#this suffering was never avoidable. maybe in a kinder world they would have been able to rally together. but they couldnt

[zeravmeta]

really does hit the moment that both the bloodthirsty king of vampires and the warmonger nachzehrer king are utterly baffled by the sorrow they feel the moment theresa dies

because that's really the only reason why the sarkaz, why theresis, are declaring this endless war on the world starting with victoria: it's pride, it's suffering, it's anger, it's revenge.

it was cruel of theresa to ask them to forgive and forget, yes. the suffering of the sarkaz is not something that could have been fixed within a single lifetime, the wounds ran too deep. no matter how much they wish they could have believed in theresa, the suffering of the sarkaz would not just vanish no matter how much she did. the core issue between the sarkaz and the rest of terra lies in their ancient grudge, the thousands of years of entrenched bitterness and loss that the sarkaz suffered and still suffer to this day. they have no home, not even kazdel, because the only thing kazdel really is at this point is the reminder that they once did have a home, have dignity as the teekaz rather than just "the sarkaz, the devils".

but even then, theresa was simply born ahead of her time. they were not ready for her future, and they all know this. babel was a dream that theresa tried her damnedest to accomplish, but they were too bitter to accept it. no matter how much they wanted to believe in it, the royal sarkaz court, scareye, the countless sarkaz we see through Babel, none of them could ever see true unity.

it's a unity that neither theresis nor pre-amnesia doctor could conceive.

theresis and doctor have their own roles to play, and their own promises to keep: the sword of kazdel that will revitalize their past glory and strike down all who oppose them, the last survivor of an alien race dedicated to completing the ancient project of a world long past to ensure its future, they are unable to accept another way.

"I can't accept your beautiful and fleeting dream, theresa. not after all the sacrifce."

they were not strong enough to believe in her. no matter how much they loved her, how much they wish they could have seen her dream come true, they simply couldn't.

it was always going to end on that bloodstained floor. they were always going to sleep, and dream that things could have been different. that one could have let go of their past, be it the long held suffering and revenge or the guilt of duty as the last survivor.

we will always be equal. i will always hold your beautiful dream in my heart.

you have to keep going, even if I am not here anymore. you're free now.

[restlessmaknae]

back to life

Jinyoung didn’t deserve to be believed, being misunderstood was his punishment for not being able to help his friend when he would have needed it. He felt like he could have a redemption only if he finished school without anyone talking to him, so why... why did you want to see him when he wanted to be invisible?

➳ Characters: high school senior!Jinyoung x female reader/you

➳ Genre: high school au, coming of age, real-life bittersweet

➳ Words: 5.2k

➳ Warning: due to the connection to the CIX story films, there will be mentions of Yonghee's suicide attempt, bullying, violence, minor character death (Seunghun's mother), blood, hospital visits, plus panic attack, insomnia and a lot of guilt, negative self-talk on Jinyoung's part, reader has a non-specified digestive disorder, so please, do not read the story if you feel triggered by such topics!

➳ A/N: This was a story that I came up with even before the Save me, kill me MV and the following story films (ep. 6-10) were released, so there are parts that do not cover the story films, yet this is my general interpretation of its lore, plus additional fictional parts. Hope you enjoy it! ❤️

➳ CIX taglist: @wccycc, @dat-town

Jinyoung knew that he deserved the glares, the stares, the malicious whispers behind his back. If that was what he had to bear for what he had done (or hadn’t done) to Yonghee, then so be it. He could never suffer as much as his friend had done so.

He deserved it, he knew that, he deserved it all.

So he kept his eyes on the ground, avoiding the endless sea of judgemental faces, shut his ears to block out the noise of rumours, and kept his emotions at bay to prevent further bursts of fury to unleash onto someone who didn’t deserve it. After all, if he had just been kinder to Yonghee, if he had just treated him gently instead of using violence, maybe this would have not happened… If… In this world, ifs didn’t amount to anything. They couldn’t bring back the happy memories they shared, they couldn’t turn back time prior to the tragedy, and they couldn’t magically bring Yonghee to consciousness. Despite the fact that the boy was still alive, the heart monitor beside his hospital bed indicating that his heart hadn’t given up, the doctors weren’t that positive regarding his condition.

“He fell from such a high building…”

“He lost so much blood…”

“The fall was rough, he hurt himself badly…”

As if the boy hadn’t struggled enough before, he was still in so much pain, and seeing his body attached to all those wires, oxygen mask on his scarred face, impossibly white sheets covering his injured body, Jinyoung felt even worse. Whenever he visited his friend in the hospital, whenever he looked at Yonghee’s face, he was reminded of their last encounter, and it was enough for him to want to scratch at his skin for it was too unbearable to deal with the consequences of his own actions.

Even though Hyunsuk had tried to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, Jinyoung didn’t believe him. After all, Yonghee had jumped the day he had pushed him to the shelves, yelling at him, asking if he had been crazy to want to hurt himself over a bad grade. He could never understand the obsession of Yonghee’s parents regarding their son’s good grades, let alone how much it impacted the boy since he himself had never been a good student, nor had he tried to be one.

If he could have just been a bit more empathetic, if he had just opened his eyes to the signs a little earlier…

Jinyoung felt the rush of guilt creeping into his veins, taking over his heart and mind, and he welcomed the feeling almost like a familiar visitor by now. He balled his hands into fists, his nails digging deep into the flesh as he tried to let it wash through him, let it drown him. He wanted nothing more than to drown in this feeling, but reality always brought him back to life - this time, it was you.

“Oh, sorry,” you apologised hastily as you noticed the boy sitting on the floor between two bookshelves, and he looked up, albeit a bit hazily. It was as if you had woken him up from a stupor, he still didn’t feel like his senses were his, his surroundings were real. It was always like this when guilt pulled him under.

He kept quiet, waiting for you to break eye-contact or outright leave this particular section of the school library that he had found to be quiet, so he could hide here while the others were having lunch at the canteen. Not that he had a good appetite these past few weeks, but bearing the watching eyes of others while eating would have been too much, all too much. So just like before, he was a coward, and cowardly chose the easier path - running away.

After transferring schools, somehow rumours followed him, and now everyone here thought that he had killed a student aggressively at his previous school, and he had only managed to avoid juvy because his parents were rich and bribed the jury. While in reality, Yonghee’s case was classified as a suicide attempt for now, and the boy had neither died, nor had Jinyoung been the bully in his case. Not that it mattered when his friend was still lying in bed, still in a coma.

“Do you mind if I join?” You inquired instead of leaving, and confusion brought Jinyoung back to the here and now. Why were you trying to join him when he was a so-called murderer? And why did you bring your lunch box to the library? Did you not eat at the canteen like the others?

He merely looked at you, unfazed, and only spoke up when you didn’t leave.

“Why? Don’t you believe what they say about me?”

“I don’t,” came the answer immediately, and the fast response took the boy aback. “If you had indeed killed someone, and your parents would have bribed the jury, they would probably not want anyone else to know about the bribery, so word wouldn’t have gotten around. Besides, you would probably not be as lifeless as you are now if you had indeed killed someone in cold blood,” you explained thoroughly, your tone almost diplomatic. Ah, now he knew who you were - not by your face but by your voice. You were the top student of the other class, and you went to English classes together. You were always the one who had to give the right answer when no one wanted to speak up.

“Why believe in my innocence when you don’t even know me?” Jinyoung protested, not letting the topic drop. He didn’t deserve to be believed, being misunderstood was his punishment for not being able to help his friend when he would have needed it. He felt like he could have a redemption only if he finished school without anyone talking to him, but instead, looking down on him, and labelling him as a murderer.

So why, why did you want to see him when he wanted to be invisible?

“I know prejudices are scarcely right, and besides… you are in my usual hideout place,” you remarked as you pointed around you. Jinyoung could have believed that the autobiography section of the school library wasn’t that frequently visited, but for you to have it as your usual hideout place meant that you must have frequented it.

Jinyoung found himself unable to say anything to that, and you took that as a sign of approval, so you lowered yourself down and sat on the ground, your back to the shelf opposite of the one Jinyoung leaned towards. You were at a decent distance from each other, but the boy still felt oddly bare given the visibility. It was as if he was afraid that you would get to know how torn and broken he was if you got any closer. Which you didn’t, thankfully.

Instead, you opened your lunch box, and took a bite from your seemingly homemade food. You stared at the books in front of you instead of looking at him, and he was both relieved and frustrated by this. All of this just for you to sit there to eat?

On the other hand, Jinyoung knew that he had no reason to question you. Not you out of all people. So he just let you have your lunch in peace while he was slipping back into his own self-destructive thoughts, glad that they didn’t change. Someone like you might have believed that he was innocent, but Jinyoung knew very well that he wasn’t. If anything, he might have been the worst of them all. Even Seunghun could forgive Yonghee after what had happened to Seunghun’s mother, but why couldn’t Jinyoung move on from that day and wish for his friend to wake up?

Because he knew very well that he would need to face him, and he wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t sure that he would ever be.

