#soft.. but in a sad way

[sga-owns-my-soul]

reblog to give ur mutuals a soft lil kissy on the head

[darksonofsparda]

vergil are u and eden still together? havent seen u two together in a while

[{ 🗡️ }] - "What an utterly stupid question. Of course, me and Eden are still together, you idiot."

Blue eyes narrow at the assumption made by the faceless individual, a stupid one to make too. Just because they weren't always together, didn't mean that they had broken up. The two of them lived busy lives, Eden is a full-time Trailblazer with an important job to do, while Vergil is a full-time Devil Hunter, so it was hard to find time to spend together sometimes. Vergil knew what he would be getting himself into the moment he and Eden became a couple, the half-devil was made well aware of how it would be sometimes, both their jobs were incredibly important, so they obviously couldn't just push everything aside just to spend time with each other, so all they could do was wait until the two of them had some time to spare for each other.

Vergil and Eden did text every day, whenever they were busy away from each other, the couple always made sure they remained in touch. The two texted when they had the chance, and usually called once or twice before bed, always saying goodnight to each other.

[{ 🗡️ }] - "Just because we haven't seen each other in a while, doesn't mean we're not together. She'll be back soon.."

As confident as he was about his statement, he did have to admit -- the longer they spent away from each other, the more Vergil would start to miss her. Long distance relationships were tough, especially one at this level, as glad as he was to have a way to keep in contact with her, it still got progressively more difficult with each passing day the longer they were apart, the more it did start to hurt. Despite the countless difficulties that a long-distance relationship of this level had, the half-devil would just try to do his very best to wait for the very next chance the two would get to see each other again.

As optimistic as he was, it was clear that he missed his little raccoon more than ever. Silence follows him as he leaves the room, entering his private bedroom, Vergil quietly walks over to the balcony doors, and steps outside, the blue glow of the moon and its light brightening up the dark sky. In silence, Vergil looks up at the stars in the night sky, the glow of the stars reminding him of the bright smile of his little trailblazer that he loved to see so much. He was hopeful that he would see the day when he and his precious Eden would finally be able to reunite again -- oh how dearly he missed her.

He missed her smile, her giggle, her kisses. But most of all, he missed the feeling of having her wrapped in his strong arms, feeling her smaller frame against his-- it would be a lonely road until they were both free next, but he loved her enough to wait forever, even if forever seemed so far away, nothing would change the way he felt about her. His heart was chained to her.

[{ 🗡️ }] - "...I know I'll see her again."

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[kidovna]

your Viktor looks a lot like your Will

i mean…

[somegrumpynerd]

A bunch of doodles inspired by @wickjump saying Cross has an eternal kicked puppy look (and steadily devolving into dadmare because y'know. My Brand)

[nextimeiny]

[novantinuum]

somewhere up above the stars the wreckage of a Universe floats past

an AU ancient lonely god Steven I have. his moniker is Astra and I am obsessed with him right now.

[gunstellations]

confessions

[tullecake]

Sonic is super badass, and that's why I think he should wear the coolest clothes ^^ ★

different background versions under the cut --

and here's a close up of the face ^^ ★

[lokimobius]

"Listen. That wasn’t tactical. I lost it." LOKI S02E02 “Breaking Brad”

[annabelle--cane]

say it with me everybody: personal health is completely immaterial to morality, including mental health. leading a mentally unhealthy lifestyle (or what you perceive as a mentally unhealthy lifestyle) does not a bad person make. no one has to socialize, exercise, have healthy coping mechanisms, or lead (what you perceive as) a fulfilling life with fulfilling hobbies in the same way that no one has to go to the doctor to get a broken bone reset. both of those types of management of personal health are likely to be beneficial to the individual, but they are in no way moral requirements or debts owed to society. they do not actually say anything about a person's principles, personality, or actions towards others. additionally, people know themselves and their own situations better than you do. maybe a person judges that the physical and financial toll of going to the doctor outweigh the benefit of getting their bone reset, maybe a person just does not have the capacity to develop healthy coping mechanisms at this point in their life, and yes, maybe a person feels like they are totally fulfilled by "media based" hobbies alone and would feel no difference in their life if they picked up a loom. just like. let people be sick without accusing them of being representative of the lazy, degenerated state of modern society.

[missescalientee]

They have a lot to talk about @zivazivc

[t-u-i-t-c]

"You'll triumph someday, as long as you never yield. I'll take you on any time." "You never fail to piss me off, Geats."

[fanfoolishness]

the waves flowing, the dawn blooming

Hunter and Crosshair have a heart-to-heart, after their girl takes wing. Set directly after the epilogue, stuffed full of soft Dad Batch feels, lots of healing, and Hunter and Crosshair being close again <3. I cried all through the back half, sorry not sorry. ~1900 words.

-

Beach-crickets shivered the last of their evening songs as Hunter and Batcher wended their way back to Lower Pabu.  The house wasn’t far from the cove, and a brisk walk would have done it in ten minutes, but they took their time.  Batcher was eager to follow her favorite smells along the beach, and Hunter waited patiently for her.  His back and knees had warmed up with the walk, but there was plenty to think about.

