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multisfabulis · 3 years

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Land’s Trust in Light

Brothers in Land and Sky (Chapter 4/6)

Word Count: 4663

Finally, after who knows how many months, we get to see what Bris has been wanting to talk to Eric about since the second chapter!

There's not too much to say about this chapter. I started work on it during the week I was posting the RLD fic on other platforms and it took me less than a week to have the rewrite finished, which is good since it allowed me to post this earlier than I originally thought!

Other than that, this is the last you'll see of this fic in 2021! Depending on when I'll finish the next two projects in my docket, I'd say to expect the next chapter either towards the tail-end of February or sometime in March!

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Today was the day. Eric stood outside the door, waiting for Bris to answer as he stewed in his anxiety. He came by as soon as he woke up and dressed himself, forgoing breakfast yet again in order to save time. This was too important for him to miss even a second of. What did Bris wish to speak with him about and what did Ferreth have to do with any of it?

There were some theories floating around in his head. Maybe his and Ferreth’s budding friendship is something Bris is concerned about or Bris needs someone to confide in that isn’t Ferreth for some reason. Or maybe he’s completely misread the whole situation and is jumping to conclusions again. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he gave a complex solution to a simple problem because he thought the obvious answer was too much of a red herring. Well, whatever the case may be, he’d face it head-on like he always did.

The door swung open, revealing Bris on the other side. He had shadows under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept well last night. Was he just as nervous about this as he was? “Good morning. Thanks for stopping by.”

“I got here as soon as I could.” He decided to put a pin in it for now, wait till after they started to ask about it. “So, shall we head inside? I’m curious to know what you have in store for me.”

Bris chuckled. “Straight to the point, huh?” He smiled but it was easy to see how it didn’t reach his eyes. “Come on in.” He stepped aside to let Eric through.

Aissyl regarded them with a small nod as they walked past. Bris’ office was the same as usual, the only exception being that a white cup sat on the desk with a familiar scent emanating from it. They each took their respective seats and Bris sipped from the cup, which seemed to perk him up some. The little Eric knew of him, Bris was very casual, bereft of seriousness. Seeing him like this meant that, whatever their talk was about, it carried weight. That didn’t help his anxiety any.

“So,” Bris began, putting his arms up on the desk with his chin resting on interlocked fingers, “how much do you know about Ferreth?”

That caught him by surprise. He wasn’t expecting Ferreth to be brought up right outta the gate like that. “Well… I know he’s something of a handyman around here. Uh, he likes to help people, I don’t imagine he’s that much older than me, and he’s very popular, if what happened yesterday morning was any indication.” He let out a nervous laugh, his answer clearly showing how unprepared he was.

“What about his background? What’s he told you about that?”

“Uh, well, he said that he came from a town called Thesriden and, due to some familial troubles, he followed you all the way here just before his 18th birthday. He’s stayed here ever since.”

“He’s been here for a little over five years now and I’ve enjoyed having him around.” Bris leaned back in his chair, sighing. “Which makes what I’m about to say hard to understand.”

Dread and a sense of déjà vu crept up as Eric asked, “What do you mean?”

“Long story short--” Bris stood up with both hands face down on his desk, looking him straight in the eyes-- “I want you to take Ferreth with you back to Aurora Zenith tomorrow.”

That was the final nail in the coffin of hope. That was precisely what he didn’t want to happen today. Still, it was out in the open now, so he may as well hear what Bris has to say. If there was one thing he was glad for, it was that Bris was nothing like the pompous jackass in Brinegarde.

He breathed in deep before responding. “Why? What’s your reasoning?”

“How should I put this?” Bris took a step back and crossed his arms. “When Ferreth first came here, I told him he could take as much time as he needed to, to sort his life out and all that. He was barely an adult at the time, I knew it’d be a while before he could start putting things into place.”

“It’s rare for someone to have their whole life figured out at that early an age.” He did the same, along with his legs. “However, this is a problem now?”

“Not a problem, per se, but…” He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. “A lot of time’s passed since then and he still doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. I know he’s fine with where he’s at now but I’m afraid of him missing out on some great opportunities because he doesn’t try to go after them.”

“Have you tried bringing this up to him? I understand where you’re coming from but I have to ask.”

“Yes but it ends in us arguing about it until I decide to drop the matter entirely because I don’t wanna fight with my best friend over something like this.” He went over to one of the walls and leaned against it. “I know he can do something great with his life, I just don’t want him to regret wasting his youth doing menial labor when he’s got the makings to become somebody.”

Eric stood up from his chair at this point and walked around the desk to face him. “I may not have known Ferreth for very long but I’d be lying if I said I disagreed. He’s got a lot of potential and it’d be a shame to see it squandered before it was even given the chance to grow.”

The corners of Bris’ mouth curled up into a small smile. He meant it when he said he believed Ferreth was capable of becoming something great. He was strong, outgoing, and, most importantly, had people skills. Almost any job he might have wanted would be easy for him to get and succeed at. It was just a matter of what his life goals were and how he would go about accomplishing them.

“Why me, then?” he asked, tilting his head. “What do you think I can do to help?”

“He’s taken quite the shine to you, so much so that--” Bris stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder-- “he’s willing to take the fall for what happened yesterday.”

He tensed up. “You knew?”

“Ferreth’s not a klutz and, truth be told, you weren’t exactly being subtle about it. He doesn’t do that often and it’s because of what he did I realized I could trust you with this.” He took his hand away.

Eric’s brows furrowed in thought. He obviously knew what his answer was but he wondered if it was the right one. This wasn’t like Brinegarde, where Lianthorne all but threatened Ven’s safety if he didn’t take her back with him. Bris seemed to be genuinely worried about Ferreth’s future and he was doing this out of the kindness and care he had for his friend. Even so, it was wrong of him to go behind his back like this, despite what good intentions he had. Eric didn’t feel comfortable making such a huge decision on Ferreth’s behalf.

“Does he know about this?” He felt as if he already knew the answer.

Pushing himself off the wall, Bris replied with, “No, he doesn’t. I haven’t spoken a word of this to him.”

“Then I’m sorry but he deserves to know.” Ferreth wasn’t even aware of what was going on behind the scenes, which was disappointing but not surprising. “This is his life we’re talking about here and I absolutely refuse to choose for him what he should do in regards to it.”

“I understand. Just know that I won’t kick him out if he decides to stay here. It’ll probably lead to a fight later but--” Bris stood up straight and met his gaze-- “he’ll always have a place here in Thornewind.”

Eric was about to cross the threshold when he stopped. This was most likely the last time he’d be seeing Bris before he departed from Thornewind tomorrow. He turned around and saw him sitting at his desk again, eyes fixed on a particular spot that had nothing on it. Maybe it would be better if he left him with some parting words to alleviate the mental and emotional strain he was under.

“Bris, I may disagree with how you went about this--” he watched as Bris lifted his head-- “but I know you were only looking out for him.”

There was a ghost of a smile on his face and he exhaled. “What kind of friend am I if I can’t tell my best friend that I’m worried about him?”

“Someone who wants the best for his brother so much, he’s willing to risk everything for him.” That could’ve been worded a tad differently but it worked all the same. “You screwed up but that doesn’t mean you can’t fix it.”

“...I just hope I can.”

Those were the last words he heard before exiting the windmill. What greeted him outside was a bright sun, the noises of the afternoon crowd milling about the place, and a nice, summery breeze. However, he wasn’t up for partaking in the scenery. There was a lot going through his mind right now.

The main goal would be to talk to Ferreth. He needed to be made aware of what Bris had planned on doing with him. Considering how he’d been curious to know what Bris was keeping secret about as well, Eric could kill two birds with one stone here. The only thing he was unsure on was how to break it to him. Would he have to sell Bris out or was it possible to tell him without making it seem awful? Was there even a way to do it that didn’t mean potentially ruining their friendship?

In any case, he needed to strategize. Even if he managed to think of the perfect solution to his problem, he still had to find Ferreth, which was going to be difficult, to say the least. Due to the nature of his work, he could be anywhere within Thornewind and Eric simply didn’t have the time to search through every nook and cranny the town had to offer for one man. With any luck, Ferreth would stop by the inn to check in on him and they’d proceed from there.

As he walked back to the Dravitae Inn, he studied his surroundings. People were smiling, talking with one another, having fun, just being happy. They all had stories he wasn’t aware of, lives that were nothing more than a tiny blip to him, but they still held meaning and value. How many of them did Ferreth know? How close was he to them and did he make their lives better, even in the smallest of ways? If he did decide to leave Thornewind, would they be sad in knowing he was gone? Ferreth was a popular man, as Eric noted yesterday, so his departure could possibly affect each and every life he’s touched in some way. Would it be right then to ask that of him or would it even be right at all? He didn’t know.

Soon after he arrived at the inn, he went straight to an empty table in the common room. Lunch was a few slices of bread topped with a dark brown, sugary syrup he recognized as treacle and a cup of tea off to the side. He didn’t have much of an appetite but he needed to eat something if he was going to be having a serious discussion with Ferreth about his future.

God, how was he going to do this? It had only been months since he was last in this position yet he was still clueless. He didn’t even see Ven that day, which he really should’ve in hindsight. He certainly didn’t want to throw Bris out to the wolves for making a stupid mistake but he still made a stupid mistake. There really was no way to salvage this wreck, was there? Why did Bris drag him into business he had no right to involve himself in?

Nothing to do about it, then. He was just going to be straightforward with Ferreth, tell him everything while hammering in the fact Bris did it out of the kindness in his heart, even if the way in which he did it was pretty dumb. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, after all. It was worth a try.

It was still early in the afternoon. If he had any chance of finding Ferreth, now would be the best time to go. He stood up from the table and strode towards the entrance, leaving behind his empty plate. He only got past the threshold when he ran into someone, which almost sent him falling back before he caught himself.

What little confidence he had evaporated upon realizing it was Ferreth. He had a hand up in greeting him and a bright smile plastered across his face. Oh, how great being as blissfully ignorant as he was would be, Eric thought.

“Hey, I was just coming to see you!” If only he could share in his merriment…

Fighting to keep his voice steady, Eric answered him with, “Hey, um, so I talked with Bris this morning…”

“What did he say? I’ve been dying to know.” Here comes the anxiety.

“Well--” he clapped his hands together-- “let’s talk about that in private, actually. Maybe out in the tulip fields?”

“Uh, sure, is there something wrong?” Ferreth asked, looking at him confusedly.

“No! No, I just, I think this just deserves to be said without any prying ears listening in, you know what I mean? I swear it’s nothing bad!” This was turning into a shitshow with how shoddy his performance was.

A moment passed between them before Ferreth acquiesced. “Okay, whatever you say.”

So they journeyed to the tulip fields. Anxiety continued to simmer in his stomach as they neared ever closer to their destination. With the moment of reckoning practically here, he found that the already difficult to navigate situation had become damn near impossible to even cross because the man was walking right beside him without a care in the world and he was going to ruin him. How he wasn’t setting off any alarm bells, he had no godforsaken idea.

They finally arrived at the tulip fields. Clouds were lazily rolling across the sky, casting shade over the town with bouts of sunshine between. The warm breeze from before was still there, ruffling the flowers and cooling the sweat off his body. What was the best way to start this awkward conversation?

Ferreth took a seat on a patch of grass in a nearby empty field. “So, what happened with Bris that’s got you so spooked?”

“Well, uh…” He gulped, knowing he needed to choose his next words very carefully. “Yesterday, when Bris told me to come by his office, I kinda noticed something odd.”

“Odd? Like what?”

“Like the timing of it. Bris said that right after you took the fall for me for what happened at the windmill. That was when I realized you were a deciding factor in that.”

“That’s weird. Like, I can’t see how I’m a part of this when I’ve got nothing to do with your lines of work.”

“That’s because it’s not work-related.” Eric breathed in deep, clasping his hands together tightly. “Bris asked me to take you back with me to Aurora Zenith.”

Silence fell around them. He chanced a look at Ferreth, since he kept his gaze averted from him the whole time, and his heart dropped. It was as if he’d been stabbed in the gut, the shock and bewilderment clear as day on his face. Then his expression twisted, his eyes squeezed shut and teeth grounded together. This was anger brought on by a perceived betrayal, which wasn’t pretty.

“What the hell, Bris?” He pounded a fist into the ground next to him, causing it to rumble beneath Eric’s feet. “He’s kicking me out? And he didn’t even have the balls to say it to my face? Seriously, what the hell, Bris?”

Oh, he was pissed. “That’s not what he said. He just wanted to see if maybe putting you in a different environment would help you reach your potential.”

“Oh god, he’s still on that?” Ferreth groaned, standing up to face him. “Look, whatever happens between me and him is our own business, he had no right dragging you into it.”

“I agree!” Thank god he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. “But I’m in this now, whether we like it or not, and I can understand why he did this. He’s just worried about your future.”

“But why does he think it involves him? What I want to do with my life, regardless of it being now or later, is none of his damn business! I’m a grown man, not some child he needs to coddle!”

“I understand but I’m saying to please consider where he’s coming from on this. He doesn’t want you to waste your life away.”

“Again, I ask, why does it matter? It’s my life, my decisions, and how I wish to live it has nothing to do with him!”

This was about what he expected. In truth, he could see both sides of the argument, though he’d never admit it in fear of sounding like he was siding with one man over the other. Bris shouldn’t have tried to go behind Ferreth’s back and taken away his right to choose for himself while Ferreth seemed to be adamantly refusing to look at the situation from Bris’ point of view, painting him out as the unequivocal bad guy. At this time, it may be best to offer an outsider’s perspective.

“...You have every right to be angry with Bris for what he did.” He forced Ferreth to meet his eyes, cutting off whatever else he had to say. “I’ve been in your position before, having someone close to me do something they knew I wouldn’t approve of because they thought they knew what was best for me.” Memories of his father and the night he and Alek decided to run away floated up to the forefront of his mind. “However, unlike what happened with me, Bris only did this out of concern for you. He was willing to risk losing you if it meant you’d have the best possible future.”

Perhaps from the intensity of his speech, Ferreth appeared to have calmed down somewhat. “I just don’t get why he feels that way. It’s not like he’s going to be affected in some way if I don’t ‘reach my potential’ or some other shit he says to make me feel better. I know I don’t have any.”

He was utterly floored by that statement. It wasn’t just shock he felt upon hearing the sincerity in which he said it. There was also sadness at Ferreth’s apparent belief in the idea of him having no potential or even the lack thereof within himself. He wasn’t that much older than he was so someone must’ve instilled that backwards line of thinking into him when he was young enough to need the opposite. Who could be so cruel towards an impressionable child?

“Well, I disagree.” He took a step forward. “While I don’t condone Bris’ actions, he’s not lying when he says he sees potential in you. We both think you can be something, carve out a very promising future for yourself.”

Ferreth scoffed at that. “I highly doubt that. What do I have that others don’t?”

“Not just anyone has the strength, the patience, or the charisma you possess. You like to help people and they seem to really like you in return.” Eric huffed out a laugh. “That’s something I envy you for. I had to learn how to be good with people but you’re a natural at it. You think that’s not a benefit?”

“Let’s just say that--” his eyes narrowed as his lips curled into a tight smile-- “I’ve been told I’m not worth much in my life.”

“Well, whoever said that to you was wrong and, if they were here right now, I’d tell them they could go fuck themselves.”

Ferreth broke out into laughter, effectively lightening the mood. Eric may have been taught proper etiquette when he was a young child but that didn’t mean he had to hold his tongue in every situation. Who was going to reprimand him for slipping into vulgarities every once in a while? He managed to lift Ferreth’s spirits up some at the very least so that was good.

As Ferreth’s laughter died down, he cut in with, “Anyway, I’m not going to force you to make a decision now. I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, which means you have until then to tell me if you’re staying or coming with me.”

“Would it really be okay if I came to Aurora Zenith?” Ferreth asked with uncertainty. It reminded him of Ven when he brought up the same proposal to her back at the forest in Brinegarde. “If I left, that is.”

“Yeah, I mean--” he chuckled at the incredulity of the situation-- “this honestly isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s just my terrible luck at getting involved in something like this yet again, especially since it’s only been a few months after the last.”

“Right… Well, I need to go talk to Bris.” Ferreth walked past him in the general direction of town. “You didn’t deserve to be dragged into this.”

He grabbed his arm before he left, forcing him to stay for just a little longer. “When you see him, go easy on him. He just didn’t want to fight the man he considers to be his brother.”

There was a sigh. “Unfortunately, even brothers fight sometimes.” Those were the words he parted with.

He watched Ferreth’s figure shrink the further away he got till he was no longer in his line of sight. He figured he may as well stay in the tulip fields, since it was too early to go back to the inn and he needed someplace quiet. Taking Ferreth’s seat, he laid back and looked up at the azure expanse above. He saw several small, shadowy figures fly across the sky, although it was hard to tell whether they were birds or dragons. His childish past self hoped it was the latter.

God, did he ruin Bris and Ferreth’s friendship? While Ferreth deserved to know what Bris was planning, it didn’t mean he should be crucified over making an egregiously stupid mistake. There really was no way for someone to come out of this unscathed by the end, huh? He still had a lot to learn when it came to people and relationships so this was, in some regards, a learning experience.

It was then he remembered he had his bag on him. He brought it with him to Bris’ office and he hadn’t had a chance to take it off since he left this morning. He pulled out his sketchbook, flipped to a blank page, and began drawing. It was more of a doodle than a full-on sketch but it gave him something to do other than think, even if it was only for the sake of venting.

His idea of dragons came from the illustrations he’d see in the books he’d read as a child, which were large, scaly beasts with hungry eyes and sharp teeth that had the ability to fly and breathe fire. Whether fantastical dragons and Dradnachs were much the same or not remained to be seen. The two creatures he drew circling each other looked better than he thought they would, despite the wonky anatomy.

One of the dragons had bandages on its legs and tiny stones floating in its space while the other had a scarf tied around its neck and a pair of great, big wings on its back flapping to keep it aloft. They were meant to symbolize Ferreth and Bris reigning over their respective domains but he figured the sketch could also work as a gifted child’s doodle of their favorite story. Looking at the finished product gave him a bittersweet feeling in his heart.

He didn’t know what the answer would be. Obviously, he wanted to believe Bris and Ferreth would reconcile and put this whole thing behind them but reality often wasn’t so generous. He could only hope their bond was strong enough to withstand this hurdle, to not let it tear them apart.

It didn’t matter if Ferreth stayed or left Thornewind. What truly mattered was that land and sky would continue on as brothers.

#airi's writing #oc; Eric #oc; Brirsyrun #oc; Ferreth #Corona's Shadow

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ethanramseyyy · 4 years

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OPEN HEART: SECOND YEAR CHAPTER 12

I have already written this post but Tumblr had the audacity to delete it. So here we go again

The first exchange between Mc and Ethan in the hospital was adorable. Since Ethan opened up to us in the last chapter we have seen a WHOLE different side to Ethan and I love it. When the heart rate monitor started accelerating because Mc and Ethan were talking, I DIED. It just goes to show how powerful their love is. “It’s okay if you need more time”, this man is really out here trying to kill me for the 500th time.

Rafael stans were spoilt today. I know they didn’t get the chance to have a 30 diamond scene with him (at least I don’t think they did). Considering the fact only a few chapters ago he was meant to be abandoning everyone to move to Brazil or somewhere like that, I think they did well today. Raf’s grandma is one of the best characters introduced into Open Heart (behind our angel Bobby obviously). She is your typical grandparent with the array of food and drink and the embarrassed grand child XD. When she said that we saved her beautiful boy and then Mc replied that they saved eachother, I understood why so many people romance him because that was adorable. Mc and Rafael’s friendship has to be one of my favourites they are so sweet with each other. Unfortunately, I was an idiot and didn’t buy the diamond scene. The only reason I didn’t get it was because it was so early in the chapter and I didn’t know what other content we were going to get. I will probably replay it and buy the diamond scene but let me know what happened during the walk.

Mc getting ready for the memorial was so sad. I thought our landlord Farley sending flowers was so so sweet. I have got to say that I LOVED the diamond dress that was on offer. Obviously, I had to get it because I had to look good for our boys on their day. I have got to give all the credit to @playchoices because I think they did an unbelievable job with the memorial. They really gave Bobby and Danny a funeral fit for kings!

The first screenshot broke me. The caskets with the boys in and the flowers on top, I miss them already. To make it even more sad, I had ‘Hold On’ by Chord Street on in the background and if you have listened to that song you know how bad that combination is. Bryce telling the story about them was so heartwarming and one of the many reasons we all love Bryce whether you are romancing him or not. That boy is an angel. Our poor baby Elijah really struggled during the ceremony and all I wanted to do was give him a big hug. He deserves the world and we must protect him at ALL costs. Him saying he has been to ‘too many of these’ was so so sad, I feel like we deserve more of his backstory because I have a feeling it is a lot worse than we originally thought. I know that this sounds heartless but I do want to mention how amazing all the men looked in their suits. Especially Ethan, this man rocks anything and everything. Laying the orchids on their caskets, made me sob. I don’t even know why their memorials hurt me so bad.

Daniel Cardinal and Robert Gunderson. We will miss you. ❤️

Ok, I just want to say that I thought that Mc and Aurora discussing the hospitals finances during the reception was kinda rude and disrespectful. I know it was probably key in the development of the story but it would have been nicer to hear stories about the boys rather than Edenbrook and Mass Kenmore. But anyway, the conversation between Sienna and Mc was so cute but so heartbreaking. When she started saying that she always thought her and Danny would become something more, I broke down. This girl deserves happiness so much especially after her ex. And Danny was that happiness but unfortunately she will never be able to experience that relationship 😞.

Ethan looking into our literal soul was very sexy if I do say so myself. The way he can just look at Mc and know exactly what she is thinking just goes to show how powerful their relationship is.And then this man had the audacity to raise his hand in our face to silence us. I didn’t know if I wanted to slap him or marry him right there and then. Did anyone else have that issue? Just me? Ok.

One thing I loved about this episode is the choice between who you wanted to leave with and the fact it wasn’t a diamond scene. This is what we like to see. I chose Ethan because... well I don’t think I need to explain why. Just so you all know he was going to leave an hour before but didn’t because Mc was still there. if that isn’t true love, then what is.

Ethan is not ok people. When he started to explain that he was scared to leave Mc alone incase he wasn’t there to save her, my jaw dropped. He has never opened up THAT much before. I thought I was ready for it but then me tell you I was not. I know that countless times during this scene he wanted to say that he was in love with Mc but wasn’t ready. Honestly, I am ok with that. For now. I feel like we should wait a little longer (emphasis on the little) for a more sentimental moemnt. Like on our first date or even in the hospital where they first met. I have a feeling that he is just going to end up saying it without thinking about it, like a reflex and I wouldn’t mind that happening either.

Finally, we move onto the diamond scene. This was the best 30 diamond scene we have had with Ethan. It was unbelievable. “The idea that I’d never touch you again... it was almost more than I could bear”. I am not even going to comment on that quote because it explains itself. Just know that I did indeed scream. Like actually scream. We got a glimpse of angry Ethan which so happens to be my second favourite Ethan after cute Ethan. Him being angry because he didn’t want people thinking Mc slept her way onto the diagnostics team shows how much he respects her career. Get you a man that respects both you and your job. The freaking windows steamed up. The power can not be matched. So I did choose the option to straddle him but let me tell you I did not choose that lightly. I was so close to picking the option of going into the back seat. “Trust me, I have many more tricks up my sleeve”, bitch I am not READY for the other 30 diamond scenes we better be receiving. Obviously, I don’t need to go into TOO much detail because we all know what happened, if you actually played the scene. Just know it was a great experience.

