing the weak seams that held it together. Stumbling backwards, her palms gripped onto the mahogany table; shaking, biting down her lip to prevent a sob from escaping. "The only time I felt like I could ever breathe, in this marriage, was when I was not with you. When I was at work, or with the others, or just anywhere else. But never with you." Dipping her head, away from him, she shut her eyes as tight as she could.

"Please stop." she whispered, a plead so quiet it almost went unspoken. Yet Seonghwa heard it anyway because no matter how angry he was, their souls were still intertwined. Their hearts beat as one, they were uniform, one whole being. Slowly, he treaded towards her, mimicking the dip of head.

"Why? Can't you take the truth?" he mocked. Full tears pooled in her eyes, her chest burning from holding in her breath. "I should divorce you." He proclaimed, without a stutter. That was enough to break her. An obnoxious wail infiltrated into the void of the room. Was that what he wanted? To provoke some sort of emotion from her to satisfy his ego? He scoffed, before darting from the room-slamming the door shut behind him. Wrought with tears she trudged to her bed, slipping under the covers; sobbing herself unconscious.

"Mummm. Ammiii. Ammaaa." A small voice whispered, the softness soothing the persisting ache in her chest. Holding back the smile ready to break through, she fixed her eyes shut waiting to see what her daughter would do next.

"Dami, let your mother sleep. Come on." The urge to smile had dropped instantaneously, the familiar sense of forlorn gushing into her again; his sweet, addictive voice puncturing holes into her heart.

"I'm hungry." She could hear the pout on her daughter's lips. Huffing, she groaned loudly snapping at her daughters attention, who jumped up and down in excitement of her mother awaking. Reaching out for her child, she picked her up settling her down on her laps. "Mama, I'm hungry." She squeaked.

"Have you washed up yet?" She shook her head. "Ok, let me go to the bathroom first. Then I'll help you."

"I'll help her wash up." Seonghwa offered. Refusing to look at him, she simply gave him a curt nod, the sight of his face wanting to make her erupt into a fit of sobs.

"I promise I'll never make you cry." He had promised, before their marriage. They sat under the stars, the cool wind brushing at their cheeks. Astronomy books sat scattered around her as she attempted to map out constellations in the beaming night.

"And if you do?" She challenged, playfully smirking. With a cute frown he gave her a nudge.

"I promise I won't but in the 0.00001 percent chance that I do, then you should leave me. You’re worth more than the moon to me, and to hurt you is the deadliest sin I can commit." He immediately leaned forward to swoop her into a deep kiss- both of them smiling as they did. The memory of his now-broken promise brought tears to her eyes again. Tightly pressing her palm to her mouth, to hold back her cries, she sucked in yet another breath. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

Gripping onto the bathroom sink until her knuckles bled white, her knees hit the floor. Nicking the handle of the tap- tears freely flowed down her cheeks as the water rushed through the basin at rapid speed. I want my baby back.

Feeling the heavy burden of a collapsing marriage, her shoulders sunk as she chopped at the onions, preparing their dinner. Dami sat on the stool by the kitchen island, with her mini crayons scribbling over the pictures in the colouring book.

“Mama, why did Appa sleep in my room yesterday?” Scraping the onions into the pan, she grabbed the wooden spoon to stir it.

“He was missing his little princess. He wasn’t causing you trouble, was he?” She teased, sending her a forced smile. God, it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay happy. To smile was to pain her cheeks, they felt more contented relaxed than to uplift and radiate an aura of joy that didn’t seem to exist within her anymore.

“He’s so big, I fell off bed.” She snorted, laughing at her child’s proclamation. It was not long before a thought occurred to her that whenever they slept in the same bed- it was always her that took up the most room-rather than him. A fond memory occurred to her, specifically a night where her body was plastered to his.

“Ah, jagi, can you move a little? I’m up against the window?” Her body shuffled slightly to the left, giving him room to breathe a little bit more. “Thank god.” He huffed out a sigh of relief, her lips fell into a pout- as she rolled further away from him towards the edge of the bed. If space was what he wanted, then she was going to give it to him. Seonghwa’s arm outstretched for her, the cold air battering his skin was no comfort, he wanted her again. A tantalising laugher infiltrated the air, he shuffled closer to her pressing his lips to the top of her head.

“Never mind I need my cuddly bunny.” He sang, nestling his face into the crook of her neck. Now, she couldn’t remember the last time he had held her so close to himself. If anything, he needed the space now and rested just less than a metre apart from her each night.

“It was nice! Appa is a teddy bear.”

“Am I, my princess?” Turning away from the doorway, she opened the cupboard to reach for the spices, shielding her melancholic face away from him. The sweet dissonance of giggling entered her ears, if he had no love to spare for her at least he had enough to spare for his daughter. “Ahem, I’m going on a business dinner tonight.”

“Ok.” Seonghwa watched her, resting his hand on the top of his daughter’s head who went straight back to colouring in the flowers in her book-switching to a pink crayon at that. “What time will you be home?” He shrugged, then quickly noticed that with her back to him she wouldn’t see.

“I don’t know. Don’t wait up.” How could he say that knowing that there wasn’t a night in their marriage where she didn’t sit patiently on the sofa, waiting for him to come back home. Even on the days where he warned her he’d be back a lot later than usual. Regardless, she’d stay plastered to the sofa switching from the tv, to her phone, to a random book-eyes continuously flickering to clock- skipping to the kitchen to shove snacks into her mouth, as she’d never eat without him.

The urge to erupt into a fit of sobs inclined, chewing on her lip violently provided her with enough solace to finish making dinner, feed her daughter and put her to bed. Then at last, when she closed the curtains to her bedroom, a hushed cry escaped her; spending the rest of her night as she did prior, wailing and wailing until fatigue had lulled her weary heart to sleep. The creak of the door went unnoticed to her, Seonghwa crept in; her sleeping figure rested in the bed, the comforter dragged over her head. He sighed, contemplating whether to slip beside her or retreat back to Dami’s room for the night.

This sequence continued for the next few weeks, every night she would cry herself to sleep and Seonghwa would sleep in Dami’s bed. It wasn’t even their room at this point, it was hers with Seonghwa’s things in it-just like her flat pre-marriage. Her room with Seonghwa’s books, few pieces of clothes and odd bits of trinkets. One morning she woke up to find a stack of papers on her nightstand. Fear coursed through her blood, were these the divorce papers that he had suggested to her? Rifling through the papers, her heart soothed as soon as she realised they were just Dami’s crayon drawings. Stick figures of Appa, Amma, and little Dami in the middle. Drawings of flowers, then one just of Amma and Appa, a big heart between them. If only that were true. If only his heart still beat for her the same way hers beat for him.

She heard his voice trail out of the study, as she almost raised her hands to knock and summon him downstairs for lunch. The rapid muttering halted her movements, instead she tentatively pressed her ears against the door to assess the situation.

“Yes, honey, I’ll be there soon…She’s pissing me off right now. I’m trying to get the papers set at the moment…I don’t know about a few more weeks?” Slapping her hand to her mouth, she squeezed her lips shut to prevent any pained sounds from releasing. Honey? There was another woman? And the papers? Was he really, truly, trying to divorce her? Rushing to the bathroom, she slammed the door shut, flipping the tap back open to relive the same endless cycle.

“I’m going on a work trip to Japan, for a week. We have an important business meeting. I might need you take care of Dami by yourself.” His head snapped from up Dami’s unfinished Lego project. She’d fallen asleep when playing, so her father took it upon herself to finish building the set.

“You should have asked me beforehand. You can’t just accept to go offshore, and then give me a week’s notice.” He scolded, playing with the pink block between his fingers.

“I only got told today. I tried to call you whilst I was still in office, but I couldn’t get through to you.” Sighing, his shoulders slumped as he shook his head in disappointment. It appeared that Mrs Park was also refraining important matters from her husband; making decisions of her own that they promised they’d always make together. An uncomfortable silence remained suspended in the tense air, shifting uncomfortably in her spot as she awaited for him to say something else. Even if it was to belittle her, she urged to hear the sound of his voice.

“If you cared enough about me, you’d know I’m busy too.” Chewing down on her lip, she held back a painful sigh. There it is. “We’ll be with my parents for a week while you’re gone. When’s your flight?”

“Sunday night.” Nodding, he scooped up the remaining pieces on the floor pouring them back into the packet before getting up himself. “I’ll pick you up from the airport.”

The work trip to Japan was just as tranquil as she anticipated, the host company was as hospitable as they could be. The days were cut short, the air silent subsiding one into deep thought, even if they denied themselves the pleasures of having to think. With her knees tucked up to her chest, she stared out onto the vast market of skyscrapers, the teeming arena beneath contributing the noises that fell deaf at her ears. She needed to leave the home, its confining airs strangling the lumen of her windpipe. She didn't exactly know what to do now that it was confirmed: Seonghwa did not love her. The declaration was enough to send her into delirium, enough to have her jolting up at night; drowning in cold sweats, preaching his name like a mantra. The flight home did not come soon enough, she boarded the plane with such eagerness and drenched even further in pain when she was assigned the seat next to her colleague and her husband.

Nervously, she dialled in his number once more hurriedly, tapping her feet against the cobbled footpath; her free hand latched onto the sweaty handle of the suitcase. Pick up, pick up, pick up. Being met by the voicemail service was disheartening, wrapping her arms around herself as the wind blew harsh against her skin sending a ripple of goosebumps over her.

"Mrs Park, is your taxi late?" Whipping her head around to find her colleague, she shook her head in dismay. "Do you need a lift? We don't live too far from each other."

Pushing through the large wooden gates of his childhood home, she adjusted the straps of her back pack lifting her head to find the blaring of orange lights through the slits between the window blinds. A small bustle of activity could be heard from the other end, tentatively, her fingers rose to provoke the silver door knocker.

"I'll get the door!" His voice floated through the surface, reaching out to caress the aches on her skin bruised wholly by him. As soon as their eyes met across the doorway, the smile was wiped clean from his lips. “Oh god, I’m sorry, it had completely slipped my mind-,”

“You don’t forget things, Hwa. The truth is: it didn’t slip from your mind, you just didn’t care.” You haven’t cared about me for a very long time. You haven’t loved me in a long time. I am no longer your wife but just Dami’s mother, to you. Though some sort of vile emotion named fear had prevented her from saying those words, becoming lodged at the crux of her throat, floating on the tip of her tongue.

The worst thing was, he didn’t say anything. He was silent, unwilling to reckon against her and fight for their marriage again. When did he become so passive? Up until now, when was there a day in their relationship when he didn’t fight to keep her at his side? Trudging into the household, the warmth lacerated her skin, taking off her shoes as the pattering of small feet came her way. A small body engulfed her larger frame, the delightful giggles of her daughter infiltrated her ears as her mother finally came home to her.

"We ate sooo much food. We had tteokbokki, dakgalbi, ramen. Halmeoni tried to make me eat yaksik but it was nasty." Letting out a tired moan she fell onto the floorboard, Dami crawling on top of her, as her mother-in-law stuffed her with enough food to last her a century.

"Ugh, Dami. Please get off Amma, my tummy is going to explode."

"Halmeoni! Amma ate too much!"

"Your Amma didn't eat enough!" Eomeonim shouted back from the kitchen. Seonghwa ambled into the room settling a cup of green tea in front of her, whilst simultaneously lifting Dami from her stomach. There was an uncomfortable silence amongst them as their daughter, oblivious to the obvious tension between her parents, entertained them nevertheless by dancing around the room and singing. He left the room in between to see to his mother in the kitchen. Feeling terrible for leaving her to tend to the mound of dishes, she carried behind walking straight into the enemy's territory.

“Are you stupid, boy? How could you even suggest a divorce?” She hissed. “It was only yesterday when you came running to me, with your eyes so full of love. Where is that love now?”

“People change.” He deadpanned, hot tears fulfilled her eyes, blurring her vision as she rushed back to the front room.