Jinyoung should have known that when you meant that the autobiography section in the school library was your hideout place, you meant that you went there frequently, but he didn’t give it too much thought. In fact, he didn’t really give anything too much thought apart from how he should have been there for Yonghee, and how much he wished he could have turned back time to make everything right.

On the other hand, you did come back day after day, and the boy didn’t have the heart to send you away, nor did he find a different hideout place when students were all over the building and the schoolyards during lunch break, so there was nowhere else to hide. Here though, no one bothered you. To be precise, Jinyoung was bothered by your presence at first, but since you didn’t push him for answers, you just greeted him when he showed up or vice versa, and finished your lunch in silence, he couldn’t find a reason to be bothered by you. He merely didn’t understand why you weren’t bothered by him.

“Why don’t you eat with the others?” He found himself asking once, eyes narrowing as his eyes found yours. You blinked a few times at him as if you were surprised that he had actually asked a question from you, and gulped down your food before answering.

“I don’t have any friends, and I don’t want anyone to comment on my food. I have enough of that on school trips,” you sighed out, your voice carrying an all too familiar emotion - bitterness. Raw, deeply personal, and fragile. Bitterness wasn’t a feeling that he had been familiar with before, but now, if one emotion could embody what he was going through, it would be this one big mess of bitterness without seemingly an end in sight.

The boy assumed that you would leave it at that, but you didn’t. He found that he didn’t exactly mind.

“I have gut problems, so I need to bring my own food, but they make fun of it as if I chose to eat this way. You don’t realise how isolating it can be when you can’t eat the food that others eat, but here, no one bothers me,” you added as you looked around the huge, still shelves of books that could indeed not ask stupid questions, let alone judge her for spending her lunch break here. He could understand the sentiment well.

“That’s ridiculous,” he snorted in disbelief, but your lips trembled and sadness moved into your eyes, so he felt the need to add. “That they make fun of you for that, I mean. It’s not your fault,” he justified solemnly, and your shoulders easened as if you had been bearing a weight for so long that had just come off now.

“You’re the first person who says that at school.”

Jinyoung was about to open his mouth, but he couldn’t utter a word. It had never been him who had caught onto someone’s change in their body language or who was said to be the most empathetic. After all, if he had been, Yonghee wouldn’t have laid in a hospital bed… So for you to voice out that he was the first one who took your side, he didn’t even know if he should have protested or shared that it was only natural in his eyes.

He closed his mouth, and looked down at his own intertwined fingers - ones that pushed those away who wanted to keep him close, ones that pushed Yonghee away quite literally when he should have needed help the most. He felt himself going back into his usual spiral of destructive thoughts when your voice pulled him out.

Again.

“Where’s your lunch? Aren’t you eating?”

He was so surprised by the question that his eyebrows elevated and his eyes widened. He was sure that he seemed pretty dumbfounded because you let out a short-lived yet beautiful (thus fragile) giggle, and explained that you figured out that he was here during lunch break because he didn’t want to eat with the others. However, unlike you, he didn’t have food with him.

“I don’t feel like eating.”

“You should. You need the energy to bear all the weight of those malicious rumours,” you pointed out almost gently, giving him a small smile before turning back to your food and proceeding to eat.

You didn’t say a word afterwards, nor did he, but now he wasn’t sure whether his lack of response was because he didn’t find it in himself to tell you that he didn’t care, that he was fine, that he deserved it, that you didn’t know anything, or because he was awestruck by the fact that someone cared. That you cared whether he ate or not, whether he was affected by the malicious rumours or not.

That you cared about him in the first place.

Jinyoung wouldn’t deem it a habit, but you still came back day after day, and he did come back day after day as well, and somehow you fell into this unfamiliar rhythm of silences filled with occasional, more or less vulnerable questions, and his heart was open to answer them. Even when you inquired whether he didn’t want to fix the broken watch around his wrist and he said that it was a friend’s, so he didn’t want to, he didn’t mind telling you, and you didn’t push for more details, so he left it at that.

He didn’t admit though that the watch was Yonghee’s, and that he found it with a torn glass lens on the rooftop of the school - from where Yonghee had jumped from. He had picked it up alongside the boy’s phone, and selfishly kept the watch, so that it could remind him of the only time that mattered - of his friend’s lifespan; so that it could be a compass for him - to show where he was supposed to go; so that it could be a guide for him - to indicate what he was supposed to do, what was the right thing to do. Such as not beating up the bullies at his previous school even though he had wanted to.

You also shared how tough it was to constantly live up to the expectations of your parents, teachers and classmates, and how you were always supposed to give the right answer even if you were an outcast, even if you were ridiculed for your health problems, even if you were never enough. Hearing that, Jinyoung couldn’t help but be reminded of Yonghee (when wasn’t he reminded of his friend, honestly?), but you seemed to be floating above all the criticism well.

When he inquired how you managed, you shared that you worked with a therapist, and the boy was surprised both to hear that and to hear you admit that, yet you confessed that asking for professional help had probably been the best decision of your life. You knew either way that school would be over soon - as you were seniors -, and you hoped university would be different. Besides, you hoped that you would meet people who could understand you like you had found Jinyoung.

The boy was never one to feel touched, but when you confessed that you deemed him someone who could accept you for who you were, he felt immensely moved. He was overcome with this inward urge, this deep want to keep you safe that was just so jarring, he felt like catching his breath while only staying still. Yet, he couldn’t tell whether it was because he didn’t want history to repeat itself or because he genuinely wanted it to stay this way. He was, as always, torn, and he wasn’t sure whether he could get an answer to his turmoil of emotions.

Nevertheless, when you didn’t come to the library for a few days, Jinyoung immediately jumped to worrisome conclusions, and he even went as far as to ask from your homeroom teacher whether you were absent because of an illness or because something had happened to you. The elderly man reassured him that you caught some bug, so you would probably come back a few days later, and unbeknownst to him, he was relieved, lungs working to full capacity again, heart quitting those crazy palpitations he had while worse and worse scenarios were going through his head.

Interestingly so, the next time you met wasn’t even in the library, but at the sports day event where everyone was supposed to participate, at least as spectators, and he found you sitting alone on the bench of the grandstand, so he headed towards you.

You looked up as he approached, and there was a small smile hiding in the corner of your lips as you realised who he was. Upon the sight, he was yet again overcome by that feeling of protectiveness. He knew that just as much as he could make you smile, he could hurt you as well, and he didn’t want that, but he didn’t want to run away either. Not from you. Not from someone who didn’t push him for questions, who didn’t care that he didn’t talk a lot about his past, who didn’t care that odd rumours were spread about him.

Besides, his internal turmoil in the past few days prompted him to appreciate the time you two could spend together, and so he wanted to keep these times within an arm reach, he didn’t want them to slip through his fingers, to crush and burn, and be just a faded, bitter memory in the future of what ifs and could haves.

So he took the first step towards you, and then the next, and before he knew it, he was sitting beside you, both of you watching the currently playing students on the field.

“You didn’t come in the past few days,” he pointed out matter-of-factly while still keeping his eyes on the football match. He saw from the corner of his eyes that your shoulders tensed a bit, and you audibly took in a deep breath before answering.

“Yeah, well… I wasn’t really feeling well. The meds that I’m taking for my gut suppress not only the harmful stuff but the beneficial bacteria, so I’m more susceptible to illnesses. It’s not the first time it happened either,” you concluded a bit bitterly, and he could hear the hurt in your voice. Though you tried to mask it, though he had not always been good at picking up on the signs, he could tell that your condition bothered you - the fact that you were tending to one illness while leading the way for others.

“Are you feeling better now?” Jinyoung inquired genuinely after clearing his throat, and looked at you just in time for you to look at him. As your gazes connected, something inside of him burst, and it flew through him in waves of warm, comforting reassurance. Just the fact that you were beside him, seemingly safe and sound, lifted such a heavy weight off his shoulders, he felt like he could breathe again.

At least for the lifespan of this conversation.

“Yeah, I think so. Don’t worry.”

“I didn’t,” the boy tried to protest immediately, but you narrowed your eyes as if you were trying to decide whether to question his words or not. In the end, you did speak up.

“The homeroom teacher told me that you asked about me. He thought I was tutoring you or something like that, and that’s why you asked about me,” you replied without batting an eye, however, Jinyoung couldn’t bear to look at you anymore. Instead, he looked away, finding the currently running boys on the field much more interesting.

The truth is, the boy didn’t know why he was embarrassed about the situation. Worrying about someone after what had happened to Yonghee was still an unfamiliar feeling to him. He didn’t even know he was concerned about you until you didn’t show up at the library, but if there was one thing he had learned from the past few months behind him, it was that he couldn’t take anything for granted. Or anyone, for that matter.

“Anyways, do you want to exchange contacts? At least, I can tell you next time if something like this happens,” you suggested warily, breaking the silence that fell upon the two of you. Jinyoung slowly shifted his eyes from the field to you, but you were looking down at your intertwined fingers, your phone resting under your hands.

“Sure,” he found himself saying even though he wasn’t sure that it was him speaking. Even you were a tad bit surprised that he had given it so quickly, but either way, you exchanged contacts before you were called for a jogging race and needed to leave him behind.