To make the experience better ( if that is even possible ). I chose the option that led to Ethan begging. Yes, you heard that right. BEGGING. I feel so evil yet so good at the same time 😋. Again I would like to personally thank @playchoices for that 30 diamond scene. It was unforgettable. But let’s be real, we deserve it after what we have been through.

I don’t remember Farley being this sweet but that man is so cute. I hope that everything works out for him at hospital. But I am excited/nervous to see how the memories and PTSD of the attack impacts Mc going back to the hospital. One thing that makes me less nervous is knowing my man Ethan will be there to support me. I know he said that at work he is still our boss but like just imagine how cute the scenes will be between them now. Ugh, imagine them meeting up after a long shift and walking out of the hospital hand in hand. Can’t freaking wait.

This chapter again was so so well written, I hope Choices keep up with this quality because it’s been amazing. I’m praying that they don’t forget to mention Danny and Bobby though, especially after a few chapters. I hope they remember to give them mentions because they were big infuences on Edenbrook and they don’t deserve to be forgotten. I just want to add that I am sorry that this is late, like I said before I had already written this and had it ready to post but then Tumblr did a mad one and deleted it. I am sorry if it seems rushed or I have forgotten something but I tried XD. As usual let me know your opinions and feelings about the new chapter and thank you so much for all the recent love on my posts. I am unbelievably grateful! ❤️

If anyone would like to be tagged in these posts let me know!

#choices #open heart #playchoices #ethan ramsey #openheart #ethanramseyyy #ethanramsey #choicesoh #dr ethan ramsey #ethanramseyxmc

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reversemoon255 · 4 years

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Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution - Kizuna

I’ve been a fan of Digimon since I first watched it as a kid, but I’m also one of those weird fans where I’m more excited to see the series give us something new rather than treading old ground (I’m not very nostalgic in general), so I wasn’t actually that excited for Kizuna, especially after the terrible experience it was to sit through Tri. Still, the movie surprised me, and grabbed me a lot more than I though it would. I didn’t cry at the ending, but I did well up a bit. Still, this movie isn’t without its problems.

Rather than going over the goods and bads like I normally do, I’m actually going to go through this one chronologically, as I feel it’s the best way to tackle this film’s strengths and flaws. Sit back for a long one, folks.

Chapter 1 (Parrotmon and the First Adventure): We start out with the same intro music we got in the original Digimon Adventure movie. This first section is full of a lot of very purposeful callbacks, like Greymon VS Parrotmon and the recreated evolution sequences. This is the part of the movie where I think this works the best, grabbing people’s nostalgia right at the beginning, getting them to remember the good times with the Digimon before the drama starts. My only, very minor, nitpicky issue is that the Agumon to Greymon sequence is a bit choppier than the original, but it’s also not meant to play 30+ times over the course of two years, so it’s easily forgiven. Also, I’m gonna put PIN 1 in the aurora, because we’ll be coming back to that later.

The animation here is also fantastic (the few moments of off CG aside). It’s been a while since I’ve seen fight scenes this good, and this is probably the best they’ve ever been in Digimon. I also enjoy that Taichi and Yamato are immediately on good terms. So much of Tri was them arguing with each other, so seeing them as friends is nice.

Chapter 2 (The New Normal): Something I didn’t notice the first time, but did on a repeat watch was Sora’s Digivice with its timer ticking down in the opening credits. I’m not a fan of how little Sora was in this movie, especially considering her reinterpretation in the reboot hasn’t been that strong, but I do think the route they went with her was fitting for her character.

Seeing Taichi and Yamato in a rut while everyone else is pursuing their dreams is well done. I definitely feel like I’ve been there before in one form or another, and it’s easy to empathize with. Also, seeing the two of them drinking is so surreal. And them talking about how they have a hard time fitting their Digimon into their lives, only to almost immediately have the idea of losing on them thrust upon them hits very hard on the first watch.

Menoa’s voice... As a native English speaker, hearing people who are supposed to be American in anime only to spout obviously line-read Katakana is always a little vexing to me. I definitely weigh it a bit based on the budget of the show I’m watching, but this is a very big budget movie and they could have gotten a better trainer at the very least to go over the lines with her. Her character is well done, though. I thought she was certainly suspicious my first watch, but on a rewatch I caught more hints, such as her reaction after Izumi mentioned his database.

Chapter 3 (It’s in the Internet): This is where I started falling off a bit. Let me know if this sounds familiar, “Taichi, Izumi, Yamato, and Takeru must battle a Digimon inside the internet. Just as they seem to have the upper hand, it evolves and the children must rely on Omegamon to defeat it.” This particular part of the movie is recycled from Children’s War Game. Even Eosmon darting around the arena with a timer going, being difficult to hit and having to be forced to slow down is reminiscent of how Diablomon was defeated. This really took me out of the film, and it kind of gets worse, but we’ll get there.

Maybe this is me, but I can’t help but feel the whales during Omegamon’s evolution are a callback to Summer Wars >_> I do like the new version of his sword with the flared guard.

Chapter 4 (Some Old Yet Newer Friends): I don’t agree with Menoa’s explanation for why Digimon disappear, but my evidence as to why hasn’t appeared yet, so we’ll put PIN 2 in that. Menoa’s assistant on the other hand was a decent red herring. I wasn’t sure which of them it actually was until the full reveal.

I can’t properly express how excited I was to see Miyoko and Hawkmon after Tri. The 02 crew got so shafted that seeing them here and how involved they were in the plot had me legit excited. There’s actually a ton of 02 love in this movie in the background that I was very appreciative of. That brings me to another point, though, that this movie feels very responsive to Tri. The heavy inclusion of the 02 cast over many of the other original Adventure members, the number of cameos from the final episodes of 02, and a very certain plot point that we’ll stick PIN 3 in for now all point to this. Heck, it was even revealed to be in production near the end of Tri, which was supposed to be the series finalé, except people didn’t like Tri so they apparently didn’t want the series to go out on a sour note (though not a bitter-sweet one).

Chapter 5 (People Change): Can we talk about how Agumon finds Taichi’s stash? It’s a little too real, man. But this scene also brings up the point that the Digimon haven’t really changed since 1999, yet the children have significantly. The Digimon change their appearance and the humans change on the inside. It’s also a little weird how the Digimon aren’t that beat up about saying goodbye. I mean, they don’t want to, but they aren’t crying their eyes out. But we’ll talk about that more when we actually pull out PIN 2.

Also, seeing Sora at the end of this chapter, knowing what’s happening to her is really sad on the second watch.

As a little bonus, I was questioning the Digivice Smart Phones until Taichi turned his off and Izumi’s name popped up. Good show-don’t-tell. That scene also has some great lighting...

Chapter 6 (Better than Himekawa Maki): You definitely feel bad for Menoa. Her story is very (and probably purposefully) similar to that of Himekawa Maki’s from Tri, but in this case we feel more for her because she went through what our leads are going through right now. Her plan makes sense to her because of her tauma. And as we’re talking about the similarities to Tri, I’m going to pull PIN 3 and mention that Taichi and Yamato are going through the same thing that Meiko did. It’s strange that they’re recycling the Tri plot for this, but it works so much better here because our connections to these characters, that we’ve known for years, are so much stronger than those of the new ones introduced in Tri. And it’s 1/10th of the run time, too. It’s almost like Tri was terrible or something O_O

Chapter 7 (Touching Down like a Revenging Hurricane): So now we’re on to a Digimon trapping Chosen Children and reverting them back to children all for the sake of one Chosen Child who has aged up. Man, that sounds familiar. It’s almost as if this plot point was taken from another movie or something...

Look, I wouldn’t harp on it so much if every Adventure + 02 Digimon movie didn’t have plot elements recycled for this film. The beginning was Adventure, the first battle with Eosmon was War Game, Tri is sprinkled throughout, we’re currently on Touchdown, and everything from here up to the final is Revenge of Diablomon. Don’t get me wrong, this was probably on purpose, and they are well integrated, but it pulls me out of the movie super hard. As I’m writing this, I’m on the scene with the 100 Eosmon reveal, just like all the Kuramon. They also do the thing all the Kuramon do where they combine together and defeat Omegamon (by removing his arms, weirdly), only to have two Digimon achieve a new evolution to defeat it.

That being said though, it is, again, handled very well. The damage you see done to Omegamon in these scenes is heartbreaking, and you can certainly feel the weight of the situation.

I also want to pull PIN 1 here, because they bring up the aurora again. There’s never actually an explanation for it, is there? It just shows up one day. It helped Menoa make Eosmon, it drove Parrotmon and apparently other Digimon crazy, but where it came from and why it’s here is never actually explained. I feel like this is bait in case they’re ever at the point where they need another big nostalgia push again and a plot for another movie. But I also don’t want to see that. After Reboot wraps (even though I like it) I’d like to see a new cast, Digimon, and story please.

I also don’t believe a word of anything Menoa says in these scenes, but she does a very good job of pushing Taichi and Yamato’s buttons. I also want to point out, it’s Greymon that isn’t phased by all this and goes on the attack when they’re doubting themselves.

Chapter 8 (An Unreliable Narrator): Time to pull PIN 2.

This is the reason why I don’t believe Menoa. This scene. Menoa kept going on about children losing their infinite possibilities and being unable to supply their Digimon with power, but the Digimon we see going through this situation don’t reflect that. Evolution is a two-way street. We help the Digimon evolve, but in turn they help us evolve, and it is when we reach the pinnacle of our evolution, when the job of the Digimon is done that they disappear. Menoa sped through her evolution because she wanted to become an adult, and when she finally achieved the dream she had set for herself is when Morphomon disappeared, but she’s so traumatized by her disappearance that her views on the situation are negative. This has to be a bad thing, there can’t be a positive reason why the Digimon would disappear. But Agumon and Gabumon are happy. Happy that they could see the great people that Taichi and Yamato turned out to be.

Gotta say, the CG fight with Omegamon and Eosmon (Perfect) isn’t as great as the previous ones. Definitely gets better when we get to Eosmon (Ultimate). This is also a scene where they very easily show the stakes by having Taichi and Yamato getting injured, which we don’t see a lot of, not to mention Omegamon getting sliced up as I said previously.

Also, how many kids got stuck with Numemon as a partner?

Chapter 9 (We’re All Together): I hate that whistle. Every time I hear it in Adventure I start crying. And seeing Sora without Piyomon in these scenes is also heart wrenching on a repeat. I enjoy the others getting involved in the Eosmon fight, but I would have liked it if all the Chosen Children who were captured helped out (though I understand the nightmare that would be aging up all those 02 designs). Overall, just some good, back-to-back emotional moments.

Agumon Bond of Courage and Gabumon Bond of Friendship are decent designs. They definitely feel more newer Digimon than anything that would have appeared in the first season, but that’s ok. It took me a while to get used to Agumon’s new face (it’s kinda weird how human they get; makes me feel like wanted this to be a Bio-Merge). Though brief, their appearance is also beautifully animated.

Seeing Menoa lose Morphomon is also pretty emotional. Actually, this whole ending sequence (y’know, the part of the movie that’s the most itself rather than rehashing old material) is very good, and it’s constant heart-tugs one after another.

Chapter 10 (Goodbye for Now): As I said, there’s a lot of tug-at-your-heartstrings moments throughout the film (especially the ending), but this is the biggest one. This is the one that almost got me. I’m choked up a bit even writing this. It doesn’t help that they end it with a non-movie, realistic cry. But as Gennai said, as long as you have infinite possibilities...

This movie does feel like it embraces the epilogue from 02, and in that epilogue everyone has their Digimon again. And when’s the moment in your life when your life becomes chaotic and hectic and full of infinite possibilities again? The unifying thing everyone in the epilogue has? Kids.

I know that sounds weird, but it makes sense. I can totally imagine Taichi sitting on the couch, and his wife walks in and tells him she’s pregnant, and there’s this stunned silence for a moment, then Agumon pops out from under the cushions and says “How did that happen!?” I’m sure there are other ways it could happen, but that’s the most comedic and “Toei pushing having kids to help with the Japanese population crisis” way I can think of doing it.

I’ll also give special mention to the credits, where they go out of their way to show the 02 Crew with their Digimon, but the main cast without. But, again, we know they get them back. And hopefully they don’t make that movie anytime soon, because I’m sick of Adventure. I’d like new things, please!

Overall, this is a good movie, but it is, to me, heavily hampered by the fact that it is too nostalgic. The animation and writing is fantastic, but that writing is built on the back of elements from the previous movies. If you haven’t watched all those movies multiple times like I have, you’ll probably enjoy it a lot more than I did (and I enjoyed it a lot, still), but be aware. Next time we talk Digi-Shop will probably be about Reboot.

Unless I manage to get my hands on the rest of the Xros Wars toys. (Where are you, MailBirdramon!)

#Digimon #Digimon Adventure #Digimon Adventure tri #Digimon Adventure Last Evolution Kizuna #Last Evolution Kizuna #Last Evolution #Kizuna #Review #Movie

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meadowbankserenity · 4 years

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( kristine froseth , 21, cis woman , she/her ) SERENITY GILLENKERK, don’t think that you have gotten off easy because i haven’t told the school that REDACTED. sweetie , no one can hide from me - not even a/the MEMBER of DELTA SIGMA TAU. oh no, your secret is most certainly not safe with me. you know , i asked around about you & most people said that you reminded them of SPENCER REID with TIED TOGETHER WITH A SMILE BY TAYLOR SWIFT playing in the background , that’s very interesting - i wonder how accurate they are. ( Sarah, 24, cis woman, she/her )

Trigger warning for mentions of anxiety and death

Is originally from a small town a few hours away from Savannah, Georgia.

Actual peach w the cutest southern accent

Her childhood? Wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows. It was always too small of clothes, too cold of nights, and too hungry of mornings.

Her mom had her when she was only sixteen and her biological father was never really in the picture. He didn’t want to have anything to do with her or his daughter. So, her mom did everything she could to raise her by herself. Things were never easy for the two of them. It was never out of the ordinary for them to be constantly evicted and not staying in the same apartment complex or duplex for a few months at the most. There were times where they’d have to couch surf or stay in shelters or even sleep in their car in between trying to find a place to stay. There were many nights where she’d have to be watched by a neighbor or one of her mother’s co-workers while she worked the late shift at whatever shitty job she had. Regardless, she never thought her childhood was awful. She knew her mom did her best to provide for her.

Serenity has always been a gifted child. As early as first, second grade, her teacher realized that there was something special about her. The girl always getting A’s on everything, regardless of the subject. She could always read above her reading / grade level. School? Was just easy for her. Not many children were like this.

Her teachers would convince her mom to get little Rora tested for her IQ and she received a score of 175. Serenity Gillenkerk? A literal child genius.

Her world turned upside down when she was 12 years old. On the night of her birthday, her mom was killed by a drunk driver. Her grandmother became her official guardian and she moved in with her. (Due to her mother’s death, she isn’t the big fan of celebrating her birthday, it brings too many painful memories).

Ren has always been a shy and introverted individual. As fat as she can remember, she has found it difficult to connect to others and establishing lasting friendships with others. While she was in grade school, she could recall always getting bullied and picked on because of her appearance and what she wore (being poor meant you never could walk around with the latest trends….she always lacked that). Being seen as such an easy target truly wrecked havoc on her self esteem. Also, it didn’t help that she moved around so much, never staying too long at a particular neighborhood or school. She sort of just learned to be comfortable with her own company.

So, this is where her reading plays an important role in her life. Since she never had many friends, she turned to reading and literature. It was such an easy way to temporarily escape real life, being transported to a new reality. It was all so fascinating to her. Genre’s never really mattered, she was willing to try anything out. Now, she can finish a book in what seems like seconds. You can normally catch her reading a book in the mornings on her front porch, coffee and breakfast alongside her.

As she got older she would take advanced classes and pass them with flying colors. Ended up graduating at the top of her class, no shocker there.

She knew that she was going to go to college. She had gotten accepted into varying colleges all around. After much convincing from her grandmother, she’d end up going to Meadowbank University on a full ride scholarship.

Currently pursing a degree in education and english.

Proud bisexual !!

The CEO of wearing mismatched socks. You will never see her wearing matching one’s, she thinks it’s bad luck.

Adores dankly earrings with funky designs.

Her style is WEIRD just like her. Like mixing patterns and laying and honestly, just wearing whatever she wants? Has been mocked for dressing like a grandmother and toddler at the same time.

Loves the color yellow. Always carries around a yellow bookbag covered in enamel pins. Has a beat up pair of yellow high tops vans. Yellow makes Aurora happy.

She cuts her own hair.

The kind of girl who doesn’t really see her beauty?? Like she’s been told she needs to model and be on a runway and she’s like *what* ME ???

LOVES to bake. So so much. Also works part time at her grandmother’s bakery.

Also enjoys knitting. Yes....knitting.

Kind of can be labeled a hopeless romantic?? Has never been one to really date or go on dates. Due to her shy demeanor, it’s been hard for her. She’s trying to break out of her shell and put herself out there, but it’s easier said than done.

She isn’t a huge drinker due to being quite the light weight….never knows when to cut herself off.

Literally is so naive and tends to see the best in others too much and wears rose tinted glasses.

Deals with issues because of her anxiety. She went to therapy after her mom died but stopped going due to the cost of it. To calm her mind, she’ll color in adult coloring books. knit, and play with fidget cubs or toys.

LOVES children. She knows she wants them in the future but will she find someone to settle down with ??? Who knows. But, if you ever need a baby sitter, hit her up.

Overall…..she’s your very eccentric wallfower super smart book worm !

I will probably add more to this but for now, have this !!

#meadowbank.intro #anxiety tw #death tw

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blasphemings · 5 years

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until i see you again (part 2): midnight sun

cineri gloria sera est // glory paid to ashes comes too late.

originally there was not going to be a part 2. there is a part 2 now. timeline in which jotaro died and kakyoin survived/timeline in which both survived/brief mention of the canon timeline, 12k words, can read it on ao3 here

your lips were like a red and ruby chalice warmer than a summer night

Kakyoin stared vacantly at the wall. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Of course they would be similarities. They were relatives. They were family. He ought to have braced for this.

Water stains streaked the plaster, visible underneath what appeared to be a recently applied coat of vanilla-toned paint. He didn’t have the heart to be discontented. If the hotel needed to cut some corners in order to keep prices where they were, he had no reason to get hung up on appearances. Besides, it wasn’t as though he intended to stay in Morioh for longer than a few days.

Families had things in common. Families shared the color of their eyes, the shapes of their faces. Tempers, senses of humor. Voices. Smiles. Laughs.

Three weeks ago, when Kakyoin picked up the phone and heard Joseph’s strained voice on the other end of the line, he hadn’t given much thought to the fact that any son of Joseph’s would have been Jotaro’s relative too. He had been more concerned with the immediate problem of Josuke’s existence, and the raised voice of Joseph’s wife in the background. Kakyoin couldn’t really make himself blame her, after Joseph explained to him in sheepish euphemisms what had her so angry. He insisted that he hadn’t known, and now that he did…

Joseph tripped over his words. “I wouldn’t…if it weren’t—I would consider Holly, but given the—the…circumstances, I—”

“I’ll go,” Kakyoin said, cutting him off.

“I just thought you—what?”

He closed his eyes. “I’ll take care of it, Mr. Joestar.”

The circumstances being that they’d had no way of knowing whether Kakyoin was going to receive confusion, anger, or a punch to the face. Responses which, in his eyes, would have been justified enough for him not to hold any of it against the kid. He did understand why Joseph had come to him first, and he certainly understood why Joseph had come to him before Holly.

It could be worse, he thought. Josuke could have inherited their eyes. Joseph understood why Kakyoin couldn’t look him in the face. A teenage stranger wouldn’t. He was glad no one had had the nerve to say anything about time heals everything for a long while. He wasn’t certain he would be able to control himself if he had to hear it again.

Josuke had been suspicious, which was a good sign. Showed he had an edge Kakyoin sometimes felt his father lacked.

“Who are you?”

“I’m your—I’m a friend of the family.”

His what? What are you to him?

Whoever Josuke’s mother was, Kakyoin felt he owed her some gratitude. Josuke seemed to take after her far more than his father’s side of the family, enough such that he could meet the boy’s eyes and explain the situation to him as steadily as could be expected. He very nearly got out unscathed.

Then the nervous laughter, a sound almost like coughing. Struck him like a punch to the stomach and when he turned to look at Josuke he half expected to see someone taller and quieter, with greener eyes. For a split second, he almost thought he did. It was only after Josuke called out to him in sudden concern that he realized he had stopped breathing.

He waved the boy away, feeling hot and cold and a little bit nauseous. I’m fine, long flight, think I’d better be going back to the hotel. He hoped it didn’t show on his face.

I’m fine. What a load of shit.

Kakyoin fell back on the folded blankets, still untouched. Jotaro would have been Josuke’s nephew. He almost smiled at that. Jotaro would have thought it was the most absurd thing on earth, to have a sixteen-year-old uncle.

A sixteen-year-old uncle who shared the awkward, coughing laugh that almost sounded like crying if you weren’t paying close enough attention. The first time hearing it Kakyoin had thought that was what it was. He had thought Jotaro might finally have snapped. Not that he would really have faulted him for doing so.

You’re not fooling anyone with that, Kakyoin had told him, much later on. You might as well hold up a sign for everyone to see that says I don’t want to be here.

Jotaro shrugged, smiling slightly. Maybe I just want them to know.

Alone in the hotel room, Kakyoin pinched the bridge of his nose. Jotaro would have known what to say to Josuke. Or, if he didn’t, he had always known his way around having nothing to say at all.

Kakyoin tried. He had been trying. The absolute silence Jotaro left behind had never been his to fill.

the clouds were like an alabaster palace rising to a snowy height

The sky was always the wrong color in his dreams. It wasn’t as often that the ocean matched it, frequent as his dreaming of water had become. Kakyoin watched the place where violet sea met yellow sky, wondering if he could still call it a horizon. The air smelled of salt and lavender and some sort of spice that brushed at the back of his mind, as though he knew he should remember it, but couldn’t. On a beach below the cliffs, purple waves crashed into sand as white as the tall grass that surrounded him, throwing it up in impossible clouds.

“Looks like snow.”

Kakyoin hugged his knees closer to his chest, not looking up when the much larger man sat heavily at his side. “Or like bones,” he said.

“Even the dust?”

“Bone dust.”

“Kind of dark.”

Kakyoin rested his chin on his forearms. “Yeah. Well.”

Sometimes, in his dreams, Kakyoin enjoyed speaking to him as if he were really there, although ordinarily he didn’t have so much trouble meeting Jotaro’s eyes. He imagined the face he would see were he to turn his head and his stomach clenched like a fist had closed around it.

“I always could find you here,” Kakyoin murmured.

Jotaro paused. “Well, I love the ocean,” he said.

“Loved.”

He shook his head. “Still do.”

A flock of black manta rays wheeled across the beach and Kakyoin tilted his head to get a better look at them. “They’ve never done that before,” he muttered, half to himself.