“We’re going, now!” She ordered, a pout on her daughter’s face grazed the surface of her heart. She couldn’t stand here, and hear her husband declare that he didn’t love her anymore. She couldn’t watch the love of her life slip from the tips of her fingers, whilst she sunk beneath the earth under her feet. She grabbed his car keys, from his jacket. “We’re going home, eomeonim. I need to go into the office, tomorrow. Thank you so much for taking care of Dami.” Kissing the top of her mother’s head, she slipped on her shoes before carrying Dami out of the home. Seonghwa followed hot on her heels.

“Where do you think you’re going at this time of night?”

“Home, Hwa.” The lock clicked out of the place, she jerked open the car door to fasten her daughter into the seat ignoring her cries and pleads to stay at her grandmother’s. “Dami! Quiet!” She roared, the same way Seonghwa would shout at her for nights on end for doing nothing other than being his wife.

“Stop acting like a child and come back inside right now!” He commanded.

“I won’t, Hwa. Because the next time I go back in and let myself be hurt by you, I’ll have no one to blame but me.” He fell quiet, swallowing the heavy lump in his throat. “I am the still the girl who would wait nights for her husband to come home to her. But you are no longer the boy that would walk straight into her arms.” Choking on her sobs, she jerked open the car door to slip inside, her daughter calling out for her father. After all, they were the same woman. Both so utterly in love with the same man that could not love them both in the ways one could dream of being in love. For being in love with him was asking for annihilation, his devotion unreachable like the stars studded in the midnight sky. Was he not made from the stars? An angel borne from light, whose banner was a celestial plane that would diminish the human essence in a heartbeat? Steering the car out of his driveway, Seonghwa stood plastered to the floor a single tear dropping from his eye as he felt his soul meander away from him.

That night, when they reached home, Dami was tight in her arms after having cried the whole journey home from missing her father. Eventually, exhaustion overpowered her and she reluctantly slept in her mother’s arms. She was so sure now that her daughter thought she was the villain for ripping her away from her father. Nuzzling her small face deeper into her mother’s neck, she felt her bottom lip tremble as she called out for her father.

There was no need to frantically run to the post box every time a letter slipped through, meeting the ground with a loud thud. Though, she did it anyway, with little Dami scuttling behind her as if she was expecting a letter herself though deep down Mrs Park knew that she wanted her Appa to come home. It had been a month having not heard back from him. No messages or calls. After work, she ventured over to his office only to be turned away by his assistant; catching a quick glance at his shadow through his window.

“I have to make an appointment to see my own husband?” She uttered through gritted teeth, though the woman in front merely nodded, disinterestedly. “When is Mr Park next available?” The jarring clatter against the keyboard gnawed at her ear drums, annoyance fulfilling her.

Fuck this. Rushing to the handle of his door, she keeled it open storming inside-the loud slam of the door jumping him up from where he sat in his seat. The assistant rushed behind, squawking about how she had to leave.

“Cilla, it’s ok. Go do your job.” He ordered, softly with his eyes fixated on his wife. She didn’t expect him to look this way, the clean, composed Seonghwa now with tousled hair and small dark circles under his eyes. Eyes bloodshot red as if he had been crying for weeks on end, exhaustion piling in them. His sunken face as if he had not eaten for weeks-Seonghwa, not eating? The same man who used to kiss her hands and go for seconds, claiming there must have been some magic in them for she made such delicious food?

“Dami is getting upset. She misses her Dad. The least you could is come home and see her, so she doesn’t think that her father abandoned her too.”

“I’ve been busy-,”

“You’ll always be busy, Hw-Seonghwa. But not busy enough that you can’t spare an hour or two to see your daughter.” She spat, storming straight out of his office, sending the assistant a dirty look on her way to the elevator.

“Appa!” Dami’s animated tone weighed down her father’s heart, his arms wide open as she jumped into them. Fixing her spot by the kitchen doorway she watched as her husband played with her daughter. After a few hours, when they had put Dami to sleep, they sat with each other in the front room Seonghwa pulling out an envelope from his work satchel.

“The-uh- papers. Divorce papers.” A pang struck through her, hands shaking as she reached out for them.

“As her mother, I’ll have custody over her. You should be allowed to see her every week, so maybe the weekend?” Her voice quivered, slightly as she opened up the seal of the envelope, its woody scent wafting up her nose. With little energy, to pull out the form- she settled it onto the coffee table. “We’ll move to my mother’s house…” She trailed off biting down on her lip as Seonghwa closed his eyes shut.

“That’s fine. You can just post it to the lawyer. I’d like to see Dami at my office next week, could you do that?” Nodding diligently, she owed him that much. He’d be counting down the days soon until he’d rarely see his daughter. How would they tell her Amma and Appa weren’t as happy as they were in the drawings?

Her eyes scoured over the woman sat in front of him, as she opened the door to his office. God, she was beautiful with her long, black, silky hair, siren eyes, her chic office look. Everything she was not, though she had managed to pick herself up and put a lot more effort than she usually did with her fitted suit, hair tied back into a sleek bun-held up by the closest pen she could find on her dressing table since her silver claw clip was nowhere in sight. Was she the woman he was going to leave her for? She couldn’t even blame him at this point, why keep something expired when you could throw it away and have something new? Gripping onto the straps of her handbag, she slowly let go of her daughter’s hand who ran to her father’s side.

“Gaeun, this is my wife Mrs Park.” Timidly, she shook her hand. Gaeun saw Mrs Park as an intimidating woman, with her silent face as she ambled into the room with her daughter, her neat hair, pointed heels and tailored skirt that accentuated her curves. She matched Mr Park’s daunting presence perfectly, and of course her intelligence was known to all as well as her insistence to remain at his rivals’ company. “Dear, this is Gaeun- she’s one of the project leads on the next Kim-Park collaboration.”

“I see.” Her head picked up, giving both parties a short nod before leaving the office. She reckoned there was enough to time to make it to her own company and break down in the toilets before beginning the work day.

The rain thundered down from the sky on a solemn afternoon, the clatter of dishes being returned to the cupboards entailing the home; followed the thundering knock at the door. Peeking into the peep hole, she swung the door open, she pulled her husband in immediately rushing around him as he jerked off his shoes.

“Into the shower now.” Without hesitation, he grabbed his clothes from her bedroom before soundlessly making his way into the shower. She only assumed he had come to their home for the signed papers, it had been a while since he’d given them to her; though all she could think about was the way her pen could not even touch the sheet. The door to the study creaked open, as she bit her lip with the unsigned line glaring back at her.

“I haven’t- I haven’t signed the paper, yet.” His breath hitched in his throat, inching closer and closer to her. With the tickle in her throat pervasive, the pen neared the line her heart shattering with every second that her hands rebuked the damned sheet in front. How did she even do her signature?

“I’m sorry that you fell in love with me. I’m sorry that you married me. I’m sorry that I’m not enough. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be the perfect wife for you.” She blurted, the pen falling from her fingers onto the table. He called out her name, drawing forward arms outstretched to encircle her into him. To hold her as tight and as true as she deserved. To fulfil her of kisses that he had deprived her of, to ease her of her pain. Though she stopped him in his tracks, with a palm to censor his movements. “No, Hwa. I haven’t been enough for you for a very long time. I must have done something wrong for you to hurt me like this. I must have done something much worse than what you’ve done to me. I just wished you spoke to me than gave me this stupid sheet and trying to end us in a single heartbeat.” An agonising wail left her lips, as she dropped to the floor tucking up her knees to her chest. Her lungs burned, desperate for air running her fingers through her hair as she slowly breathed out to ease the throbbing sensation loitering at her temples. He sunk to the floor with her, engulfing her frame within his. His jumper so soft, drenched in the scent that she adored. The same scent that he wore when they first met. Her bottom lip quivered again.

“You did nothing, it was all me. I forgot who I was, I forgot it was you who gave me life.” Her tears stained his shirt, he held her closer to his body. “I came to here to change your mind. I didn’t want you to sign those papers. I was so scared you had.” Their bodies rocked back and forth as the painful sound of her sobbing gradually declined.

“I couldn’t do it.” She whispered, her throat sore from this prolonging nightmare. Kissing away her tears, his fingers gently tilted up her head so he could bore his eyes in her beautiful ones. “I just need to know if there’s another woman. If there is, and you love her the same way you loved me, you can have her.”

“There was never another woman. It was always you I swear.” He pledged, as his own tears rushed down his face tickling his jawline before pattering carefully on his sweater. “I was just a poor excuse of a man, a poor excuse of a husband. I admit that I felt like you’d never leave me, but when I realised you really could it hurt me so much.” Drawing lines over his sweatshirt she listened to the sweet sound of his voice whisper into her ears.

“I’ll be a better man. I’ll work on me, and you can just keep on being a great wife and mother.” Their lips met in a frenzy of emotions, their palpitating hearts enamouring their befallen entities as passionate kisses filled the wounds that penetrated through them. His hands snaked around her waist, as hers ran through his long hair emitting a husky groan out of him. “Do you think Dami would like a sibling?” He joked, before being met by whack to the back of his head, they deepened the kiss before she happily rested her head against his chest.

“Maybe, but not now. Right now, you need to come home to us.”

“It’s just you and me now. Nothing’s going to hurt you baby.”

•••

All Right Reserved © the-midnight-blooms

DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, REPURPOSE, OR PLAGISRISE ANY OF THE WORK HERE

cheong meaning 'quiet' 'eomeonim' means mother-in-law (husband's side) 'halmeoni' means grandma

A/N: i'm sorry if the ending seems a bit rushed, i'm going on some meds soon and i have no idea how shit i'm gonna feel while on them. wanted to update in case i have no energy to release something else for a while😖 Hope you guys liked this one! ✨✨

let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list for any future fics I post!

tags: @n0v4t33z @potatos-on-clouds @jjongwho

[thisblogisaboutabook]

RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT ME

Azriel x Reader - Fluff - One Shot

While getting over a breakup, a performer in a Velaris tavern catches the attention of a certain Shadowsinger.

Warnings: Alcohol, Implied hook-up

The notes flowed effortlessly through my fingers onto the ivory keys of the tavern’s antique piano. I’d played the song more times than I cared to admit over the past several months yet the angst of it had yet to be lost on me.

Tonight was particularly lively as the High Lord and Lady’s inner circle made their way into the tavern. One of the nicer pleasure halls in Velaris yet not as alluring as Rita’s, which was closed this week as they install an updated dance floor and modernize the bar’s serving area.

Once word spread of the prestigious guests, a plethora of onlookers flowed in the front doors. It had been a while since the bouncer actually had a line to attend to.

Attendees made requests, many tunes of a more risqué variety in hopes of a sultry dance against THE Morrigan. Who could blame them? She was lovely. Not in a soft and gentle way - but in a powerful, warm, seductive sort of way. Those that didn’t want to be with her, wanted to be her. Males and females alike tried and failed to get close enough for a dance but she stayed close to the remainder of the inner circle on the dance floor, so lost in the music that she hadn’t even noticed the desire flowing around her.

The Shadowsinger had also come out tonight. Though he evaded the dance floor, guarding their corner table diligently. An emotionless, bordering cold stare plastered on his face as he monitored the place. Ever the watchful friend, ensuring nobody stepped out of line. Many patrons gazed from afar, whispering words of encouragement as to who could work up the nerve to approach. The more brazen guests going as far as to take a few steps closer before being put off by his intimidating presence without him even making eye contact with them.

After a recent break up - recent putting it lightly - it had been months but who was counting? I’d taken to spending my weekends in this tavern. One evening, after far too many shots of liquid courage, I began playing on the piano while singing raunchy limericks and catchy tunes I’d picked up over the years during my travels through Prythian. Despite his odious reputation, some of my favorite limericks came from the High Lord of the Spring Court whom I’d never met personally. The poems coming in slurs from drunken participants of the Great Rite many years ago, the Calanmai where I met my former lover.