Nevertheless, as you were walking down the stairs, you halted and looked back over your shoulder, directing a gentle smile in the boy’s direction. Whenever he saw you smile like that, the only thought that he had was for how long you could smile like that before he would paint it with agony and hurt, before he would ruin your blossom of affection, before he would break the heart you held out to him.

“Thank you. For worrying about me.”

Your voice broke through the overwhelming mass of his own destruction that was ready to bring him down anytime, and suddenly, in that moment, his heart whispered something else: maybe your smile was one for change, one for hope.

Jinyoung knew that they all blamed themselves for what had happened to Yonghee, and they had all changed since their friend had tried to commit suicide. Byounggon, for one, had dropped out of school altogether after he had realised that he had no power as someone who lived alone on a rooftop, abandoned by his parents, struggling to make ends meet with school and his part-time job. He had started working full-time instead. Seunghun, who had aspired to become a dancer before, had given up on dancing after he had not been able to go back to the practice room because it always reminded him of how his mother had died. He was completely lost for now. Hyunsuk, who had always tried to do well at school - to gain his parents’ love and his father’s attention who lived far away since his parents’ divorce - had started dropping in rank, even going as far as attempting to steal because he could no longer tolerate who he was, and how the supposed-to-be perfect Yoon Hyunsuk had not been able to help his friend because he had been blinded by his own suffering.

And Jinyoung, well… He had changed schools, but his guilt followed him everywhere. His parents said that they didn’t even recognise him anymore, but Jinyoung couldn’t either. Whenever he looked into the mirror, he saw his friend’s face as he had grabbed Yonghee by the collar and pushed him to the shelves, and he wished he could break the mirror, punch the glass until his knuckles bled, scream at the top of his lungs until he became speechless. The truth is, he felt like a part of him had died on the day Yonghee had jumped from the rooftop. Living was painful, but sleeping wasn’t peaceful either. He was constantly tormented by nightmares, and not even the sleeping pills could help - they helped with actually going to sleep, but not with chasing away his nightmares.

He wasn’t one to believe in miracles because he had tasted the bitterness of life, but you, you seemed to shine some light in the darkness. A kind of light that warmed him but also scared him at the same time. What if you were suffering in silence, and he wasn’t able to help? Again. What if he was to hurt you, either literally or figuratively? Again. What if he couldn’t take care of you? Again. The thought of anything happening to you made his already agonising days even more frightening. Staying away from you seemed as much of a bad idea as getting closer to you. He was truly lost in his sea of emotions, he felt like drowning.

And just when he thought that he was doing better, he realised that the hardest part was still left: letting go of the guilt when his friend’s state was still uncertain. However, if you hadn’t told him to think from Yonghee’s point of view, he would have never realised that Yonghee would want him to be happy. Yet, he had a panic attack once when you were in the library and he got a message from Seunghun saying that Yonghee’s heart had stopped for a while, but they had managed to resuscitate him. Afterwards, words just spilled out from him, and it was like an avalanche: sweeping everything up into the air, raging through slopes and destroying anything that got in its way.

Jinyoung told you that he blamed himself for everything, and that he was the reason his friend had still not woken up, and you let him speak until his mouth ran dry, until his words bled together, until his heart was finally brought out from the shadows, put in front of you to hold and decide whether to break it or tend to it.

You seemed to decide on the latter.

“It’s hard to say for sure at times like this, but usually, a decision like this is more about a handful of different things coming together at the wrong time, and consequences seeming daunting. Your friend might have also wanted things to be different,” you mentioned tentatively after you had let him tell you whatever he wanted. He figured that you had a feeling that if you interrupted him, you would hold him back from sharing the whole story, and he was sure that it could have gone down that way because he wasn’t one to talk about his emotions, especially not the ones regarding Yonghee.

“I don’t know…”

“He might have been happy while you had been together. It might have given him strength to hold out for so long. Something in him still wants to fight,” you reasoned gently, your words rolling off like drops of rain on a tranquil night just between fall and winter.

These were just words, mere syllables put together, but Jinyoung was struck, he felt his heart clench, his mind flooded with the memories they had made in the movie club, flashbacks of Yonghee smiling, the twinkling eyes of the boy, the childish giggle of his… and in that moment, Jinyoung realised that his mind was clouded by all the pain of the past few months, and he couldn’t see the joy, the care, the happiness before… It was as if everything else had been erased from his life apart from his wrongdoings and the events that followed Yonghee’s fall.

And in that moment, he found himself collapsing like pillars of a building that gave in to the massive weight on top of them, and cries broke out of him. Ugly, raw, heart-wrenching sobs that you didn’t try to muffle, you didn’t try to calm down, you merely let him like it all out.

And for that, he would always be thankful because he felt like he had been holding out for so long, he had tried to keep it all together before because he couldn’t crumble, he couldn’t cause more pain to others around him, but maybe it wasn’t about being a burden to others, it was about being human.

After so long without being in the same room together that was not the hospital ward, the four boys got together to read Yonghee’s letter, back at the music club of their old school. To be precise, Jinyoung and Byounggon’s old school. And you were right, Yonghee confessed in his letter that the only happy times he had were the ones he had with the four of them. Damn it, you were right.

No wonder tears were shed, words were exchanged, and after watching the movie they had worked on together, Jinyoung felt like something mended. It was as if with Yonghee’s fall, they had all fallen apart like broken pieces of a vase because there wasn’t a glue anymore that held them together - there wasn’t Yonghee there to keep them together. Yet, now they were together like this again. For a while after what felt like eternity, they were themselves again. It felt like maybe they forgave themselves. Not entirely but maybe forgiveness wasn’t as far as they had thought so.

And coincidentally, the next morning when Jinyoung was at school, zoning out during Maths class, he received a message in the groupchat that Yonghee had woken up. He didn’t think twice, he disregarded the exclaims of the teacher, the stares of his classmates and ran through corridors, streets, hallways, hopped on and off buses until his legs could give in and fall to the ground beside Yonghee’s bed.

Byounggon was already there, but through the waterfall of his tears, Jinyoung couldn’t see what state the boy was in, he could only see Yonghee's face breaking free from the stern lines - the ones that made him resemble a statue for so long - and his eyes - wide and bright as usually - focusing on him.

“Jinyoung…” He muttered quietly, and his voice - the one he could only listen to in videos on his phone before - seemed both familiar and brand new. He couldn’t believe his ears. His friend had not only woken up, but he also remembered him. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he added, voice raspy and words a bit uncertain, but the message was there, and if Jinyoung could fall even deeper, he would have.

“Thank you…. Thank you so… much… for coming back,” Jinyoung cried out, interrupted by his jarring sobs. Yonghee’s lips curled upwards slowly, and Jinyoung found himself smiling with him through his tears. Gosh, just how easy it was to smile again.

He didn’t know what he would have done if Yonghee’s heart had given up for good, but now, he knew that he wouldn’t take anything for granted again. Not his friend’s silent plea for help, not his parents’ support towards him, not his friends’ care, not the smiles and laughs and jokes, not the silly little nothings and the “I’ve told you so” sentences, and not you as well, not the chances he had been given to feel alive again, not the friends he had mended his relationship with again, and not the bond you two had created. He would cherish all of it as much as he could, and make sure that he would voice it out. Because he now knew that life was so precious, and despite it being hard on the living, it might have been more difficult on those who had left or chosen to leave.

Something within him gave in, and he felt like his lungs were working on full capacity, but not because he couldn’t breathe - but because he was ready to welcome more air, more life. He was coming back to life bit by bit.

A/N:  If you or someone is in need, don't hesitate to reach out for help! A list of worlwide helplines can be found here.

We are never alone.

I want to clarify that I believe one could be a support to a person struggling, but it's still the person in question who has to find the will in themselves to keep going. So I purposefully didn't make it into a romance-focused story where the reader "saves" Jinyoung because Jinyoung needed to forgive himself and "save" himself, but the way the reader supported him, showed him a different way of life and put things into a different perspective helped him tremendously to deal with everything that he was going through. They both helped each other, to be precise.

In my story, I wanted Yonghee to wake up from the start, but only after the boys forgive themselves, yet in the story films, I think there might be a different ending regarding Yonghee's condition. However, we can see the boys slowly coming together and moving on in their own way, and I wanted to showcase that same kind of hopefulness by the end of the story.

I'm super proud of CIX for having such a storyline, for taking it so seriously and for showcasing all the different ways a person can deal with such things and find some salvation. Super proud of them for their acting, too!

As for my story, I know it might not be able to do the storyline justice, but I hope it could spark something in your nevertheless. Thank you so so so much for reading it!❤️

If you want to read more stories of mine, let it be for CIX or for other bands, consider signing up for my taglist here.

