#the burning legion

[sacreblugh]

joshua graham ain't playing with the matching snakeskin booties, pistol grip, and belt 🙀🙀

[thekingpengu]

malapis legate

[protosymphonette]

huh. whuh. where am i

[vampiric-arts]

Woe, cunty Orin fanart be upon ye.

[spoonhead]

idk if anyone else remembers these books or if this even makes sense but it came to me in a dream

[rampagemagpie]

"We can't expect God, to do all the work" Joshua is just some good man with bad decisions, or he's just playing a victim as a warcrime princess? Who knows....

[milesonsight]

HI HELLO I ADORE YOUR VULPES SO MUCH OH MY GOD

He's. Such a pathetic little wet cat of a man I need to sink my teeth into him and shake him around like a chewtoy

Also how you draw his EYES???? HELLO????????? I ADORE IT

Sjdjdjf sorry I'm. So mentally ill

HI HELLO JESUS I THOUGHT I SOMEHOW SENT THIS TO MYSELF BRO YOU ARE LITERAY ME FR jokes aside, I WANT TO SINK ME TEETH IN HIS N E C K AND AAAA I like him I love him he is so fun to make bullshit with oh also here have Vulpes staring at the fires of Nipton with child like fascination

[svartberg]

I made a thing

[tame-the-lion-writes]

[legate!joshua graham x reader] what god hath joined together

This is reposted from my ao3!

[Joshua Graham] tags: religious imagery and symbolism, religious discussion, religion in a positive and respectful light

_

“Have you ever thought about it? That we aren’t married.”

“Slavery is marriage by Legion. And you are mine. Is that not enough?”

You shake your head as you sit upon his bed of furs – warm yet wrapped in the scent of gunpowder and smoke. The scent of him after many a battle – for which he was once praised – yet now finds disheartening. For though the title of Malpais Legate held prestige and power amongst the ranks of Caesar’s army, Caesar’s army was made of slaves, and the legate, too, was no exception.

And so, while your husband – no, master – makes his way toward you from across the room, you imagine the chains upon his skin. Wrought iron clinging to his wrists and ankles – perhaps a muzzle. For they exist, albeit as air – as the raw and undefeated power of Caesar. A man who picked and plundered the history of an old world, and forged an empire in the image of an idol.

“That is marriage under the law of a broken man,” you tell him, inching closer to the edge of the bed that you may take his face in your hands. “That is not marriage under God. There is a difference .”

He hisses in dismissal as he withdraws from your touch, but you can tell your inquiry lingers by the look in his eyes.

“As legatus, I do not know your god. Only the law of Caesar–”

You huff – a sharp exhale through your nose – and follow after him to reach for the bedside table. In it is a false bottom – a wooden panel to harbor a Bible that Joshua had long harbored in secrecy before you came. In the weeks before your arrival, he’d stolen seconds out of the night to skim through the yellowed pages. Back then, he didn’t know why – it was a past he’d decided best forgotten, and buried alongside the bodies he’d left rotting in their graves. But just as the Son of Man, the Word rose to roll the rock away, and burning light began to seep through every battle scar ever inflicted. Those wounds he cast upon others, and to himself. 

He could deny God all he wanted, but timing was never a coincidence. Not in the grand scheme of Creation.

Case in point: you were a translator years ago. Worked with the Followers of the Apocalypse before being absorbed into the New Canaanite fold. What was once simply outreach work — teaching — became learning, and though you’d grown in religion before, now it wove its way through every vein. So when the tribe you’d lived with for months soon became your fellow captives under the scarlet red flags of the Legion, you didn’t blame God. You blamed men. 

Blessed is free will, and cursed is what man does with it.

“‘Ye thought evil against me’,” you muttered to yourself then, “‘But God meant it unto good.’” And what can one do in their most desperate hour – when there is no way to act, and only plead – but believe?

In hindsight, you knew that it was God who sent you Joshua – for amidst the crying and soothing lies, he’d heard your prayer. Reminded him of a younger man, with hopes and dreams, and promised land. So he took you out of the pen, and purchased you like a sacrifice – from a temple taxed and forbidden, offerings sold like heresy.

It’s not as though the legate was warm, but you never expected him to be. No – at first, he merely spared you from the worst the Legion had to offer. You knew, for you heard the rumors, and the screams and sobbing in the night. The silence that followed, beaten to submission. Women reduced to cattle and children reduced to fodder.