We’d connected instantly - literally and figuratively - and spent several wonderful years together. Until, damn the cauldron, he found his mate earlier this year. What are years together in the face of fate? Fate having a wicked sense of humor. How lucky for me that his mate dwelled in the city that I had introduced him to, MY city. They’d come into this very tavern shortly after the breakup, kindly leaving just as abruptly they came in. A futile effort of sparing me the heartache. Truthfully, he wasn’t a cruel male. He didn’t know I played here - and I didn’t hate him. But I resented it. All of it.

Which lead me to the song I was currently belting out at this piano. The song I’d written immediately after arriving back to my apartment that night, whiskey in one hand, fountain pen in the other.

“…And you're sitting in front of me at the restaurant, when I was still the one you want

Cross-legged in the dim light, everything was just right.

I, I could feel the mascara run. You told me that you met someone, glass shattered on the white cloth

Everybody moved on

Help, I'm still at the restaurant, still sitting in a corner I haunt, cross-legged in the dim light

They say, What a sad sight"

Despite the angsty, brooding lyrics, the tone was catchy and very easy to move along to. The more frequent patrons of the establishment had come to know this as a staple in my evening set, belting out the lyrics right along with me.

The song was my closing for the evening as I packed up, ready to head out. One of the attendees brought a glass of my favorite whiskey to me, nodding to the beautiful brooding male at the Inner Circle’s table.

Interesting.

I nodded a thank you with a brief raise of my glass to the Spymaster, as a little shadow swirled around my wrist with a gentle tug in his direction.

Who was I to turn him down? Aside from a steaming bath and smutty novel, I had nothing waiting for me to return home.

I casually strode to his table, giving a little smirk before sitting in front of him. Licking my lip before raising the glass to my mouth, lifting an eyebrow as I locked eyes with him.

“I didn’t realize Spymaster involved sussing out a lady’s drink of choice.”

A cool, bemused expression settled on his face as he took a sip from his own glass. “While my skill set is quite impressive, I asked the attendant for the bartender to send you a glass of your favorite.”

“I see. Well, thank you.” I replied, giving him time to continue the conversation or bid a farewell.

“You wrote that song.” He stated, not a question. Spymaster indeed.

For emphasis, I threw back a large swig of my liquor. “I did. Did you like it?”

He met my gaze with a contemplative glean in those hazel eyes, “Yes, no. Yes, the song was good. No, I did not like the truth behind the words. It felt too… relatable.”

I ran my fingers back through my hair letting it loosely fall back into place, and sighed. “Looks like we’ll both need another drink then.” Turning to the nearby attendee and signaling two fingers.

Two drinks turned to three, and four, by the end of the night we had laughed, one-upped eachother on who was unluckiest in love, and I was practically in his lap as we boisterously toasted a cheeky “Damn, the cauldron!” to which a nearby couple audibly gasped. We both muttered quick “apologies” turning away as we muffled our laughter into each others shoulders. He graciously sent the pair a shot with our next round of drinks.

The place started clearing out as the lights brightened and the keep yelled out a last call. Both of us hesitant to call it a night as we stepped into the brisk cold. “Walk me home, Shadowsinger?”

“Azriel. Call me Azriel.” He smiled. “I actually have something better in mind. Join me for a night cap?” He extended a hand.

Holding my hand out to squeeze his reassuringly, I replied, “Y/N. I’d be delighted.”

He eagerly swept me into his arms and darted into the sky, aiming for the House of Wind. The city lights quickly fading into twinkling stars.

Our pulses fluttered with anticipation as I nuzzled my head into the crook of his neck. When I pulled back to meet his eyes, he gave me a mischevious grin and briskly swooped down then back up. I flicked his nose to which he laughed, tilting his head downward to plant a kiss on my forehead.

I finally left the restaurant…

And my dress on his bedroom floor.

[wolfstarshipping]

wolfstar wips

So I'm using the @hprecfest day 12 prompt "a WIP you're following" to post a short rec list of WIPs that has been sitting in my drafts for so long now I even had to remove a fic that had been finished in the meanwhile!

Something rotten in Grimmauld Place by @plecotusauritus (8,802 words, Hamlet AU) This is a wolfstar Hamlet AU, need I say more?? I've never much cared or thought about Hamlet since I read it in school but this fic (almost) makes me want to reread Hamlet and I can't wait to see where the story goes next, I love the atmosphere this fic captures, the lovely writing style and just seeing all these characters we know so well fit into the plot of Hamlet is so, so cool!!

the oldest recipe for parsnip soup by @eyra (10.639 words, modern AU, christmas fic) Getting another fic by eyra for the holidays has been such a wonderful treat! I love the whole setting and the characters of this fic so much already, especially Sirius!! And the writing and all the descriptions are so, so beautiful, as always, highly recommend checking it out!!

Welcome to Aphrodite by @de-sire-blog & @rhabarberjunge (18.957 words, magical AU, secret identities) this is one of those fics I've read a while ago, but I keep thinking about it because I loved it so much. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but the premise is Sirius finding a hidden, adults-only club that makes people's secret desires come true, and of course Sirius's secret desire is Remus... It's hot, it's fun, and it's incredibly angsty, I love it.

Stitched into My Skin by @squintclover (19.297 words, canon divergent AU, memory loss) I love the heartache and all the bittersweetness that comes with memory loss fics so much already, and I am so obsessed with the way it's been done in this fic. The premise of the fic is Peter casting a memory loss charm on Sirius on October 31st 1981, which leads to Remus raising Harry and randomly coming across Sirius years later, only Sirius doesn't remember him. I'm so intrigued by the first few chapters already and can't wait to see where the story goes next!

Marauder FM by @hollyivydruzy (26.402 words, modern AU, radio AU, enemies to friends to lovers) I know I've recced this fic before but I will never shut up about it because I love it, and especially this fic's Remus so, so much! It's an iconic, funny radio AU set in London, and I wish the radio shows from this fic were real because I would listen to Sirius's radio show every morning if I could. I just love the vibe of all of them working at the radio station together and the slow burn enemies to friends (to lovers) is so delicious!

The Patchwork of Us by @tracingpatternswrites (27.502 words, modern AU, enemies to lovers, co-parenting Teddy) This is such a lovely fic about Sirius and Remus navigating the difficult situation of co-parenting Teddy after Tonks dies, I love the domesticity and the enemies to lovers vibe of this fic so much!

The Picture of Sirius Black by @lynxindisguise (30.049 words, Dorian Gray AU) okay anyone who has ever seen my blog knows how much I love lynx's writing, which is why I am also obsessed with this fic, even though it's a genre I'm usually not that familiar with. It's a Dorian Gray AU, it's gothic horror but especially the first few chapters are also giving victorian romcom with murder sideplot vibes (and I mean this as the biggest compliment), this fic will make you laugh and cry and want to murder some of these characters yourself maybe.

Only Fools Are Satisfied by grumposaur (@pancakehouse) (38.353 words, modern AU, tennis AU). I really love the exploration of Sirius's family dynamics in the context of him being a professional athlete in this fic, and Remus with his tanlines and freckles is everything!!

Neon Moon by @krethes (47.698 words, modern AU, cowboy stripper Remus AU, Las Vegas) I didn't know how much I needed Remus to be a stripper and a cowboy before I read this fic, but now I do and I love him!! The whole premise of them meeting at a strip club while Sirius is out on James's bachelor party is so iconic, and the vibes of the fic are just overall excellent, highly recommend checking it out!

on another ocean by @colgatebluemintygel (118.148 words, modern AU, backpacking/interrail, friends with benefits) Where do I even start? This is an incredible fic, one of my all time faves, I've reread some of the chapters several times now and am so obsessed with this fic's Remus in his socks and sandals, driving Sirius crazy with lust. Also I will not spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it, but the scene in the budapest chapter in the club bathroom features one of my favorite Sirius moments of all time, across all universes haha.

marginalia by @spindrifters (266.547 words, magical AU, canon divergent AU - Grindelwald won, slavery AU) I'm having a hard time trying to put my love for this fic into words in just a short paragraph. This fic is so unique in its setting, and it's so beautifully written and asks & answers the question "what if Grindelwald had won?" in such an incredible, highly political and also very immersive way, if you haven't read it already I really recommend checking it out (as well as the already complete Tedromeda spinoff set in the same world, history books!!!).

Staying Strangers by 3amAndCounting (319,368 words, modern AU, texting fic, university AU). This is one of my comfort fics, I love a good texting AU, this is quite a popular fic anyways but if you haven't read it and like modern AUs & texting fics (though it isn't all just texting) go check it out!

[shixhiro]

Tokito Muichiro x FEM reader !!

Series !!?!

Querencia

(n.) a place from which one's strength is drawn, where one feels at home; the place where you are your most authentic self

• Querencia is a metaphysical concept in the Spanish language. The term comes from the Spanish verb "querer," which means to want, to desire, and to love.

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ in which two teenagers who hate one another and one's who suffer with problems will slowly fall for one another

Warnings? !:

This book will have mentions of the following below:

Abuse

Alcohol

Drugs

Smoking

Suicide

Self loathing

SA

And maybe other sensitive topics

If you are not comfortable with any of that this book might not be your cup of tea.

Before you go on, yes I am aware that tokito muichiro is a 14 year old boy so in this fic he will be aged up to the age of 17-16 but keep in mind they will not be any smut because I will not be comfortable of writing anything like that. There will be kissing, cuddling, flirting, dirty jokes and sexual tension but it will not escalate any further. Tokito Muichiro is a canon minor character so I will not be comfortable writing it obviously.

I planned this book with a friend @pasteriies so I will not be taking all credits for this fan fiction. I got inspired to do this fic by an author who I don't remember their tag but I was inspired by their book heartache. It's another tokito muichiro fan fiction I recommend to read but I assure you, my story will not have anything similar to theirs, at least I don't think so, maybe the similar in the dark theme but nothing else.

Female reader unfortunately, sorry to the male readers or nonbinary's and obviously modern au !!

Introducing our characters !!

L/N Y/N

The main female lead !!

Main love interest !!

Tokito Muichiro

The main male lead !!

Main love interest !!

My Original Characters !

(Mainly those who play a main role in the story. My friend helped me out so cr. m1zyuu)

Himari

One of Y/n's closest friends

Is known to be the sunshine of the group

Ichimura Haruka

One of Y/n's closest friends

The mother of the whole friend group

Aoyama Yuya

One of Y/n's closest friends

Known to be the star and cheerful one in the group

Lady Koshimizu

An old woman who sits at the park everyday for who knows what

People call her crazy for the things she says

Other Characters !!

Tokito Yuichiro

Twin brother of Tokito Muichiro

Kocho Shinobu

Homeroom teacher

Teaches art and math and other subjects

Kamado Tanjiro

A friend to Tokito Muichiro

Kamado Nezuko

A friend to L/n Y/n

Kocho Kanae

School guidance counselor!

Kanroji Mitsuri

English Language teacher

Kyojuro Rengoku

Japanese Language teacher

Iguro Obanai

Chemistry, Physics and AP Math teacher

Uzui Tengen

Physical Education teacher !!

Tomioka Giyu

Discipline teacher

Shinazugawa Sanemi

Engineering or Design and Technology teacher

And so on !!

I do not own any of the characters here, they all belong to Koyoharu Gotouge except for my original characters above and soon to come and y/n's personality trait.

I am still trying to improve my english so my use of vocabulary and grammar will not be advanced nor perfect as english is not my native tongue and it isn't my first language so please bare with me here. I promise you my English isn't bad it just needs a little reshaping

I do not tolerate plagiarism, this fic will be written in my tumblr account _shixhiro_ and my Wattpad account. If I see any of my fics being used in other platforms or other users you will be blocked but I don't mind taking inspirations just like I did with mine. I hope the author of the book I was inspired by doesn't mind that I was inspired to write a book of muichiro because of them. I assure you once more I was merely inspired and I will not be taking any of what you've written in your book !!

Reblogs appreciated !!