“I don’t know,” Jotaro said. “They do it all the time for me.”

“The mantas?”

“Yeah.”

Kakyoin lifted his face slightly, considering. “Didn’t you—wasn’t it you who said that?”

“Said what?”

“That the…that manta rays look like they should be flying.”

Jotaro chuckled. “Probably. Yeah. I told you that when we were on the—”

“Boat to Singapore,” Kakyoin finished slowly, raising his eyes at last. “I remember now.”

He glanced at Jotaro, looking away rapidly as though had opened his eyes too quickly in a bright light. This time Jotaro wore a black sweater and white pants, appeared to be late twenties or early thirties. Seeing him older than he had been when Kakyoin knew him wasn’t uncommon, either, but something about the way the lines of his face fell set him on edge.

“You look different,” he said. “Than you usually do.”

Jotaro watched him curiously. “Usually?”

“When I think about what you…” Kakyoin half expected sunspots to burn into place when he forced himself to look. “What you would’ve…if you’d got older. What you’d be like, I never…I don’t imagine you with more laugh lines than—”

He gestured vaguely at Jotaro’s face.

“—than frown lines. I knew you better than that.”

Jotaro’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. He looked at Kakyoin’s hands, seeing only unfamiliar scars, and forced himself to stop holding his breath. Pointless, he thought distantly, to keep up appearances for a dream. “You’re speaking in the past tense.”

“Well, yes,” Kakyoin said. “That’s generally the way one addresses the dead.”

each star its own aurora borealis

suddenly you held me tight

The end of that life was too fast. Too quick and loud and bloody and so deplorably easy. He would have said it was over in an instant, but he lost Jotaro in the space between heartbeats, and to say it took an instant would have made it seem far too long.

Kakyoin poured his full concentration into shaping the shimmering barrier. If Dio moved, they would know. He knew his own capabilities well. The barrier was fragile but it never lied. Kakyoin just had to provoke him into using his Stand and it would answer. It always answered.

I’ll never lose to you again.

Jotaro stood on the same rooftop a few feet away, his eyes fixed on Dio.

What, exactly, is the cost of keeping that promise?

“Get ready,” he murmured. “Be ready for anything.”

Kakyoin raised his hand as though holding the strings of a marionette.

“I can do this.”

What are you willing to pay?

Jotaro smiled, though it couldn’t warm away the angry worry in his eyes.

“I know you can,” he said.

Who will pay it for you?

It had been a long time since he had tried to produce such a wide blast radius, but the disgust and rage he felt building in his chest every time he looked at Dio’s sneering face gave him more than enough to draw from. He felt dread and he felt certainty. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.

Kakyoin sucked in a breath meant for a scream and a wave of emeralds tore free from Hierophant before he even realized he had decided it was time. Finally, Dio laughed and called for the World—

I could see the midnight sun

—and before Kakyoin could let that breath go, it was forced out of him as Jotaro’s back slammed into his chest. The two of them went flying across the rooftop, slowed only by Hierophant’s tentacles frantically snatching at the base of a nearby water tower. Kakyoin grunted as the farthest of them started to rip under the strain, screwing his eyes up to brace for the impact, but something half-solid caught him in time to break the fall.

He looked down at the violet arms wrapped around himself and Jotaro in time to recognize them, but Star Platinum flickered out of sight as quickly as it had appeared. Kakyoin scrambled to his feet, whirling to look for Dio, but he was nowhere to be seen. They didn’t have time, Jotaro was taking too long to get up—what the hell is wrong with you—Kakyoin reached down to pull him to his feet, as he’d done God knew how many times over the past month.

“What the fuck ha—”

Jotaro stared at his hand blankly, making no move to reach for it.

“—ppened…”

He had managed to push himself into a sitting position against the water tower’s legs, but given the state of his body, it didn’t appear that he would be doing much more than that. All things considered, it took Kakyoin a remarkably long time to notice the blood. He looked at the wound without seeing it the way you might look at an approaching mirage, waiting for the lie to fade, because it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true, less that a minute ago he had been standing there completely intact, he had been smiling—

“No.”

He dropped to his knees at Jotaro’s side, ignoring the blood soaking into his pants. Every detail thrown into harsh relief by the rooftop floodlights.

“Oh, no, no, no, no.”

The impact that threw them back—but Jotaro had been at least a meter away. He hadn’t been between Kakyoin and Dio. He shouldn’t have been between Kakyoin and Dio. There had been no time for him to get there.

“How did you get—how did you—you were, you weren’t—what did he do?”

Jotaro’s hand twitched and Kakyoin reached for it, clutching it in both of his own. His heart dropped when he felt the icy skin. Jotaro always ran hot, complained that Kakyoin was the cold one. Everything was backwards. Everything was wrong.

“How did you move—how did either of you…how did you…you got in front of me. Did you do that? Did you…”

Kakyoin stared at him in horror, seized by the paralyzing certainty that he had made a mistake, and that Jotaro had paid for it.

“He was aiming for me,” he croaked. “He—you…”

Jotaro met his eyes with what appeared to be a great effort. He shook his head very, very slightly.

“Jotaro, you fucking—” Kakyoin punched the ground weakly, trying not to scream. “What the hell is wrong with—what were you thinking?”

He screwed his eyes shut, trying to force a clear thought through the mess of static. Names floated to the surface. Joseph. Polnareff. Where…? He needed to find them. He needed to get help for…

Jotaro. Jotaro. Warm wind pushed at their hair, gentle and horribly out of place. Kakyoin stared down at his knuckles. Blood began to bead along the edges of the scrapes left behind by the stone.

“I’ll help you.”

Jotaro shook his head again, more insistently this time. His nails dug into Kakyoin’s hand, eyes wide and desperate.

“I know, I—it’s okay. It’s okay. It’ll be—” Kakyoin looked around wildly. Where was Dio? Where was he? “Just—just hold on. Please. Please.”

The hoarse sound forced free from his chest could barely pass for a voice, much less for Jotaro’s. Kakyoin looked down at him as something cold and heavy settled around his heart. He felt as though he might vomit.

“You’re okay,” he said, cursing the break in his own voice. “You’ll be all right, you—”

Jotaro ripped his hand out of Kakyoin’s and clutched the front of his uniform. He yanked him down to eye level with surprising strength. Kakyoin stared first at his fists, then at his face, confronted by rage that grew from someplace deeper than he had ever known to reach. For a moment he wondered if Jotaro might hit him.

“Go,” he rasped.

The next thing Kakyoin knew Star had thrown him from the roof and he was once again in freefall, body dropping too quickly for his heart to keep up with. As he threw Hierophant out to catch him, the air just above seemed to be disrupted, as though space itself faltered.

Hierophant hurled emeralds blindly in the direction of the harsh laughter that rang out above while its user stumbled out of the dirty alleyway in which he had landed, coughing up only dust at first, then everything else. Kakyoin wiped his mouth with shaky hands that quickly turned to clenched fists as his eyes rested on a yellow-framed figure backlit by a wash of white light. Jotaro’s message was clear: stay away from him.

Kakyoin gritted his teeth. Don’t ask me for that.

Ask me for anything, ask me for the world, but don’t you dare ask me to leave you alone.

I can’t explain the silver rain that found me or was that a moonlight veil?

“You shouldn’t have come with me.”

His voice came out muffled. He didn’t remember hiding his face in his hands, but he must have done it at some point.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Kakyoin repeated as though he were reciting from a script. “You wouldn’t have—”

“I didn’t.”

He looked at Jotaro blankly. “What?”

“I didn’t go with you,” Jotaro said. “I should have. I didn’t.”

The laugh lines. He wasn’t old enough to have real wrinkles yet and he wouldn’t for quite some time, if he was lucky. The thought of Jotaro living long enough for a record of his smile to show on his face hit Kakyoin hard. He had a difficult time imagining him smiling enough to create those lines in the first place. He had only known Jotaro serious, sometimes melancholy, sometimes afraid, but during those fifty days, he had never really been happy. Kakyoin couldn’t blame him.

He remembered thinking that he would like to see what Jotaro was like outside of all of that.

“What do you…” Kakyoin narrowed his eyes. “You did go with me.”

“No.” Jotaro shook his head. “I let the old man go with you.”

He watched Kakyoin closely. Jotaro hadn’t imagined he would ever need to look for a stranger behind such a familiar face, but there was distance to the tighter angles, the way Kakyoin’s eyebrows pulled together in a permanent frown not unlike his own. Kakyoin usually met his eyes so intently that Jotaro often had to look away before the feeling in his chest reached critical mass. This man stared straight ahead with a dazed look, as though he expected to turn around and find he had been speaking to thin air after all.

Jotaro dug his heels into the dirt, which somehow had stayed the right color. “You got…because I wasn’t there. Hurt. You got hurt.” He took a deep breath. “Worst mistake of my life, I—I should never have let you go up there alone. You almost…God, you almost died on me.”

This time, Kakyoin looked down. He had no right to be so familiar with the product of a future that he alone had been responsible for the truncation of. It may as well be empty space he was talking to, for all the good it would do him in the end.

What he saw was a convincing phantom, but a phantom all the same.

He smiled to himself and glanced up. “Almost?”

“Hmm?”

“You said almost died on you.”

“Yeah…I did.”

The should-be-familiar smell of spice grew stronger with the wind. Kakyoin squinted at Jotaro. Was that him? Jotaro hated cologne. That couldn’t be right.

“We got lucky,” Jotaro said calmly, though his hands, Kakyoin saw, had curled into fists at his side. “We got lucky. Seems like…maybe you didn’t.”

Kakyoin laughed, low and exhausted.

“I’ve never had a dream like you before,” he muttered. “I really haven’t, I…you could almost pass for him if I squint, you know?”

He had never liked phrases like eyes burning a hole into the back of your head. He found himself feeling they were too cliché to mean anything, no matter how pretty they sounded. Now, though, with the weight of Jotaro’s eyes on him, Kakyoin felt more sympathetic.

“I could say the same thing to you,” Jotaro told him.

His voice was deeper, too. More worn. Warmer.

Something ripped free in his chest when he reached for Jotaro’s hand. He told himself he was trying to wake up. He told himself he would be able to tell as soon as he touched it, the cruelest possible ghost, that he would wake up alone but at least the isolation he had come to find comforting was something more than an elegant lie.

Hesitantly Kakyoin rested his fingertips on the back of Jotaro’s hand. His strangled gasp made the other man flinch, but Kakyoin didn’t notice, Kakyoin didn’t see, Kakyoin couldn’t feel anything but the heat of the hand underneath his own, recoiling from the memory of how cold that skin had been the last time he touched it.

“Give me a break, Noriaki,” Jotaro said, half-smiling as he wrapped both his hands around Kakyoin’s in what appeared to be an attempt to warm it. “Still got hands like ice.”

Kakyoin didn’t answer, wouldn’t look at him. He had clamped his free hand over his mouth as though he were as afraid of retching as he was of speaking. His other hand tightened around Jotaro’s like a vise, testing to see if the feeling would leave as soon as it had come, half hoping it would. Something about him had more weight than a dream should, and it drew the grief up out of Kakyoin’s heart like it was coaxing out a toxin.

The dirt didn’t quite catch his tears. They disappeared, as things often do in dreams, halfway to the ground. But Jotaro still watched Kakyoin screw his eyes shut against them, watched them well up defiantly despite this, clinging to his eyelashes like tiny jewels. In the right light, he thought, they might look like emeralds.

Jotaro felt heavy-tongued, unsure as ever of the right thing to say to when he found himself staring down someone else’s heartbreak. Despite appearances, his chronic loss for words almost never came from an inability to understand; often, he was struck silent because he understood far too well.

He could say anything and everything and it would never be enough. It felt hollow to try. Useless. Still, the look on Kakyoin’s face hit him like a backhand. He opened his mouth, hoping the blanks would fill in if he just tried to say something. Just to get that look out of his eyes.

Jotaro squeezed his hand. “It’s…okay,” he said lamely.

Kakyoin opened his eyes, wiping at them with his sleeve. Through the remaining tears, he threw his head back and laughed.

“It’s not.” He smiled angrily, still staring straight ahead at the water. “It’s not. It’s—it’s not.”

“Well…” Jotaro shifted uncomfortably. “Want me to tell you something else?”

Kakyoin laughed again, tired rather than frustrated. “God, you—you’re still so bad at this.”

He shrugged. “I know I can’t say the right thing. I don’t see the point of saying the wrong thing on purpose.”

Kakyoin considered him. “You saying I’m still…you’ve still got me around.”

“Yeah. You could say that.”

“And I never got you better at this shit.”

Jotaro chuckled reluctantly. “You…gave up on it. Sometimes I think it’s your fault.”

“My fault,” Kakyoin repeated

“Could blame it on living with you.”

“Living with—?”

“Never really have to explain myself since you pretty much know what I mean the first time.”

Kakyoin stiffened, stricken. He looked darkly down at his hands.

“If only that were true,” he murmured.

the music of the universe around me or was that a nightingale?

Kakyoin remembered reading, once, that pollution made for more colorful sunsets. He wondered if the same thing might be true for the sunrise; Cairo had a beautiful skyline, punctuated by high-rise buildings and minarets framed by the reflected city lights. The dawn must be stunning.

Still, the light pollution bothered him, even as the pale orange haze that hung between the city and the sky made it easier to watch the movements silhouetted against it. He could barely see a single star, let alone constellations. Could never orient himself under a sky like that.

He looked down. It occurred to him that he should have started using Hierophant’s tentacles for traversal like this a long time ago. Easy to keep out of range, easy to launch himself between lampposts and rooftops, easy to get a good targeting angle, which he took advantage of at every available opportunity, flinging barrage after barrage of gleaming green projectiles at the flickering figure beneath him.

Of course, none of those advantages mattered, given that Dio just wouldn’t fucking move.

Kakyoin hardly cared about the man himself. He could have disappeared into thin air and it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. The only thing that existed to him was the growing pool of blood around the crumpled figure at the base of the water tower, the figure that Dio stayed just within range of, watching Kakyoin’s helpless thrashing with delight. He kept too much distance to do any significant damage, couldn’t get to Jotaro without going within range of…something.

The armored mass of a stand appeared occasionally to bat emeralds away like a bored cat, watching him with the same contempt he saw in the eyes of its human counterpart, but he couldn’t glean anything about the ability that had allowed him to attack Jotaro completely unseen. Paralysis? Memory manipulation? Was it all in his head? Was he the one bleeding out?

Wishful thinking. Unrealistic. Focus.

He tore his eyes away from Jotaro to scan dark streets for silver hair, found his frustration becoming increasingly violent when he came up empty yet again. His hand curled into a fist when he thought of Polnareff. If he could have stopped being a selfish bastard for one night—for one night…

“I almost feel,” Dio drawled, “as though I ought to thank you, Kakyoin.”

He folded his arms and leaned back against the rusted steel bars, studying his manicured nails with detached concentration.

“For making it so easy,” he added, flashing Kakyoin a smile so perfectly engineered to charm that it turned his stomach.

“Shut the fuck up,” Kakyoin said hoarsely, voice raw from screaming. “Shut your ugly fucking mouth.”

“Oh, come on now.” Dio held one hand out, an invitation. “Is that any way to speak to your friend?”

He shuddered so hard his teeth chattered. If he hadn’t been so damn lonely that night, if he had walked away instead of scrambling for the first open hand he set eyes on, then Jotaro wouldn’t be lying down there with a hole in his stomach. Risking himself over and over again to save Kakyoin’s life without a reason, without even knowing why.

Jotaro.

Pathetic, to crave being seen so badly. To want a friend so badly, like a frightened child. Seventeen years of practicing being alone made obsolete by a single word. He should never have been tricked into thinking it was an option.

You should have killed me.

You should have let it kill me.

The streetlights glowed deep yellow, creating misty halos where the fog curled around them. Kakyoin wished it were harsher, brighter. Yellow felt too much like the hazy light of a dream. He tried and failed to breathe, wiped sweaty hands on his already filthy coat.

“Poor Jotaro.”

Dio smirked.

“He’s in bad shape, you know,” he remarked, voice syrupy with manufactured concern. “And he thought you were his friend, surely?”

“You don’t know about us,” spat Kakyoin, bracing himself. “You don’t know ANYTHING!”

Dio slapped the lashing tentacles away as though they were a swarm of bugs barely noticeable enough to be annoyed by. Kakyoin stabbed through a shoulder, felt the flesh tear, only to have the tip of the puncturing appendage snapped off like a twig an instant later. The searing pain of Hierophant’s damaged limb was punctuated by the thundering of blood in his ears and Dio’s howling laughter; by the time his eyes refocused, the injured shoulder was already whole again.

“Is that all?”

His smile grew wider.

“So glad Jonathan isn’t here to see how pathetic it all turned out, you know.” Dio nudged at Jotaro’s leg with the pointed toe of his boot.

Jotaro would tell him not to be stupid. Jotaro would tell him not to fall for it.

“Don’t touch him,” Kakyoin tried to say, but his dry throat caught the words. Nothing came out. All he could see was a white hand, sharp nails, a mocking smile.

“Do you think he’s realized you aren’t coming?”

To see red, to really see red, you must first successfully be baited. Like a bull in the ring, drawn towards the matador as easily as waving a flag.

Dio’s hand rested on Jotaro’s head, stroking his hair in a sick parody of comfort. He knew he would see it every time he closed his eyes, afterimage etched there as though he had stared too long at the sun. It was the only thing he had ever seen. It was the only thing he ever would see.

You let that happen. You let this happen.

Bullfights are not designed with the survival of the bull in mind. The phrase itself, seeing red, can only ever be the last burst of rage that sends him hurtling towards an end already written, with nothing left but the need to make it hurt.

“I said,” he snarled, “don’t touch him.”

You’ll die.

The bull is dead the moment he steps into the ring.

So what?

Nothing existed but the need to reach Dio and Jotaro, boiling from the top of his head to the pit of his stomach. He charged towards the gap. A heartbeat and he would finally be within striking distance. Kakyoin had always been fast. He only needed to be fast one last time.

He would, however, never have the advantage as far as strength was concerned, and certainly not when it came to Star Platinum.

Kakyoin stopped just short of slamming into its chest. Jotaro’s stand balanced carefully on the gutter, blocking both his view of Dio and his way forward. He groaned in frustration, struggling to get loose, but Star held tight to his shoulders, staring at him intently. He could see the ragged patch around the middle where its body had begun to dissolve into shimmering dust.

“Stop,” he pleaded. “Please. Please. Let me.”

Star shook its head slowly. For the first time, he saw no aggression in its eyes, no anger, only heavy, bottomless grief. How different from the first time, Kakyoin thought, remembering the vicious smile and white-hot self-righteousness. He would have done anything to get that violence back. He would let the starlight kill him, if he needed to.

“You don’t—don’t do this. You don’t have to. I just—let me go, Star. Star?”

He had never addressed it directly before. It showed no sign of recognition upon hearing its own name. If it heard at all.

“Jotaro.” Kakyoin closed his eyes. “Let me go.”

Across the gap, by the tower, Jotaro’s eyes focused on him. He shook his head, jaw set. Kakyoin felt nauseous all over again. He was right there. He was right there.

In the distance, a siren sounded. An emergency, somewhere. Someone else’s disaster.

Star started to pry one of his clenched hands open and Kakyoin let him, watching silently as he carefully placed something small and misshapen into his palm. With a jolt he noticed that its hands shook.

He looked down at the broken watch, cold enough to burn his skin. Jotaro’s watch, crushed beyond repair. He narrowed his eyes, taking in the shattered glass, the still hands. He tried not to take in the blood.

“A keepsake?” Dio laughed. “How touching.”

But Kakyoin could only stare. The watch hadn’t been broken during the attack. He must have done it himself. Jotaro never said anything unless he had no other choice. He only ever said exactly what he meant.

“Now—”

When he heard the thick crunch of a breaking bone, a wild moment passed during which he thought Dio must have tired of waiting and finished Jotaro off himself. But Star hadn’t disappeared, and Dio paused in what first appeared to be surprise, his mouth still open. He opened it wider and a flash of silver caught the floodlights. Kakyoin’s heart leaped.

Polnareff’s eyes rested on Jotaro, his face pale. Chariot’s sword had pierced the base of Dio’s neck and impaled him straight through the back of his mouth. He stood just on the other side of the tower, having thrown his detached blade in a maneuver Kakyoin had only seen him use successfully once.

With a wet growl of annoyance Dio wrenched it free, shaking his head as if to clear it as he spat a stream of blood down into the alley below.

“You again,” he grunted, snapping the sword in half.

“Polnareff—”

He turned towards Kakyoin’s voice.

“—don’t let him get near you…!”

Polnareff looked from Jotaro to Kakyoin and back again. He took one step back, then another, then began to run. Dio watched him with a sneer for a moment before he threw his head back, snorted, and followed.

Kakyoin lunged towards the gap once again only to find that Star had not loosened its hold in the slightest. He’s outside his range, he thought dazedly, aching to the bone with terror. He’s too far, he shouldn’t be pushing himself, he needs to…

“Why?” He looked up at the stand, speaking through tears at last. “Why did you do this?”

Star Platinum placed its hands on either side of Kakyoin’s face. The stand’s touch was like a heavy shadow, a solid mist. It pressed its forehead against his; even now, it was warm.

He had never really touched it like this. He had been struck by it, shielded by it, thrown by it, but never held. Now, confronted by something so much gentler than anything he had come to know, the realization punched ragged through his chest like a matching wound, and Kakyoin began to shake. He didn’t want to understand, didn’t want to finally see what it was he had failed to notice, now, at the last breath, with no way to tell him I know, I know, me too.

To find him here, with no choice but to lose him.

Kakyoin stood hesitant, as he had always been, to hold any part of Jotaro close to him, but when Star finally stumbled, he was there to catch it. Holding it was easy enough to break his heart. Its breath hitched and he thought if he could pin this moment down, make it stay, the loss would never reach its conclusion. The light would never change hands.

Don’t go.

What was left of Star clung to him and Kakyoin clutched it tighter, trying desperately to help it hold its body together. His heart flickered like a hummingbird. He wondered if Jotaro could feel it. He bit back what might have become a scream, or a crazed sob.

Cold, empty dust flew through his fingers, and Star Platinum went hollow in his arms.

I’m sorry.

The streets ran bright with people who knew nothing about the teenage boy who had just lost his life beside a water tower. They knew nothing about the star on his shoulder, the way he ripped the backs off his hats for reasons no one had ever really understood, his set of cigarette tricks that dazzled bored children. They knew nothing about his friend on the rooftop opposite, his growing nausea and horror as he realized there was no waking up, why he looked at the sky as though he had just watched the extinguishing of the sun.

He opened his eyes. The night hung motionless around him, tepid and vacant. A warm breeze ruffled his matted hair and the bloody hem of his coat. And Kakyoin was alone, standing with nothing but fragments of light in his hands, like the remnants of a shattered star.

and then your arms miraculously found me suddenly the sky turned pale I could see the midnight sun

“So you got stuck with me.”

“Yeah.” Jotaro rubbed a piece of bone-white grass between his fingers, watching it crumble into dust. He wondered briefly whether this was his dream or Kakyoin’s. “Well, we both made it, I—it wasn’t…wasn’t always so simple.”