Their kid was gone.

He didn’t know what to call this feeling in his chest: a deep and full-bodied sorrow, mingled with the fierce pride he always felt every time he looked at Omega, tangled with joy and worry and the longing for more time.  He grappled with it as they followed the familiar path back to their little home, as the stars shimmered among the slowly lightening sky.  

Batcher whuffed softly as they approached the gate.  Light from the kitchen glowed gently through the side window, and Hunter smiled, catching a faint scent of caf.  Batcher scampered up to the door, morning stiffness long forgotten, and trotted inside as it opened.  Hunter followed, slipping off his boots and heading to the kitchen.

“I wondered when you’d be back,” said Crosshair, raising his eyebrows at Hunter.  He sat at the kitchen table with a pitcher of caf and two mugs.  One steamed merrily before him, and he cradled it in his left hand to take a sip.  He never wore his prosthetic first thing in the morning.

“Well… she’s off.”  Hunter drew up a chair and sat down at the table.

A small smile creased Crosshair’s face.  “You caught her?”

“You knew?” he asked.  “Ahhh, of course you did.”  He waved an annoyed hand at his little brother.

“Said her goodbyes to Wrecker and me last night.  Swore us to secrecy.”  Crosshair shrugged, taking a sip of his caf.  “I can’t say no to her.  Never could.”

Hunter chuckled.  He remembered a time, long ago, that that hadn’t been the case; it felt like another lifetime.  “She let me catch her.  She acted like I’d found her out, but she could have hidden her tracks if she’d wanted.”  He sighed.  “I know I was hard on her.”

”You’ve always protected her.  She knows that’s all it was.  Though she did complain about it.”  Crosshair smirked, wearing the same punchable little half-grin he’d perfected in their brief cadet years.  “‘Doesn’t he know I’m not a kid anymore?’”

Hunter groaned, rubbing his face.  He reached for the pot of caf and poured himself a cup.  “I deserve that.”

”Mm-hm.”

He took a sip of caf.  It was bracing, strong, just how Crosshair always brewed it.  He savored it, letting it swirl over his tongue, so much richer and fuller than the stim drinks they used to have in their rations.  He closed his eyes, lost in thought.

The war had never ended.  It just took on a new name.

This is my fight, Hunter.

Why did she have to have one, when she’d already fought so hard?  Didn’t she deserve the peace they’d won so dearly?

”Are you all right?” Crosshair said in a quiet voice, breaking his reverie.

Hunter blinked, glancing over at his brother.  Crosshair regarded him with that cool, observant gaze, the weight of it familiar and steady.  

It was the same look he used to give him in the Marauder on missions during the Clone Wars; but the face giving it was older, softer.  Crosshair’s narrow cheeks had filled in somewhat with the years, rounding the sharp angles he’d once carried.  His gray hair had grown out and gone fully white, curling gently at his forehead and the nape of his neck, except at the old scar at his temple where it had never regrown.  His short white beard held a hint of the same curl.

You can wear it how you like, you know.  We’re defective.  Nobody cares as long as we complete the mission.

Grow it long like yours?  I don’t think so. These blasted curls are a nightmare.  Give me that trimmer, I don’t know how you stand it.

It’s the headband, obviously.

Sure it isn’t cutting off circulation to your brain?

Hunter stifled a laugh.  They’d been so young.  Things had changed so much since those days, and Crosshair was different now… yet still the same as ever.  

They all were, he supposed.

“Just feeling thoughtful,” Hunter said.  He sighed.  “I don't know where the time went.”

“We’re clones.  We never had very much of it to begin with.”  Crosshair’s eyes softened.  “Tech should have had more.”

Hunter nodded slowly.  “He should have.”

He thought of Tech’s goggles, safely stowed on Omega’s little ship, where she could see them with every pitched turn or hyperspace leap.  It was the right place for them, a testament to all he’d taught her.  His breath caught in his throat.

“She told me this was her fight,” Hunter said.  “But she shouldn’t have to have one.  Not again.”  Tantiss was a victory -- and a cruelty -- that should have been enough for one lifetime.  It tore at him, thinking of her taking on another brutal fight, one with no guarantee of victory.  They hadn’t been blind, these years on Pabu; he knew what she was up against.  He rubbed at his chest, taking a deep breath.

Crosshair poured himself another cup of caf.  “It’s not the galaxy we live in, Hunter.  It never has been.”

”When did you get so wise?”

Crosshair ducked his head in one of his rare guffaws, the laugh echoing sharply in the kitchen.  “That’s not wisdom.  That’s just living.”

”I’m not sure the two aren’t the same.”  Hunter took another drink of his caf, but it had cooled significantly.  How long had he been musing? 

“You’re worried about her.”

”And you aren’t?” Hunter asked skeptically.