If you prefer to read it on Wattpad here is the link :

Taglist: (none yet)

[tigorrrr]

𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗧𝗶𝗲𝘀 || 𝔗𝔦𝔭 𝔒𝔣 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℑ𝔠𝔢𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔤

Banners made by, and AU belongs to @another-vampire-au

[first] [previously]

"— and they became eternal friends, mayhaps to this very day."

"曾祖母..." a little girl mumbled over the sleeve of her nightgown, peering at the elder with never wavering, childish fascination at how beautiful her grandmother is.

"Yes, Chizu-chan?" the wrinkle-less woman inched closer to the futon.

A frown creased underneath wispy bangs of jet-black locks. "You made that up, that could not have happened."

Seldomly smiling, Diya raked aside some of the locks from the child's face, behind her ear. And Chizuru wasn't wrong to think there was more to it, but she can't be telling the naughties to her seven-year-old grandchild. She also admits she's not that great of a storyteller. "Were you there?"

"... No..." Chizuru mumbled in a wilted tone and reached for the dainty hand that would a regular senior envy to have once more, she placed the palm upon her face and the thumb began to caress the front of the rosy cheek.

There was a stark contrast of their skin tones that may never cease to entrrtain Diya to see, she likes to be and feel different from others. Something that the modern society began to accept less and less.

Diya leaned closer and susurated. "Then how can you be sure it is not how it went?"

The child frowned once more before springing to sit up. "That monster would have ended Shirayuki-san's life, it would not want to be her friend nor return her shoe! And what about her family? What happened to them?"

"How would I know? I was not there~" she cooed playfully and tucked her grandchild with the blankets under the child's chin and Chizuru didn't try to protest much.

But Chizuru was not about to get dismissed like that. Again. "But grandmaaaaa, there is more to that story. Why won't you tell me before you go?"

Diya tried not to break into a fit of giggles at her adorable pout. "... No, but you can finish that story when you'll tell it to someone else. You can change anything about it, if you so wish, as long as it has a happy ending."

Chizuru gazes up at her grandmother with disappointment and those big sad eyes would make one imagine it's a hamster looking at them.

She sighed, mentally armoring herself up against the attack at her soul before dismissing her grandchild with a heavy heart. "Darling, it's too late. I don't want your aunt to come and make fuss over you still being awake when you have school tomorrow."

Chizuru took her time with response, eyes filted around with a frown on her face. "Minamoto-san is not my mom, though."

With a wavered smile, Diya took her hand from the girl's face to caress her head instead. "Well, your parents would've wanted you to listen to your mother's sister, and so do I. Please, be a good child."

She thought about it for a moment before complying. "... Fine."

Diya smiled and leaned down to peck her forehead, when she was about to stand little hands grasped at her skirt.

"Don't go... Great-grandma... Please."

Sadness stung deep inside Diya's heart. She wondered if Chizuru knows she'll never return or has yet to figure that out as she'll age up and comes to an acception that her grandmother will not return. Saying goodbye like this is already hard, and if Diya would try to properly explain it might make things a little harder for the both of them.

"Everyone eventually leaves, 亲爱的. They have to." Diya still tried to smile despite the heartache beneath her breast.

"And me too?"

With a deep breath, Diya nodded. "One day, yes. But that is so far ahead, just enjoy your life as it is with the ones you love."

Diya's great-grandchild, Sagae Chizuru, is a smart girl with a bright future ahead. That is all she wished for when she had last seen the entity. A happy ending for Chizuru that Diya could not have, not even Chizuru's grandmother whom she took under her wing to care for only to leave this mortal plane too early and same goes to Chizuru's parents — well, maybe it isn't such a tragic end if she squints one eye.

Chizuru responded with a nod and Diya offered her one last smile before turning the nightlight off. "Goodnight, Chizu-chan."

"Nighty night..." the girl yawned and watched her great-grandmother leave before switching to lay on her other side of her bed, facing the window. She had a hard time falling asleep that night.

Diya sat outside on a bench in a central park around midnight and there was barely anyone out there other than stray pets. She observed the breath she puffed past her lips. She had spent more than half her lifetime at a freezing mountain, this little cold is something she barely feels.

It was a beautiful night, last one she'll ever experience and Diya made sure it was worth her time.

All of a sudden she felt a presence of something that is hard to explain, they are somewhere around her but Diya knew if she were to look she wouldn't have found anyone there because they didn't want to be found just yet.

The air became heavy, pressuring her lungs and it was a little difficult to breathe.

He's here.

A figure which could pass as a human being at a fleeting glance cassually sat next to her and Diya's breath hitched as she had trouble filling her lungs before the atmosphere stilled and turned back to normal.

At the presence of a Prince, her mind was reeling in slight dizziness and she felt a little nauseous. It's managable now though, the first time she was in his presence Diya fainted and the demon, unbothered, just waited for her to wake up for about thirty minutes.

"Are you ready then, witch?"

The albino woman turned to face an old acquaintance of hers, searching in his playful orbs that seem to be floating in sclera-less eyesockets in this darkness for.. something. "Will I be seeing my brothers?"

Diya partly hoped she'd also see her lover, but then thought she'd prefer to know he was taken to Heaven. Baraka deserves that much for everything that he had to endure because of a cursed bite he did not ask for.

"Only one way to find out." Mammon offered her a lopsided grin and leaned an elbow on his thigh. Admittedly, modern clothes do look a little out of sorts for a demon she knew most of her life to roam naked.

With a polite smile, she leaned back a bit for more space. "Pardon me, I don't quite trust you, darling."

The age-stunned woman was not thrilled to meet the demon once more when their last encounter had ended with her brother's unfortunately demise.

Bi-han, although cuel and uncompassionate at times, had made a sacrifice at the darkest hour. He finished what his sister refused to complete.

Mammon set the price which she accepted. He wanted mortal souls, the ones that - although living in faith - are rooted too deep with darkness. And quite a demanding number at that, until the day's sunset approaches.

The demon looked forward at a fountain from a distance, snorting. "That does hurt one's friend's feelings.. But I should think you insane if you don't. Mortals with your gift have a better treatment at our infernal home, I can promise you that much."

It was pure luck that few hours before the immortal's visit the Vampires Hunters showed at the Lin-Kuei gate, and they became the sacrificial goats but it came with high stakes.

Hunters attacked just a few hours after dawn and tried to smoke out Diya's family like rats and she felt as useless as she was. Liu Kang of clan Huǒ did not came to aid them, they did not show up days after either and although Diya does not wish to ever be bitter towards anyone if she can help it but she was heartbroken to know that her clan mattered so little to those whom they served for so long.

"Whatever retribution I must face for my wrong doings, I shall." after all, she did kill hundred of inoccent beings for her greed and selfishness.

"That at peace with it, huh? You truly ready?" the Imp-hybrid in human-ish disguise stood with little to no effort as if gravity wasn't that bothersome and stood right in front of her.

Diya hummed and lost herself in thought for just a moment as she asked that same question herself.

Her brothers, all three of them and all of the Lin-Kuei, secured another hundred years of immortality and a chance to live anew. And she did. But she carried that guilt with it. First, the former Grandmaster, now the rest of her family. All gone because of her weakness.

That faithful day, years ago, she had nowhere else to go other than to the Tarkatans who hid quite well from the Vampire Hunters, and after a little hostility and uneasiness of her presence they let her stay. Although constantly on the move from the Hunters, Diya did not mind, she always wished to travel, live outside the safety of her gilded cage.

Tragedy had unfortunately plagued the clan's following years after that, one clansman after another succumbed to their vampiric disease, their bodies were not capable to withstand it longer. Or more precisely, their blood types was not suited for their curse and it was only a matter of time before they'd be released to their bittersweet deaths. Diya learned that when she joined a medical profession as a doctor to finally take a part in society she was cut off from for centuries.

Baraka was the last one that stayed with her until he, too, passed away. Were it not for Chizuru's grandmother, a pregnant teenager she was taking care of at that time, Diya would have ended up all alone.

Today, though, she felt like she had lived quite enough of numerous centuries with the Prince of Greed's generosity.

Diya Grau does fear death like any other person but she also knows when a story has to end.

"I am ready." her arm stretched to him willingly.

With a grin of an imp, Mammon held tightly onto her ivory hand of silky flesh before they dissolved into flames that did not burn either of them as they disappeared off the face of Mortal Plane.

🎶O' Death - Until Dawn🎶

[disneyanddisneyships]

@gyubby99 hehe

Warnings: alastor being ooc. Angst.

Summary: Alastor watches aponi sing a breakup song about him.

Aponi walked through the halls of the hotel.

Today was supposed to be alastors day off, so she decided to go practice her singing in the lobby with the grand piano that alastor had donated himself.

It had been a week since his former significant other came back into the picture, and aponi was practically heartbroken.

She had been avoiding him for days.

Sitting down at the table, she played the music froma. Pirated site that allowed sinners to listen to human songs.

And that she did. It was the karaoke version.

As the music placed, aponi kept up with the piano herself, her eyes closing as she took in the music and sang the lyrics.

I got my driver's license last week Just like we always talked about 'Cause you were so excited for me To finally drive up to your house But today I drove through the suburbs Cryin' 'cause you weren't around

Alastor walked through the halls, following a voice he recognized into the lobby.

And that when he saw her....

He hadn't seen her for a week....

He didn't know what the feeling was, but he just chalked it up to feeling guilty. Which he had never felt before... but this seemed more prominent. Like heartache.....

But he was I love with Ruth! He was when he was alive! He had to be in love with her now.

And yet, as he watches aponi, something in him breaks.

And you're probably with that blonde girl Who always made me doubt She's so much older than me She's everything I'm insecure about Yeah, today I drove through the suburbs 'Cause how could I ever love someone else?

As aponi sang, a tear fell from her eye. Sorrow..... so much sorrow.....

As alastor listened to the lyrics, his eyes widened. "Love"?

Since when? He's never even heard her mutter the words.

And yet here she was. Professing her love for some unknown person.

And alastor couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy flood through his body.

But.. no... he was with Ruth again. He loved Ruth.

And I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me 'Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

Alastor tilted his head.....

Usually he hated modern music. With a burning, fired passion, in fact... but right now... all he saw was the most beautiful woman get wrapped up in the emotions of a song.

He hadn't even processed what the words were saying.... at least not until he paid more attention.

Who in all hell was she singing this about?

And all my friends are tired Of hearing how much I miss you, but I kinda feel sorry for them 'Cause they'll never know you the way that I do, yeah Today I drove through the suburbs And pictured I was driving home to you

As aponi closed her eyes, she felt as if she had drifted off into who knows where, surrounded by music, and thoughts and feelings.

Unrequited love.....

How cliché.

And I know we weren't perfect But I've never felt this way for no one, oh And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone I guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me 'Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

As aponi sang softer she seemed to shrink in on herself.

Alastor watched her with a mix of feelings. Maybe even love....

No wait.

He was in love with Ruth.

Was.....

Red lights, stop signs I still see your face in the white cars, front yards Can't drive past the places we used to go to 'Cause I still fuckin' love you, babe (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh) Sidewalks we crossed I still hear your voice in the traffic, we're laughing Over all the noise God, I'm so blue, know we're through But I still fuckin' love you, babe (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)

As aponi belted the lyrics, a warm orange glow illuminated around her as she put her entire soul into her seemingly private performance.

Her voice cracked a few times from the heartbreak she felt....

Alastor watched on....

I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone 'Cause you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me 'Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street Yeah, you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

As the song finished, neither of the demons realized there was another.

Ruth.

She had been looking back and fourth between alastor and aponi......

She knew.

It was so painfully obvious, but of course she knew.....

As the song ended, aponi wiped away her tears, turning off her phone and cleaning up her area.

Alastor watched in heartache as she walked back into her room.

[ask-the-four-lords]

Dear Lady Alcina would you rate the poem i made while listening to my teacher rn (relates to me hm..)

In shadows deep where whispers hide,

A soul endures the silent tide.

No voice to break the heavy air,

No sound of anguish, no despair.

Beneath the calm, a tempest brews,

In quiet depths, the heartache stews.

A silent scream, a muted plea,

The suffering remains unseen.