Kakyoin nodded thoughtfully. The silent plane ride back to Japan had stayed with him for a long time, and even now he often found there was nothing more to say, no reason to meet their eyes. “I can’t imagine it would be.”

“Can’t imagine any of it without you now, though.”

He caught himself holding his breath. “We…live together?”

“With Jolyne,” Jotaro corrected him.

“Jolene?”

“My daughter.”

“Your daughter,” Kakyoin echoed. He leaned back, unsure how to judge the nature of the feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. Why he felt like giggling, he barely knew.

Jotaro looked at him with a strange expression. “What’s funny?”

He waved a hand in front of his face. “Kujo Jolene. Did you—was it on purpose?”

“Was what on purpose?”

“Another Jojo.”

Jotaro paused. Reluctantly he smiled. “It…I always liked the song.”

Kakyoin snorted. “Oh, you’re so full of shit.”

“It wasn’t not on purpose—hey!”

He laughed, easily catching his balance. Kakyoin grinned like a teenager, looking more than ready to shove him again.

His smile faded slightly. How easy it was to remember why he had felt the way he did. How easy to feel that way again. Jotaro was almost sheepish when he smiled, as though every time he remembered he was happy he was realizing it for the first time. As though he had allowed himself to be talked into it but still wasn’t certain he had the right to be…it almost seemed true, that he might have turned out like this. Given the right reasons.

Kakyoin wondered whether he might be one of them and slammed the thought shut as soon as it formed. The pit in his stomach grew so deep he felt in danger of falling in.

Meanwhile, Jotaro watched the ocean. It must be his, Kakyoin thought. He was always talking about how things were the wrong color in his dreams. The stars, though, looked familiar; constellations that were either false or more true than anything else, depending on whether or not he chose to believe his dreams ceased to exist when he opened his eyes.

“You still love it.”

He glanced at Kakyoin, feeling eyes on him. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I ended up…well, I don’t have it yet. I’m working on the doctorate now.”

“Doctorate?”

“I—” Jotaro laughed awkwardly. “It feels…I mean, telling you about it like you don’t…” He shook his head. “Sorry. I meant—marine biologist. That’s what I do.”

Kakyoin exhaled long through his teeth. “I see.”

Like everything else about him, it felt true. It felt like being reminded of something he wished he had been able to know.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“What happened to you?”

He flinched and Jotaro shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry, if you—”

“It’s all right.” Kakyoin pressed his lips together. “I…travel a lot. For the Foundation, you know.”

“You work for them?”

“Yeah.”

Should have guessed. The shadows under his eyes did not belong to a man who had moved on. Still Jotaro felt the hollow in his chest fill with a strange sense of loss, one that was both impossible to claim and intimately his own.

“And I…”

Kakyoin coughed quietly, looking slightly embarrassed, of all things.

“I’m registered as a substitute teacher,” he said quickly. “In some districts. Art classes.”

“I remember that.”

He looked up, frowning. “You—?”

“Sorry, I guess that’s not really the…” Jotaro scratched the back of his head. “My you. Does that too.”

Kakyoin dropped flat into the grass with a soft thud. “Do I,” he said, muffled by the arms he had thrown over his face.

“Yeah.” Jotaro leaned back on his elbows. “Your art’s—you’re good at it.”

“It was…” He sighed. “It was what I…it was the only thing that made sense to me.”

“And you’re…you’ve been alone.”

Kakyoin cracked one eye suspiciously, moving an arm to look at him. “Sorry?”

“You’ve been alone all this time,” Jotaro said. “Haven’t you?”

He fell silent for so long Jotaro wondered if he would turn to see Kakyoin had vanished altogether. When he did feel the body beside him shift, Kakyoin had pushed himself into a cross-legged position, no longer attempting to cover his face.

“I couldn’t forget you,” he said flatly. “I couldn’t forget what happened to you because of me.”

“Noriaki.”

He screwed his eyes shut. “Don’t.”

“I make my own decisions. Whatever I did—”

“If you try to tell me it wasn’t my fault.” Kakyoin laughed harshly. “I know you mean well, I know you do, but you’ll be lying to my face, Jotaro.”

He wanted to look away. He couldn’t keep meeting the eyes of the dead, full of life as they seemed to be.

“It wasn’t,” Jotaro said firmly.

“Really? Okay.” Kakyoin smiled, wide and almost bright enough to be convincing. “Tell me where I got hurt, then.”

“You—what?”

“You said I got hurt, right? When I was up there without you, in Cairo? You said that’s what happened. Where did I get hurt? How did it happen?”

A muscle twitched above Jotaro’s locked jaw. He stared straight ahead, silent. Whether unwilling to say or unwilling to remember, it would never be clear.

“On the rooftops,” Kakyoin continued cheerfully. “I was—I fucked up. The barriers, I was wrong, I was all wrong about it. That’s where it happened. Sound familiar?”

Jotaro flinched when Kakyoin reached to press a hand against his sweater, marking a fist-sized area directly underneath his lungs.

“Straight through,” Kakyoin said. “Right here. That’s the hit you took for me. Understand?”

Jotaro shook his head vehemently despite having gone noticeably pale. “You would’ve—you would’ve done the same damn thing for me. You almost did.”

Kakyoin looked down at it, the place where Dio had struck him. To see Jotaro whole again, to imagine a world where he might have had the chance to keep him that way…

“I would have done anything to keep you alive,” he said.

He folded his trembling hands into fists, watching the knuckles go white rather than look back at Jotaro’s face.

“And if you had the chance,” Jotaro said calmly, “if it had been you. You’d agree that it was my fault, then.”

“You messing with me?” Kakyoin sat up straight, glaring at him. “Of course it wouldn’t be your f—”

Jotaro raised his eyebrows.

“…Ah.”

He suppressed a smile. “Got you.”

Kakyoin huffed in disbelief. “Still a jackass, are you?”

“Well, I do have you to practice on.”

It’s not the same. He wanted to shake Jotaro by the shoulders and scream into his big smug face that it’ s not the same, it could never be the same, the world needed you.

Salt air ruffled their hair and Kakyoin blew his bangs away from his mouth, irritated. It was all very accurate, the sea breeze, down to the way it fell heavy on his tongue and left his hair stiff. He half expected he would still smell like seaweed when he woke up. Must be his. Kakyoin dreamed of the ocean, but Jotaro seemed to be on a first-name basis with it.

“I do want to know one thing.”

Kakyoin glanced at him. Jotaro frowned at the patch of grass he had methodically uprooted, all traces of a smile vanished.

“Dio,” he said darkly. “My mom. Is she…?”

“Mrs. Kujo is fine.” Kakyoin paused. “Well, she’s…alive.”

Jotaro’s eyes remained unreadable. “Is she okay?”

“Physically she’s all right.” Ten years and the memory was still as fresh as it had been the day after they visited Holly at that sprawling house. “I was there when Joseph…when he told her.”

“Told her—oh.” He looked down at his hands. “Yeah.”

“Thought she’d snap, and she would’ve—I would have understood, if she had. But she just…she just looked at us. Looked at me, and she said she knew as soon as she woke up that he—you…that you weren’t…coming home.”

“Was it you?”

Kakyoin blinked. “Was what me?”

“Dio.” Jotaro stared into Kakyoin’s eyes, his own feverish and bright. “I’m asking if it was you.”

He had seen that look in his own eyes, in every mirror, every storefront window, every photograph taken since that night in Cairo. Slowly, without looking away, Kakyoin nodded.

“It was me,” he said.

Jotaro felt no surprise. It was right there on Kakyoin’s face, in the tired eyes, the shaking hands and clenched jaw. Jotaro wasn’t the only ghost haunting him. The second one, grinning sharp and golden, was a ghost they shared.

“How?”

Kakyoin looked at him steadily this time. “You mean how did I kill him.”

Jotaro nodded. “Your stand—”

I ripped him into pieces.

“I bashed his head in.”

I drowned him in the sun.

Absently he traced a tiny star in the dirt.

“You helped.”

was there such a night it’s a thrill I still don’t quite believe

“I should have started killing your friends in front of you earlier!”

Kakyoin gasped for air, clinging to the side of a four-story building with Hierophant’s tentacles. Briefly he thought to himself that if he ever reached a point in his life where breath came easy he would never again take the ability to catch it for granted. He stiffened as the silhouette popped into view and pulled himself away, using his stand’s limbs like some nightmarish, bloodstained octopus.

He caught sight of Dio, now across the street, and screamed his name. With no time and no extra energy to conjure emeralds, he had resorted to ripping up chunks of cement and flinging them with Hierophant’s arms instead. The undersides were scraped raw, and each time new abrasions appeared on Kakyoin’s palms, his bloody knuckles, the insides of his forearms.

“Look at you,” Dio crooned. “Can’t you feel it? You’re alive!”

Dio saw it coming, because he always saw it coming, and an instant later the cement pieces struck empty pavement and Dio was once again too close to him. He flew back again, dodging one of his own projectiles that the World had launched back at him.

He had learned its capabilities in that respect the hard way. A tentacle wrapped around his midsection as a makeshift brace, although he suspected broken ribs usually required different treatment. Once Dio had worked out Kakyoin’s tactics he had stopped with that, though, and started using his ability to warp closer and closer to him every time. Kakyoin knew the ranged nature of Hierophant Green was the only thing keeping him from joining Jotaro.

Jotaro.

He knew, with the same certainty, that he was no match for this man. Dio’s equal died alone on that rooftop for all the wrong reasons, the light changed hands for all the wrong reasons, and Kakyoin could not win. Polnareff and Joseph, wherever they were, could not win, though a pang shot through him when he thought of them.

Dio rushed him as soon as he made a move towards Jotaro’s body. He had protected Kakyoin to the best of his ability by holding him away until the end. There had been no sign of his grandfather or of Polnareff. Kakyoin was well aware what that might mean, though he did expect that Dio would have used their deaths to mock him by now, were that the case. His only hope laid in the fact that he had not.

Dio took a different angle.

“It really is a shame,” he said cheerfully. “Despair looks wonderful on you.”

Kakyoin wiped at the blood on his face. “Shut up.”

“If only you had more friends to kill.” Dio tilted his head like a playful cat. “But you don’t, do you? Not like Jotaro.”

“Don’t,” he snarled, “say his name.”

“Jotaro’s?”

“Shut UP!”

Though Kakyoin was angry enough for real emeralds this time, Dio didn’t even bother warping away. He pulled one free from his eye with a bored expression, waiting for the wound to seal itself.

“Never know who you are,” he purred, “until you lose what useless little thing you think matters the most, and recognize that it was simply in the way.”

Kakyoin fell back further, breathing heavily. He clutched at the broken watch in his pocket.

You only ever said exactly what you meant.

He looked up at the skyline, scanning for the water tower where Jotaro rested.

So what was this supposed to mean?

“If only Jotaro could have seen you like this.” Dio grinned. “A shame that his time ran out so quickly.”

Kakyoin froze, hand curled around the watch.

His time.

He looked down at it, at the frozen hands, the stopped time. Dio’s movements that seemed to take no time at all. Simple and impossible.

I understand. I heard you. I heard you.

When Dio chuckled, Kakyoin scrambled back to see that his pause had cost him the opportunity to put that critical distance between himself and his pursuer; Hierophant dissipated while his concentration was elsewhere. Dio stalked across the asphalt, into striking distance, his damaged eye already whole again.

“Slippery, aren’t you.”

He smirked and threw up his arms triumphantly.

“The Wo—”

What emerged from Kakyoin could hardly be called a scream. No words to it, only a sound so harsh and guttural it may as well have been a death rattle, a sound that had been building in his chest and in his lungs since the moment he realized who that punch was meant for. Rage defined by grief, grief weaponized by rage.

I can do this.

The last time he saw Jotaro smile flashed to the front of his mind.

I know you can.

Kakyoin looked at the flecks of asphalt suspended in midair. He looked at the blood from his own wounds, perfect round droplets flung away and stopped in place. Finally he turned and looked at Dio, whose look of shock registered in Kakyoin’s eyes as a weakness he could not afford not to exploit. Moving within what could only be stopped time compressed his chest to such an extent that he felt his heart might burst, his head such that his skull might splinter. It didn’t matter to him.

Take what you want from me.

He looked down at his hands. The shards of light Star Platinum had left behind hadn’t dissipated. They had been absorbed. Kakyoin flexed his fingers, watching the light crackle from his fingertips to his shoulders with something like wonder.

The light formed arms with a familiar shape and weight, pulsing with a bloodlust that combined with his own. He curled his hands into fists and Star Platinum’s arms moved with him, connected to Kakyoin’s body at the shoulder.

Just let me take him too.

Somehow he had expected the skull to be thicker. It crumpled in like eggshell, spraying blood into Kakyoin’s face, his clothes, in the air. Only the arms he had crushed Dio’s head with remained unstained.

He kept hitting, long after time began to move again. And hitting. And hitting, and hitting, until there was nothing left of that head, nothing left to mock or speak, remind him of what he had done, what had been done because of him. He wielded that strength mercilessly, knowing it did not belong to him, knowing it never would.

Only when what was left of Dio’s head was splattered across the intersection did Kakyoin finally release the extra arms to call back Hierophant. Only then did he see what had stopped Dio’s movement long enough for him to gain the advantage.

At first it was difficult to gauge the shape; Kakyoin could only see the sharp spikes emerging from various places around his torso. Once he had pulled the body apart, flinging the pieces as far as possible while still ensuring the sun would reach them, the jewel clattered to the ground: a star-shaped emerald that had torn Dio’s heart into ribbons from the inside out.

Kakyoin stared at the star for a long moment, holding it gingerly as though he feared it might shatter at his touch. He sat carefully on the road divider, a piece of concrete clutched in each of Hierophant’s eight accessible limbs, and he waited for the head to regenerate.

By the time dawn reached Cairo, all eight pieces had been smashed into the spot where Dio’s head fell. Kakyoin stood on cracked concrete, watching bone and tissue dissolve into ash at the touch of a sunrise as bloody as the street. He stayed there until he was certain every shred of the body was dust, then turned on his heel and started for the water tower. Later that morning they were found there: two bodies, and one heartbeat.

but after you were gone there was still some stardust on my sleeve

“You…”

The wind by the beach had grown cold, insistently whipping at their hair and clothes. Jotaro ignored it.

“You stopped time?”

Kakyoin shook his head vehemently. “No.”

“You said time stopped.”

“It did.”

“So you—”

“I didn’t stop it,” he said. “It stopped…for me. I don’t know what I—I didn’t do it myself. I certainly never did it again.”

Jotaro watched him closely. “And the rest of it?”

Kakyoin hesitated, and for a moment it seemed as though he might not answer at all. When he did at last raise his arm, holding it palm up for Jotaro to see, a perfect copy of Star Platinum’s right arm unfolded from his shoulder to rest above it, carved out of translucent white light. He flexed his hand and Star’s arm moved with him. Jotaro stared, stunned into silence.

“I don’t…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t really use them. Not unless I—you know, sometimes there isn’t another choice, but it…it just feels like digging up your grave. Every time.”

Jotaro closed his eyes. His teeth were on edge for a week when he first used Star to stop time after Cairo. He still felt strange calling it his own, rather than the World’s, and even ten years later he refused point blank to use it in front of Kakyoin. “I know what you mean.”

Kakyoin paused. “That’s…not all.”

At first Jotaro barely even recognized that it as the same stand, thinking it was just another strange element of the dream, something one of them had coughed up just beneath the surface. He eyed it curiously as it curled around Kakyoin, staring back at him with lidless, unblinking eyes.

“Oh,” he breathed.

Kakyoin nodded, avoiding his eyes.

Jotaro stood, squinting slightly against the harsh sea air and the pale glare of the rising sun. It had breached the horizon as Kakyoin spoke tonelessly, telling the story of Dio’s other death with blank eyes. Kakyoin recognized the look of it, knowing from experience that dreams would pull themselves from memories whether he wanted them to or not. It was a sunrise he thought of far more frequently than he would like.

Hierophant rose with him, unwinding itself from Kakyoin’s body. It tilted its head, drifting closer by inches. It almost seemed afraid. Although, Jotaro realized, for the stand it had been a while since they had seen each other.

“How long…?”

“A few years after you—after Cairo.” He glanced up. “It took about ten months for it to get…like this.”

So accustomed to looking for green, Jotaro hadn’t registered the shape of the stand at all. It had retained its original form, but white and jade were replaced entirely by gold and a deeply familiar pale violet. He started to reach for it; caught himself, pulled his hand back.

“I guess you’d need a new name,” Jotaro whispered.

Kakyoin smiled bitterly. “I just call it Hierophant,” he said. “Or Hierophant Green, still, if I want to fuck with people.”

Jotaro snorted in quiet disbelief. A soft radiance melted through from somewhere beneath Hierophant's skin, as though it had swallowed a star and could never get all that light out. The pale yellow glow that surrounded both Kakyoin and his stand was unmistakable, though Jotaro knew it as his own, as Star Platinum’s.

“The emerald star,” Kakyoin continued, getting to his feet with careful disinterest. “That’s the only one I still use. It’s decent at close range but I can’t really—I’ve never hit the heart dead-on like I did with D—”

“All this time you’ve carried me.”

Kakyoin froze mid-breath. Hierophant dissipated as he stared at Jotaro with an expression more suited for suddenly recognizing him as a threat.

“You have,” Jotaro said, and it sounded more like an accusation. “Haven’t you?”

Kakyoin allowed himself to exhale. “Where,” he muttered, teeth gritted, “where, exactly, do you imagine I would find a place to put you down?”

“It’s heavy,” Jotaro murmured. “Isn’t it?”

Kakyoin stared at the ground, watching the long grass blow in the wind. It really did look like bone, he thought.

“I’ve learned to cast your shadow very well, Jotaro.” He willed the burning at the back of his throat to stay down. “The light that casts it…that’s what’s left of you. I don’t know what happens if I step out of it.”

His eyes snapped open when he felt Jotaro’s hand on his arm.

“Look at me.”

Kakyoin shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t.”

“I know you can.”

He had always found the color of Jotaro’s eyes impossible to describe while he was alive. A memory could be flattened, compressed into a word. Looking at him now, Kakyoin knew he would never be able to do it right in his absence. He knew he never wanted to try.

“Even now,” Jotaro said slowly, “even now, even where I am, you carry so much of it. Of me. I don’t…I don’t think that part of me would leave you. I don’t think it can. Even if I were gone. Even when I am.”

His eyes rested on Kakyoin’s hands, his forearms. “Light like that burns from the inside out. It takes everything you have not to be consumed by it.”

“How?”

Jotaro lifted both his hands and held them by the wrist, palms up, until Kakyoin relented and uncurled the fists. Together they looked at the ragged scars left behind by the Cairo streets, wounds he had never been able to stomach stitching shut. He swallowed.

“You can’t feed that fire with pieces of yourself,” Jotaro said quietly. “You have to find me somewhere else.”

“Where?”

Kakyoin yanked his hands back angrily and turned away.

“Where?” he repeated, feeling, for some reason, on the verge of laughter. Pathetic. “I don’t know where to—where could I ever find you again?”

Jotaro paused. He shrugged. “I would have left it with you for a reason.”

“Left it?”

“Well, yeah.” He smiled slightly. “Who else would know how to use it?”

For a moment Kakyoin stood frozen, unable to speak. Their sun turned the sky the color of roses, though it wasn’t quite bright enough to drown out the stars.

“I’m glad you’re happy, wherever you are.”

“I’m learning how to be.” Jotaro looked up at the sun, the clouds. The wind had, at last, died down. “You’re the one who taught me to believe in that.”

“And do you?”

“Believe?”

Kakyoin nodded.

“I try to,” Jotaro said.

Something pulled tight in Kakyoin’s chest, a feeling he hadn’t needed to get free from in over a decade. He looked back at Jotaro from a distance he never had the chance to learn how to cross. He had wanted to reach him. He had wanted so badly to reach him.

I miss you.

“Don’t go.”

It came out choked, the burning in his throat finally making good on the threat. Jotaro stared at him, taken aback.

Kakyoin grimaced. “I don’t…want you to leave again.”

He stiffened in surprise when Jotaro pulled him in. There was a distant familiarity to being in his arms, as though he were remembering someone else’s memories. His warmth reminded Kakyoin of a different time, equally hopeless attempts to hold on to him, although he tried still in spite of it, as he always had.

“I never did,” Jotaro said, resting his chin on the top of Kakyoin’s head. “I never will. Wherever I am, wherever you are, I—you couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried, understand?”

He closed his eyes. “Jotaro?”

“Yeah?”

“You…you knew I loved you, right?”

Jotaro pulled away slightly to look down at him. It had been a long time since he heard Kakyoin’s voice shake.

“I never got to say.”

He smiled and nodded slowly. “It’s always you, in the end.”

Kakyoin’s tears wouldn’t fall. They never did.

“Cineri gloria seria est,” he murmured. He reached up to rest his fingertips lightly on the side of Jotaro’s face, trying to memorize the shape.

“Glory paid to ashes comes too late.”

the flame of it may dwindle to an ember and the stars forget to shine

Jotaro stared at the bedroom wall, waiting for his heart to slow. Again. He shook his head hard, trying to dislodge old visions of bursting water towers and bloodied school uniforms. Familiar scenes of violence. Nothing new.

He leaned his head on his forearms, watching condensation grow thicker on the door to the porch. Through the clouded glass Kakyoin’s red hair was just bright enough to be visible; he had paused with his sketchbook lowered, hand halfway to the mug of coffee on the table beside him. He raised his eyebrows upon meeting Jotaro’s eyes.

Jotaro waved a hand dismissively as he reluctantly left the warmth of their bed. If he had jerked awake abruptly enough to worry him, that was Kakyoin’s issue for being so inconveniently attuned to it all.

Still, it was almost nice to have someone so vehemently committed to their concern for his well-being. Generally he wouldn’t consider giving anyone the opportunity, but Kakyoin hadn’t exactly left him a choice.

He had, however, left hot coffee on the kitchen counter, so Jotaro figured he could forgive him for being insufferable. At least for the morning.

“Watch out,” he mumbled, sliding the porch door open. Kakyoin leaned out of the way in practiced avoidance of Jotaro’s large frame, and produced a small, warm smile before silently turning back to his sketchbook.

For a short while they sat without saying a word, as they often did when it was early and cold. Jotaro watched Kakyoin’s breath fog up the air, catching dawn’s last rays as the sun finally broke free from the horizon. Sometimes he remarked on Jotaro’s fascination with watching him breathe, but he never teased about it. More than once he had caught Kakyoin watching his chest rise and fall when he thought Jotaro was asleep.

He curled over his pad and paper with a blanket over his shoulders, frowning slightly in concentration. Jotaro shuddered, remembering the same frown on a different face. Kakyoin glanced in the direction of the movement but did not raise his head.

Usually, in his dreams, it was Kakyoin who was dead. Strange to imagine it might have gone the other way, although the way it was explained to him on the cliffs had been frighteningly plausible. When Jotaro thought about it, if he had been there, if he had realized he could move…if protecting him had been an option…

Any of number of ways they could have lost each other. Any number of ways they should have lost each other. Maybe ways they did, in another life. Jotaro cleared his throat and Kakyoin leaned back, looking at him curiously.

“Remember last week?”

Kakyoin placed his drawing pad face down on his lap. “I remember parts of last week.”

