#the filter on this scene was so ugly and blue and dark you don't even know so i'm very proud of my colouring here!

[sophsun1]

[punisheye]

Somewhere halfway through the Mistwood, Wolfwood passes out. The last thing he remembers are his legs buckling under him and Vash's startled gasp.

He wakes up God knows how much later in a bed. Not his bed. It's not very comfortable because it's not really big enough for him, but when he weakly tries to shift around to adjust the dull throb in his body makes him wince and go still.

It's a hospital. He's in a hospital. The walls are pale blue and the curtain drawn around his bed is off-white. The heart monitor next to his bed beeps steadily. They're feeding him something through an IV drip in his arm; probably some powerful painkillers. The meds do make him a little nauseated, though.

Vaguely, he's aware of a bandage around his shoulder, one on his gut, another around his thigh. Did he get shot there, too, and just not notice?

A nurse comes in soon enough and, upon seeing him awake, is quick to fetch the doctor.

"Where's Vash?" He asks groggily, before she can even get a word in.

"Mister... Saverem? He's down the hall. He's been asking to see you for hours. You ought to be grateful to him, he carried you here on his back with an injured shoulder and bullet wound in his leg."

"Mmgh." He's too tired to really reply. Or talk in general. While the doctor talks to him a nurse applies ice to his bruised-up ribs. Whatever she says is kinda muffled. Something about fractured ribs, digging a bullet out of his gut, and a lot of painkillers and bedrest. He's fading in and out the whole time before finally, finally slipping back into unconsciousness.

He dreams this time. In front of him stands a dark figure shaped just like him. It has a cross on its back. It's staring at him with his eyes.

"Yer still here," Wolfwood says.

"Always been here," he gets in response. "Always will be here."

They're in the chapel of the orphanage. It was always the cleanest area, but there are still signs of kids. Toys left behind, a small missing shoe, a crude drawing of baby Jesus in the manger sitting on the pulpit. Sunlight filters in through the windows. Dust motes float through the air. Somewhere, distantly, he hears children laughing.

"Even if we shed every other part of ourselves, we'd never forget this place," the Shadow says. "The old man could never beat that out of us."

"Would you've gone after this place, too?"

The Shadow stares at him for a long time. Something inscrutable swims in his eyes.

"No," he finally says. A simple answer.

Around them, the scene shifts. They're sitting on a familiar white couch, holding shot glasses. Wolfwood's on the opposite end now. The Shadow's got The Bride in his other hand, one leg folded over the other, slumped back. Confetti rains down around them.

The Shadow says, "I'm everything you hate about yerself. Think you can ever let me go?"

"I don't know." Wolfwood stares down at the shot glass. "I don't think so."

"Yer friends accepted me. All the ugly parts of you. They saw me and still loved you."

"Yeah."

"You accepted me, too."

"...Yeah."

"That all you know how to say? Jesus." He bonks Wolfwood over the head with the bottle. Wolfwood rubs the back of his head, scowling. "Whatever. I'm not yer therapist. I'm just you."

Again, the scene shifts. They're standing over his own grave. The cross remains a tall, vigilant guardian over the stone. The Shadow leans against it with one arm.

"Time to go," he says. "Everythin' from here on, you gotta figure out yerself."

"You still scared?" Wolfwood asks.

"Always am. I think it'll be a li'l easier now, though." The Shadow stands up straight and lights up a cigarette. He walks forward, his stride steady, and brushes past Wolfwood. "I love you more than you'll ever know. Be well."

Wolfwood looks over his shoulder, only to find the Shadow gone.

When he wakes again, he can still smell cigarette smoke.

Listen to my voice. Listen to our heartbeat. Listen… I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you... — Fray, Final Fantasy XIV

[allsassnoclass]

15, 18 (specifically for the tie me down 'verse ending since i KNOW you were talking about that but if you don't want to disclose then that's cool i just think about it a lot), and 20 go crazy love you a lot xoxo bella

Thank you bella :)

okay these are going under a read more because they got ridiculously long. I really enjoy talking about my writing lol

also some spoilers ahead....

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)? I think this really depends!  On occasion, I’ll have a title while I’m writing a piece, but otherwise titles are pretty difficult for me because I really want them to have some sort of meaning. I don’t like just plucking song lyrics for them unless the song has some sort of significance to the fic, but sometimes I have to because I can’t think of anything else and that’s the accepted way to name fics.  Something like All I Really Want Is You is okay because I referenced slsp in the fic.  Something like Puzzle Pieces was taken from a running metaphor in the fic, which I feel better about because it’s something that is more specific to the fic itself.  Summaries are also difficult because sometimes I don’t have a few lines that I feel properly introduce the fic and hook the reader without giving things away, but I feel like people are less likely to read if there isn’t an excerpt??? idk.  tags are pretty easy though even though I’m always guessing a little and worried that someone will say I should have tagged it with something else or that it doesn’t fit a tag I added.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them. For the most part, I don’t have alternate versions unless it’s a prompt fic that I started out going one direction then deleted and flipped it around.  HOWEVER the Tie Me Down trilogy DID have a possible different third installment (spoilers ahead)