By contrast, your “worst” was a hard, leather cot, and eating on the floor but never off of it. You were soon welcomed at the table, albeit for leftovers, and granted new clothes once the rags became threads. Small mercies, you understood, and took with careful hands. One at a time. A gradual gift of grace – for when you discovered the Bible, he did not execute you – bury you – blind you, as was his right.

He sat with you at the edge of his bed – took the book from your hands – and slipped it back into place as though nothing had ever happened.

In the days that followed, it became clear that God had made room in Joshua’s heart for more than bloodshed. You hummed hymns, and he would listen. You spoke scripture, and he would still. He would hardly confess his true thoughts on the matter, but there were nights when he’d tuck a blanket over your shoulders, and in your muddled state of half-consciousness, you’d hear the steady flip of a page. A murmur under his breath, and by firelight, salt and tears. Bittersweet, yet made you smile: his tent was your abode, and your abode was given to God. There would be no return for Joshua – only forward – to fill canyons of prodigal defiance. For your God was a jealous God, who sought to heal the empty with love.

Unconditional, but not accepting. Never enough, but what did it matter?

Come as you are, and –

– change .

“I want to get married,” you decide, pulling the Bible from its hiding place. “I want to do this right. As right as it can be, anyway–”

“Mea ocella. ”

Joshua stops you with a hand over yours, gentler this time.

“If you wish for a husband under covenant of God, do not seek me. I am a leader of war. Not a household, or in spirit.”

Your lips thin.

“Let me be your equal, as one flesh, under God. If not that mercy, at least tell me why.”

Joshua frowns – the expression aging his features by many a year. “I do not mean to insult you, or to refuse you as my equal. I mean to say that to bind you to me would only be another sin.” He lowers his voice– “‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?’”

This time, he cups your face in his hands. Rough and scarred and trembling as if amidst war.

“I wish to save you from the shackles that are mine. For though I cannot save you from the Legion, I can spare you the trouble of me.”

You stare back at him, a challenge in your eye – yet a soothing hush in the way you press your forehead to his.

“The trouble of the Malpais Legate, or of Joshua Graham? To which man do I speak now? ”

It’s subtle, but you see the way his jaw clenches. The next move is his, and you’ve offered yourself up on a plate. Willingly. No Legion auctions, no threat of the whip. Just you, him, and the Word still in your hand.

Slow, you place some space between the two of you. Undo the silk ribbon holding back your hair. Joshua – not the legate – bought it from the market on your birthday. The sweetest gift, small and unnoticed. What would it say of the Legion to have a soft legatus?

But he is soft, and ever softer — here and now — and allows himself to be so – as you take his hand and wrap it in the ribbon. His and yours, without a ring, but this would have to do.

“I,” you begin, glancing down at your entwined hands, then up to his blue eyes, “take thee, Joshua Graham, as my lawfully wedded husband. To have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. To love and to cherish…”

You trail off to give him room. Seconds, perhaps minutes in your nervousness, to undo the ribbon if he wished, and all ties that came with it.

Yet Joshua finishes for you:

“Till death do us part. According to God's holy ordinance. And thereto I pledge thee my faith ."

It is him that squeezes your hand – him that pulls you forward – and him that first presses a chaste kiss to your lips. His and yours, his and yours. You meld into one, allowing him to take you by the waist, and lower you back onto the bed.

“'And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh,'” he whispers. Recitations. Remembrance. “'What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.'”

List of Biblical references and quotes (off the bat that I can remember): - Genesis 50:20 - Matthew 21 (Jesus flipping tables at the temple) - Luke 15 (prodigal son) - Exodus 34:14 - 2 Corinthians 6:14 - Mark 10:9 Also -- "mea ocella" means "my eyes/my sight" but is otherwise a term of endearment in Latin :)

[gaykarstaagforever]

Yeah we're all laughing at Burning Man now. But it's going to stop being funny real quick when someone unites them over the untended portapotties and their new Legion takes Hoover Dam.

[chillfinity]

[sacreblugh]

yall have infected me w the toxic old man yaoi, thanks 😒

[thekingpengu]

joshua gyatt 🤤🤤

[nooklingposting]

Ides of March

Joshua Graham just loses it occasionally

Bonus reaction:

[melonmortis]

Chat, is this a safe space to post this?

[astroyogurt]

kinlist includes war crime-committing burn victim silly little guy who won't shut up about bears and bulls cringe dogboy traumatized war vet on antidepressants skinny smart white man mute bald woman chandler bing in a checkered suit and mangled hollywood jerk