“I mean when we talked about—when you asked me about you being the one who lived.”

He paused for a long time. When Jotaro looked over at him, he stared straight ahead, his hand balled into a fist around the pencil he still held.

“I have not forgotten that, no,” Kakyoin said evenly.

“Had a weird dream last night.”

The old wood creaked as he shifted in his chair, eyeing Jotaro with brighter conviction now. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Yes. No. I mean—” He groaned, dropped his face into his hands. “I want to,” he muttered through them. “I don’t think I can.”

Kakyoin nodded, unsurprised. “Do you want to try?”

“It was you,” Jotaro said. Kakyoin looked him steadily in the eyes when he lifted his head and he thought of the other, visibly struggling to meet them. As though he were ashamed. “It was…another life…but you. It was you all the same. Honestly, I—I think that’s what made it so…made it worse.”

“Worse?”

“Well, he was…” He studied the alternate set of scars lacing the surface of Kakyoin’s hands. “He was the one who lived.”

A long moment later Kakyoin exhaled heavily and Jotaro realized he had been holding his breath.

“…I see,” he murmured, so quietly that were it to anyone else he might as well have said nothing at all.

“He was so…” Jotaro rubbed at his eyes. “He was…weighed down by it. By what happened to me, I…could see it crushing him. And he was…”

Kakyoin reached for his hand and gripped it tightly. His fingers were cold, even for him. During any other conversation Jotaro might have accused him of expressing what looked like affection for the ulterior motive of hijacking his body heat, but this time it felt more like offering him something he knew how to hold on to.

“I don’t ever want you to be alone like that,” he said fiercely, watching Kakyoin’s eyes as he would watch the sky for signs of a coming storm.

Kakyoin looked away, watching a solitary sparrow hop across the far end of the yard. His expression betrayed nothing but a dark certainty that Jotaro had seen many times before, ever since he first slid through the infirmary window making death threats with a smile on his face.

“I would do anything to keep you alive,” he said, still staring straight ahead. “Don’t you ever ask me to put limits on that.”

Jotaro’s stomach turned. For an instant there was no difference between the man he had dreamed of and the man sitting at his side apart from that single shifted verb tense. I would have done anything to keep you alive.

He wanted to tell him no. He wanted to say it wasn’t Kakyoin’s decision, that he’d done enough, that he’d done more than Jotaro had ever asked him to, more than he ever would. Kakyoin tilted his face back mulishly, daring him to argue.

Across the grass, a second sparrow joined the first.

If Kakyoin were the kind of person whose mind he could change about this he wouldn’t be the person who had been able to find Jotaro over and over and over again. He had told him not to do anything more, that it wasn’t his decision. And Kakyoin laughed in his face, he stayed all the same. Every time, he stayed.

He had once told Jotaro you’re the kind of person who only ever stays until you remember you know how to leave.

And what does that tell you?

I’ll learn how to find you. I’ll find you every time.

He inclined his head towards the pad of paper still lying in Kakyoin’s lap. “What are you working on?”

Kakyoin blinked, taken aback by the sudden evaporation of what had appeared to be a sharp retort. He looked down at it thoughtfully, considering whether or not answering the question was a good idea. It was a bad idea, he decided, and he flipped it over, tilting the paper for Jotaro to see.

“Is that…”

Jotaro trailed off, eyes widening. He saw a light sketch of himself in profile, looking up as if at the sky, or some other distant light. It was Jotaro, but something familiar was off about the eyes, the tired angles of his mouth. The shadows of frown lines where he saw the beginnings of laugh lines on his own face. A sadness he remembered, despite having never felt it.

“I had a strange dream too,” Kakyoin said.

and we may see the meadow in December icy white and crystalline

Two young women sat at the edge of a rotting boardwalk, bare legs dangling over the ocean in hopes of catching the salty water on their skin. Jade green waves crashed against the dock beneath a sky that threatened lightning, hard enough that each girl had independently wondered whether it might collapse.

The woman on the left had a star-shaped birthmark and a permanent scowl, half-dyed hair in two buns and a braid. The woman on the right had bleached her entire head nearly white, though the roots implied it had once been dark. She wore her own hair long, hiding most of her face behind it.

“I like your hair,” she said. Her voice was low and smooth.

“Thanks.” The girl with the birthmark looked at her curiously. “How’d you keep yours so soft looking?”

“Soft?”

“Like, because it’s bleached, right?” She untied her braid, shook it out. “Mine gets all wiry.”

“Oh.” The white-haired girl thought for a moment. “You gotta get that conditioner you can leave in there. Helps a lot.”

“Cool. Maybe I’ll remember.”

They leaned back, watching a thick layer of storm clouds roll in.

“You have a name?”

The girl with the birthmark shrugged. Weird dream, but it didn’t matter, in the end. Might be a little silly but nothing bad ever came from telling the truth in a dream.

“Jolyne Kujo,” she said. “You?”

Her companion froze for a beat. She laughed. “Kakyoin Jolene.”

“No way.”

Jolene held up her hands in surrender. “Swear.”

“Like the song?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Jolyne said. She grinned. “We got that one difference, then.”

Jolene raised her eyebrows. “Which is?”

“Mine’s spelled with a Y.”

“Weird.” She paused. “No one calls me Jolene except my dad anyway. Most people just call me Jo. It’s fine.”

Jolyne chuckled. “My mom’s the only one who doesn’t call me Jolyne.”

“Don’t have one of those.”

“Oh, god.” She covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, I’m—”

“No, no, no.” Jo waved her away. “Not like that. Adopted.”

She pushed her hair away from her face to get a better look at Jolyne, revealing dark almond-shaped eyes and a spray of freckles. She remembered parts of herself from her waking life, the parts that this dream fit into like puzzle pieces. Her expression grew curious. Both women opened their mouths to speak at the same time.

“You said Kujo—”

“You said Kakyoin—”

They stared at one another, not without mutual suspicion.

“You first,” Jo said quietly.

Jolyne narrowed her eyes, and Jo thought she had never seen such a clear green before. “You said Kakyoin,” she repeated. “Is that your name?”

“Family name.”

“Can you…what’s your dad’s name?”

Jo blinked. “Kakyoin Noriaki.”

“See, I didn’t even know I remembered that.” She shook her head in disbelief. “This is a weird fucking dream.”

“Remembered what?”

“Name of my dad’s dead best friend.”

Jo snorted. “No fucking way.”

“Why?”

“What’s your dad’s name?”

“Kujo Jotaro.”

She laughed again. “That’s my dad’s dead best friend.”

Jolyne fell back on the wood, ignoring the ominous creaking. “See? Weird dream.” She sighed. “Not like I’m in any hurry to wake up, so, whatever, though.”

Jo laid on her back beside her, more carefully such as to avoid splinters. Second nature, though she knew in the back of her mind that it wouldn’t make a difference, in a dream. “Oh, yeah?”

“I mean, I’m…” Jolyne groaned. “I’m in prison right now, actually.”

“Oh.” Jo fell silent, watching the dark silhouette of the hand she held up against the sky. Even full of thunder, these clouds were bright. “That’s…me too.”

Jolyne lurched into a sitting position. “You serious?”

“I could be lying.” Jo propped herself up on her elbows. “Whether or not I am, it’s kind of moot, right?”

“Moot.” Jolyne rolled her eyes. “You sound like my dad.”

Jo brushed her hair out of her face again, wishing she had thought to put on a hair tie before she went to sleep. Did she have a hair tie with her? Did the prison allow that? She couldn’t remember. She looked back at Jolyne and stifled a gasp.

“Is that your…” She swallowed. “You have a stand?”

“Stand?” Jolyne tilted her head. “Um…”

Jo pointed at the pale blue shape half-manifested over her shoulder. “That.”

“Oh. Is that what it’s called?” Jolyne allowed her stand to wrap its arms around her shoulders. It seemed to look straight at Jo, and she had only seen her father’s Hierophant a handful of times, but it was enough for those eyes to be familiar. The marks through them could easily pass for vertical scars in low light. “Yeah…I guess. I don’t know. It’s kind of a…new development.”

“What’s it called?”

Jolyne hesitated. No point in keeping secrets. “Been calling it Stone Free.”

Jo held her hand out towards Stone Free as though offering it to a cat. It stared down at it, unmoving. “How’d you learn to bring it in?”

“In?”

“To the dream.” She rolled her wrist. “I had to practice to get it right, for like…months. But my dad was pretty serious about getting me to do it. Said you might think you can let your guard down when you go to sleep, but you can’t.”

“I don’t think I did anything special. It just came with me.” Jolyne put her arm around her stand absently. “Guess it knew what to do?”

“Really.” Jo snorted. “God. I’m jealous.”

“You got one too, then?”

“Yeah.”

Jo held her hand up, and the stand took it, pulling her to her feet. Stone Free followed suit with its own user, largely due to Jolyne’s stark refusal to stay below eye level, though Jo’s considerable height made this a tricky goal. Let alone the height of her stand.

“Whoa,” Jolyne breathed.

Jo smiled, warmer than before. “This is Midnight Sun.”

“That’s funny,” she said faintly. “My dad loves that song. Only one I ever heard him sing.”

Midnight Sun was nearly six and a half feet tall, with black-gloved hands and pale green skin. The dark mane of hair seemed familiar, though Jolyne couldn’t think of where she might have seen it before. The stand rested its chin on the top of Jo’s head, armored arms draped over her shoulders, and it eyed Jolyne curiously, following her with eyes she had known all her life.

“I don’t know if this is a weird thing to say,” Jolyne murmured, “but that thing kind of reminds me of my dad.”

Jo shook her head slowly. “No,” she said, eyes on Stone Free. “I was really about to say the same thing about yours.”

The two stands watched each other silently. They said nothing, they only ever said nothing, but Midnight Sun inclined its head and Stone Free almost seemed to smile, as if to say of course it’s still you.

It’s only ever been you.

but oh my darling always I’ll remember

when your lips were close to mine

and we saw the midnight sun.

#jjba #jojos bizarre adventure #jotaro kujo #kakyoin noriaki #jotakak #im allergic totheir ship name but i dont have a choice i guess even though its not like #its not like *romance* its just love #anyways. here it is

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mutantsrisingrpg · 5 years

Photo

Congratulations SAMWELL! You’ve been accepted as CALYPSO.

Samwell, your writing never ceases to amaze me! Shae is someone who has many layers and by describing their layers as masks was brilliant. I also loved how Shae’s mother said that they were signs from God - a fitting metaphor for mutants in. And while Shae doesn’t particularly believe in God, the fact that she believes mutants are special brought a softness to her that I absolutely love. I can’t wait to see where you go with them!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Samwell

PRONOUNS: he/him

AGE: 20

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: EST HMM i’d say out of a 10, probably a 3? I’ll be around, but sometimes i take six years to reply

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Shae Knox

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Transfeminine nonbinary, they/them

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

Shae is a mystery. They are the awe you get from seeing the Aurora Borealis. They are both the inherent danger and beauty of a supernova. Come too close and you’ll be made into stardust.

They are the exhilaration you feel when a strong gust of wind threatens to knock you off of your feet. They are the allure of sleeping in the sun without applying sunscreen.

Shae has many masks they present in place of their true self. In fact, they have so many masks, that they themselves don’t know who their true self really is at the end of the day.

Shae takes great pride in their mutation. They have not, nor will they ever apologize for existing.

They are incredibly flirtatious and bubbly for the most part; that is their main mask that they like to show.

BIO:

Shae Knox was born into a small community in the Dominican Republic. Their birth was not an accident. Their mother and father were carefully picked in order to deliver a baby with powers, who mimicked both their parents: weather manipulation. However, the child rearing of Shae Knox was a community effort.

Technically, they were supposed to be a bringer of peace and good weather for crops like their biological parents were. Technically, they were a good sign from the gods meant to signal many more years of happiness for their community.

In reality, they and their mother were sent away when news of an attack on their community was discovered. In hopes of keeping both Shae and their mother’s powers alive, the two of them went into hiding until their mother received news of a hostile takeover from outside settlers.

She made the decision to pursue a life in America, despite having only even known her home in the Dominican Republic. It took time and energy for her to get in and become a citizen, and even longer for her to figure out how to hide their powers from the anti mutant governments, who would hate them based on their powers as well as their immigrant status.

For Shae, as they began to grow, it became clear that their powers were tied to their emotions. The first instance that their mother could remember was how hot it got in December when she stopped Shae from going outside. Shae was only five years old at the time, but it was the first time their mother sat them down and told them how dangerous it was.

“Do you want to be taken from me? Do you want to get hurt?”

Well no, Shae didn’t want either of those things. Not at all. But sometimes they couldn’t help it. Sometimes, the hair on their head rose with their temper, or the temperature would drop dangerously when they were sad. But as they grew, it became easier and easier to suppress the unwanted effects of their power.

When they would go to sleep at night, their mother would comb their hair and plait it back for bed, and talk about where Shae was from, and about their community. “We were signs sent from God,” their mother would murmur. “We brought peace and prosperity to our lands. We were made for more than this. You were made for more than this, Shae.”

Shae wasn’t sure if they believed in God, but they did believe that mutants were something special. Something unique. They sparked their interest in a way few other things could. They would eat up books about the potential origins of powers, as well as politics concerning mutants. They wanted to meet and greet and shake the hand of every mutant they could find in order to share stories.

Shae loved the stories of their home and of the mutants they encountered, but they also found that they began to hate how they had to hide who they were. In another place, they would’ve been free to be themselves as much as they wanted. But here, they had to hide themselves, they had to hide their emotions. Perhaps that was why when their mother finally passed, they made their way to the Jem family. They seemed to understand just exactly how important mutants were.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

ANASTASIA AHN: Shae was used to feeling out of touch, just knowing about their past. But Anastasia made them feel like maybe they could find a place within mutants to thrive. It made sense that they would meet Anastasia again in the Jem family, because if there was anyone that Shae really felt like would listen to them rant about mutant powers and politics, it would be her.

EOIN DOUGHERTY: Shae had read about and encountered many different powers. But Eoin was exceptional. His power was so potent, and Shae had so many questions about how he survived being so toxic. But more so than his power, his personality was just as noxious. Shae was good at socializing, but they weren’t going to go into trying to explore Eoin’s power without trying to find out a way to connect outside of powers. Maybe do some snooping? If they could start with a common thread, maybe he’d be willing to let them pick his brain.

EXTRA:

Shae excels at distractions because they are as flashy as they come. While not rich, they know how to make work a pretty party dress, no matter the price.

Shae doesn’t know who they are, not really. They think they know, but their sense of self is skewed not only by their job as the distraction, but also because of their identity with their lost community.

https://www.pinterest.com/nenapie0890/shae-knox/

https://shaemynamexoxo.tumblr.com/

ANYTHING ELSE:

Research about Dominican Republic and the indigenous people I based Shae’s background on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%C3%ADno

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Dominican_Republic

#accepted #accepted: calypso

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kpop-musicreviews · 5 years

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A Review of Ateez’s “Treasure EP.3: One to All” EP

Utopia

This song stood out to me upon first listen. The relaxed guitar in the beginning, paired with Yunho’s upper register and Seonghwa’s lower register really makes a great intro. However, I think the true gem of this song is the chorus. The higher-register chant gives it this larger-than-life feeling, making the chorus feel very powerful. I think that this song mostly resembles Ateez’s previous song, Promise, in that way. However, in the way that Promise feels empowering in a secure and safe way, Utopia feels more open; it feels like Promise encourages us to be happy with what we have, while Utopia is a song that wonders what more is out there and pushes us to do more. The bridge was great particularly because of Jongho’s vocals, as well as the tension that was built alongside it. Now, the outro of this song is something special. It slows, it becomes more cinematic, and it feels so nostalgic, as if the boys are yearning for something, as the lyrics imply. Jongho leads the calls (“woah”), which I think is a great touch since they are reminiscent of the “woah”s in the chorus but used in a different context, and also because Jongho’s voice is very strong and poignant enough to pull off the part very well. The song builds and builds, and then leaves us with a small resolution. It certainly leaves the listener in awe for a moment, before moving into the next song.

Illusion

Upon first listen, this song may sound pretty treble-heavy, but when I listened to this song again I realized that the bass plays a key roll. I almost wish that the bass had been more present in the song, because it does some really interesting things. Seonghwa’s part in the bridge was originally confusing to me, and I didn’t know if I liked it that much; I felt that it sort of didn’t feel with the flow of the song. However, after many listens I think that now that I know what to expect at that point in the song I do like Seonghwa’s part quite a bit, as it aides in the build-up by creating a halftime pulse. The chorus is so fun to listen to, with the loud synths and the shout-y vocals that imitate the intro to the song. Now, disclaimer: I am actually a huge fan of Ateez, and I’ve gotta say, after hearing only the first portion of the song over and over, it felt so weird to hear the full song the first few times. I just really expected it to end after Mingi’s part! After hearing the song a lot more now I feel more accustomed to it, but it was definitely funny to expect the song to end in the middle. Also, I just have to say that their little chant “let me free” is so cute. And, before I finish the review of this song I have to discuss Yunho’s vocals. I don’t think he got all that many lines in this song, but the ones he got were very different for him and he totally rocked that higher register “ooo” part in the verses!

Crescent

Of course this song is not a full track, but it is still a significant part of the album. This track was put here for a reason, and I’m assuming that it is meant to be the transition from Illusion to Wave. If I had to come up with a theory for it, it seems to me that Illusion is all about breaking free, so perhaps Crescent is meant to represent them waking from their sleep, or their dreams if you will, and finding themselves on beach. Crescent may represent the moon shining down on them. As for the “open your eyes,” that could also represent the boys waking from their dreams. This track, while not very long, still feels very grand. There are staticky sounds in the background that remind me of a walkie talkie, maybe to represent someone reaching out to them. And of course, the sounds of waves transition us into Wave.

Wave

The beginning of this song is so beautifully sung by San and Yunho. I can’t even point out exactly what I is that makes the beginning feel so special to me, but those two are able to put some real emotion into their voices, that’s for sure. Maybes it’s the breathiness of their lines that’s getting me. Jumping right into Mingi’s part, he truly announces the vibe of the song. Hongjoong gets to show off his lower register a little, which I think sounds really great in this song. And then, the notorious “hakuna matata yah”. The chorus of this song just feels so fun and carefree. I also didn’t realize until I listened actively that they sing with a triplet rhythm in the chorus and I love triplets so that might be another reason why I like this chorus so much. The interesting thing about the verse following the first chorus is that it almost sound like it’s going to become beautiful and breathy again just like the beginning, but at th least second Hongjoong comes in with his rap portion. I think the backup vocals during his part really add to the fun of the song, because it feels like the vocals are encouraging him to keep going. Another thing that I just realized is that during the buildup to the chorus, the opening synth line is being played in the background, and it also played again during the bridge with a different synth sound. It’s actually really interesting how many more things you can hear in a song when you actively listen to it. This song really gets to me every time I listen to it. It just feels so happy, and Ateez really does a good job of performing it, as well as singing and rapping it.

Aurora

This song is a lot more laid back than the other ones on this album, and I think it’s a nice contrast. The chorus really reminds me of Seventeen’s style, which I really wasn’t expecting! Wooyoung higher register is really something to behold in this chorus; his voice sounds very delicate and beautiful. Honestly, the verses and bridge of this song all flow very well and it was pretty easy to listen to. It’s a very nice song, and I think the lyrics add the extra depth that make the verses meaningful.

Dancing Like Butterfly Wings

This whole album feels much like a summer album, so it’s only fitting that the last song would give us that final summer song boost. I think the lyrics are what really makes this song so meaningful. They tell us to reach for our dreams, even if it gives you that nervous feeling deep down. It makes the song feel hopeful and very pretty. I like how the song experiments with all of the vocalists’ higher registers, because they all sing very well up there. I don’t know how I feel about the bridge. It’s more like a rap break, but I personally would have preferred a prettier, more vocal-based bridge. I appreciate the rapping, but I don’t know that I felt it belonged in this song is all. Aside from that, this song was very nice and I liked the “oh”s in the chorus, because singing together always makes a song feel more like home.

Overall Thoughts

I like this album a lot, as I have Ateez’s past albums. I think I may have been a little overexcited about it, so apologies if my reviews of the individual songs seem a little all over the place. I think this was a nice release for summertime; all of the songs are very feel good, and I liked it a lot. The only thing I can say is I noticed that this album doesn’t have one of those hard hitting songs, like Pirate King or Hala Hala. Of course, I’m not complaining because this album s great, but I do think it’s interesting that they didn’t include anything like that. That’s another reason why this feels a lot like a summer album to me, because all of the songs are very pretty and fun to listen to rather than intense. I was pleased and surprised to hear that the boys are experimenting with their higher registers more, since they usually tend to go deep for their choruses. (Yet another reason that this album feels more like summer.). Overall, I’m glad I got to review it and I can’t wait to see what else they have for us in the future!

——————————————————————————

Thank you for reading my review of Ateez’s “Treasure EP.3: One to All” EP! What did you think of the boys’ comeback? Are there any other artists or idols you’d like me to review? Feel free to DM me, comment, and leave things in my inbox!

Upcoming reviews: Somi, fromis_9, Leo, and more!

kpop-musicreviews 🎶💚

#ateez #atiny #wooyoung #mingi #jongho #seonghwa #san #yeosang #hongjoong #kpop

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thebookdragonsden · 5 years

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The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch… A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder An alien warrior with anger management issues A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem—that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy.