Yet in the silence, strength is found,

A quiet courage, profound.

Though words may fail and tears be still,

The silent pain is felt until.

Alcina Dimitrescu: I... I enjoyed this. Almost all modern poetry is absolutely abhorrent but I really did quite like this. Although might I suggest a small edit? "awe inspired and profound" not just "profound" *pauses, sighs* In my youth, in the years I spent journeying throughout Europe, I used to sit on the highest beach rocks at night and watch the high tide. I would do it every night I was anywhere near a sea or the Atlantic. I'll never forget those nights, lonely and inspiring. That memory became more apparent than any other reading this, thank you, Anon.

[tired-biscuit]

(reader is a virgin)

kind big and gentle stepbro!kiba who comforts u after a breakup.. kisses, cuddles and movies for days, then yk ;)

oml, the way my mind just went fuzzy over this........ it's all under the cut <3

cw: stepcest, virginity // 18+ mdni, virgin!fem!reader, modern AU, sort of dubcon-ish?

he definitely spoils you rotten. as soon as you come crying to him about your silly ex-boyfriend leaving you for someone else, your eyes brimming with big, fat tears, his 'brotherly' instinct kicks in and he literally wants to murder the guy, even though he's secretly somewhat pleased you got your heart broken and are vulnerable as hell now.

because now that your ex is out of the picture, that means you finally have more time to spend with him. it's a sad realization for you but he makes it all better, treats your heartache as if it's his own. gives you plenty of forehead kisses, ruffles your hair, wants to hear all about your day, lets you sit on his lap as he plays games on his pc; stroking your back during breaks and whispering soft words into your ear.

he even lets you spend a couple of nights at his apartment because your parents just don't understand you, and the solace you keep seeking is only found in him. insists that you share a bed, because in no way is his precious lil' sister sleeping on the couch, like she's some common friend he sometimes allows to crash at his place.

and he uses that same excuse to cuddle you. after you both get ready for bed and slip under the covers in nothing more but your t-shirts and underwear; he's all over you. your head rests on his chest, arms and legs splayed wide apart as you lay on top of him like you're a little kitten leeching off his warmth. he's so big and strong; is willing to fight the entire world just to protect you. even his mere presence and the sound of his heartbeat calm you.

so during one of those nights, he strokes your spine all over again just like he does whilst he sits in his gaming chair. tells you how cute you look when you're tired like this, how he could just smother you in kisses. and you giggle at that, even when he tells you how sweet you smell and he runs his fingers through your hair in a way that makes you shiver and whine when he tugs just a tad bit too harshly.

you swear that you can feel something hard poking you then, and when you ask what it is because you're just so inexperienced and dumb - you'd never believe your big stepbrother would see you like that, after all - he tells you to not worry about it and to try and get some sleep, that you need it because you're still hurting, aren't you?

and you do, you do try, but he keeps kind of pressing you real tightly against him, his hands going lower than they usually go when he thinks you'd fallen asleep; way past the small of your back, tracing your cute booty over your cotton underwear until he's grabbing handfuls and spreading the plush cheeks apart gently, making your panties pull taut.

and then there's this heat forming in the pit of your stomach as his fingers accidentally reach lower and brush over your pussy, making you mewl his name out and start asking him what's going on. and he goes wide-eyed in the dark before he starts shushing you, telling you to stop making so much noise as he's carefully pushing you off of him and easing you onto your side, that the neighbours are gonna be pissed at him if you won't be a good girl and just stay quiet.

so as you clamp your mouth shut because you really don't want to get him in trouble - he treats you so kindly, after all - and he spoons you again, you can still feel that hardness poking you in the back of your thigh this time. and god, it's even bigger now as it snuggles right between your legs and applies heat and pressure right there.

you're whining again in an instant; whimpering like a little slut even if you aren't one, breathing in this hitched gasp sort of way that makes him want to snicker, but he holds himself back. especially when he starts rocking his hips into you, his hand somehow ending up right between your legs; fingers cautiously, but expertly toying with your sensitive clit that he knows nobody else had touched before because he's coaxed you into telling him days prior.

he's whispering sweet reassurances, telling you that 'this will make you feel so much better' and that he's 'only doing this to take care of you because your lousy ex-boyfriend couldn't' even though your panties are all of a sudden nowhere to be seen because of how sneakily he's dragged them down your legs, and his cock is gliding along your puffy pussy lips that are so gooey from how hot and bothered your body is getting in response to his touches.

and he's hot and bothered, too. still, he doesn't fuck you, but he does fuck your thighs. he makes you cum by slowly dragging his dick back and forth right between them, nudging your overstimulated clit every once in a while before he continues playing with it with his fingers in a way that makes your back arch against him. he never stuffs your tiny hole even if he wants to do it so bad. no, he just makes it flutter around nothing and turns it sticky by the time he becomes undone too and spills a fuckload of cum right there; right at the apex of your thighs and all over your soft cunt.

it's a moment of weakness for the both of you, one that makes you feel ashamed because of who he is to you and who you are to him. so you make him promise to never do it again, and he does give you that promise, but by the time he goes to the bathroom to shower the next morning; you're the one breaking it by following him inside for more.

after that, you stay with him at his apartment for a lot longer than you had first intended, your heartbreak forgotten but your mind still troubled with other reasons now. things escalate fast from that moment onwards, and all of a sudden he's eating your pussy every night before bed, and you're sucking his dick as he games before you're climbing into his lap just like you did before, with the exception that you're now swallowing his cum during it, too.

he teaches you all he knows about sex, makes you watch sleazy porn with him so that you can see what exactly he wants to do to you when you finally let him take your virginity. his chin resting on the top of your head as your back presses against his chest; he shows you all his favourite parts while whispering how he can't wait to bend you over like that. and you're scared but also thrilled at the thought, because he's just so big; even two of his fingers are too thick to handle, so how the hell are you going to take his cock?

and when you voice your concerns, he just smiles and kisses you softly. pulls you into his lap and promises you that he's going to make it fit. that he is going to be so gentle during it, that it'll hurt just a little at the start, even though he knows he'll probably make you ache all over in reality; that he'll make you cry when he sinks into you fully for the first time. he tells you that he'll take such good care of you, because you deserve to be taken care of by a real man, not some silly little boy like your stupid ex was.

and he is going to be your first, there's no doubt about it.

it's what his little sister deserves.

[hiswordsarekisses]

Sometimes that dark place and season feels like forever. And it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But faith doesn’t require feeling. Jesus promised He would never leave us or forsake us. Jesus sits with us in our darkest hours and He cries with us. His word says He collects every tear we cry and it’s recorded in heaven. I remember sitting on the bathroom floor crying so hard from heartache that I couldn’t breathe. The pain was so severe. In that moment I imagined myself holding unto Jesus’ hand and riding those tidal waves of intense and surreal emotional pain. He didn’t take away the feelings I was enduring but He stayed by my side through it. It does get easier and better over time. Healing is often a very slow process and it’s moment by moment and layer by layer. Grief takes a long while to heal. And that’s okay. Some days you feel like all is great but then you hear a song on the radio, or smell something that triggers your feelings or you see something that makes you cry. Just know that shedding tears is part of the healing process and it doesn’t mean you are going backwards. It’s okay to cry and feel. It’s okay to have to take a break while you are riding difficult painful feelings. You don’t have to please anyone. You don’t have to always be strong for everyone. You are allowed to grieve, to cry, to retreat for a while to heal. There’s no perfect way of dealing with heartache, pain, loss, injury, a death, or divorce or abuse. Pain is pain. Remember you will get through this and you will be alright. And you are never alone. ~ A Modern Day Ruth, © 2021

[smallblueandloud]

2023 fic roundup

2023 was the year of the comeback. in 2021, i wrote about 25k; in 2022, i didn't even keep track. meanwhile, my total wordcount last year was 119,226 words. while that doesn't come close to my 200k from 2020, i am arguably prouder of last year and what it represented. my writing isn't dead! my abilities haven't vanished! i can have fun making art again :D

as always, the summer was the most productive for me. you can see that i wrote more in the spring than the fall -- this roughly corresponds to how i was doing during those times, lol. i had a Much Better spring semester than the fall. september was very rough, i had a very bad time, and it meant my mental health suffered for the rest of the year. but hey, at least i was writing essays :')

some more scattered thoughts:

i was arguably pretty consistent this year? may/june/july all had about the same wordcount (roughly) and i think that's cool. my goal isn't to be doing NaNos, it's to be writing consistently, so i'm very happy with this

ao3 says i published 67k in 2023. minus the first chapter of something out of a dream, which was published in 2020, i believe that's 65k or so total. i wrote 72k of fanfic last year, meaning that there's about 8k from last year still sitting in my google drive (a rough eyeball at my WIPs folder confirms this). these numbers don't QUITE make sense to me, since i used a fair bit of old material in what i published last year, but i'm not going to think about it too hard

i published fic for a whopping fifteen fandoms in 2023. nine of those were fandoms i'd never published anything for before! i am so, so proud of this stat. i remain multifandom as all hell and seeing that represented in my work makes me really :D

two fics -- be amazed by the sky and i got your back (and you got mine) -- were crossovers! i'd only ever written one crossover before (stay all day in the sun, which i still love dearly) and it was fun to play in these playgrounds (mostly by sticking the librarians into other universes, xD)

i published 25 fics last year! and five of those fics were less than 1k, which i also really love. this year i really tried to let go of my idea that my fics Had to be more than 4k (and super polished) before they could see the light of day. i think my writing has been more fun and less stressful because of that.

i polished off 4 multi-year WIPs last year: but the verse is sweet, something out of a dream, don't wanna see you go (but it's not forever), and all we can do today. it felt so, so good to finally get those out there. the only one i have left from The Great Hiatus of 2021-2022 is éponine de bergerac. i will finish that someday, but i'm letting her take her time, because she deserves it. (i DID make good progress on that fic, which is something at least!)

most popular fic of the year was sit there in your heartache, which. is a spirk fic written right after a relevant episode, so not a surprise lol. the fic that surprised me most is actually the sisterhood of the travelling main character plotpoints -- i kinda expected that one to vanish quietly, but the hatchetfield fandom is WAY more active than i expected! which is very cool :D

the fic with the fewest hits was sidenote, which doesn't surprise me, since the librarians isn't a very active fandom and it's a rareship within the fandom anyway. the people who DID read it were very sweet, so i am very grateful for them. (i'm doing fic with the fewest hits because i feel like it's better to focus on that than What Didn't Get Kudos)

i started 2024 with 5 WIPs. i actually already finished one (and then immediately started its sequel, whoops) (shoutout to the ds9 modern au, i'll make a real post about that sometime). none of these fics are particularly progressed, but i'll keep working on them and try to find the Finishing A Project Dopamine from ficlets if i need it.

i didn't really have any Writing Goals for 2023 aside from doing any writing at all, lol. i think for 2024 i want to try to get more consistent with my writing -- instead of doing x number of words per month (which usually happen over 3-4 Big Writing Days), i'd rather try to write for 5 days out of every week, or something like that. we'll see what i can get done.

in the meantime: thank you guys for listening. i'm proud of what i did last year, and i'm excited to see what happens next year :D

[court-jobi]

Better Angels

Pairing: Thorin x Tessa (Modern OC)

Words: 3,489

Ratings: Gen Audience

Warnings: none

A/N:  The grief -fresh in her dearheart's soulful eyes- tumbles around with Tessa's head with heartache of her own, and what follows is told through her POV.

Summary:  After their brief time apart, morning found Tessa finally rejoining the others in the makeshift infirmary on Erebor's groundfloor. By Mahal's Grace and every dwarves' fingers-crossed, Thorin Oakenshield II pulled through and is in recovery after his skiff on Ravenhill. The Mountain seemed even brighter on the inside, its history far beyond what she imagined. Tessa couldn't hold back her questions in her eagerness to see him again, and wanted to hear everything from his own lips. Thorin welcomed her familiar, doting company at his bedside, but also realized he has his guilt to reckon with before he can even consider taking the Throne as King. In his honesty to Tessa, he shares his bout with darkness that threatened to take his sanity and respect, and hopes this does not stain her view of him in return. Clearly she missed something big....