If I had written the epilogue from Jack’s perspective, it would’ve been a little bit of a different ending.  Something I mentioned in both of the first parts was Jack’s restlessness and Alex’s desire for something more settled, and one day I was listening to peace by Taylor swift and was like “wow this is Jack from the tie me down verse,” and that song could’ve very easily been the inspiration behind the third part.  Alex’s epilogue was based on best years because he recognized that he hadn’t treated Jack the best but resolved to then make up for it by giving Jack the best years possible ahead with all of his love.  peace as an epilogue song would’ve pushed the story away from a crystal-clear resolution.  that would’ve focused a bit more on the struggle of making it work with two people who want/need fundamentally different things.  It would’ve had much more to do with the compromise of Jack being able to give Alex infinite love and devotion, but not the peace that he craves.  Inevitably, something would go wrong.  “The rain is always gonna come if you’re standing with me.”  The epilogue would’ve then been about Jack living with that knowledge and trusting that Alex would stay anyway and that their relationship would be enough, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty of an imperfect relationship in that song, and it inevitably would’ve ended up in the fic.  that’s why the Alex epilogue was the one I went with: I needed a strong, conclusive, and positive ending for them, and Jack’s epilogue would not have given that

otherwise though I don’t think my fics shift too terribly much between when I think of them and when they get published.  nothing is coming to mind, at least not for things that I have completed.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Okayyyyyy a lot of my symbolism is in the short angsty fics and when I talk about it I feel like I didn’t do it well lol but for my unrequited lashton (I was done but you undid me) (spoiler) the buckling of the seatbelt was something I thought about a lot and ending the fic with that action was important to me because it was Luke making the conscious decision to protect himself in this situation.  there’s a lot of symbolism in the lie to me music vid in general but back seat of the car/no seatbelt is very significant because 1. he can’t swerve, he just has to take the crash and 2. he isn’t doing the bare minimum to protect himself from the hit, he’s letting himself take maximum damage from it.  while Luke may be in the passenger seat in the fic, he can still take that little step to protect himself metaphorically, which goes along with the decision to protect himself by not trying to pursue something with Ashton or try to get the validation from him that he wants but that would ultimately be a lie.

also fun fact! my angsty Luke song is putting the dog to sleep by the antlers, which partially inspired the bear-trap metaphor despite bear traps not being mentioned in the song at all.  when I wasn’t listening to a version of lie to me while writing that, I was listening to that song.

the tie me down trilogy also included a whole bunch of metaphors that first appeared in tie me down and I hate that for you.  when I do song fics, I really look at the songs for inspiration, so a lot of the figurative language and images in the songs were incorporated into the fics, then I combined stuff for the third installment.  best years arguably had the least amount of influence over the installment out of that trilogy.

I have had a few people ask if the cocktail chats reference in off-screen was intentional.  it was.  that moment in cocktail chats inspired the entire fic.  it all stemmed from a desire to put that one little moment into a fic.  also my personal thought is that off-screen Ashton pretends to dislike petunia but he actually adores her and calls her darling all the time when they’re alone.  Luke heard him do it once and teased him mercilessly.

now for puzzle pieces!!!! sorry bella I know that you asked this question and haven’t read this one yet but I want to talk about it so you can stop reading now because that’s what the rest of this ask is.

I talked about this briefly once, but the colors for puzzle pieces were chosen specifically!  there was thought behind it! 

Michael got red not just because of the iconic red hair, which is how I almost think of younger Michael, but because it’s a pretty loud and brash color.  Michael (especially when he was younger) doesn’t really filter things and wears a decent amount of his personality on his sleeve. that’s red to me, baby!

Calum has always been forest green to be.  This is partially influenced by the empathy hoodie (even though that’s a bit brighter than forest green), but it’s more because my associations with green have always said it’s a very dependable, stable color.  It reminds me of pine trees, and I think Calum can give off that same sense of reliability in weathering the seasons.  It’s a quieter color but can really pop next to another one.  It also worked out nicely that Calum and Michael’s colors were compliments

Luke gets gold because he is a sunshine boy!  Luke actually was the person I had the most trouble with, because I was flipping between gold, a lighter blue, or pink.  Pink ultimately was too close to red to make me be able to visualize what the marks looked like on each boy to my satisfaction like it just looked ugly.  I went with gold because there is a lot of outward brightness in Luke.  He’s the kind of person where if he’s happy everyone else gets a bit happier, and gold also seemed fitting for the eventual shift into a rockstar and the amount of talent he has

Ashton gets purple, but a deeper purple.  Dynamic but still relatively stable, has a lot of depth.  Purple is a secret color, but it’s still beautiful and it draws people in.  When I visualize it it ends up being a really dark shade, but in reality he’s probably more of a royal purple than a plum purple

I have a lot of favorite moments in that fic but one that’s standing out now is right when Ashton and Michael do their first touch: “The dark purple reminds him of spilling grape juice on his clothes as a kid, and when he collapses into Ashton he feels like they could have known each other at that age, too.”  There is something so charming about meeting someone later and feeling like you’ve known them your whole life, and that was significant here because Michael has known Calum and Luke since they were younger (although Luke did come in the picture when they were tweens/young teens instead of kids).  I wanted to be sure that although Michael, Calum, and Luke are the triangle, Ashton is an equal part of their soulmate group.  He doesn’t have the same history, but that doesn’t matter because it feels like he does.

also pretty early on in the fic (I think it’s when Calum is in Brazil) I say that Michael is always touch-starved for Calum, and I brought that line back in the hair dye scene because baby seasons change but people don’t!  one thing is consistent about Michael and that is his love for Calum, expressed here through the love language of physical touch

As for clues for future scenes... :)

anyway! ask me some fun meta writer asks!