Hope you have a lovely day/night! Take care! ❤️

[writing-in-sin]

Post-canon, modern DabiHawks quirkless au fic idea:

Won't lie, the idea started because i want a dabihawks quirkless modern au but with a twist that it's post-canon & this is the result! it's what I tentatively dubbed as 'in another life'

Inspired by the Sandman's The Dream of a Thousand Cats, it's an idea where the combined quirk of OfA & AfO are able to rewrite history in that quirks never manifested, giving the world a 2nd chance from superpowered society

With quirks, heroes & villains gone, history changed & those who suffered were given a 2nd chance. Eventually, those who were in the centre of the war & combined quirks will regain their memories However, before they do, their past mistakes were avoided by a sense of deja vu

those who regained their memories were the older gen 1st which allowed the younger gens to flourish before they regained their own memories the earliest are the 8 users of OfA followed by older pro heroes & villain generals. all civilians now with kinder lives

with AfO gone, the OfA heroes were allowed to live their lives full without the threat of an early grave. families whole instead of broken by death & sacrifice Tenko lives happily with his family, protected by his badass grandma

the Todoroki fam are no longer broken, the punishing reminder of his abusive self & sins finally keeping endeavor in check. there would be consequences & raging fights once touya & shouto remember but they're allowed the space to heal now by the 2nd chance

memories of his past self will eventually give enji the redemption his family deserves. forgiveness is a choice upon the individual & only they get to decide whether to give it touya will have his own redemption for the innocents that were caught in his revenge

ultimately, a chance to regain the life that was once cremated. a family that will not discard him & be there for him & vice versa. a life he gets to choose what & who to be without pressure a chance to finally dance with his songbird

not everyone will have a better beginning but it'll be kinder. there are those who had pasts that may run on a similar course since their parents hadn't been in the centre of the war but it will be kinder & they'll no longer be alone

one of them will be Hawks. his parents are unfortunately still the same but he'll have adults who genuinely care for him instead of turning him into a child soldier this time, he'll be taken in by safer hands and into the arms of an azure eyed boy

all those who will remember, will regain their memories when they're around 16 years old & since touya is a year older, he'll remember before keigo for a while, his relationship with his family & friends will be strained as he processed. once things are better, he'll feel dread. because soon, it'll be keigo's turn & he knows it'll be painful.

maybe not as ugly with enji as touya tried to reconcile the double image of the abusive endeavor & strict yet devoted enji but it'll be close

once, they were both soldiers burnt by his flames

they're childhood friends this time around, with countless precious memories between them. on a cusp of the 'what-ifs' that were robbed from them and it can all end before it even begins, their past sins weighing heavily between them

but keigo's anger is less personal

caged & groomed as a soldier, keigo's anger had more to do with his past crimes rather than the precious wings that were almost taken from him

'i was an undercover soldier fighting a war who killed a good man to protect the masses. anyone would want revenge, dumbass.'

they heal

they'd stumble of course. lives are diff now with diff challenges. priorities & dreams have changed. families, friends, school, work, celebrations.

a normal life but kinder now, they're allowed to grow up & grow old together.

that itself is a blessing

[wren-again]

Don’t You Cry No More

Chuck smiled in his sleep. The Winchesters hugging in heaven. Two brothers and the open road. Game of Thrones in redneck America. Heterosexual ever after. Both dead. Both redeemed. The way it was always supposed to be. He was not to be defeated, he was invincible, the beginning and the end, light and dark. He was everything. Just as it had always been. Destiny, his favourite invention.

In his dream he was still god. In his dream he was not human, he had never been human. In his dream he was not hung from the ceiling. In his dream the blood was not slowly draining from him. In his dream he would never have been too weak to fight off a Djinn.

If he had been kinder to the Winchesters maybe they would have saved him. If he’d been kinder to anyone maybe someone would have noticed he was missing. As it was, no one saved him. No one even knew he was gone. As it was his body rotted and was never found. Maybe Jack knew, maybe not. He had vowed to be a hands off god and he would live up to that promise.

Jack sat in the bunker with his family, a smile on his face with no discernable source. Maybe he was just happy. He hadn’t brought Cas back, not yet. He could, in an instant, but he was a better storyteller than that. In his three years he had watched so many movies, with Dean and Sam and Cas, and he knew that there was a pattern to these things. Three years old and already a better storyteller than his grandfather. He supposed age and wisdom had no correlation, it either was or was not.

All those who Chuck had snapped away had been restored. Sam and Eileen were so happy, it was beautiful to see, and that was helping. Dean had to be the one. Dean had to make the choice. Not for magical reasons, those were irrelevant to a god, but for the success of any future they might have, and for The Story.

Jack had understood instantly, when he absorbed Chuck’s power, the nature of a god. One didn’t have to rule everything, or even control anything. A god was just a writer. Jack didn’t have to tell every story, most of the pieces would fall into place without interference, he just had to choose one. It wasn’t hard. He knew what mattered to this world. Their family, all of them, all those who loved the Winchesters, and the brothers themselves. If he was a god, he decided, he would make it his life’s purpose to heal the Winchesters, to give his family what they had fought so hard to give him. He could do that now. He just had to be patient.

Dean had to be ready. Otherwise he would only push Cas away.

Dean smiled that performative smile. He was happy for Sammy, he was. He really freaking loved Eileen. He loved seeing his brother happy. He was so fucking pleased for them. Claire and Kaia too, adorable, young love. Why was the next generation so much freer? Why wasn’t he born when they were? If he’d been born twenty years later maybe he... maybe Cas...

He was miserable. He tried to hide it. He tried so hard to live his life and just not think. He drank a lot. He got a job and a dog and he was happy. He was okay.

He was not okay.

He fixed cars. He loved cars. He knew how to love. He loved cars and pie and booze and Sam. He loved. He knew what love was. He knew how to feel it.

He buried himself in his work. Engine grease and physical labour. It was enough. It was enough. It was enough. It was-

He didn’t cry every night.

He should have said something.

He was so fucking angry. Why did Cas have to tell him? Why did Cas have to tell him then? Why did Cas have to die? He should have said it back. Fuck Chuck and fuck The Empty and fuck Death for good measure. Fuck himself most of all. He should have said it back.

He should have said it years ago.

He didn’t beat up a car this time. There was a weight in his limbs, a limpness that wouldn’t let him swing a crowbar or punch a wall, he didn’t have the energy.

He threw away his second pillow, the one he’d never used, the one he’d bought just in case. What was the point? His bed would never be filled. He would always be cold, now, empty.

Was Cas conscious where he was? Was he asleep? Dean hoped he was asleep.

Dean didn’t sleep much anymore. Not that he ever had, but it was worse. His sheets were a damp mess most mornings. Nightmares like he hadn’t had since he was freshly out of hell.

He didn’t keep a gun under his pillow anymore. If death came he would let it. What was the point anymore? He was the loose thread. Everyone else was happy, everyone else had found a purpose or happiness or love. He was lost. He had lost everything.

He couldn’t go down to the dungeon anymore. He avoided that room with one excuse or another. Sam was the nerdy one, he could get the files, that was why it was. He wasn’t scared, didn’t fear the dark would come for him and never let him go, or tempt him with some cruel ghost of what could have been.

Dean Winchester wasn’t scared of anything.

Despair. Always despair. A confession repeated on a never ending loop, words he would never speak, events he couldn’t ever bear to recount to Sam. He might as well have lost his tongue for all he could bear to talk. He had never been this quiet. Sam must have noticed, surely, but years of experience had taught him not to ask. Dean cursed his violent rage, all those years of biting Sam’s head off the second he got too close to any hidden truth, he would have given anything for those questions now. He couldn’t bear to broach the topic. He knew he’d only start crying again. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to tell anyone. It hurt too much. Sam didn’t ask and Dean didn’t tell.

If only there was a way to bring Cas back. If only there was something, anything, he could do to save him. Dean wanted to die, but he knew that even in death he wouldn’t get what he truly wanted, so he kept on living. One day after the next. More suffering, more silence.

He’d researched, with a frantic desperation, the first few weeks. He’d contacted every deity, every demon, every nasty little thing that might hold the answer. None of them answered. There was nothing out there. The big bads, all of them seemed to have vanished. Rowena knew as little about The Empty as he did, the angels were unhelpful as always. He wished Jack hadn’t given his powers over to Amara, or Amara hadn’t disappeared.

He’d been surprised when Jack told them, appearing on their doorstep in the dead of night, that he was simply human now. He hadn’t known that was possible, but the kid had no reason to lie. Jack would have brought Cas back already, if he could. It was hopeless, he supposed, and he just had to learn to live like this, with this truth that could never be spoken eating away at him, with an empty space where Cas should be. Alone. Always alone.

Sam didn’t ask. Jack didn’t ask either, Jack just stated a fact, with the simplicity of an all knowing child.

“At least you know he loved you,” that simple smile, a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

Dean managed to make it all the way to his bedroom. He managed to lock the door. He started crying the second he was alone. Tears like he hadn’t cried since that first night.

“Dean, you okay?” Sam’s worried voice through the door wasn’t enough to snap him out of it this time.

“Leave me alone Sam.”

It wasn’t fair. Hearing it said out loud just strengthened his certainty that it wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. A million potential futures, snatched away the second they became possible. Dean deserved to be happy god damn it!

“Dean, you know you can talk to me, right?”

He should have been able to kiss him before he went. He shouldn’t have had to watch love be snatched away from him while he watched, helpless. He should have been able to make Cas smile like he had, oh so briefly, every day for the rest of his life. He should get to have two pillows on his bed, warmth on the other side.