Read on AO3

It hit me the next morning when I woke– I never asked about the Throne Room! 

Every dwarf filing into the Halls was bustling with important things like keeping their King alive, so I never thought to stop someone and ask to see it. I was drained enough as it was, when I saw him… what a sight that must have been. Even after a wash down, I felt dirty as sin from ash and smoke and leftover dragon bile, topped with a mess of tears seeing him on the brink of life and death. 

My adrenaline tanked when my head hit the pillow, and though every square inch of this place needed a deep clean with a couple hundred Swiffer mops, I was way too exhausted to care about tidiness. In our huddle outside the hospital wing, there was a fire, the six of us non-injured Company members sleeping in shifts just like old times- that comfort meant the world to me after the days I spent away. 

In the morning I found myself raring to help, but wanted to go back and check in with everyone, first thing. When we all visited our friends and brothers again with breakfast in tow, I took my waiting place on the King’s bed while Dori checked on Fili first. 

Wrappings and heat warmers aside, Thorin sported color in his cheeks today, which was a fantastic sign. Sleep must have come easier with the roots Oin gave him. From the way he moved, his abdomen must be feeling better because he could scoot up to the headboard all on his own, making room for me to sit. 

Washing down my first bite, I shared my waking thoughts with him, 

“Well, hon, if we can get you out of this bed here soon, it’s time to get you back to your throne where you belong~. It’s all yours now, isn’t it!” 

There’s so much I wanted to catch up on; time flew as we'd spent the last few weeks away from each other in a whirlwind. Surely he'd had plenty of time to refamiliarize himself with his home before the battle. Our friends had been armed and prepared for it, judging by the state of everyone's armor. 

I really should've paced myself; Thorin only just woke up. But I couldn't bite back the questions now, there were so many. But I was most curious about him– what living meant, now that he'd made it through the night and could see his future more brightly,

“How does it feel? Take you right back? Only now, you're taking the best seat in the house," I remembered aloud.

…Thorin's expression fell altogether. The last thing I ever wanted to have happen because of something I said; I regretted asking- though I didn’t know why.

“-What?”

Then abruptly he just– cut away. Not looking at me at all, but rather his feet; sulking away like the sad sight of a guilty child. Even when I cocked my head to cue him to look up, he wouldn't.

In all these months, this was the first ounce of hesitation I’d ever seen in Thorin. The one time I’d ever dare call him feeble: 

"Thorin?"

"I-... They’ve not told you, have they."

"Told me what?"

Grief heaved across his face. You can tell by the way he struggled to breathe– the normal ebb of his chest didn’t lift in that steady, sure rise. 

In the gap of quiet, I stretched out, turning from my twisted seat off the side of the bed to prop up my legs alongside his. He wiped at his brow with a still-stiff hand in search of words, the right words. Whatever had happened proved hard for him to swallow, let alone speak.

"A grace that they didn’t." Thorin murmured under his breath before speaking up, "You weren't here to see it, when we arrived at the Door. To see me, what became of me inside.” To pacify my growing worry, Thorin laid his hand over mine.  “And to be true, I am glad for it."

Under his palm, I held it back to try and stop its tremor. "See you? In– what way?"

The confession barely passed his lips,

 "... I turned goldsick."

The longest fear he’d held: the one taunted to him by kings and trolls alike for months- refusing at every turn to anyone who would listen the very idea of succumbing to his grandfather’s fate –

...it came true anyway.

"Oh, Thorin," I only scooted closer- not away, never away. (And that, plainly, surprised him, if his brows freezing in place was any indication.) "What happened?"

Internal debate brought Thorin's eyes to close for a minute, but he shook his head at the end, 

"The things I said, I cannot take back.  I'd give nearly anything for the chance to scrub them away... How Bilbo can even look me in the eye is beyond me. It's inexcusable." 

The groove of his top lip twitched at some tortured memory,

"Once the dragon left, my heart turned toward the gold around me, and never looked away. This- damned lust settled in my chest… Had this grip on my mind and– what felt like my very soul. It was a dream, and not a dream, because I can remember every moment passed .. almost like a morning fog."

Thorin reasoned with the thought a moment, the followed up, 

"To answer you, I’ve not returned to that cursed room. How could I? How can I sit there, when the very sight of the gilded stone we used in our haste lies poured solid across the floors below?… It reflects everywhere. We’d never piece it up again if we tried for another sixty years."

His heavy brows sagged in their agony. I listened on until Thorin's large thumb stilled and held onto my hand like a lifeline,

"I was horrid, Tessa. You'd never recognize me."

How his heart made the claim as fact so surely, broke mine.

"Of course I would. You're still you, even if you're 'not yourself'."

"-But I was myself.” 

Thorin finally braved to look up: firm as ever, and brokenhearted,

“–Foul and greedy and sick," he said, "Even in the dark when I lay alone trying to sleep. My madness mixed about with the fallen who came before me; the curse passed through my lips as it would their own. I could taste those acrid words as they slipped from me– and I believed them. I'd–...I believed every word." 

I knew my pity must have been readable, because his guilt rose with each sin he confessed:

“I led us to war when it was not necessary. Peace may have been an option, had I but honored my word. Our allies presented joint arms and I refused. I set my brethren to count coins instead of hunt, I let men, women, children dig themselves out from Smaug’s wreckage and leant no help– all while I writhed in my wealth and excess.” Thorin’s words wavered with his head, “I set my own.. my own kin to anger against me. It is by Mahal’s Grace that I have them with me now.”

It clicked why no one told me. This seemed like a huge shift in Thorin’s character to have watched him suffer through. Seemed it was aptly named- a sickness. One he’s clearly sought forgiveness for, and they’ve very clearly wished for nothing more than to move on from. I could see it in how Balin prayed over his healing, how Kili kept asking about him, how everyone cared so much– even given how he’d allegedly treated them all.

The very sink of his shoulders pushing him down sent my chest into an ache. Prostrate as David before the Lord– or as much as he could manage in a makeshift bed.

"I am worthy of that throne no more.” Thorin braced his head as he had before, “Who would follow a slipshod king prone to such weakness?"

This was his truth as he knew it. I reached for Thorin’s other hand.

"Here, c’mere–” 

While he looked tense to receive anything resembling comfort in this moment when he’s already so exposed of the heart, Thorin surrendered it. 

Massive, steel-worn hands, cupped by thin, spread-wide fingers like mine… harmless by comparison. 

Holding them fast seemed second nature; with both the reverence as a king deserved, but also with the care of someone who oh-so deserved something soft for once in his life. No rings adorned his hands now. Before I would have thought this was necessary for hygiene and bandaging; though now I suspect it was a choice of unworthiness. I couldn’t stop myself; I kissed them both. 

I still can’t fathom having a royal title over my head like he does. Holding any kind of political office –or even some stuffy position on a board of trustees seems daunting enough to me. With royal expectations and generations' past leaving their pressures lying on my shoulders like a fur cloak, not to mention being held up by a bum leg that's keeping me trapped to a bed for the next few weeks? That handicap alone –however temporary– would be frustrating enough on its own. 

And to face the oliphaunt in the room, let no one forget that this room is chock full of people suffering from injuries from top to bottom. There was a war outside these walls. We fought a frickin’ war and won. 

Really, what could I say to give counsel to a mastermind behind that undertaking? 

But as I sat back up, the way this guy looked at me caught me in the moment. His eyes set to hear my words like I hung the stars myself. This reminds me of every time we’ve gotten a second alone: this is Thorin. This is the man - no. ‘It's dwarf, lass, and a proud one’- that has to sit with himself at the end of the day, and reason with the same questions as anyone else: 

‘Have I done my best’, ‘Was it enough’, ‘What can I do better tomorrow’. 

And yes, he has to think about those things for the greater good of his people, first… but I’m positive he worries over those things for his own peace of mind. Or else, why would he have brought his friends, his kin, his own flesh and blood along with him to the hardest challenge of his life? He needed them. Surely, even he wrestled with those wants when he’s completely alone. The ones that crop up in the quiet, from the haze of his pipe, 

–a calm, quiet, ‘I could really use a friend right now’.

Rubbing out the tension in his hands is my next move- a nervous gesture of busyness I tend to hide most of the time when I make some excuse to be around him. But it does serve a purpose of relief. Not much, but maybe enough for now.

I offered my hardest to relate, to ease that tension in his brow:

"We all have inner demons. Whether they were born there or worked their way in somehow. And sometimes, our better angels are just so quiet, it's hard to hear them over the noise."

Thorin cocked his head to understand the idea.

"But you listened, hon'," a pause to give a kiss to his tented knuckles, and again, "You listened to your angels in the end; they haven't left you. You came out of it. You chose to do that, yourself. And they all know that–” 

Thorin glanced to where I nodded: somewhere behind me, to the hall and Halls beyond. 

“There's no second thoughts from any of them, whether or not to follow you."  I assured him "–wasn’t any doubt from the start. Your Company was well-chosen. Knew every one of those concerns, always heard you out, and yes- maybe even considered that temptation about you. And yet, they still kept with you anyway, and from the looks of things- all your injuries, notwithstanding- every risk was worth it."

And these were no small injuries- to him, least of all. Scores of his own kind lost their lives in this fight.

My gut backpedaled to the point, 

"That's not to say I'm happy for what you went through! Please don't think that I'm grateful for that part; you've suffered enough." My fingers slipped to lace through his. "Hearing voices- ghosts, insomnia, what have you- that sounds like a form of torture I’d not wish on my worst enemy. Thorin, no one would want more of that for you... you don't deserve it."

To prove I was earnest, I took a few fingers to chip his chin up from where he locked onto my hands in wonderment. This part was important:

"But– you’re no less deserving of what’s rightfully yours just because you stumbled. That's being human– mortal, guilty to a fault. It can, and has, and will, happen again to even the highest among you.”

Thorin is listening– but that edge of doubt still bobbed his head back and forth, scoffing at the idea. Too hard on himself, this one.

“If it wasn’t you, might’ve been Fili next, wouldn’t it? By your thinking, this temptation would have been the 'Durin Family Blight of Erebor'.”

At this, Thorin’s sights flitted to his nephew’s bed, across the way. A spike of fear and steely readiness shook his bones, unseen. He hadn’t considered that. 

“You think… he would have done the same?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged a little lightly. “- and even if he did,” the fact remained, “Would you have turned away from his side because of how it changed him?”

A quick, sharp blurt, “Never.”

Of course, you wouldn't. I smirked through it. 

“And do you think I wouldn’t be telling him the same thing I’m telling you now? It’s no less true, no matter who in your family this applies to.”

This was funny territory, playing hypotheticals in reverse– to rework the past rather than guessing the future. The Company thrived on telling me visions of Erebor our whole way here; didn’t give a second thought to the life I’d left behind, and instead fed be images that I wasn't totally certain I believed at the time. Plus I’m still not sure where I stand on the whole ‘cursed gold’ situation myself. That sounds like the kind of thing from faerie tales. 

–Then again, here I am in Middle Earth… so I’ll be shutting up now.

“Point is, whatever happened when you first came here is no reason to abdicate your throne, Thorin.”

A little, thoughtful hum passed in the moment, though he didn’t look altogether convinced. 

Thorin's sights still flickered to Fili, thoughtfully as he pondered his nephew. 

I stopped him in his tracks, 

“His time will come, you said so yourself.” I blocked his view with a little lean, “But now’s not the time to step down. You’ve done nothing by step up and up and up. The moment you came back to your right self, you came out onto that balcony and asked them to follow you head first against an entire Orc legion, and lead the charge yourself." 

The imagery still thrilled me. Kili made it sound so glorious- majestic. In fact- given what he’d overcome, it meant even more now.

"--You are their King– the only one they'd ever accept after all this time. And the one they'd live and sing and die for, even now."