Rating: 4 stars

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS - READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

Aurora Rising, Aurora Rising, how to describe to explain my feelings about you? In my initial high of completing the book, I was like FIVE STARS! ABSOLUTE FAVORITE! But then I took some time to dwell on it, reality set in, and I thought... was it? Was it really? The short answer is no. It was definitely fun and engaging but there were some problems. I can't wait to read the next one but I would recommend this one with caveats. The long answer is that there were things I absolutely loved about this book and felt were really well executed. When it was going right, it was really going right, but it hit a couple of heavy duty stumbling blocks for me. For starters though, it's no secret I love found family stories and this was definitely scratching that itch. A group of difficult misfits from a variety of backgrounds finding a home with each other? Hell yes! I loved the way they came together and helped each other fit in, even if sometimes it meant calling each other out and delivering hard truths. There's still room for growth and expansion on this and I hope to see it continue in the next book. Tbh, I loved pretty much all the characters in the book with one exception, which I'll come to when I start unpacking what didn't work for me. Obviously, Finn was a beloved character, full of sarcasm and personality, but no one was more shocked than me when it turned out that Tyler ended up being my favorite character. I don't normally care much about the golden boy archetype, but there was something about the way Tyler was written that I really enjoyed. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he obviously didn't get the team he wanted but he never shoved that in their faces and he didn't try to domineer them. He looked at them and thought, what are they capable of and how can I bring that out of them? He believed in them and they delivered. I was here for it. Additionally, I loved his relationship with Scarlett. They were so supportive but also such little shits to each other. There was a lot for this book to get through, plotwise, which means it moved at an extremely fast pace. There was not a lot of time to linger and really develop characters. This was especially true in the case of Zila, whose personality was one that made her more withdrawn. The lack of participation meant she kind of disappeared at times. It also meant that some of the characters blurred together. Sarcasm and wisecracks are pretty much a trademark for Kristoff (I can't speak to Kaufman because I've never read a book she's written solo) and it's been liberally applied to pretty much every single one of the team, which meant they could be pretty indistinguishable from each other, especially in group settings. Also, there were a few scenes that were supposed to be tense and serious, where they're trying to negotiate with someone and a professional portrayal is really important... and someone has to say something witty, and it's really jarring because the book completely ignores the potential issues of said wisecrack. It would launch me right out of the seriousness of that scene. It wasn't common though so it was easy to ignore. The villain of the book was interesting idea, although it did take pretty much until the end for it to be revealed. The description of it wasn't really bringing me creepy vibes, although that could be different if I actually saw it, and while the appearance is something unusual and unexpected, I can't say it was necessarily original. I'm withholding a real verdict on it until the next book. So... what cost the book a full star? Space is a rainbow... and all the pairings here are het! I appreciate that Finn is very blatantly bi/pan and that homophobia is not a thing but it's really hard to hold on to that appreciation when you're sending heavy vibes that he's also going to be paired off with a woman, which brings it to total of 3 canon het pairings among your seven main characters. Also, there's a scene in there that left an extremely sour taste in my mouth because it reminded so much of queerbaiting tactics I've seen executed before that it still fills me with a sense of frustration. There's a lot of jokes, especially from Scarlett and Finn, that Tyler and Kal should kiss. It eventually does actually happen, but only as a method of throwing off pursuers, and Kal already has a "mate" in Aurora and the only indication we have of Tyler's orientation is a complicated relationship with Cat. So... the only actual non-het potential pairing in the whole book is a fakeout. My wife didn't feel the same though, so YMMV. Secondly... the mate thing. I'm not always opposed to soulmates in stories but I hate when it's used as a copout for developing a relationship between people. It's an interesting take to have only one of the characters experience the "mate" link but it still left you with one person who was instantly devoted and thought their mate was a perfect human being for no actual reason except "they're mates!" It doesn't help that once Aurora finds out Kal sees her as his mate, it's suddenly 'oh, he's not a dick to me and I should give this relationship thing a go!' which is, again, a copout for developing an actual reason for them to want to date each other. We'll see how things progress in the next book. The last thing I really struggled with is, because of the lack of ability to really focus on development, I feel like Cat's character got shafted. I struggled to like her and a lot of it had to do with every time she was involved, especially from her perspective, it was petty and vindictive. A lot of this is tied up in her seeing something that isn't there and thus hating on Aurora for no reason, which yay, more girls hating on girls over boys, just what the world needs. I never came around to liking her, which I still feel wasn't entirely fair to her. TL;DR - a fast paced book with a cast I (mostly) loved and great found family feels but it suffers a little on the character development side and be wary if you're expecting the LGBT rep to manifest in actual, canon pairings.

#aurora rising #jay kristoff #Amie Kaufman #rating: 4 stars #format: hardcover #genre: sci-fi #series: the aurora cycle #bi/pan characters #lgbtqia+ representation #queue before me #2019 reads #book review

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j-philly-b · 5 years

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8, 9, 17, 36 If you are feeling salty!

Sorry it took me so long to answer, Holli, but here I am. I love all of your Salty OUaT Asks, thanks for the ask!

8. What are your feelings about the show’sconcept of “true love” and/or TLK?

Oh man, this is the one that made me pause and walkaround the room a few times while preparing an answer because I feel like theshow didn’t actually have a cohesive concept of a true love or a TLK. Ofcourse, having said that, let’s see if I can get my thoughts down in a way thatmakes sense going off of the TLKs that are most prominent in my memory.

TL/TLK started out as something unique, rare, the most powerful form of magic,which over the course of seven years was eroded down to something as common andubiquitous as a three-leaf clover. There’s no tension if it works for everyone,and that’s what ruined the original conceit.

First we have the Charming/Snow TLK juxtaposed with the Emma/Henry TLK. I lovedthis one, there was the tension of whether Emma would put her faith in Henryand believe and whether that would be enough for a TLK. Plus there was anelement of sacrifice in each TLK – Charming and Emma each thought they weresaying goodbye to their heart, and who they loved enough to let go. So the TLKwas almost like a reward for their love and faith in the other.

We see the element of sacrifice and TL again when Emma and Killian are in the UW.They pass the test and open the door because each of them is willing tosacrifice themselves for the other. So while we didn’t get a TLK because deathisn’t a curse and a TLK wouldn’t have cured Killian’s condition, we did get thesame criteria of sacrifice and faith and the ultimate final reward of Killianbeing given a second chance at life so he and Emma could be together. I know alot of people were disappointed that CS never had a TLK, but I think what wegot was a lot more powerful.

Then we have the unsuccessful Rumpel/Belle TLK, which was the perfect parallel.Rumpel’s fear kicks in midway through the kiss and we see how that makes himpull back and become unwilling to give up his power for love. Because hebecomes unwilling to sacrifice his power for his heart, the TLK doesn’t work.It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and lends weight to the successfulsacrifice-based TLKs.

We also have the unsuccessful TLKs where one half of the pair had missingmemories (I could go on a whole other rant about missing memories, jfc). Butagain, there can be no sacrifice and not agreement on intent if one half of thepair either doesn’t remember the other – Snow not remembering Charming/Emma notremembering Killian, or doesn’t remember all the details of the curse – Killiannot remembering that he’s a DO, added to the fact Emma didn’t want to break herown memory curse.

But then we have the TLKs that didn’t seem to have any element of sacrifice ordanger and were just TLKs for the sake of a TLK to break a curse. The firstthat comes to mind is Brennan Jones and his nurse. I mean, WTELF? First, wehave Brennan under a sleeping curse for a century or two? All right, that justtakes away from the danger of the sleeping curse full stop. I’m pretty surethat in S1 it was established that if the sleeping curse wasn’t broken theperson under the curse would eventually die – wasn’t that what eventuallyspurred Emma and Charming on? Not only was there no apparent danger of imminentdeath for Brennan, but he gets a TLK from someone he’d never even met? So whatthe hell was this unnamed nurse sacrificing? Was Brennan the only patient shewas responsible for, so if he eventually bit the dust she’d be out of a job? Idon’t know, the Brennan/nurse TLK was one of the stupidest things the show everdid.

The stupidity and rule-breaking TLK between Brennan and his nurse was equaledby the TLK between Zelena/Hades. Zelena’s intent may, arguably, have been pure(honestly, I’ve blocked a lot of this from memory because it was so infuriatingat the time), but Hades was knowingly deceiving her.

So now we have two successful TLKs where there is no equality between theparticipants and no sacrifice. Each of those should have gone the way of theRumpel/Belle TLK, but noooooooo, the rules go out the window because it waseasier to write a TLK explanation than to think of something else. I’m going toadd in the Ruby and Dorothy TLK here as well. I don’t think we knew enoughabout Ruby and Dorothy’s relationship to say whether or not they had TL, but myproblem with the TLK they had is that Ruby went there intending to wake Dorothyup with the TLK, there was no tension or doubt that it would work and there wasno element of sacrifice in the kiss because of that.

My memory of the Philip and Aurora TLK isn’t good enough to say whether or notthe element of sacrifice was established. But because of Aurora we learnedabout the room of fire that apparently exists and where people who have beenunder the sleeping curse are doomed to spend their time (except for Brennan?JFC, why did we ever need to know anything about Brennan, at all?). So thatlead to David undergoing the sleeping curse to be able to communicate with Snowwhile she was in the EF, to be awoken by Snow when she returned. Ok, we knowSnowing had TL, that was established, and in S2 there was still an element ofdanger for the person that was under the curse, so a TLK there I can accept.

But then we have the S6 shared sleeping curse and the daily TLKs for Snowing. Iguess? There was still tension built into that, but the solution? Snowing’sclosest friends and family will take on the sleeping curse for a few minutesand somehow that the curse that was on Snowing’s shared heart? Ummm, what? Asleeping curse is broken by TL, does that mean this huge group of people sharedTL with each other, I don’t… I can’t… *sigh* This is one of the instances wherethe show’s concept of TL lost all meaning.

I don’t even know what to say about the TL sapling that formed when Snow andCharming first spoke to each other through that hole in the carriage. Whatexactly was the point of that thing? They introduce the concept of the TL greenthumb, destroy the sapling as soon as it’s found, and then never revisit theidea. So… yeah.

But, let’s go back to the element of sacrifice and TL, because we did getanother example of that without a TLK in the UW when Liam sacrificed himselffor Killian. (Hey, look at that! Killian got two major TL moments in the UW,why don’t we talk about that more?) I am not a fan of the way they wrote Liam,but that moment in the cave was without doubt TL, and Liam was properlyrewarded for his sacrifice and faith in Killian.

TL/DR; the show did not have a consistent concept of TL/TLK and used theconcepts and used the TLK as a crutch when they got too lazy to think aboutplot.

9. Which character arc was more like a line?

Belle is the first one to come to mind. Hercharacter was very poorly treated by the writers. She would get her soloadventures with the visiting princess of the season, but then go right back tobeing Rumpel’s cheerleader. She came close to character growth in S6, but thatwas cut short to serve the Rumpel as savior plotline and she was once againrelegated to the background.

Mulan also comes to mind. We know she was a fierce warrior, but she never gotthe emotional development she deserved.

17. If you could recast someone who would it beand why?

This is a hard one, I tend to think the fault in thecharacters was with the writers rather than with the actors. That being said,the flashbacks where the characters were supposed to be teenagers but wereplayed by the main actors always fell flat for me – giving someone bangs doesn’tmean they suddenly look 20 years younger, and made it difficult to accept thestory they were trying to tell. Also, I was not a fan of S7 Cinderella/Jacinda,I don’t know if was actor or director choices, but there were a lot of sceneswhere the emotions of the character didn’t seem to fit with the emotion of thescene.

36. What thing that was not meant to be funny made you laugh?

Oy, I feel like there were so many, and yet I cannotthink of a single example. Oh, wait! Robin’s death scene. I apologize to Robinfans, but omg it was ridiculous and over the top – Zeus’s double-ended dildo,the extreme lingering close-ups on Robin and Regina’s faces, Robin’s bodyfalling and leaving his spirit/sparkly essence behind, the “wings” forming ashis sparkle turned to dust and floated away. Sorry, I’m laughing just thinkingabout it.

#myrddinwilt #j answers #ouat asks #i'm still salty about this show #i am also salty about tumblr mobile formatting #it’s absolute shite and unreadable

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kayincolwyn · 6 years

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Mad World (reflection, 10/28/2018)

When I was about 19 or 20, after my parents had split up, for about six months or so and for the first and only time in my life, I was living on my own, in a rental room in this old lady’s house, in St. Johns on the outskirts of Portland, where I was working my first job at a McDonald’s, and that was when I first watched this now cult classic film called Donnie Darko, and when I got to the end of the film, sitting there alone on a bed watching a TV in some stranger’s house, and heard Gary Jules’ cover of Mad World (originally by Tears For Fears), I was so moved that I wept.

For those who haven’t seen it, Donnie Darko is the story of a somewhat outcast and antisocial high schooler (much as I was when I was in high school), played by Jake Gyllenhall, who, after an engine of a plane crashes into his house, and specifically into his room, when he is away, begins experiencing visions and other weird happenings in his life, and begins losing touch with reality as he tries to understand what is going on and what some higher power seems to want from him, all while he meets and falls in love with this girl named Gretchen. Eventually events lead up to Gretchen’s death when she is hit by a car, and then everything falls into place, and he finds himself traveling back in time, and he realizes that he was meant to be there and die on that day when the plane engine crashed into his room, which will spare Gretchen’s life at the cost of his life and the cost of them ever knowing one another. In this scene, as Mad World plays in the background, we see shots of different people throughout his town that we see throughout the film, sitting in their rooms in the middle of the night, smoking or drinking or crying or just starting blankly into the dark, people who during the day pretend to be things that they’re not or wear masks or keep secrets, all while Donnie laughs alone in his room on that fateful day, knowing that death is coming for him, but embracing it to save someone he loves who will not know who saved her or that she was even saved at all. I believe he laughs as he finds the comedy in the tragedy, the joy in the sadness, the light in the madness...

Looking back, I think I was deeply moved by this not only because of that beautiful cover of Mad World by Gary Jules, but also because this scene showcased the sadness and, yes, the madness of the world, in how we say or do things in life that don’t reflect who we really are or who we really want to be, just to survive or to get by or to fit in or for reasons that we don’t even really know ourselves, all while under the surface and behind closed doors we feel empty or alone or broken or wounded, not even really knowing how to express how we feel... and yet it also showcased the beauty in knowing that we’re all in the same boat, we’re all human, so we’re not alone in all of this, in trying to cope and figure out this thing that we call life, and the beauty in love and relationship and giving to and sacrificing for others and how that can give our lives a sense of meaning and purpose in a world that otherwise doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. In this post I wanted to try and talk about this, about how maybe we can find, or at least try to find, like I believe Donnie does in the film, some kind of meaning and purpose in this world that is so full of sadness and madness, or at least that’s my aim here... There have been times in my life when I have experienced nothing but sadness and madness, whether because of stressful or painful circumstances or because of internal existential struggles, times when I have been that person crying or staring blankly in the dark, empty and alone and broken and wounded, and yet I’ve also been someone who was comforted or encouraged by others, or has been someone who has comforted and encouraged others, and someone who has found some meaning and purpose in love and relationship (even in spite of its many ups and downs) and has both received from others and given to others, and all of this lives within me simultaneously, because, as poet Walt Whitman once said, “I am large, I contain multitudes”.

I recently discovered and have become a fan of the young Norwegian musician Aurora Aksnes (and I recently purchased a ticket to a concert here in Portland next February, which I will be looking forward to), whose music is as creative as it is thoughtful, and whose personality is very unique and refreshing, as she has a pure and childlike spirit while also having an intelligence and wisdom beyond her years. Many of her fans consider her something of a real life Luna Lovegood, who is one of the more popular characters from the Harry Potter universe (and who also happens to be my favorite HP character), known for her eccentricity and non-conformity as well as her wise and empathetic nature. Of course Aurora is just a human being like you or me, and no doubt with her own fair share of faults and flaws, who makes mistakes and doesn’t know everything and doesn’t have all the answers, but she has an angelic or fey-like quality about her that is wonderful and attractive. She calls her fans ‘Warriors and Weirdos’, and I think she is a combination of those herself, a warrior and a weirdo, and I believe she encourages others to embrace those qualities within themselves. When you watch interviews with Aurora she comes off as very authentic, speaking and acting in sometimes strange and funny ways, but you can tell she is entirely herself without putting on any airs, which makes her very endearing and charming and magnetic, but then much of her music, which she writes herself, is thought provoking and heartfelt, clearly written by someone who has thought and felt about life, both the darkness and the light in it, deeply. I wanted to focus on a couple of her songs, which are among my favorites of hers, one from her debut album All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend, and the second from her new album Infections Of A Different Kind (Step 1). Through The Eyes Of A Child, a beautiful and moving song that has a lullaby-like quality to it, was Aurora’s favorite song from her debut album according to an interview from 2016, and in the interview she said this of its meaning: ‘It’s a very important song for me that’s about getting older and seeing the real world and how cruel people can be. You discover this more and more as you grow older, and it gets quite hard on your shoulders knowing all of these things. So it’s about being able to see the beauty in everything and everyone, and innocence in the world, which I miss.’ Here are the lyrics to the song: World is covered by our trails Scars we covered up with paint Watch them preach in sour lies I would rather see this world through the eyes of a child, Through the eyes of a child Darker times will come and go Times you need to see her smile And mother's hands are warm and mild I would rather feel this world through the skin of a child Through the skin of a child When a human strokes your skin That is when you let them in Let them in before they go I would rather feel alive with a childlike soul With a childlike soul Please don't leave me here I remember when I first discovered this song I listened to it on my music player while walking home from work in the middle of the night and it moved me to tears as I resonated so strongly with it. Like Aurora I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older that life is full of pain and as humans it is so easy for us to hurt or disappoint one another, and then sometimes we find ourselves longing, as impossible as it may seem, for a world where it wasn’t like that, a world where there was only joy and where we just loved one another, a simpler and kinder world where we didn’t feel any need to hide ourselves from others for fear of getting hurt or being misunderstood, or where we didn’t feel as though we were just stumbling through the dark, or where we didn’t feel like we were alone. And tonight as I was writing this I watched a live video of Aurora singing this (which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncG9zTzsisE) and when she sings that last line, ‘please don’t leave me here’, there is this look on her face afterwards that’s so real and moving and that brought me to tears, as it felt like she was putting her soul into those words, and because I have felt, ached, and prayed, those words at times myself... I’m reminded of Mad World, which I quoted above, where in the chorus it says ‘the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had’, which certainly sounds morbid, but I have to admit there is a part of me that looks forward to death, not because I hate life or because I really want to die (and please don’t take this as me being suicidal, as that’s not where I’m at, though I have been there in the past no doubt), but because, in spite of my uncertainty about life beyond this one, I hope that if there is life beyond this one that it is more like that kind of life, life through the eyes of a child, that Aurora sings about. And it’s not so much that part of me wants to die, but more that part of me wants to die to a world full of sadness and madness and instead find myself in a better one full of joy and light, if that makes any sense. But I don’t believe that we have to, or even should, wait for death to see if that might bring us into that kind of world, even if we may have hope for that, as we can also try to create that kind of world here, or at least as much as we are able. And I think that’s what people like Aurora are trying to do, and I suppose what all of us who are capable of love in this world try to do for those we love.

The next song, Infections Of A Different Kind, the title track and the final track of her new album, was, according to Aurora in a recent interview, the most personal song on her new album, which came to her in the middle of the night and was the seed that inspired her new album. I feel like this song in some way addresses that desire to create a better world (and here’s a link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bdasfyaPjA). Here are the lyrics: It's a feeling growing old with time Like a restless in the leaves coming down The world is a hole and we all seem to fall Down and down And the universe is growing tall And we all are caving into dreams of this space Unfolding her arms cannot do any harm Violent contractions And if there is a God, would we even know his name? And if there is a God, I think he would shake his head And turn away So belong to us all Be God in the shape of a girl Who walks this world And I beg, I beg to be drained From the pain I have soaked myself in So I can stay Okay, and more than okay for a while For a while, for a while Infections of a different kind The world is being attacked by your pain If I am the world then why would I hurt All that is living? And if there is a God, would he then believe in us? And if there is a God, I think he can't hear all of us Belong to us all Be God in the shape of a girl Who walks this world And I beg, I beg to be drained From the pain I've soaked myself in So I can stay Okay, and more than okay for a while For a while, for a while This is the breath, this is the breath... There was a discussion on one of her Youtube videos that I was reading tonight that came out of a fan wondering if this song was questioning and even jabbing at belief in God and I can understand why some people would take it that way (though as far as I can tell Aurora seems to be a very spiritual person, if not particularly religious), but I resonated more with what another fan said: ‘For me, I would say that she is rather asking us to be reflective on what we've done for each other so far, and how much more we can do in the years to come. "I think he would shake his head" and "Would he believe in us?" are powerful statements that make us realize that the only one causing our pain and distress is ourselves. To me, she's not saying that there isn't a God, she’s saying it doesn't matter if there is, because he is not responsible for our problems that we created.’ I can agree with this for the most part, and I would add that I felt her line where she says ‘Be God in the shape of a girl who walks this world’, rather than being some blasphemous statement as some might take it, is referring to that spark of the divine in every one of us (or the image of God as it is referred to in the Bible, or the inner light as Quakers call it), including herself, and then to how we have the ability to be a kind of divine presence (where one might say that God is working through us) in one another’s lives if we choose to be. This reminds me, putting this into a more Christian context, of this quote from Catholic saint Teresa of Avila: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” Now as I’ve said elsewhere I no longer consider myself Christian, at least not in a traditional sense, but I can resonate with this idea of our being a channel or conduit for the divine in one another’s lives, and I believe this is kind of what Aurora meant or was trying to say through her song, and there can be truth in this whether one believes in a God or not. Even the end where she says ‘this is the breath, this is the breath’ reminds me of the Greek word pneuma, which means both breath and spirit, so she could also be saying ‘this is the spirit, this is the spirit’. Of course I’m not really sure whether that was what Aurora was getting at here (would love to pick her brain about this song by the way), but in the context of the song I think it makes sense. I admit that I don’t feel as though I am really a channel or conduit for anything like a divine presence much of the time. It’s something I aspire to be, and maybe sometimes in spite of myself I can be that, but much of the time I feel that I fall short of that. I often find myself feeling irritated and annoyed by people, and I often feel numb and apathetic to others and their lives. I have my bad habits and negative tendencies, my faults and flaws, and I certainly don’t feel very angelic or Christlike or whatever one may call it much of the time, and if anything I often feel like something of, well, an asshole. I know there are people that love and care about me that would disagree with this feeling I have, which I appreciate, but it’s something I often feel regardless. I feel like I contribute my own share of sadness and madness to the world you could say, and though that may not be my intention, or any of our intentions really when we do that, it is what it is and there’s really no way around it save for me to try and balance that out by bringing more joy and light into the world, as I believe Aurora and many people, or maybe even most people, are trying to do. As author George Eliot (aka Mary Anne Evans) once said, ‘ What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?’ I think this is a question that we all have to wrestle with, especially in times like these where there is so much division and fear and uncertainty, where that sense of being in a world full of sadness and madness is all the more acute (or at least that’s how it feels for many of us) and it’s not an easy question when many of us, like myself, struggle just to deal with our own problems, let alone anyone else’s, but it’s a question we have to ask ourselves because we all share this world, and in large part I believe how we choose to live our lives in it, or what we choose to bring into this world, can add either to its sadness or joy, to its madness or light. In Donnie Darko, Donnie was willing to give his life to save the life of someone he loved. Aurora, like many artists out there, gives her time and energy to her music to hopefully bring some more joy and light into the world. What can I do to make the world better, to make it a simpler and kinder one? Honestly I’m still trying to figure that out.