“I miss Cas,” he sobbed, quietly, in the direction of the door.

“What did you say Dean?”

Dean leaned his head against the wall, cold against his burning skin.

“He loved me. He loved me all these years and I fucked it up Sam. We could have had what you and Eileen have but I was too fucking scared and I left it too late and now he’s gone and there’s nothing I can do.”

“Unlock the door Dean.”

He did as he was told. Not caring if Sam saw him like this. Not bothering to move his head. Screwing his eyes shut as the truth of it all crashed down on him.

“I just want him back. I just need to tell him. Why didn’t I tell him Sam? Three words and I fucking couldn’t and now-“ Dean had ripped his head away from the wall in his rage to turn to look at Sam, only for his words to die out in a strangled sort of noise at what he saw.

His ears were ringing, ringing like they had been that first day, like broken glass was falling around him. Like the most beautiful hideous noise in the universe was threatening to deafen him.

His vision was hyper focussed at the same time it blurred with tears and the surreal nature of what was happening.

Maybe he was just asleep.

“Hello Dean.”

No, this was not the way he dreamed. Everything was too clear, every detail perfect in its imperfection.

“I love you,” he blurted without thought. He couldn’t pause, not this time. He would never stop to process again. Embarrassment and backpedalling and a foot in the mouth held no fear compared to what had come before, the sickening terror of too late, too late. Not too late now. How was it not too late?

He didn’t care.

He flung himself at Cas, not pausing to wonder if Sam was still standing out in that hallway, not caring about anything but this.

His full weight settled on warm solid flesh, angel beneath the trench coat, Cas easily holding Dean to him as he wrapped his legs around his waist and kissed him over and over again. Like he couldn’t breathe unless it was Cas’ air, because he couldn’t, not really.

Jack smiled in the library. He didn’t need to see with regular eyes, not anymore. He didn’t need them to know. Maybe he would tell them that he was still god, if they asked, maybe not. All they needed to know was that everything was good, now. All they needed to know was family, and love, and long nights of peaceful sleep.

That was the story he wrote.

He was a good writer, after all, and he loved his family.

Sam sat down beside him, smiling just as wide as he was, and they sat together for a while. No words were spoken. Sam knew. Sam was grateful. Jack was pleased that someone shared his secret, he was pleased that it changed nothing, and he was especially pleased when Sam reached into his pocket and produced a bar of nougat. Jack took it. He was happy. They all were.

No tears, not now. Never again.

That was what the Winchesters deserved and Jack was oh so willing to give it to them.

Love held no place for selfishness, for limitation, love was infinite. God was supposed to be love, after all, and Jack was going to be a wonderful god.

He reached his arms around his world and held it tight, kept it safe, and somewhere in the bunker Dean did the same.

Dean slept better than he ever had that night, the next, and every night for the rest of his life. With his angel beside him no nightmares could come, only pleasant dreams and even better waking, only a simple life of a simple man and the cosmic being that loved him.

He wanted for nothing.

He was saved.

[rileymcdaniels]

Dear Winter, I hope you like your name.

@magicaltalents

“I promised Felicity that I would go with her and Sam today. Is that okay?” Eden nearly hops with excitement as she walks next to her papa, grinning up at him.

It’s the Harvest Festival, which is her favorite time of year and not just because her birthday was last week. Their town’s main thoroughfare is lined with vendors selling everything from apple candy and autumn beer to fine woolen clothing for the winter. There are entertainers of all kinds playing music and telling stories.

“Sure,” Papa says. “Here.”

Eden holds her hand out, surprised when two gold pieces are dropped into her palm. She beams. “Thank you!” she chirps, putting the money in her pocket for safekeeping.

“Don’t tell your mother,” he warns, but he’s smiling.

Eden giggles as Mama catches up to them, Eden’s little brother at her heels. Her brother is five and has recently decided to become very annoying, so she ignores him. Eden much prefers Alara, who is six months old and asleep in Mama’s arms. Eden goes up onto her tiptoes to peer at Alara’s face and kiss her round baby cheeks.

“Wait before you run off,” Mama says as she passes Alara to Papa, who cradles her with his arm.

Mama refastens Eden’s cloak as Eden stands still, impatient with excitement but obedient. “There,” Mama says as she looks Eden over. “I know you were disappointed we wouldn’t be able to stay as long as usual.”

“Alara’s too little,” Eden says, shrugging like she has never been bothered by anything in her life. “I don’t care.”

Mama smiles. “Your papa and I decided you’re old enough to stay a little longer. Be home before supper, alright?”

Eden bounces, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt, waving at her parents as she dashes off. Felicity and Samantha, twins with bright red hair, are easy enough to find, and together, the girls go off to enjoy the festival.

They split the cost of one of Miss Turner’s famously sized pumpkin pastries and eat it sitting on a bench near the blacksmith. With the rest of their money, Sam and Felicity buy real silk ribbons so the dresses they wear to the Chantry each week will not be so boring.

Eden does not need ribbons. She has never attended Chantry services in her life. And after last week, she isn’t even curious anymore. Eden’s palms itch as she thinks about watching her brother tumble out of a tree and the crackling energy that exploded from her hands to form a protective bubble around him so he hit the ground without a scratch on him.

Once the twins tuck their new ribbons into their pockets, Eden buys apple candy and hot apple cider for all three of them. She puts the handful of silver pieces she has left back into her pocket with her apple candy. Sam leads the way to a bard with the largest audience.

The bard is a stout human woman whose glorious textured curls fall down to her waist, and the bard begins a story just as they walk up.

Eden hears the story of the Inquisition and of Corypheus and of an end of the world that never came to pass that afternoon. It’s not the first time she has heard the story. She doesn’t remember the first time she heard it. She knows most of the names.

Seeker Cassandra is her Aunt Cassandra, who taught her to throw a punch when she was six. Magister Pavus is Uncle Dorian, and Eden makes a face to hear someone talk about him so seriously because Uncle Dorian is absolutely ridiculous. Eden has never deigned to call Uncle Bull The Iron Bull in her life. Her parents still do not know about the copy of The Viper’s Nest by Uncle Varric that she keeps under her pillow, and if her brother knows what’s good for him, they never will.

The archer with deadly aim – although the bard seems to knows more about the archer’s love for the Herald than anything else – is her mama.

And to her, the Lord Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste, is just her papa.

But – the bard’s telling is not the story she knows. Her mouth tightens as she looks around and watches people’s faces. When the story is over, Felicity and Sam chatter excitedly, but Eden follows a step or two behind, head heavy with questions.

“Are you okay?”

Sam and Felicity are looking at her with concern.

“What? Oh, yes, sorry. Um. I think I’m going to go home. I promised my mama I wouldn’t stay too late.”

The twins nod and say goodbye as Eden takes the path away from town towards her house. It’s not far, only a few minutes, but it’s not even close to suppertime, so she takes it slow.

The story she just heard is a lot bigger than the one she’s heard before. Maybe she used to just be too little to understand it. It’s not like she thinks about it everyday. And Corypheus had been dead for ages by the time she was born.

The world had almost been destroyed. She almost was never born. But she was. She’s eleven years old. Just this morning, Papa had asked her, in a long-suffering tone, to be a little kinder to her brother. Mama nagged her about picking up her books yesterday.

They saved the world.

And then, as the house comes into view, it occurs to her that Papa is more powerful than empresses and kings. Or he was. And the bard said Papa deliberately left all of that for a quieter life. It didn’t end naturally like Mama used to say. It occurs to her that Papa and Mama would have known that they were having her when Papa left the Inquisition.

Papa had been greater than an emperor or king or Archon, but he and Mama came here, to their little house and farm, a few months before she was born. She hesitates before opening the front door. Papa didn’t have to do that. Lots of important people have kids but stay important. But unlike those kids, Papa is there to ruffle her hair and remind her to be nice to her brother and kiss Mama everyday.

“I’m home!” Eden calls out as she opens the door and hangs up her cloak, kicking her shoes off. She only just remembers to nudge them out of the walkway before going further into the house.

Mama comes down the stairs, smiling. “Hey, little love. You’re back early. Everything okay?”

Eden nods and looks down at her stocking feet to avoid seeing the skepticism in Mama’s eyes. “Nothing’s wrong. Felicity and Sam were bickering and I didn’t want to listen to them,” she lies. She swallows around the lump in her throat, and she pops up onto her toes to kiss Mama’s cheek. “Where’s Papa?”

“Getting Alara to sleep,” Mama says. “He’s going to start supper soon.” Mama pauses and looks at her. “I love you, Eden. I am so proud to be your mother.”

Tears threaten Eden’s composure, so she just nods. Mama always seems to know what she means even when she can’t say it, so she probably understands.

Eden goes up the stairs to her parents’ bedroom and peeks in. Papa is looking at Alara in her crib with soft eyes, and Eden taps lightly on the door to get his attention.

He looks up and smiles when he sees her. “Hey. Did you have fun today?”

Tears burn at her eyes again, but she nods. “It was good.” There are more words she wants to say, other words, but they get all tangled in her mouth. And she’s shy all of a sudden. She hesitates at the door.