And then– that look came back. Like a narrative was swirling around my head like Tweedy-birds, Thorin looked me over like a man dazed.  

Y'know, to put my finger on it, he stared just the same as he did at every stop and rest we’d taken from the Rolling Hills to Dale. He’s mulling over things I’d said, trying to ‘get me’. I hoped he’d be remembering the good ones:

'It's coming, Blue Eyes. You've earned the rest that comes at the end of this- even if I have to beat it into submission. I've got little arms, but sheer Southern spite to back it up.-- Don't believe me? I'll do it!'

'Yknow I may not have a magic 8-ball in front of me, but I see a couch in your future. A couch, a bed of ridiculously-sized pillows, a hot bath, and all the mead you can drink. (No, Nori, I’m not a wizardess! NO, it's not real magic-It’s an expression!)'

'Home is coming; peace is coming- for you, and everyone else. Please, for the love of God, take it when the time comes.'

You've suffered enough.

You've suffered enough.

You've suffered enough.

Wait… 

Oh God, Thorin’s one blink away from crying. 

And I would too, if I wasn't careful. Sympathetic crier..

Was I that good at making folks emotional?? Didn’t take much around me, apparently. Balin, the Ri’s, Kili, even Bombur that one time I sang a flipping Hamilton song. (Then again, if you don’t choke up at ‘Burn’, do you even have a heart?)

"I'm sorry I wasn't here for the worst of things, Thorin…” I shook any heady mush away. “But seeing you now, I'd take every ounce of that dragon-sick memory from you if I could, if it'd only take that poor look off your face."

Thorin pardoned the sentiment with a brush to my hands entrapped in his. 

"N'yway, I think… Even at its worst?… It's nothing I wouldn't have loved you through."

The bleary haze sobered, Thorin flickered to life.

"Loved?" he asked. 

What could I say?

…well. Yes. “Love,” I decided. “Present tense.”

Not the finest confession, but we’d danced around the label so far and said everything but the three words to each other. 

I knew it, felt it, even if I’d not said it. 

And yet… I don’t quite know what I was expecting, but Thorin sure didn't melt into a full-on puddle at whatever I said in those imaginings. Not as he did now. Blue Eyes just centered back on my hand and sniffed his emotion back. I think I rendered him speechless, until he glanced up he chimed into his regular, deep timbre,

“Master Oin,”

I turned to see our lovely healer Oin in his element, with a massive tray harness coming up on my right. His vending case of herbalist goods was traded out to what he usually must work with in an infirmary, filled with all sorts of things; namely bandage rolls, compresses, and sacks of medicine pouches. Just in time for the King’s daily dose. 

“Aye, got yer breakfast in ye already, Thorin? Gonna have to keep you, ‘round, lassie,” Oin’s free hand batted at my shoulder and shook it, “Pulling teeth to get him to eat somethin’ down last night, it was...”

I gave Thorin a bit of a look, to which he muted an eye roll. 

“Call me childish all you like,” Thorin droned, “But my stomach was in knots, in both senses of the word.”

“And ye know what helps that along? Bit of this, bit of that– and a solid meal in you to settle in!” Oin’s curmudgeonly side kicked into high gear, pointing at just the sorts of things Thorin needed to get well. Of all his patients at the moment, seems the one that needed the most ‘patience’ indeed was the King himself. 

Dwalin teased me just earlier that I might need to keep on snack duty for the foreseeable future, just to make sure no one keels over. 

Gotta say, this wasn’t the most ideal timing, given we were most definitely interrupted, but I slid off the bed with a happy step, straightened the covers to let Oin have his space.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I cleared the way, and to Thorin, “And I’ll gladly check on you later with a bite of lunch, huh?”

“Please do,” Thorin answered at the ready. A touch softer than he just quipped back to Oin, but he returned to his usual self as Oin chattered along with the usual rounds of questions about every bit of his body and if it still hurt the same.

Thorin was a hard read most of the time– but never to me, and not about what we’d just talked about. There was no mistaking that soft look in his eye that promised more; he smiled back when I took his empty bowl with me.

I nodded to them both as I left, making an effort to keep a snarky smile back at his puppy-like expression that all but apologized for the intrusion out loud. Given his state of calm, I relished in the little signs he gave that he was feeling better in more ways than one.

I’m not a long-time friend of his by any stretch; our time together so far has been but a blink in the span of his life… but I’m so proud of him. And truthfully, I’d follow him anywhere.

[thenighttcat]

☢️ November last year

It is at our lowest points that we are open to the greatest change

There is really nothing that I can control. Life with God is lived moment by moment. You can't decide what's going to happen next. The only way forward is one step at a time, and keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus, or else the waves will fast swallow you, and you shall be destroyed in the storm.

There is an impenetrable wall that stands between me and my childhood. However hard I try, there is no way to recall what it feels like to be a child. Yet every so often, a tiny glimpse, a little peek, would creep up on me unaware. It could while trudging home from work on a plain evening, or when staring out at the passing streetlights on a quiet drive along an empty highway. But those flashes of the past are always ever so tiny that I can hardly grasp them before they slip quickly away again. They will not be contained or stored.

Though I may be timid, there resides a fighter within me who doesn't back down and wants to win. Who thrives in conflict. He has been shoved down and stashed away for so long that I don't know if any breath remains in him. Keep the peace, they say, but I don't want to. Cordiality is worthless. Suffocating and inauthentic. All this tip-toeing is killing me. Why not stamp down hard on the ice and feel the icy water soak through your spine? Let your blood freeze.

The thing about growing up is that you have to be your own adult. No one is going to make you do what you dislike that is good for you. It's time to grow up, so I've told myself time and time again. Yet I'm still such a child.

Self-mastery. Full autonomy. Needing nothing.

Boredom: demanding satisfaction and excitement from something outside of ourselves. Not centered.

D minor. Walking through a desolate carnival in the moonlight. Wind sweeps through the tents and abandoned rides. It's so cold tonight.

Life is short, eternity is long.

Received a letter from my sister today. First time receiving anything from her in years. First time receiving anything in years. It was much easeir to get by cutting her out. But reading the letter today made me a great deal sad. It came like a flood and left me speechless.

Now that my sister is out of town the green and purple Yakult flavours are exclusively mine.

Had a panic attack at Uniqlo today. Fitting room, small brightly-lit rectangle. Collapsed onto the floor and started sobbing. Grown man sobbing in a Uniqlo fitting room. That's downright disrespectable. But behind closed doors, who would know? Wonder how people behave behind closed doors when no one is watching.

There are songs that make us be at place we've never been, that make us feel feelings we have never felt. They make life seem special, even if for a brief fleeting moment.  These are the songs that I treat as precious and so avoid listening too much, yet can't help but circle back to again and again.

The airport used to feel magical during those annual holidays, or the trips we made there during nights out in navy school. Right now, it's completely functional. Not a place to linger but to pass through as quickly and efficiently as possible. The magic is long lost.

On writing. Go somewhere else to write - away from everybody and everything, your own secret space. Give your permission not to write. Just sit there and stare into space, and eventually you will somehow write a little bit here and there. You don't have to keep writing.

Another colleague leaving the company. Heartache. It's so stupid, feel like an over-attached clown. Why care about people who don't give a fig about me? This frantic crossing and diverging of paths is what makes modern life so desperately empty.

Joseph came over today for Pilates, jamming and literally hanging out - just sitting around and doing nothing. He frustrates me sometimes - he eats messily, rushes from place to place, speaks at an astounding wpm that it can be quite hard to keep up, and often doesn't listen properly. Yet having him as a friend is one of the little constants that makes life make sense.

Always pursuing new highs, wandering down weary and restless paths. Always travelling, never stopping, forever coming short. When will this circus end?

The hardest time of the day is the little sliver of time between the end of the day and going to bed. You really want to do something before going to sleep, because you know the next thing that's going to happen is the alarm clock ringing, and the dawn of a new day.

Found myself in a meeting surrounded by confident, outspoken ladies. Super intimidated. It's like the gender imbalance has been flipped on me. Balls shriveling.

Tired of this world and its phony human interactions. Flattery on one side and gossip on the other. People tearing down people. Speak the truth in love, build another up with words of encouragement. Feels so far-fetched.

Ascended to the 20th floor of a HDB block in Chinatown today. Narrow corridors. Leaned over the parapet and stared straight down, feeling my legs grow jelly. What must it be like to leap off from such a height and feel the world rushing at you at sixteen million kilometres per hour.

[denimbex1986]

'Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, which is still playing in some theatres, impressed upon me a lesson that I have learned with a lot of heartache over the last couple of years: Love is, in its simplest form, the ability to see and, in turn, be seen. Andrew Scott plays Adam, a lonely screenwriter in London, with a traumatic past. In the first few minutes themselves, the dimly-lit frames and scenes carefully induce a tangible feeling of heaviness.

Adam is visibly alone in his life. Time passes outside his window as the lights shift on the horizon, but in his apartment, time exists in a vacuum — takeout food sits morosely in tin foils in the refrigerator, he sleeps on his couch, with no one to cover him with a blanket. Suddenly, his doorbell rings and the nauseating ghetto of loneliness is punctured… He opens the door of his apartment to Paul Mescal’s Harry in a baby pink jumper, drunk and desperate, appealing to Andrew Scott’s Adam to let him in — both into his apartment and, by extension, his life.

Love, the movie suggests, is also the simple but infinitely brave act of keeping the door open long enough for someone to come in, and build a home with us. But Adam closes the door on an unnervingly starved and alone Harry, perhaps to protect himself from his clearly sexual advances, or simply because he is imprisoned by his loneliness so much that the choice to open the door is not even real to him — he must keep the literal door closed too, as a comorbid condition of that loneliness.

Queer loneliness

After decades of struggles, protests and brutalisation, LGBTQ+ issues have become relatively more public and accessible. But we are far from addressing, let alone understanding how queerness is married to loneliness. The film makes sure that despite the bustling crowds around Adam — whether he is on a train or in a club — he is almost always alone.

Adam lives in this menacing high-rise, which is also depicted on the posters, but each window represents loneliness, more than other lives, because for all its splendour, modernity is after all a poor excuse for crippling communal estrangement and mutual disconnection from each other. In one of the most poignant scenes in the movie, Harry tells Adam: “I always felt like a stranger in my own family anyway. Coming out just puts a name to the difference that had always been there.”

The title of Andrew Haigh’s ghost romance suggests that all of us remain strangers to each other, because somehow the act of knowing the other — even within our families — comes at the discomfort of effort. To open our world to the possibility that the other’s own world too exists. Attitude magazine described the movie as “a tender examination of love in the shadow of shame.” Which perhaps also comes close to describing the radical costs of love: at so many levels, it requires us to wade through the complicated shame of vulnerability — which is so tangibly demanding a feeling, perhaps especially for the LGBTQ community.

Everyone wants to be seen, to be found, but for queer people, the experience is often so postponed that they close themselves off from the possibility itself. Or worse, fear being vulnerable, lest they expose themselves to the defeat of rejection or abandonment — a feeling they are already made to feel from a young age. Families often abandon them or stop talking to them out of anger, friends more often than not drift apart, relationships are somehow so much more challenging…

Coming out — the constant confessional nature of it notwithstanding — is one of the most difficult things to do when queer individuals know how keeping the silence and repressing their truth buys them peace at home. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the movie, Adam comes out to his father, and tells him how he was bullied in school: “They’d call me a girl. Refuse to play with me. Flick drawing pins at my face and flush my head down the loo.” But Adam never told any of this at home as a child. As so many queer children don’t. To avoid their parents the disappointment, perhaps, and so many times to avoid confronting the pain themselves. Silence and loneliness reinforce each other.

To love, to be loved

Adam (as so many of us will identify with) describes his helpless loneliness as a knot in his heart. It is falling in love with Harry, finally, which not only reveals the knot and its smothering force, but also permits Adam the tools to unravel this knot. Often queer individuals develop a structure/ghetto of loneliness around themselves as a survival mechanism. Growing into one’s queerness, then, is so frequently (and sometimes tiringly) about unmaking and unlearning these survivalist behaviours.