Last weekend I spent most of the day with some of my family on my grandpa Allan’s side, including his wife Miriam, my aunt Angela, my aunt Shannon and her husband Jeff, and my cousin Andrea. My grandpa Allan passed away from cancer in March of last year, and he would have been 82 years old on October 21st, so we observed his birthday by visiting his gravesite. I remember as we gathered around his grave I felt awkward and uncertain, as I imagine all of us did to some extent, because death can’t help but leave us feeling awkward and uncertain on some level I think, and yet I know that we all felt, and feel, love for him, and we tried to, and continue to try to, honor him, being grateful for the part that he played in our lives, for the ways in which he loved us, gave to us, and brought joy and light into our lives. We went to lunch at Shari’s and I remember talking with my aunt Shannon who was sitting next to me much of the time, and I remember telling her how Allan’s story of how he found his faith resonated with me, the story of being a foster child who was often abandoned and rejected, who then had an experience where he felt that God told him that he would not abandon him or reject him as others had, and it resonated with me because it had a message that was so universal and childlike, so basic and primal, and uncomplicated by theology and doctrine, that I believe almost anyone could connect with it, that desire and longing to be unconditionally loved and accepted where you are and as you are, and that that desire and longing can be answered. Perhaps, much like Aurora, through that experience Allan learned to see through the eyes of a child. Maybe at bottom he had the faith of a child, and even if he may have built different theology and doctrine around that experience that he had over the years, that experience, and the message within it, was still somewhere at the heart of his faith, and I can resonate with that. After lunch I was at Allan’s house, and Miriam and Angie gave me some of Allan’s things that they wanted me to have, including a tie and some cufflinks and some of his rocks from his rock collection (he was a big rockhound), and I spent some time with my cousin Andrea, connecting over music (including some music by Aurora, which she liked), and I remember looking at pictures of Allan on the walls and thanking him for whatever hand he may have had in helping me to connect more with his family, and I remember telling Andrea that I felt like maybe that was his final gift to me. We didn’t really discuss politics at all throughout the day, although it is something that Allan’s family has had some conflict over from what I’ve heard as there are some in the family who are more conservative and others who are more liberal, and since the 2016 election there has been some tension among some of the family members. The only time it ever came up in any way was when Angie, who is a little more conservative herself, pointed out a letter that acknowledged Allan’s service in Korea that was signed by President Trump, and she wondered what I thought of that and if I would like a copy, and I told her that even though I don’t like Trump myself that if it’s something that is meant to honor Allan then I’m okay with it as that’s what really matters to me, and not who signs it, and I would be okay with having a copy. I think it’s safe to say, being the elephant in the room, that politics causes much of the sadness and madness in this country and in this world, and I think this is something that people on both sides of the political spectrum can agree on. But my day with Allan’s family was a reminder to me of a potential answer to much of the division and tension, the sadness and madness, in this country and this world, that being the awareness that we’re all in the same boat, that we’re all human, that we’re not alone in this, that love and relationship is what matters most of all, and a desire, and really a choice, to try and find what brings us together rather than what divides us. I may not completely agree with Allan’s family when it comes to politics or religion or when it comes to this or that, but at the end of the day we all loved and love Allan and we all miss him and hope to see him again whenever we cross the veil, and that is something that we all have in common in spite of whatever differences we may have, and while as human beings we may all be capable of bringing more sadness and madness into the world, we are all equally capable of bringing more joy and light into it as well, and into one another’s lives, just as Allan did. And just as Donnie Darko left an impact on the world after his death, I believe Allan did as well, just as he did in life, and maybe we can all do that.

A couple weeks ago I watched the Netflix series The Haunting Of Hill House, which I really enjoyed and found equally frightening and moving. The basic premise of the series is there is this family, the Crains, who move into Hill House for a few months and begin having strange experiences which lead to the mother’s suicide, and as the season progresses you find out what happened in the house from the perspectives of each of the family members in flashbacks as you also see how their experiences in the house have continued to impact them as adults, leading to different ways of coping with the trauma, and effecting their relationships with one another and with others. The two children who were impacted most by the events that took place when they were in Hill House were the two youngest children, Luke and Nell, who were twins and have a psychic twin connection. My favorite scene in the whole series was in the last episode when Nell (who is found dead in Hill House after a nervous breakdown not long after the death of her husband, presumably killing herself) reunites with her siblings in spirit and reassures all of them, forgiving them for however they let her down in life, and letting them know that she is not truly gone. When Luke, who was closest to her, tells her that he doesn’t know how to go on without her, she responds tenderly: “There’s no without. I’m not gone. I’m scattered into so many pieces, sprinkled on your life like new snow.” I remember being really moved when I heard this, thinking of Allan and others that I’ve lost in recent years. While my own beliefs about life after death may not be in line with this in a literal sense, as I believe, or hope, that a consciousness, or a soul, continues somehow after death not just in the memories of those who loved them but also in some other dimension that is beyond (if also in some way connected to) this one. But I interpret this as the impact that that person had on us (and continue to have on us even after their death), all the different ways that they loved us and gave to us, all the ways they brought joy and light into our lives, sprinkled onto our lives like new snow. And whether you may believe in a God or not, whether you may believe in life after death or not, I believe the impact you leave, the legacy you leave, matters. Even my mom, who is a self-proclaimed atheist, hopes that when she dies that she will be have made a difference in the lives of people she loved, and maybe in the world too, and that she will be remembered well. I believe she hopes, as many of us do I think, that she will leave this oftentimes sad and mad world just a little better for her being in it, that she can do her part to take away a little of the sadness and madness and bring a little more joy and light into it. While I don’t consider myself as an atheist, I can resonate with this desire and this hope, as I share it, even if I may also desire and hope for some kind of life beyond this one where I am reunited with Allan and others. In short, if in living our lives we made life a little less difficult for others than maybe we have lived life well...

It’s only a few days till Halloween, one of my favorite holidays, when children, and children at heart, dress up in costumes and go trick or treating or simply party and have fun, embracing the spooky and creepy, and in some small way answering darkness and the night and death with laughter as Donnie Darko did, bringing joy and light into it, seeing the world through the eyes of a child, and maybe being channels and conduits of something, well, holy, in what some may see as unholy, being divine sparks in the night, and I think it’s kind of wonderful. The world is kind of wonderful, and it’s kind of horrible, the world is kind of funny, and it’s kind of sad, the world is kind of beautiful, and it’s kind of mad, and I dream of a better world, a simpler and kinder one, beyond this one, but I also dream and hope to help make this world I am living in a better one if I can, even if only in some small way, and it’s hard to know how to express everything that I feel about this world, and it’s hard to take everything that I go through in it, and people are running around and I’m running around, and it can feel pretty crazy sometimes, that’s for sure. But like Donnie I will keep trying to find some kind of meaning and purpose in this world in which I live, and like Aurora I will try to hold onto my childlike soul and be open to being a channel and conduit of the divine in the world, and like Allan I’ll try to hold onto those experiences that help me to feel unconditionally loved and accepted, as I hope like him to make an impact on the lives of others, even after it is my turn to cross the veil, hopefully leaving a little more joy and light behind me in this world than sadness and madness, leaving pieces of myself sprinkled over other’s lives like new snow. And I know that this world can be very very mad indeed, but I know it can also be very very beautiful, because, like me, and like all of us, the world is large and it contains multitudes.

#mad world #donnie darko #aurora aksnes #luna lovegood #haunting of hill house #Halloween #life reflections

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jaegertango · 7 years

Text

Crimmus stuff I never posted

I was originally gonna write a bunch of Christmas drabbles for my OTPs and stuff - and then only actually completed one of them. Whoops. Here’s the only one I actually got done because it’s super short and kinda lame, but. Yaaaay for Rex.

Quiet was not Rex's forte.

He bit his lip, and then had to force back what would have been an even louder hiss as he realized how sharp his teeth were. Trying to be as silent as possible about the Iron Raider was not an easy task. The Draenei captain towered far too massively to make any of his steps quiet, especially with those mighty hooves of his. He had to time this correctly, and he only had a limited frame to do it in. While he and his Raiders had taken on much harder tasks before, this one was important enough that Rex actually felt *nervous. He hated that – the pirate was never nervous!

So why did he feel like if he messed this up, he would absolutely die?

Grumbling, the huge Reaver tilted the barrel on its side, walking as carefully as he could manage as his gaze turned upward. A sea of stars matched the ocean reflecting it, those endless lights and nebula twinkling merrily in the frigid air. It might have been chilly, but Rex hadn't taken any precautions: his chest was still as bare as when he was still in Hillsbrad. Apparently, the Draenei was too worried to even care about freezing, for even as another layer of shivers rocked his muscular body, he ignored it bluntly. The cold meant he was going the right direction – the Kaldorei sailors had taught him that long ago. Cold winds were North winds – and this special stop he needed to take was as far north as he needed to go.

All of the other corsairs had fallen asleep. Chief among them was Kyleri, the one that Rex wanted to keep asleep the most. She deserved the best night's rest possible, especially after the day that he and his Raiders had just put her through. While not necessarily bad, it was definitely eventful – a true life of a Raider. The Kaldorei seemed pleased to be aboard his ship though, and it made the Draenei's heart sing like the Naaru back in Shattrath. He hated to admit it, but the pirate did miss those tunes – and the fact that he had condemned his Raiders to a life of crime only made him regret it more.

Shaking his head, he pushed away the bad thoughts. There was no time for brooding – Rex had a job to do! Setting aside the barrel, the titanic Reaver observed the ship's deck with a one-eye leer, making sure everything was settled. Pleased with his inspection, he turned towards the doorway to his cabin – and froze.

It was fifteen feet away – and if he moved from his spot, he would destroy all of his hard work.

Rex kept halted, looking around anxiously as he realized he had just trapped himself. He probably should have thought this through a bit better, but the Draenei was never one for thinking too hard – the first thought was all that counted most. Now though, he wasn't too pleased with that line of thought. The pirate needed to get back to his room, and there was no way he could move to there without outside help. Maybe if he jumped? It was worth a try. The corsair inhaled deeply, bent his legs and-

“Rex?”

The cabin door suddenly creaked open, and the Draenei hastily moved back up into a standing position, grinning eagerly as if he wasn't about to cannonball directly at the open door like a missile.

“Kyleri! Rex thought you were asleep!”

“I was – I missed the teddy bear that kept me warm,” the Night Elf murmured gently, starting to open the door more than a crack. “What are-”

“Uh! Nothing! Rex is just-”

But Kyleri had already opened the door broadly, her silver eyes wide as she gazed onto the deck of the Iron Raider.

He had somehow taken the snow he had collected, and multiplied it by six. The deck was coated in a cloak of white, unblemished by any footprints, and the only part left uncovered was where Rex stood trapped. Small strings of tinsel fluttered in the cold wind, and the brilliant light of the stars above made the white snow dance with color. An aurora gracefully shimmered along that frost, creating so many different colors that there had to be entirely new ones undiscovered by mortal eyes before. Kyleri could only gape as Rex tentatively tried to move forward, only to realize he would destroy his creation if he did so.

“Rex was supposed to surprise Kyleri later,” he grunted sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head. “He knows the aurora is prettiest near Winter's Veil, especially on snow.”

“Rex...” the Kaldorei started, but with her hands over her mouth, she seemed at a loss for words. The Draenei only smiled simply, holding his arms out broadly.

“Rex wanted to give Kyleri a gift. This is-”

He was interrupted as the Kaldorei suddenly rocketed through the air, landing in his outstretched hands and clinging to him happily, hugging tightly.

“It's so beautiful! Rex, you shouldn't have-” was all she could do as Kyleri pressed her face into his neck, nuzzling against the Draenei eagerly as he held her. This affection was enough to bring some strength back in the corsair, for he chuckled raucously and looked down to her merrily.

“This? Just the background setting! HERE is Rex's gift for Kyleri!”

With a surprising amount of dexterity, his tail scooped up a parcel, and then offered it to the monk. It looked very messily wrapped – it was a bundled mess of giftwrap shrouded haphazardly around it. There had to of been at least ten feet worth of gift paper used, and that also included at least four different gaudy bows of different colors. When the Night Elf finally managed to shred through all of the paper, she held up a very big shirt – definitely in Rex size. It was far too massive for Kyleri to use, and yet she held it up ecstatically as she flipped it over to the front, which had a treasure chest symbol on it, and big bold letters emblazoned upon it: Keep yer eyes off me booty!

“Rex knows it isn't much, but he is happy to give Kyleri the shirt off his back if it means keeping her on his ship!” the Draenei spoke fondly, grinning widely. “That one is one of his favorites too!”

Kyleri looked utterly dumbstruck as she looked down to the shirt, to the pirate clutching onto her ever so tenderly, to the sky dancing with an infinite amount of colors above. Her silver eyes almost seemed to well up, and suddenly Rex looked highly nervous – he didn't want her to cry. Luckily though, she dove back into his chest, hugging him tightly and laughing as she did so. It brought a rumbling chuckle to the Draenei as well, and he held her warmly, enough to keep away the chill of the world around them. When they finally broke away from the hug, the Kaldorei looked back up towards Rex's scarred face and smiled gently.

“I wanna try it on.”

“Rex isn't sure if he can destroy the snow though,” he grunted a bit offhandedly, gazing at the perfect layer of ice worriedly. “He wanted it to be perfect for Kyleri's-” “If you take me back now I can show you your gift.”

Within two seconds, Rex had thundered across the deck and into the cabin, making it to the bedroom in record time as the Iron Raider now had several massive hoofprints marking its snowy deck, but all had gone silent in the night – at least for a few moments.

And then they banged for four more hours.

#jaegerwrites

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stxrmwithskin · 4 years

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Name: Esmeralda Rae Hastens.

Nicknames: Esme, Es.

Biological Age: 24.

Birthday: December 21st, 1993.

Star Sign: Sagittarius.

Place of Birth: Falls Church, Virginia.

Current Town: Falls Church, Virginia.

Sexuality: Pansexual.

Marital Status: Single.

Species: Death God.

Occupation: Stay at home mom, Heir to Heaven.

Education: General Studies, University.

Faceclaim: Phoebe Tonkin.

Relations:

Parents:

Brett Hastens (Father)

Adelya Petrova (Mother)

Landon Sandell (Step-Father)

Siblings:

Delilah Aurora Hastens (Twin Sister)

Adeline Avalina Petrova-Hastens (Eldest Sister)

Phoebe Hazel Hastens (Elder Sister, †)

Blair Elena Hastens (Elder Sister)

Jade Zoe Hastens (Younger Sister)

Sophia Gemma Hastens (Younger Sister)

Roxanne Chloe Hastens (Younger Sister)

Kyle Scott Hastens (Eldest Brother, †)

Matthew Zander Hastens (Elder Brother)

Gillian Sandell (Half-Sister)

Mark Sandell Half-Brother, Twin of Maia)

Maia Sandell (Half-Sister, Twin of Mark)

Other Relatives:

Zander Hastens (Uncle)

Veronica Claw (Non-Biological Aunt)

Octavia Hastens (Aunt, †)

Emberly Hastens (Aunt)

Nesryn Hastens (Aunt)

Children:

Iliana Phoebe Hastens (Adoptive Daughter, Biological Niece)

Vasilisa “Lissa” Adeliah Hastens (Daughter).

Romantic Partners:

Nathan Forbes (On/Off Boyfriend)

Julian Adello (Ex-Boyfriend)

Jasper Reese (Ex-Lover)

Rhysand Verselle (Ex-Lover).

Friends:

Elain Silvena (Best Friend, Former Handler)

Elody Killip (Best Friend, Roommate).

Physical Features:

Build: Slim.

Weight: 123.5 lbs.

Height: 5’7 ft.

Ethnicity: White.

Skin Tone: Olive.

Hair Color: Dark Brown.

Eye Color: Hazel with dominant green shades.

Tattoos: “Joy” in cursive on outer side of left wrist.

Birthmark: Crescent moon on right shoulder.

Scars: N/A.

Species Information:

Main Powers: Telepathy, materialization, elemental powers, flying, healing, resurrection, death prediction within family, aura reading, ability to see spirits, telekinesis, superhuman strength, speed, agility, dexterity, enhance senses, self-regeneration, shapeshifting into wolf, spell casting, immortality, ability to kill others with a thought. Main Weaknesses: Seraph blades are harmful but not lethal to Esmeralda. This will delay her regenerative capabilities for a certain amount of time depending on the grade of the wound. Seraph blades are blades angels are susceptible too, and because one of her more dominant species is angelic, she too is susceptible. Mort daggers are lethal to all death gods. If struck through the heart with one of these blades, Esmeralda would die. Mort daggers were five daggers created by Lucifer and hid all over the world meant for the original five death gods that original were born into existence, since Esmeralda is the child of one of the children of those death gods, she too is vulnerable to them.

Species Features: White feathered wings, wing slits, crescent moon birthmark originally meant for the Heir to Hell as she was supposed to be.

Diet: In order to maintain and keep up her extensive set of powers, Esmeralda must drink blood. This blood can be the blood of any other species.

Personality:

Esmeralda wasn’t always as cold and cynical as she’s become. Despite her family troubles, she was rather innocent and looked at the world hopefully. However, over the years she’s become colder and has had her eyes opened to what she believes to be the way of the world. There are a few exceptions for her iciness, and those are her children and her siblings. They get to see a warmer, more compassionate side of her. With them, she is understanding and kind. Esmeralda tends to avoid intense feelings and emotions using wit, a blunt attitude, sarcasm, and deflection. She feels a great deal, but is known for bottling things and pushing them down, so when she does deal with something head on, it brings all the other emotions to surface and she gets rather overwhelmed, often falling into states of depression. Because of the one constant of people walking out of her life and sometimes never coming back, she’s learned to push people away, to keep them at an arm’s length, which is another reason she avoids emotional honesty and intimacy, because it keeps people from getting too close to hurt her. She prefers superficial relationships with no true roots because they don’t result in a broken heart. She has trust issues, so if she ends up letting someone in and allowing them to get close, it’s not a common occurrence. She will be completely loyal to those she develops this bond with. However, if she’s hurt or betrayed, she can be extremely spiteful. Esme had a high temper and tends to snap first and ask questions later, though the exception to this is her kids. Her temper is volatile, and if someone she loves is especially threatened, violence tends to be a medium of that rage. She often finds rage and anger are the easiest emotions for her to feel, and knows if she dips far into the others, she won’t be able to control it, which is something she’s had a great deal of difficulty with, losing control. In most things, Esmeralda is blunt and uncensored, she has the tendency to say the things that if people noticed, they wouldn’t talk about. Though, the one thing she isn’t quite as blunt about is the rejection of her ‘destiny’. She fears the angels taking action against her, or worse, someone she loves if she full out rejects what they believe she is to do. And so, she lives her life just within the lines they’ve set for her, if only to avoid getting tortured, or having someone she loves targeted. More so than her sisters, she has the tendency to be reckless and impulsive, something that goes hand and hand with her blunt attitude and her temper. She acts and thinks on how she’s feeling in the moment, and doesn’t always take the time to sort it out. Despite a constant show of bravado and a generally cocky defect, Esmeralda is insecure, and believes herself to be expendable, something that started as early as her parents mistreating her, and developed more so with struggles in other relationships. Despite not wanting to get close, she’s rather extroverted, though she keeps the deeper parts of herself reserved, she tends to be more outgoing, however not everyone can get along with her attitude. Her biggest weak spot are her two children, and her biggest fear is that one day the angels will use this against her if she steps out of line. Despite her tendencies favoring rash actions, she’s intelligent, and she’s capable of being calculated.

Biography:

Background & Birth:

From the beginning of her pregnancy, Adelya knew that something was different. It had not been like her other pregnancies in any sense. She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something. As the pregnancy developed, she found her own health declining rapidly. She grew weaker and weaker the longer she was pregnant. Finally, Brett took Adelya to a shaman healer. Upon seeing her, the shaman was struck, and with a deeper, more magical search, he realized that the children Adelya carried had a far greater purpose than even their lineage would suggest. He informed them there had been a prophecy, long foretold within both the Hell and Heaven realms, that one day the time would come for new heirs to rise to take over Heaven and Hell. The heirs would be twin girls, with the first born being destined for darkness, meant to be future Heir to Hell, and the second born being destined for light, meant to rule Heaven. At first, neither was willing to believe it, but eventually came to terms with what their daughters were meant for. In preparation, they did as much research as they possibly could on the prophecy, something Adelya had a great deal of time to do with all the time spent on bedrest.

Adelya’s health continued to rapidly decrease. Near her seventh month of pregnancy, it was evident that she would not survive carrying the children to term. Even her vampire nature would not be enough to save her and her children. Two weeks into her third trimester, she discovered she was bleeding. Both she and Brett knew they had to save the children, so an emergency c-section was performed, which is where it all went wrong. The procedure was complicated because of her vampire nature, but alongside of that, the twins were not born in the natural order intended. Esmeralda, in line with the prophecy was intended to be heir to Hell, and was meant to be born first, however, because of the c-section, Delilah was born first, and despite the way fate was meant to swing, she was to be the Heir to Hell. Esmeralda was removed second, taking place as the Heir to Heaven.

Childhood:

Using complicated to describe her childhood would be a severe understatement. From day one, people doted on her twin sister over her. Where Delilah had been an easy, happy baby, Esmeralda had been a difficult one. While Delilah had a natural light charm about her, Esmeralda always had something darker about her, even when she was innocent, she was not her sister, and life had seemed set up to remind her of that fact. Though, despite being ignored, strangle enough she bore no ill will to her siblings that got more attention, to her it was a tragic but given fact that she came last. Anybody putting her above others often was met by surprise from Esmeralda. As long as she was able to comprehend the environment around her, she can remember the fights between her parents. More often than not, Esmeralda found herself caught between the fights of her parents. The couple did not simply squabble with each other or have small disagreements – when they fought, the house hold shook with the volume of their screams. They’d go on for hours, and more than often her relations with her parents were one or the other trying to sway her towards their side of the argument, if they even paid attention to her. If it wasn’t for the fact her elder sister Adeline was there to look after her and care for her, to give her the time of day when others would not, she might never have held onto her innocence and hopeful nature as long as she did.

She was eight the first time her father left. Even though she wasn’t always the closest with him, she mourned his departure. A lot of the times she questioned herself, what she could have done to make him stay, or what actions she had done to make him leave. The cycle continued each time he came back. She lost track of the times he’d leave, disappear for weeks, sometimes months or years. During those times, she couldn’t rely on her mother. She was either occupied with a new boyfriend or child. The only thing she could rely on were her parents abandoning her.

Teen Years:

The pattern of her father’s disappearances carried well on into her teenage years. The cycle became so normal, she began to forget that her father’s patterns had laid the groundwork to her always keeping a distance from people. Even as in her youth, she found ways to avoid intimacy, often through avoiding people in general. She was more introverted. And though her mother had them attending a human school, no true connections ever came of it. In class, she focused only on her courses and tasks at hand. She didn’t gossip with the other students or pass notes in the back of the class. The only time she was really open was when she was around her two sisters, Delilah and Adeline. While she and Delilah would always meet for coffee in the local café, in school, they were often avoided each other.

When Esmeralda was thirteen, her mother told her and Delilah about their prophecy. Though it had remained clear from the start to her that she wasn’t exactly like her other siblings, at least in terms of powers, she knew that. But she hadn’t expected the bomb that was dropped on her by any means. She had always believed that she was meant to be in the background. Delilah she could imagine as a leader, but herself, it hadn’t dawned on her in any sense. She spent almost two years scoffing at the idea, finding new ways to deny what she was meant to do. While she didn’t rebel against the idea in so many ways, she rejected it.

When she was fifteen, she started to shift, losing the innocence and optimistic nature. It started rather simply, in fact, with something that might have been normal by most circumstances. She got involved with a man. His name was Rhysand, and he was from an ancient family of hybrid vampire-werewolves. She found him wounded, and offered him her blood to heal. She knew the risks at the time, knew that her angelic blood could be addictive to those who craved blood, but she wanted to ensure he healed. And so she fed him her blood. Predictably, he got addicted to it, and she too got addicted to him in a way. He was escape from all the things at home. Her mother and father’s flightiness, the stress of the prophecy. For a time, she could just be carefree. She started skipping some days of school, spending most days at his house, often letting him feed off her just because she enjoyed the thrill. Eventually their relationship became sexual, and he took her virginity. They continued the rather unhealthy interaction for about a year. Unfortunately, Esmeralda fell for him, yet he hadn’t wanted that type of relationship with her, so when she told him of her feelings, she was rejected, and not kindly.