Her papa saved the whole world. He was more important than the empress of Orlais. And now, instead of being the most important person in the world, he’s leaning down to kiss Alara’s forehead as she sleeps.

Eden crosses the room to him, and he rests his arm around her shoulders when she wraps her arms tightly around his waist. She presses her face against his chest.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, rubbing gentle circles on her back.

“I love you, Papa,” she says, mouth pressed against his shirt’s fabric. A couple of tears slip out. “I’m so glad you’re my papa.”

[isolavirtuosa]

Starting Over (For Real?) 29-30

[fanfiction] NaruSasu

Read the previous parts here.

This part picks right up where 28 left off.

I wanted to not be a sarcastic asshole and actually help him.  I really wanted to.  My complete failings at human niceties had never bothered me before, yet here I was, floundering to be normal for once.

He reached over, smoothing the wrinkle in my brow.  “What are you thinking?”

I looked at him.

He waited.

- 29 -

  He waited for a long time.

“If I try to put it into words, it just sounds jumbled and stupid,” I finally said.

“I don’t mind,” Naruto said, bumping our foreheads together and making his gaze inescapable.

“I do.”

“I know,” he said.  “But it’s just me, you know?  You don’t have to try and be cool in front of me; I already think you’re the coolest guy in the world.”

“That’s a ringing endorsement.”

“You make me feel so small and unimportant when you say things like that,” he said quietly.

I flinched.

“It’s just you being you, but… I wish you could talk to me instead of deflecting everything,” he said, lowering his gaze.  “Why do you have to put up your walls with me of all people?  Do I… do I… have I done something wrong?”

I could tell he was getting upset again.  “I’m not saying you’re perfect,” I stumbled out.  “But it’s… it’s not you, okay?”

Naruto swallowed.

“I know you don’t want to hear this and I don’t want to say it…” I trailed off.

He rested his hand on my knee, squeezing gently.

“The other me… the me in your world…”

He tensed up.

“He’d already dealt with all his issues,” I tried to explain.  “He knew that he had issues and he dealt with them, and he was a mature adult, and then there’s me, and I haven’t… dealt with them.”

When I didn’t continue, he squeezed my knee again.  “Dealt with what?” he prodded.

I shook my head.

“You’re not ready?” he asked softly.

I shook my head again, feeling pathetic.

“I get what you’re saying,” he said, rubbing my knee in what seemed like an anxious movement.  “I…” he trailed off and swallowed.  “Maybe I’m not completely… over him…”

I took in a shaky breath and let it out.  This was really just beyond idiotic.

“I can see your walls going up,” he said.

“Well I need them,” I said, pushing his hand away.

“I know,” he said, looking stupidly devastated.

I didn’t know where this conversation was headed anymore, but I just wanted it to be over.  “You’re fine now, right?” I asked, standing up.  My legs were sore from sitting on the floor for so long, but they held me up.

“No,” he said.

I glared at him.

He stood up, too.  “I thought we were okay.”

“Clearly we’re not,” I said, trying to push down the embarrassment from the ridiculous way I’d thrown myself at him earlier only to run away, which kept running over and over in my head on endless, mortifying loop.  Then there was this whole conversation about how he was more in love with some fake version of me than he was with the actual me, which made a lot of sense and explained why someone like him could ever be with someone like me.  He thought that I was going to grow and mature into a good person.  It was funny and sad, and we were never going to work.  “So what are we doing about all of the impending world crises?”

“…did you just change the subject…?”

“Fucking right I did.”

“Sasuke.”

“So all the kage are turning into white zetsu.”

“How… did you…?”

“I’m Uchiha Sasuke.”

“I’m not supposed to…”

“I already know, so who cares?”

“Okay, well you didn’t hear it from me.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said, looking at him pointedly.

“Don’t act like that,” he said with a frown.  “I trust you.  I was just sworn to secrecy by people who… don’t.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said.  “Anyway, why was the tsuchikage acting like everything was normal?”

“I guess he was the only one who didn’t get turned into a white zetsu?” Naruto offered.

“Does that really seem likely?”

“Well, I don’t really know how God Trees work, so…”

“Don’t white zetsu have transformation abilities?” I suggested.  “Can’t they mimic someone’s body and chakra signature?”

“Uh…”

“The answer is ‘yes’, in case you were wondering.”

“Just so we’re clear, you’re saying that the tsuchikage is a fake?”

“That body probably used to be the tsuchikage,” I said with a shrug.

Naruto studied my face.

“What?” I asked irritably.

“You’re really smart,” he said.

“…okay?”

He shrugged.  “I mean like savvy.  You know what’s going on and you can read the political climate and all that stuff.”

“As any good ninja should be able to.”

“You and your digs.  Anyway, I want you to be my partner at the Summit.”

“So there’s a summit now?” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Well, I’m trying to put one together, but everyone is about as helpful as you are,” Naruto said.

“And yet you want me to be your adjutant?  How flattering.”

“Like I even know what that word means, but no, I said partner you jackass.”

He was clearly getting mad, but I was in the kind of horrible mood where I just wanted to make him madder.  I opened my mouth to rip into him, paused to think about earlier, and closed it.  I gave my words more thought.  “You don’t show up to a peace summit with the enemy next to you.”

“Well, I’ve already showed up everywhere with him in my bed,” he said.  “Not that you’re the enemy,” he added quickly.  “And, uh…” he stuttered, suddenly going red.

I liked when Naruto embarrassed himself.  It put me in a kinder, gentler mood.  “In your bed, huh?”

His lips pursed defiantly.  “Yes.”

I wanted to throw myself at him again, and that was just so beyond embarrassing that I looked away.  “And who are you inviting to this summit?”

“The Ninja Alliance.”

“So… basically any ninja?”

“Well, sure,” he said.  “I’m not excluding anyone.”

“Do you even have a functioning brain in your head?”

The purse of his lips got deeper.

“Your enemies are everywhere!” I snapped.  “Konoha is fucking poison, Iwa’s propping up a fake tsuchikage, Kiri’s being wiped out by non-ninjas and fake God Trees, and we couldn’t even set foot in fucking Kumo because they’re already under fucking Konoha’s thumb.”

“You’re the one Konoha’s after,” Naruto said with a shrug.

“Oh, well in that case, please give them your location and invite them into your home for fucking tea and crumpets.”

“You’re really mad,” he commented.

“I’m not mad!”

“You swear a lot when you’re mad.”

“I fu-… do not.”

He stared at me knowingly.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Not yet.”

I was going to crush his windpipe and that was going to be that.

“You haven’t even left the entryway,” he added, taking my hand and tugging me inside of his apartment.

His ability to just change gears was astounding.  He was almost as adept at avoidance as I was.

“Does the fucking happen after I tour your shitty apartment?” I muttered.

“Only if you want it to,” he said cheerfully.

I tensed up.

He tugged my hand harder and we moved into his living room.  It looked exactly like my living room, except his was already messy.  “Sit,” he said, his eyes screaming, ‘you need to rest your legs!’

I sat down and looked long-suffering.

“I’ll make you some tea,” he offered.

“You don’t have any tea.”

“Oh…” he said, scratching the back of his neck.  “I could… borrow some…”

“Who is going to lend you tea?”

“Sas’, it’s been a long fucking day and we’re both stressed and exhausted,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“So I’m gonna go ask Karin or someone if they have any stupid tea, and then I’m going to boil some water and serve it to you and you’re gonna shut up and drink it,” he decided, crossing his arm over his chest.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

“Yes, please,” I said, leaning my head back against the back of the couch and closing my eyes.

His footsteps creaked closer to me, then I felt him lean in and kiss my forehead.  “I’ll be right back.”

He was not right back, but I barely noticed as I drifted in and out of sleep.  I kept startling awake from uneasiness, running from the shadows in my head, before exhausting myself back into sleep.

The door flew open.  Naruto kicked off his shoes with a loud thump and bounded back into the living room before setting eyes on my half-asleep form.  He tiptoed by me and put the kettle on.  Then he tiptoed back over.

I cracked an eye open at him.

“I’m back,” he whispered.  “I got tea,” he added.  “And a whole chicken,” he added again.  “Because we didn’t eat dinner.”

I didn’t bother asking where he got a whole chicken from or what he was currently doing with it.  “Naruto.”

“Hm?” he said, coming closer.

I needed to talk to him.  I needed to express myself.  I needed so many things, and all I could do was stare at him.

He looked worried.

“I don’t know how to talk to you,” I finally said.

Naruto gave me a sad smile.  “I know.”

“I’m… embarrassed.”

Now his brows drew up a little.  “Why would you be embarrassed?”

I shrugged.

He came over to sit next to me.

“Maybe I’m not what everyone thinks.  Or maybe… I was but now I’m not.”

“And what do we all think?” he asked, genuinely curious.

I shrugged.

Naruto sighed loudly.

I glared at him.

“I can feel frustrated by your inability to express yourself,” he grumbled.  “You don’t have to shut down the second that I do.”

“I’m not shutting down.”

“You are shut down and closed for business.”

The kettle started to whistle.

Naruto sighed again and got up, disappearing into the kitchen.  He came back with a cup of tea and put it on the coffee table in front of me before going back for his chicken.