There are so few happy queer stories, as Andrew Sean Greer has often talked about. And while Haigh’s movie is incredibly heavy with emotions, there’s something so reassuring, uplifting about it too. In the simplest way, it is a testament to the triumphant quality of love, which even through the worst times — or perhaps especially through the worst times — can protect us… so often from ourselves.

With an almost shocking ability to anticipate the next feeling, and present it with stunning accuracy, Haigh’s screenplay (available to read online) registers moments of tenderness and grief, and the heartbreaking process of healing old wounds with a double-layered plot. While Adam and Harry’s relationship builds, Adam also finds his own past clouding over the tender bliss of new-found love. Adam tells Harry at one point how all the scabs that seem to have healed, really don’t. “It doesn’t take much to be back there again, does it? Skin all fucking raw, feeling how you used to feel.”

Haigh’s screenplay, inspired by Taichi Yamada’s ghost novel Strangers, rallies for a simple message: While love begins with a sort of suspension of logic, it is indeed the most revolutionary and violent act of self-awareness. It makes us weak as it breaks all of our walls, and reveals to us the embarrassingly vulnerable and fragile children we are at heart. But isn’t that itself — paradoxically — one of the most powerful things that can happen to us? Exposing to us the awful realisation that in the pursuit of self-preservation, we complied with the conditions of a cruel world, and forgot that that child exists within us — who just wants to be loved, and to love.

The language of tenderness

One of my favourite scenes from the movie is when Adam and Harry talk about their respective childhoods after making love passionately, but it’s not the sex that builds intimacy as Haigh’s note in the screenplay directs: “More than sex, it’s a mutual understanding of something shared that brings deepening intimacy. Harry leans in and kisses him.”

While loneliness is one of the most challenging conditions of queerness, it seems that its consequences are far worse when we forget to care about ourselves. So often, whether it’s after enduring the grand heartbreaks of a breakup or everyday anguishes of living, we give up on ourselves, because it’s the easiest thing to do. And so often we also convince ourselves that we deserve our loneliness, too.

Haigh’s project with this movie seems to be to remind all of us strangers that we are capable of love, and being loved. That we too can find (or stumble upon) care and safety, even in this not-very-promising swipe-right world of modern relationships… because these are the basic necessities of living and enduring, and indeed what else can we put all our hopes on, if not love?

Every response to the movie that I have read online has been deeply moving too, with so many people writing about how Adam’s story reflected theirs. How the loneliness of the movie became theirs. How the promise and incredible power of love is something they crave too. One review just said that they felt “held” by the movie. The language of touch is one of our most profound achievements, I would argue, because in so many ways it’s also something that makes us real to each other. All of Us Strangers triumphs in this understanding, too.

Much like Haigh’s phenomenal series released a decade ago, Looking — which masterfully explores the parabolas of queer desire, with their crests and valleys — All of Us Strangers presents passion with a careful intensity, fletched with mutual care and love. Intimacy that is more than physical, always. And so a movie about a London-based screenwriter finds resonance across borders because we all experience loneliness in similar ways, and we all know that to be cared for, and to care for someone is what can save us, change us, and keep us going in a burning world. Tennessee Williams wrote that ‘we have not long to love: a night, a day…’ and that ‘we live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.’

All of Us Strangers is the promise of a haunting forever, especially when we are all yearning for a forever that never seems to exist or is not enough. It is, in the most gut-wrenching, but also reassuring way, a guide, not a warning. That love is, in its most profound state, an awful feeling that pushes us to madness. But it’s all we have, and that’s always enough.'

[sanctummiles]

@herosluminis asked:

There's a strange, unfamiliar tightness in her chest when bright blue eyes fall upon an all too familiar form-- a face she could not forget even if she wanted to, and one she certainly never expected to see again, given the circumstances. How was it that someone like King Thordan's own son, one of the men that betrayed and slaughtered her should continue walking the streets? Ratatoskr, forgetting how different she herself looks, can only manage to get a single, trembling question out as she gazes upon the man in horror. "How...?"

Naught had met the prince in the modern day other than the severity of heartache and enough regret to poison his very person a thousand times over. Memories belonging to a thousand years past were as fresh as the very day they were made, and yet his torturous slumber while deceased and fused to one of Nidhogg's eyes spanned that gap with such ease that it was difficult to think of aught else.

Even now, some time having passed since his resurrection within the halls of Azys Lla, did Haldrath struggle to find peace or comfort in the city he had once loved and adored; given his life to protect, down to the very last agonising moment.

All around him, regardless of where he could stand or sit, was he reminded of a war that he had not intended. A thousand years of suffering he had placed not only unto his own people, but those of the dragons too; an act he had regretted since the very moment it had happened. Throughout his undeath, sealed away in a vault beneath the city proper, he had been tormented regarding his decision to follow his father's terrible intentions. Instincts at the time had told him not to - - but he had, regardless, and thus the blame was his own to shoulder. Thus, he did so - - - - constantly.

"Is aught amiss, my lady?" Far be it from the usual for Haldrath to speak to others while out attempting to get some fresh air into a body that still felt stiff and sore from death; but her single-worded query had caught his attention rather swiftly.

'T was impossible for her to recognise him and thus the thought never entered his mind - only those of high stature and understanding knew of the prince's accidental resurrection and return to the city; his very being was being kept as a very closely guarded secret for the sake of many. For the moment, he appeared as if a Nobleman back from a long stay away in Gridania - or something of that sort.

"You've paled. Mayhap you'd prefer to sit a moment? I mind not the company."

[pastelwitchling]

Sorcerers and Saints by Amy Kuivalainen

⭐⭐⭐

Three stars for Athanasius, though the book itself really does feel more like 2.5 or 2.75.

I was really enjoying the feel of this book at first, it was a lot like Practical Magic where it was mostly just small-town magic stuff with nothing huge going on, but it fell apart really quickly for me with the main character, setting, and second half.

- For one thing, I had no idea what time we were in. The book opens up with talk about the early 1900's, so I assumed we were around that era. Then the scene starts with a medieval-style teashop and we don't get to see any characters or hear any conversation outside of Mara and her grandfather as they talk about saints, so I had to keep forcing myself to remember that we were in somewhere around 1990? Except then THAT'S not even true because they mention earphones so I figured, Oh! We're in... modern day? It's so confusing, there's so sense of atmosphere or description of setting at all.

- Nothing happened for so much of the story that when they started to fall into basic teen drama tropes, I was groaning at my screen. The dress reveal trope? The club trope? The whole "Oh, I've taken something to totally cloud my senses so I can finally kiss my love interest" trope? And then, the most unbelievable, the miscommunication and breaking down in tears trope? OH MY GOD, I couldn't believe this story that was starting with such an original idea could fall trap to every cliché in the book. I mean, when she broke down in front of her teashop because she saw a strange woman in his apartment, I just rolled my eyes and waited for the pain to be over.

- There was no real weight to any situation because, again, the complete lack of atmosphere. It was all "this happened and then that happened and then they went here where this happened and they went there where that happened." There was a literal storm at the end with sirens blaring and people in danger, and these two main characters decide to put off fixing any of it for hours. Not to mention, I got so lost on where we were half the time, Augustus would sit when he was already sitting, Mara would fit herself better on his lap when they'd just been standing, Augustus talked about coming back to the cave to fix the tear he'd caused, but didn't he not even know that he'd caused it until Mara told him? It could've done with some editing, is all I'm saying.

- The main character. I'm going to say it; outside of her powers, I don't know why anyone would fall for her. She had little to no personality outside of her sainthood, so when she lost her abilities, I just couldn't understand why he would still want her, to be honest. Also, she came off as a total prick to her mom. We were never told or shown a single bad thing that her mom did to her, and instead were only told over and over that everything her mother had done; murder, running away, keeping her in a moving teashop; it was all to keep Mara safe. So when Mara then says that her mother "resented her despite loving her"? Honestly, she just seemed like... well, an ungrateful brat. Maybe her mother was either physically or emotionally abusive, but I wouldn't know because we never see ANY of that. All we see is her mother constantly sacrificing to protect her, but we're somehow supposed to believe that she's awful because Mara complains about it with no basis for the reader to go off of? I don't think so.

It's just a classic case of, FMC has no real personality or charm, but we're supposed to think she's cool because everyone smirks at her snarky one-liners. Which is such a shame because she started off with so much potential as this kind figure who wants to help with people's grief, and then she just gets all sassy for some reason, even though it doesn't really fit the personality of someone who's spent most of her life healing people through their heartache over tea. I don't know, I just thought she was wasted potential, to be honest.

I really liked and enjoyed Augustus, but Athanasius stole the book. OH MY GOD I loved that cat. I will say that I flew through this story really quickly, and it was actually quite a pleasant read to sit through in the rain with a cup of tea. There were plenty of lines in the beginning that I highlighted for being so funny, so sweet, so well-written. It just feels like the book really rushed through the second half.

[hompunkulus]

Pop-Culture Magick: The Pop Cult Urn

The Movie Theatre can be a pilgrammage to the big screen or the inner journey of a pathworking. It can also be a home style date with snacks and your favorite television show.

My partner and I have been watching Tomorrow, a supernatural K-drama about Grim Reapers. The protagonists are the Risk Management (RM) Team who's job it is to reduce the number of suicides because Hell is filling up which is causing an imbalance in the Spirit Realm.

It is an emotional show with just enough humor to get you through the heartache. Like Shadow Work, it helps you face the dark depths of your psyche. Especially if you have ever dealt with suicidal attempts and thought. If you have talked someone out of suicide, it hits on a level deeper then most Western shows as the entire premise is about suicie prevention.

Risk Management Team and Escort Team Manager (man on the left of the lady with pink hair)

Pop Culture and the Liminal

Tomorrow is based on a WebToon (I have not read it) so it also crosses the liminal from comic to live action. Just like so many of my favorite works of media, like Supergirl, DBZ, iZombie, Vampire Diaries, and the list goes on, started as comics or books and have been adapted to the screen.

Even deeper, they have crossed the abyss of the subconscious to paper drafts, publishing, to the screen and finally to our hearts. A step futher, for us Pop Culture Magicians, to our altars and incantations. I used to try and adapt the ficitonal character to a mythological god, but that is, to be honest, overdone and quite boring to me so I look into the magic of the Multiverse they stem from and how it relates to my personal practice.

Nina Dobrev as Katerina Petrova (aka Katherine Pierce), Vampire Diaries

Katerina Petrova is one of my favorite characters in the Vampire Diaries. She is the one who turned Damon and Stefan Salvitore, as well as their former lovers. Even more interesting, she was a former witch before she was turned and the doppelganger of Elena Gilbert (the protagonist).

Katerina turned when she hanged herself with vampire blood in her system. This all happened because she tried to kill herself by stabbing herself in the stomach. Rose, a vampire, gave Katerina her blood to save her only to be distracted. When Rose turned to find Katerina, she was already dead.

Beyond the obvious vampiric archetype, she represents Shadow Work, past life regressions, solace, and a form to call upon for help during hard times. Although she is intially portrayed as a villian, all she really wanted was love.

On her death bed, Katerina and Elena sit next to one another and Katerina gives Elena her blood which is also a cure for vampirism. Seasons go by and we find out Katerina becomes the Queen of Hell! She gives up the throne because she gets bored of trying to wrangle in the hellions and just wants to be her own self. That builds another attribute of fierce individuality.

Making It Your Own

There are so many ways to work magic, and Pop-Culture Magic is one of my favorites as it is a completely modern form (omitting the argument that mythology was the original pop culture media). When I was part of Veritas Society, a forum about Psionics and magic, we had a few 'Radki' practitioners (that were honestly never taken seriously). 'Radki' is short for 'Radical Ki' and takes its influence from anime energy power - particularly DBZ. While I do not work with Radki, I always admired their creativity. That is what is so great about Pop Culture Magic, is the creativity! Never a boring moment with magic!