She was changed by it. The cruel rejection from the man she had loved stirred up all the feelings of a similar rejection from her parents and it basically took the lid off the bottle. She snapped. She started partying, often taking supernatural drugs to feel alive, to let her hair down and be out of control of something. She slept around, and didn’t regard anyone’s feelings but her own. Despite her close relationship with Delilah, they grew distant over the next two years as Esme changed. Delilah kept confronting her about her problems and habits, and Esme didn’t want to face them. Instead she grew closer to her sister Phoebe, who turned into her party buddy, someone who wasn’t trying to change her back into the girl she’d been before.

When she was seventeen, the angels took her for the first time. They had been watching her since birth, certain she would mess up since she hadn’t been intended to be the heir at all. Seeing her behavior, they believed it to be a disgrace to heaven and wanted to nip it in the bud immediately. They’d use a series of torture techniques. Physical and emotional. Whether they were messing with her mind, or ripping into her body, they found their ways to make Esme fear their wrath. The first time, they released her after a week. The second time, she was not nearly so lucky. They kept her for three months that time. No one came to save her as they simply believed she’d gone off the rails partying. And even though after two times of being tortured by the angels enough to fear them, she still went on partying. The third time she was taken for half a year. They allowed her to experience the fall from heaven to earth. She collided in her hometown in an alleyway, slamming hard enough into the ground to make her bones shatter. The pain knocked her unconscious.

Upon waking up, she was at the house of a male named Nathan. He had bandaged up her external wounds and had watched over her while she had healed. She had been more than alarmed and paranoid at first, but after spending a few days in his home, their relationship switched to the blossoming of a friendship. And perhaps it was because she didn’t know him, and he didn’t have expectations of her, but he was the first person she told about being tortured by the angels. He helped her come up with a loophole for the angels strict rules so she could continue to be her partying self. They spent three months around each other, and her platonic feelings for him developed into something more romantic, though she kept them hidden because Nathan had a girlfriend at the time. Eventually he broke up with his girlfriend two months after meeting Esme, simply because of her attitude and behavior. Eventually, he fell for Esme too. She let him in, trusted him and they started a relationship. It didn’t last long, eventually Nathan returned to his ex, breaking Esmeralda’s heart in a much deeper manner than before, and further affirming her trust issues.

Determined to go back to her lifestyle, she moved to Los Angelos with her sister Phoebe. For a while, they went about partying, doing so under the radar with Esmeralda dancing around the angels set lines. Phoebe started growing paranoid and carried an odd behavior. Esmeralda was scared she was losing it. Things only got worse when Phoebe discovered she was four months pregnant. It seemed to be her undoing. She spent most nights pacing the house, muttering about how something was coming for her. She gave birth a month before she was due, to a little girl.

Later in the evening after Phoebe had given birth, Esme woke up to the sound of the infant child crying. At first she thought nothing of it, until the crying persisted on. Eventually she got up, worry striking her. She went down to her sister’s room and found the child alone in her sister’s bed, and next to her, a letter. Esme calmed the infant down despite her confusion, then settled her back on the bed to read the letter. The letter was from her sister. Most of it was scribbled thoughts of her paranoia, but there was some clarity to it, telling Esme she loved her and that she was sorry.

Adult Years:

With her sister’s disappearance, there was no one to look after the daughter she’d left behind. Esmeralda was left to take on a child she had not been prepared for in any sort of way. But, despite her lack of being prepared for such a thing, she took it on. It was difficult, extremely so. But it was good for her, because it gave her a reason to smarten up. It gave her something to care about, to drive her. She became a mother to the child, adopting her as her own. She became more responsible, stopped partying and got sober of the spell ridden drugs she’d been relying on to take her from the cruelty of the world she’d been in. She struggled with it, but she always had something to anchor her, something to drive her to keep going. She ended up naming the child she adopted Iliana Phoebe, in honor of her sister and Iliana’s biological mother. It was one of her better kept secrets, at an early age she even imprinted a copy of her own birthmark onto Iliana’s shoulder, knowing that any biological child of hers would have it, and it would be necessary to make it seem as if Iliana was her true child.

She ended up meeting Julian two years after taking in Iliana. He was everything that she needed. He was safe, reliable. He had a daughter the same age as Iliana named Rose. They ended up getting together, but despite the fact that he was safe and secure with him, there was no passion. She loved him, but she was not in love with him. She made it work for as long as she could. Things started getting more serious, and when he proposed to her, she almost accepted, but realized it wouldn’t be right because while she loved him, she could never be in love the way he was. She ended things.

When Iliana was three years old, she felt a familiar echo of power, one she’d felt only three times before – when family members of her had fallen. Only this one was different, closer, it felt like a part of her. She knew what it meant, that her sister Phoebe had died. She wasn’t sure how, but she spent over a year trying to find her body, or her killer. She couldn’t find anything. It was hard to deal with the loss, but when she was finally no longer consumed by trying to find her, she mourned for her sister.

It was just after the death of her sister when Nathan came back into her life. She couldn’t believe it. At first, she kept him at a distance, scared to let him back in after he’d left her for his ex. She was terrified of being hurt. But she was vulnerable, with the death of her sister, and more than that, despite her better efforts, she still loved him, she ended up getting close again, and they became close to getting back together again. One morning she woke up, and he was gone, leaving her heartbroken all over again.

She never truly got that close to anyone romantically after that. The closest she came to romance was Jasper Reese, who came into her life two weeks later when she took Iliana for a check-up. He was a doctor known for treating the supernatural, and Iliana had a worrying fever. At first it was strictly professional, she relied on him solely for medical help with Iliana. It shifted when she discovered he was Iliana’s birth father. Knowing what it was like to be raised without a father, she told him that he was Iliana’s father, and let him be part of her life, even though she was scared he would try to take Iliana from her. Esme got involved in a physical with Jasper, and feelings started to develop, but then he too left. She discovered she was pregnant two weeks later, but knew because of the date that it was not Jasper’s, but Nathan’s. However, because the answer was easier, because Jasper held less power over her, she lied and told those who asked about the father that he was.

She had a daughter whom she named Vasilisa, though it was an incredibly rare day that she ever used her full name. Often she affectionately called her “Lissa.” She had her hands full with two daughters, but during her pregnancy she had taken the time to fully repair things with Delilah, whom she’d pushed away but always held closer than others. Those were her main emotional ties, as she swore of almost all romantic connections, certain they could only lead to pain. She still rejected her destiny in a more quiet manner, but never quite said it allowed, because she feared the angels may come and take the two most important things in the world to her, her daughters.

#fireandiceroleplay #biography

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addyhastens · 4 years

Photo

Quick Facts

Name: Adeline Avalina Hastens.

Nicknames: Addy, Ad, Princess.

Biological Age: 22.

Real Age: 40.

Birthday: August 14th, 1985.

Star Sign: Leo.

Place of Birth: Falls Church, Virginia.

Current Town: Falls Church, Virginia.

Sexuality: Heterosexual.

Marital Status: Divorced.

Species: Death God.

Occupation: Out of Home Business Owner.

Education: Partial University Education.

Faceclaim: Britt Robertson.

Family

Parents:

Brett Hastens (Father).

Adelya Petrova (Mother).

Landon Sandell (Step-Father).

Siblings:

Phoebe Hazel Hastens (Younger Sister).

Blair Elena Hastens (Younger Sister).

Delilah Aurora Hastens (Younger Sister).

Esmeralda Rae Hastens (Younger Sister).

Jade Zoe Hastens (Younger Sister).

Sophia Gemma Hastens (Younger Sister).

Roxanne Chloe Hastens (Younger Sister).

Kyle Scott Hastens (Younger Brother, †).

Matthew Zander Hastens (Younger Brother).

Gillian Sandell (Half-Sister).

Mark Sandell Half-Brother, Twin of Maia).

Maia Sandell (Half-Sister, Twin of Mark).

Other Relatives:

Zander Hastens (Uncle).

Veronica Claw (Non-Biological Aunt).

Octavia Hastens (Aunt, †).

Emberly Hastens (Aunt).

Nesryn Hastens (Aunt).

Children:

Kahlia Sophia Hastens (Eldest Daughter).

Audrey Mariella Hastens (Youngest Daughter, Twin of Parker).

Parker Brett Hastens (Eldest Son, Twin of Audrey).

Romantic Partners:

Nicholas “Nick” Goulding (Ex-Husband).

Chris Samson (Ex-Fiancé).

Friends: N/A.

Physical Features:

Build: Athletic.

Weight: 115 lbs.

Height: 5’3 ft.

Ethnicity: White.

Skin Tone: Light.

Hair Color: Blonde.

Eye Color: Blue.

Tattoos: Star on right shoulder.

Scars: Triangle-shaped scar on left ankle (Hex Mark).

Species Information:

Main Powers: Since her children were brought back to life, she’s stopped using her powers. The most she does is use a small glamor to make it appear to others as if she’s not a supernatural creature. Naturally, she has regenerative capabilities and though she’s not actively using her powers, these and her enhanced physical traits (speed, strength, agility, dexterity and senses) as well as her immortality function whether or not she’s actively using her powers. Before ceasing her use of powers, Adeline showed no true affinity. Being a death god, she is the embodiment of powers of all supernatural beings, and unlike many of her siblings, her body didn’t favor a particular species or power set, she could access and use them all. Mostly, she simply copied her father. Her only true infinity was shown towards the water element. Though she had control over all elements, she always had a pull to water.

Main Weaknesses: Mort daggers are lethal to all death gods. If struck through the heart with one of these blades, Adeline would die. Mort daggers were five daggers created by Lucifer and hid all over the world meant for the original five death gods that original were born into existence, since Adeline is the child of one of the children of those death gods, she too is vulnerable to them.

Species Features: N/A.

Diet: Before stopping using her powers, she often felt more powerful when drinking blood. Blood can allow her to heal more quickly, and offers a quick recharge when she down. She doesn’t consume a lot, but drinks a tiny bit once a week, just enough to provide some energy to keep glamouring herself.

Personality:

Adeline has always been a caretaker. From the earliest of ages she possessed a strong maternal instinct that drove her to look after others. Even as a small child, she often pretended to be a doctor and would look after her mother while she was pregnant, which was the only real time she ended up being sick, or look after sick animals. Her compassionate side drives her. Even before being put in a big sister type roll, she was driven by her warm and caring nature, the drive to help other beings. It’s lead to her having a more selfless complex. After an entire lifetime of constantly putting others above herself, she doesn’t know how to put herself first. She doesn’t know how to simply do things for her, and the thing that truly drives her is doing things for other people. While it may seem that she has a low self-esteem, she doesn’t often hold the mindset of someone who hates herself. For her it’s more so a fact of not thinking of herself as an option. Though in some factors, she does have an incredibly low self-esteem, such as her belief that she causes death. The initial loss of her children plagued her for years. She is haunted constantly by the idea that she was the reason for losing her child, that something is wrong for her that she couldn’t do the one thing to bring her child into the world safely. Even knowing about the curse has not helped the guilt or the shame, it’s only provided one way for her to not face the guilt. While Adeline was always one for facing problems, both intense emotional and more shallowly calculated problems head on with a clear and more logical mindset, she does tend to use avoidance tactics such as deflection to steer away from people alluding or outright saying that she often uses her caring for other people as a crutch and shield from admitting she never learned how to truly love or care for herself. More than often she’ll shift topics away from anything that grows close to pointing this fact out. In the cases of the previous pregnancy complications, she uses an entirely different tactic, and one that is uncharacteristically harsh for her. She superficially blames magic for the problems she’s experiences, and acts as if it is the reason for all issues within her and her family’s life when in reality, this is simply a way to hold down and bottle her emotions. Adeline doesn’t have a real mean bone in her body. She’s never been malicious, or cruel, she’s always been warm. She is however the most calculating of her sisters. She’s got an incredible intelligence, and tries to force herself as best as she can into a logical way of thinking so she can solve problems, though it’s not always the easiest for her to separate her soft heart from the decisions she makes. She’s naturally got a firm and guiding hand, something that has always had the tendency to put her in a leadership type position. Unlike a lot of her siblings, she has a far more forgiving nature. While she’s capable of holding a grudge or being upset with someone, this usually doesn’t last long and she often forgives them repeatedly, no matter how many mistakes they’ve made in the past – one of the biggest examples of this being her father. She’s not tempered, like the majority of her family, in fact she’s often the one to remain calm and collected in a situation, and while she does go to a panicked state, this often doesn’t result in anger. When she is angry, it is a quiet and icy rage that possesses her. She often is perfectly quiet, and most people only see the calm before the storm until it’s too late.

Biography:

Background & Birth:

Adelya and Brett didn’t start off in the best of ways, but soon antagonism turned into flirtation, allure and curiosity. And from that, a friendship blossomed and that blossoming friendship evolved into love. They were happy, at first, for a time. They wed a few months after being with each other. Everything was often rash and intense with the two of them, their decisions with their marriage and life was no different. About a month after they had gotten married, Adelya discovered she was pregnant with her first child. It came as a shock to both Adelya and Brett, as Adelya was a vampire and it wasn’t expected that she could conceive or carry a child.

Because of this, Brett was always hovering during the pregnancy. Almost every moment, he spent at her bedside, caring for her, checking on the baby to make sure they were both safe. It wasn’t an easy pregnancy, but it wasn’t nearly difficult as some of the other ones Adelya experienced. Finally, after nine months, Adeline was born. She was lucky enough to come into the world at a time where her parents were still very much in love with each other and when they very much loved her. She was greeted with open arms by all her family and the friends of family.

However, her family name turned into a curse. With such great power as her father possessed, and his cruel and hard nature that he’d had before meeting her mother, he’d made many, many enemies. These enemies were all over the world, seething and waiting for a chance at vengeance on him for what he’d done in the past. It was a warlock who decided that Adeline would be the one to pay the cost though. He didn’t think killing Brett or even Adelya would solve his problems, because it would be too quick, too easy. The pain would not be lasting. He knew though, from watching his own family suffer because of Brett’s actions, that the pain of having to watch a loved one in pain would be the only suited punishment for his crimes. And so only a day or two after news reached the warlock that Adeline had been born, he cursed her. The curse was rather simple. He made it so she could bear no child that would not fall to the hands of death. The mark of the curse marred her ankle in a triangular scar. Neither Brett nor Adelya knew what the scar had come from.

Childhood:

Unlike the majority of Brett and Adelya’s children, Adeline was born before the fighting began. When all the intensity and rash nature was turned on one another. She got to see something most of her other siblings didn’t get to see – her parents truly loving each other. Things were never quite like they had been in those first five years. They had been a proper family, they’d had love and light. And it had shown in the way that Adeline was raised in those five years. She was doted on by everyone, cared for, even had a best friend, Chris. But she was especially loved by her father. Even after her other children were born, she was always his soft spot.

She was happy, for those five years. And then the fighting started. It was small things at first, disagreements over furniture and clothing and parties to attend. Then it was her father telling her mother she spent too much time partying and drinking with her friends, and her mother telling her father that maybe if he wasn’t running off all the time, consumed by his job as the embodiment of death. It tore her apart to see her parent’s relationship falling and crumbling before her eyes. She often stayed up at night in her bed, listening to them yelling through the walls. More than often she’d try to do damage control, going out of her way to be well-behaved after their fights, if only so she didn’t agitate it. Even though her mother and father had always encouraged her looking out to her siblings, she’d also have the tendency to look after them and do what she could after the fights to make sure they weren’t scared by the fighting.

It only escalated from there. Love turned to possession, hatred and anger. And Adeline was there to watch it. She was there while her parents sought different things to solve problems that they had, as they had more kids in hopes that might repair their broken relationship. Her mother had become completely dependent on her to look after the kids by the time she was eight. It was a big responsibility for someone so young, but it seemed natural to her. Since she thought it might make things better, she kept doing it – kept trying to look after the others in hopes that their family might stay together. Holding her family’s broken bits into one piece became her mission and purpose.

Teen Years:

Holding her family together was not a mission she abandoned in her teenage years. Her family came first, no matter one. She put it above everything, even above herself. They were always more important to her. Even though her mother had enrolled her into a human school so she could have a normal education to fall back on as opposed to simple money and riches she would inherit from her father, she barely had time to focus on it. Despite the intelligence she had, she never did her best. She maintained good grades, but they were not by a mark what she could have gotten if she hadn’t been so distracted – if she’d been able to apply and immerse herself in her studies. Even though she was well liked in school, people never got the chance to get truly close to her. All those friends she had were human and she knew they couldn’t know the truth anyway, so she used that divide as an excuse to put her family once more above her personal connection. She even grew apart from Chris, her friend since childhood who knew all the details of her family.

In the craziness of her family drama, her only true escape was her books. She’d often get overwhelmed, and while she didn’t let it break a calm exterior that she’d forced herself to learn, she needed an escape to get away from all the stress her family could bring on. So when all of her responsibilities were handled, she’d bury herself in books. She’d always choose books with character who she could relate too, so if she focused hard enough, for just a little while it could almost be like she was somewhere else for a change. It was the closest she ever really got to doing things for herself.

When she was sixteen, her father left for the first time. Through all the fights, all the arguments and screaming, a part of her never really believed he’d leave. She spent so much time holding her family together, she almost believed she could do it forever, that if she kept trying, if she gave it her all, it would work. It was the crushing of this ideal that led to Adeline taking it the hardest when her father left. She tried to hide it, tried not to show how heartbroken she was when she was looking after her little sister’s and brother’s, or comforting her mother, but at night, when she was alone in her room, she cry for him and plead to the crushing silence for him to return.

It became almost normal, and a lot of the time, Adeline was able to forgive her father for leaving. She was too willing to. Every time he’d come back, she’d let him again, hoping it would mean her family might be whole again. It took her a long time to realize that her father and mother weren’t meant to be forever. It took her a long time to really stand up to him even. It wasn’t until she was eighteen and her younger brother, the second oldest of the family died that she truly lost it at her father, when she didn’t forgive him for leaving. She blamed him for her brother’s death because instead of having been there when he died, to defend him, he had been gone.

Adult Years:

Adeline’s duty still lay with her family, even when she’d reached adulthood. She still held a dedication to her siblings, to her mother. Even if her mother was out partying all the time, or messing around with a new boyfriend. She was there. And though she’d tried to be normal, to have something like a college experience, it didn’t work and she only got halfway through her first year. There was one thing that got her away from her family, aside from reading. At least in a way.

Her father had had a vampire friend named Nick Goulding. He’d been around a fair bit growing up, and he was no stranger to her. But a few years before her father had left, there’d been a falling out, so he’d faded away from her family life. When she was eighteen, only a few months after her brother had died, she ended up running into Nick again. He’d left town for a while, but had been coming in for a brief visit. They ended up having dinner and talking. It had been nice, to see the face of someone who didn’t just simply expect her to do something for them.

He left town a week later, but they had spent a few hours together, spread out over that week. That time spent together had been enough for Adeline to be reminded of a small childhood crush she’d had on him, and that it was a lot easier now to fall for his charm in a more serious manner. He returned a few months later, after she’d turned nineteen, this time because he was moving back to town. It gave her a new outlet, one away from her family. He already knew things, knew her father, her mother. She could talk to him or well not talk at all. Sometimes they would just be around each other. Her feelings got serious, and soon it became all too real a fact that she was head over heels in love with him.

It took her two months to gain the courage to tell him, but when she finally did, he admitted he’d been feeling things too, but had been worried it was wrong because of so many things. Despite this, they pursued a relationship. They ended up married rather quickly, just before she turned twenty years old. It was more of a rash decision, but she had been certain that she loved Nick, and he was the one for her at that time. She thought they were soulmates.

Things were okay at first. They were happy. Her attention was still with her family, but he’d become a part of that family, so it was much easier to balance both parts of her life. It started to get more difficult near the end. Things were more complicated. Adeline found out she was pregnant, and Nick realized when she told him he wasn’t ready for the seriousness of the entire thing. It got difficult. Nick started growing distant from her, and Adeline was left to deal with a lot of the pregnancy on her own. She was five months along when Nick told her he’d cheated on her. It broke her heart, but she did what she often did and forgave him. Though what he’d done made her question many things about herself. She only got more depressed and stressed after his confession. At seven months along, she went into early labor. The baby was still born.

Nick ended things with her a week later. She spiraled, falling into a pit of despair. She’d throw herself into anything and everything she could focus on besides the crushing loss of both her husband and child all at once. It was too much for her, and she thought throwing herself into taking care of her family once more was far better than facing the pain of that loss.

A few years passed, and she was obviously facing a serious depression, but still denying it to everyone around her, if they even noticed at all. She ran into Chris once more, her childhood friend. He was just returning from university and he had gotten a job in town. At first, things were stiff. After all she’d been the one who’d built the distance between them at first. But he became the first person she really let herself get close to after losing the baby and Nick. They became friends once more, and he eventually helped her get help, even arranged for her to see a therapist to help her cope with her problems. She got some closure, and even though she didn’t get a complete release from her pain, it was enough for her to start moving on with her life.

A year or two passed, and her friendship with Chris persisted. He was her rock in life, and provided her with a security she hadn’t gotten to experience with many others. She had developed feelings at one point, but had sat on them because of him being in a relationship. Eventually they faded, or she’d pushed them back enough so that they weren’t in the conscious part of her mind. His relationship eventually ended because he and his girlfriend didn’t want the same things – like kids. He talked a lot about having kids, how he thought about seeking out other methods of having a child, such as having a surrogate carry his child. Even though she still mourned for her daughter, she too wanted a child. So she offered to be the mother to his child, for them to raise the child together as friends. He agreed.

After a process of artificial insemination, Adeline found out she was pregnant with not just one child but two. The pregnancy was difficult. She was on constant alert, paranoid and terrified that she might lose her children. Chris was there, for every appointment, every single moment. They grew close, and eventually admitted they had feelings for each other. Even got engaged. However, when she was four months along, she awoke one night bleeding. When she went to the hospital, Chris had her go in the office alone. The doctor informed her she had lost her twins. When she left the office Chris wasn’t there. He’d abandoned her. She called a dozen times, went looking for him over and over. She never found him.

Four years later, her father returned once more after a very long time. Unlike her usual behavior, she was furious with him. He hadn’t been there, hadn’t held her or soothed her when she’d cried her eyes out every night for months after she’d lost her kids, hadn’t been there to help her through her pain. He’d left her alone so many times, and that finally hit her, even more so than it had when her brother had died. In the process of her anger, she told him why she was so angry. And after her anger had faded into sadness, when the emotion had subsided to normal levels, he told her he could bring her children back.

She was in disbelief at first, because she’d tried herself to use her powers to bring her kids back to no avail. However, when he did it, it worked. Only the twins had to be resurrected within her as they had no solid vessel. It was during the resurrection of the twins they he recognized the curse on his daughter. After some research, he learned the details of the curse and who’d done it, and while he tried to get him to break the curse, it wasn’t possible, but he at least now knew there was a way around it. After he told Adeline about the curse, she officially forgave him for leaving, and found some peace in the life she had to look forward to with her kids. Though, to avoid some of the weight of guilt on her, she found herself blaming magic for the problems within her life, and decided her kids would not have magic in their lives.

Years later, Adeline still lived in her home town with her daughter Kahlia and her twins Audrey and Parker. Most of the time, her life is consumed with being a stay at home mom, though she does make teas and perfumes and sells them out of her home as a hobby.

#fireandiceroleplay #rp #biography

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