It was just a giant plate filled with chicken.

He picked some up with his fingers and held it up towards my mouth.

I gave him the repulsed look he deserved.

“You’re just a priss,” he said, sucking the grease off of his fingers.  “Eat something.”

“I’m good,” I said, sipping my tea.  It was still a little hot.

Naruto continued to eat chicken with his hand.  “You know I love you, right?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t think we’re…” he trailed off.

I kept my facial expression frozen as I sipped more overly hot tea.

“See?” he said.  “I just sent you into full panic mode.”

“Who is panicking?” I asked, calmly setting the cup and saucer back on the table.

“You’re locked down more than a daimyou’s mansion.”

I shrugged.  “I’m perfectly calm.”

“We can’t have a relationship like this.”

Everything inside of me shattered into a million pieces.  “Okay then,” I said.

Naruto put down his disgusting chicken, wiping his hand on his pants.  “No, it’s not okay.  You’re the air I breathe.”

“You’re very desperately codependent,” I informed him.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I know.  And that’s a very large part of the problem.  I’m like… aggressively in love with you, and you’re… not…”

“So really the problem is me,” I said.  I picked up my tea and took another sip.  It was still too damn hot.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” he said frustratedly.

“Does it matter what you’re saying?” I asked, putting the cup down again.  “You want to end it, let’s end it.”

Of course Naruto was crying.  “I don’t want to end it, you stupid jerk.”

“Then what do you want, crybaby?”  I started rubbing at my temple, feeling a headache coming on.  The skin was hard under my fingers.

“I want you to grow up!” he snapped.

“Yeah,” I said, standing up.  “Well, give me twenty or so years to catch up to you.”  I was almost to the door when I felt him tugging at the back of my shirt.

“Don’t go,” he requested barely above a whisper.

“I thought that’s what mature people do during arguments,” I said.  “You know, they run away in the middle of it.”

“Sasuke.”

I didn’t look at him.

I didn’t even know how we ended up kissing on the floor, shoes crushed under Naruto’s back.

His eyes were still wet and glistening so I closed mine.

Everything felt wrong.

I was embarrassed when we pulled apart, both sitting up and looking anywhere but at each other.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“For what?” I asked, trying not to snap.

“I don’t know how to make things right, so I just make them worse.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“If you can’t do anything but snip at me, then…”

“Then what.”

“…I don’t know,” he said quietly, playing with the hem of his jacket.  “I think I’ll lose you.”

I didn’t want this.  I didn’t want to keep pushing him away.  I didn’t want to, but…  “I’m gonna go.”

Naruto was quiet for a moment.  “Yeah, okay,” he finally said.

I got up and stepped into my shoes.

Naruto stayed on the floor.

I opened the door and didn’t look back.

 - 30 -

  Karin and Sakura seemed to think that having vaginas somehow uniquely qualified them to prepare the men’s breakfast.

“Why isn’t Naruto here?” Sai asked, looking around Sakura’s apartment.

“He had a meeting,” Sakura said through clenched teeth.  She proceeded to fold her omelet very aggressively in the pan.

“Oh, so he still hates you,” Sai said with a knowing nod.

“Sai,” I said.

He looked at me.

I shook my head.

“Ah, girls are sensitive about that kind of thing,” he said.

I nodded.

Karin burst out laughing.

I gave her a look.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.  “But you of all people telling Sai how to behave appropriately… oh my god…” she trailed off before cackling madly.

“I know how to behave appropriately, I just choose not to because I’m a sociopath,” I said with a shrug.

“At least you acknowledge it,” Sakura said, smiling a little.

“I’m self-aware,” I said, which got me another round of laughter from the peanut gallery.  I chose to ignore them and continued sharpening my kunai while I waited for this farce of womanly nurturing to come to an end.

Kakashi popped into the room, stealing a piece of sausage from the pan where Karin was cooking.

“Isn’t that hot?” she asked him incredulously, but he just shrugged.

The rice cooker dinged.

Sakura turned off the stove and flipped her omelet onto a plate before hurrying over to the rice cooker to start scooping the rice.

Sai watched with interest.  “Is this some kind of mating ritual?”

Sakura just sighed loudly.  She was probably the person the most used to Sai’s ridiculousness.

Karin looked affronted.  “Who would want to mate with any of you?”

“I believe you tried to mate with my best friend Uchiha several times,” Sai explained.  “And he and I look similar, so many women who are attracted to him are also attracted to me.”

“We don’t look that similar,” I muttered.

Karin looked like she was revving up to yell something, then paused and actually looked at Sai.  Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.  “Hey, I thought the belly shirt meant you were gay, too, but are you…?”

“Undecided,” Sai said, his actual smile spreading across his lips.

Karin’s eyes gleamed.  “And how do you plan on deciding?”

“Karin, down,” I commanded.

She turned a withering look on me.  “What, are you jealous?”

“He’s figuring things out and he doesn’t need your obsessive stalking,” I said.

“I only obsessively stalk you!” she snapped, slamming a bowl of salad on the table.

It actually warmed my heart to hear that.

“Why don’t we eat?” Sakura suggested, putting down the last of the dishes on the table.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Kakashi said, already digging in.

“Sensei,” Sakura said irritably.  “At least give proper thanks before stuffing your face like a pig.”

“Rubba dub dub, thanks for the grub,” Kakashi said, his mouth clearly full behind his mask.

“How does he eat without showing his face?” Karin murmured.

“I’m a ninja,” Kakashi informed her proudly.

“Was there a reason for this circus of a breakfast, or did you just want to show off your mediocre culinary skills?” I asked, carefully bringing rice to mouth with my one hand.

“Maybe if you all could stop being jackasses for five seconds, we could talk,” Sakura grumped.

“That might be asking a bit much from this group,” Sai said cheerfully.  “This really is rather mediocre.  Look how burnt the bottom of this omelet is.”

“Sai, so help me, you will be the first one that I throttle,” Sakura growled.

He grinned at her.  “I look forward to it.”

“Throttling is bad,” I informed him.  “Especially if the person doing the throttling is strong enough to destroy this entire building with a punch.”

“Yes, but Sakura-chan only throttles the people she loves,” Sai said happily.

The expression on Sakura’s face was priceless.

“Well, thanks for the food,” Kakashi said, starting to stand up.

Sakura put her hands on his shoulders, shoving him back into the chair.  “Enough.  You all are children.  We need to talk.”

“Then talk,” I said.

“Okay, well…” she said, fidgeting back into her seat.  “Kakashi brought us to Suna to get off the ANBU’s radar, but what are we doing here?”

“There’s food,” I said.

“Shelter,” Sai added.

“Naruto,” Kakashi chimed in, which I would have thought was directed at me, but everyone besides Karin seemed to look away at that one.  “Tsunade,” he added.

“I brought her here, but I can’t do anything else for her in Suna,” Sakura said with a sad shake of her head.  “I want to do more research on the zetsu.  I was thinking maybe you two could help,” she said, nodding at Karin and me.  “Orochimaru’s research…”

“Sakura, you don’t want to get involved in that,” Karin said, shaking her head.  “The things he did in the name of science, you… you don’t want to touch it.”

“What choice do I have?” she asked, looking lost and desperate.

“We go to Water and we look into the God Trees,” I said.

“Water’s awfully dangerous for a ninja,” Kakashi hummed.

I rolled my eyes at him.

He winked at me.

It was not sexy and it did not make me feel uncomfortable.

“I wouldn’t mind cleaning the clocks of a few anti-ninja brigades,” Sai said, looking very cheerful about the prospect of bloodshed.

“We could ascertain what’s happened to the mizukage,” I put in.

“Sounds like a plan,” Kakashi said, pushing himself off of the table and onto his feet.  “See ya.”  He disappeared.

“Why is he like that?” Sakura complained, stabbing her food with more force than necessary.

“What other way would he be?” I asked.

She sighed and took the first bite of her food since we’d sat at the table.  She seemed a little more at ease now that we weren’t just twiddling our thumbs.

It felt strangely comfortable now, like we were some kind of unit working towards a goal.

“What about Naruto?” Sai finally asked in the middle of our planning.

Sakura tensed up.

I avoided eye contact.

“Seems to me like the kid can’t make a decision,” Karin commented.

“He can choose to be mad at me,” Sakura muttered.

“He can choose to du-” I started to say and immediately shut my mouth.  Why had I been about to tell these people my personal business?  And it wasn’t like we’d officially broken up.  Naruto had just said that he loved the fake me more and that he wanted me to grow up and that we couldn’t have a relationship.

All three of them were looking at me with too much interest.

“Best friend, do you require my comfort?” Sai finally asked.

“No,” I said flatly.

“I could procure some alcohol for us, and we could have a rip-roaring time,” he continued.

“‘Rip-roaring’?” Karin repeated, her nose scrunching up.

“You keep calling Sasuke your best friend, and I really don’t understand when this dynamic came about,” Sakura said, looking between us.

“It’s got nothing to do with me,” I said.

“A lot happens when men travel together,” Sai explained.  “Sacred bonds are forged.”