Crosshair raised an eyebrow.  “Of course I am.”  He gazed down into his mug, tracing his thumb over the top of the cup.  He rubbed thoughtfully at the side of his face with his stump.  “Of course I am,” he said again.  “But — I trust her, Hunter.  If she has to do this, I have to let her.”  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were bright.  He blinked rapidly.

Hunter reached out, taking him by the shoulder and nodding.  For a moment, it was hard for either of them to speak.

Crosshair cleared his throat, and Hunter let his hand fall.  Crosshair tilted his head towards the back door.  “Maybe you should join us.”

”You and Batcher?” Hunter asked.  He did, sometimes.  When memories of Eriadu, Kamino, Tantiss crept in; when his senses jangled, when it was hard to sleep or think.  It wasn’t often that he needed it, but it did help, he’d had to admit.  And he’d seen the changes meditation had wrought in Crosshair through the years, a calm held deep within, so different from the twisted guilt and painful memories that had once defined him.  

“An open invitation,” said Crosshair.  He swallowed, and Hunter could tell he was thinking of Omega, sunny and centered, always happy to join him when she wasn’t sleeping in or off with friends.  

”All right, then,” Hunter agreed.  “If there’s room on that patio for another old man.”

”Who are you calling old?” Crosshair snarked, getting to his feet with an audible creak.  Now it was Hunter’s turn for a sharp, short laugh.

”Both of us, brother,” Hunter said fondly.

They shuffled out to the back patio, Batcher at Crosshair’s heels.  She curled up in her comfy bed on the patio, knowing the routine.  Crosshair pulled out the stack of pillows piled against the side of the house, tossing two down.  The ground had somehow gotten a lot harder in recent years than it used to be, and the pillows helped.

They settled down beside each other, their folded knees brushing.  The dawn was rising, blushes of faint pink and orange and gold nipping at the edges of the deep inky blue.  The beach-crickets had quieted their songs, only to be replaced by the sweet tittering music of the saltbush sparrows and the sandcatchers and the buzzing starthroats.  

Hunter gazed out at the lightening sky, eyes straining as if to catch the glimmer of a ship’s lights.  But there was nothing out there besides the glow of pre-dawn, no lights making their way home.  Omega was gone, and he knew she’d had to go, knew she had to follow what was right just as she always had, and he hung his head, his breath stuttering.  

What were they going to do without her?  Her laughter echoing through the house with Wrecker’s booming joy, her tinkering with Gonky or parts from her little ship at the kitchen table so like what Tech used to do, her wicked banter and her kind understanding with Crosshair --

The soft, trusting way she’d look up at him, when she was small?

Cut had tried to warn him, once.  Tried to tell him what it meant to love a child, to give everything for them, to do what was best for them even when it was so, so hard.  Hunter had thought he’d be able to figure it out.  Turned out he’d had no idea.

He rubbed at his eyes, trying to master his breath, and looked out at the sea.  The dawn was in full bloom now, gold lining the flowers along their patio and glittering in the suncatcher standing at the east boundary.  Hunter relaxed as the light danced around him, reflecting off the mirrors twirling slowly in the morning breeze.  He remembered when Crosshair had shyly shown him what he’d made, his old mirror pucks strung together with shells and colorful stones, shimmering beacons of art instead of cold devices of war.

He glanced at Crosshair out of the corners of his eyes.  His brother sat with his eyes closed, head slightly bowed, his hand and his stump resting atop his knees.  The lines in his face had softened, his expression calm, grounded.  Peaceful.  His breath flowed in Hunter’s ears like waves on the shore, in and out, in… and out.  

Tears pricked his eyes again, and Hunter smiled, nodded, bowed his head, and let his eyes fall closed.

His brother was right.  If she has to do this, I have to let her.  

He knew it, as much as he knew anything.

She knows what to do.  Of course she did; they’d taught her, hadn’t they, Echo, Tech, Wrecker, Crosshair, all of them.  She’d come through floods and fire, destruction and capture and all-out war, and she’d never stopped hoping, never given up, never stopped loving all of them through everything. Part of them would always be with her in the emblems on her jacket, in her treasured Lula-doll, in Tech’s goggles, in Hunter’s old headband.  And after that, she’d have the memories, long after they’d breathed their last and gone to join their brother.  

Tears dampened his face, but he didn’t mind: a small price to pay for a love this fierce and good.  He breathed in, and breathed out, his breath matching Crosshair’s, melding with the sounds of the waves below.

She’d be brave, just like they’d taught her, just like she’d always been.

He hoped the galaxy was ready for her.

[sunb0ts]

something that always gets me about klavier is that he is so clearly just like. friendly. he cares so much and he cares too much. he's one to tease simultaneously but he so clearly just like. loves and loves and loves, even when it puts him in harm's way, he likes people and he likes being around people enough to be desperate for it and for friendship like. ough

[yuseirra]

I watched that part where he appears!! and

it was way too extra I couldn't take it seriously.. why does he have to be so dramatic.. it was sweet though. I think Ai would have appreciated it coming from him