“Have you been hanging out with Lee?” Sakura asked, squinting at him.

“Oh, no, I haven’t,” he said.  “But I’ve been reading his book.  He’s one of my role models for how to be a normal human being.”

“You chose… Lee…?” Sakura said slowly.

“He wrote a book…?” I asked.

“I don’t even know what’s going on anymore,” Karin said, shaking her head.

“Sasuke’s sad about being dumped,” Sai explained.

“I wasn’t dumped!” I snapped.

“But you just said-”

“I didn’t say anything!” I yelled, standing up abruptly and stomping my dishes over to the sink.  I started washing them vigorously.  Fuck, I was so uncool.  I needed to go back to not caring about things.

They whispered about me for a while like somehow I couldn’t hear them, then went back to planning our departure to the Land of Water.

I washed all their damn dishes until there was nothing left to do but go back and sit at the table.

“Can you be in charge of getting Kakashi-sensei to transport us?” Sakura requested of me, not even bringing up what a fool I’d just made of myself.

“I don’t think I have any particular sway over his whims,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“What?” I asked.

“I know,” she said flatly.

“Know what?” I asked, legitimately confused.

“I know,” she repeated.  “You saw.”

“I saw what?” I started to ask, before it clicked into place.  “His face?”

Sakura stared back at me evenly.

I shrugged.

She simmered.

“I’ll ask him,” I said casually.

Sakura shook her head.  “Try and kill us all and you’re still the favorite.”

“Oh, is that why you joined the ANBU that were trying to kill us all?” I asked.  “Currying favor?”

“The mission given to me was to bring you back alive, which you are perfectly aware of,” she said, reaching over the table and poking me in the chest.

Her poke was harder than a normal poke.  I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again, looking into hers directly.  “I do know.”

Her angry expression faltered.  “I swear, if I had known what Hyuuga was up to-”

“Sakura, I know,” I said.  “I never doubted you.  But no many how many times I try and tell the idiot to just shut up and listen to you, he doesn’t.”

She sighed, running a hand through her mess of a ponytail.  “I don’t know how to fix it.”

Strangely, I wanted to help her fix it.  The thing was, I couldn’t even fix my own relationship with Naruto.

He came pounding on my door that evening, in a tizzy about not being included in our plan to leave.

“You’re the one who ran away from the Land of Water,” I said with a shrug, stepping inside the apartment and letting him in against my better judgement.

“I said we needed time to make a plan!”

“So you have a plan now?”

Naruto followed me to the living room, huffing away.

I sat on the couch.

He sat next to me.

We stared at each other.

“You’re really planning to just go without me,” he finally said.

I shrugged.  “I have my mission, you have yours.”

“Really, it’s that simple to you?”

“Yes, Naruto, because I’m not a codependent crazy person like you.”

“I feel like that’s not completely true…”

I glowered at him.

He looked down at his lap.

“Are you going to make up with Sakura?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from us.

“No,” he said sullenly.

I rolled my eyes.

He sighed.  “Okay, yeah, I’m being childish about it, but she…”

“But she what?”

“She didn’t trust us!”

“You didn’t trust me,” I said with a shrug.

“Why do you keep trying to compare the two situations like they’re the same?”

“Because they are the same?”

“They’re not!”

“You tried to bring me back to Konoha by force because you thought I was making a mistake by leaving.”

“Well, you were making a mistake.”

I exhaled loudly and stood up.  “Clearly the only perfect one among us is Saint Naruto, he who never makes mistakes.”

“That’s not what I was saying.”

“I was right to leave,” I said, looking down on him coldly.  “I regret leaving the way I did, and I regret hurting you, but I made the right choice.  I will never be complicit with Konoha and its-”

Naruto stood up now, too.  “You’re not going to be complicit with Konoha, but you’ll be complicit with Orochimaru?” he asked incredulously.

“I took what I needed from him,” I said with a shrug.  “You think that I look down on you all the time, but I can feel your disdain right now.  You think you’re so morally superior to me, and yet here you are, doing exactly what I did years ago.  Don’t even try to get on your high horse with me, Naruto, I see right through you.”

He took a step back from me like I’d struck at him.

“You can go,” I said, turning away from him.  I clung to the edges of my steely calm, trying to stay afloat.

My couch creaked.

I turned around to see Naruto sitting again, his hand covering his mouth and his eyes wide.  “That wasn’t an invitation to stay-” I started and stopped.

He was trying so hard not to cry.

“You are pathetic,” I said, sitting next to him.

“I know,” he mumbled into his hand.

I waited.

He seemed to pull himself together, dropping his hand from his mouth.  “I wish I knew who I was.”

“You’re Uzumaki Naruto,” I offered.  “The number one knuckle-headed ninja of Konoha.”

He breathed out a laugh, but he wasn’t smiling.  “I can’t even claim that anymore.  I’m in the BINGO book and everything.”

“You’ll defeat all the bad guys, and Konoha will be clamoring to have you back as the hokage in no time,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Is that the happy ending?” he asked.  “I’m not so sure anymore.”

“It’s your happy ending,” I assured him.

“I think I might want something different,” he said quietly.

We looked at each other.

“Sas’…” he said pleadingly.

I sighed and bumped our foreheads together, reaching up to cup his cheek.

He closed his eyes and leaned into my hand.  Then his eyes shot open.  “Do you… have… horns…?”

“No,” I said with a frown.  I’d checked this morning.

“Feels hard,” he said, pulling away and touching my temple with his fingers.  “Uh, yeah, definitely hard.”

“Well they haven’t come in like yours,” I said.  The press of his horns had been obvious against my skin.

“Oh, yeah, that reminds me,” he said, suddenly yanking his shirt off.

[yutikyis]

Honest Q&A: Round 6! Table

Hello all! It’s been a while since we were all together. I’m glad everyone was able to join our roundtable today. Hmm… looking over the questions submitted they seem to be… ahh, yes, this were all omitted from the previous questionnaires due to their… darker theme. Well, it seems my editor is looking to expand our readership. Very well, if anyone feels uncomfortable answering these VERY hypotheticals… feel free to pass.

First, a question for myself. Where have you all been? It’s been really hard to track you all down for another sit down lately.

Yuti:  “Ah... I’ve been b-busy w-with this and that.

Reri: “Same as I ever been. Huntin’ and screwin’. Ya ain’t seen me then ya either are blessed or cursed I guess.”

Rahya: “Um, same ol’, same ol’. I ain’t been that different. I been goin’ on walks with Grape an’ I found a nice pond! It’s got all kinda fishers in it an’ I saw a frogtoad once!”

Sayo: “My life has passed as normal. I have been exploring the land under the guard of Lord Vachir. I fear he is not overly excited about some of our exploration but he is kind about it.”

Tsukiko: “Ah, Lady Kususha. I am certain he is very kind about it. After all he is not a stupid man, nor a blind one. I have been waiting for new orders from my Master and aiding Kitakage in his missions.” Meichi’a: “Moi? I, of course, have been a shameless louse! Exploring the lands, drinking the finest wine, and just yesterday I spent a night with the most CHA-rming... ah and I’m getting glares again. Ahem. I’ve kept myself occupied.”

Alright, on to our… readers’ questions. <cough> Uh-hmm… let’s get this over with, shall we?

“If you had to kill one person you cared about to save the rest of the world, who would you pick?”

Yuti: “... P-probably myself? I k-know there are arguments to b-be made about t-the needs of the many a-and as a h-healer you n-need to decide these things but... I d-don’t think I could kill someone I c-cared about.”

Reri: “Haw! Like anyone’s surprised at that answer Snowflake. Me? Sure. It ain’t really a choice, is it? They’re gonna die if the world explodes or whatever. I’d just take whoever’s closest. Ain’t a big deal.”

Rahya: “Um... I... I ain’t... I ain’t gonna kill nobody, not even ta save the world. I’d keep on hopin’ an’ prayin’ that things’d work out. Aasifa’s got me belivin’ in luck so... I figure I’d just hold off an’ hope somethin’ good happens!

Sayo: “I... I suppose it would be my duty. I can not say I would... This is really a very unfair question. I... if I had to pick I suppose it would be Lord Vachir or perhaps Lord Benedict. Only because I believe the two of them would most willingly sacrifice themselves to save others! Not because I value them less!”

Tsukiko:  “If I was commanded to, of course. My highest priority is satisfying my Master and I can only imagine he would be... displeased.. if the world was destroyed due to inaction. One life is not worth more than many, especially weighed against the feelings of a mere servant.” Meichi’a: “I? I would sacrifice nobody. I have already sacrificed one person I cared about and the world is not worth more than that. Let it burn if it comes to that. Selfish perhaps but I never claimed to be anything but.”

“What is the worst thing you can imagine someone doing?”

Yuti: “Ah... t-that’s a difficult answer. I-if I had to say... it w-would be harming someone’s soul or mind. A b-body is a body a-and can be healed b-but to hurt their mind or their spirit i-is unacceptable.”

Reri: “Hah. Ya really want my answer ta this? Because I got some ideas. So, ya start with some fish hooks... now this works best if the bastard’s a guy... and ya start insertin... ya look kinda green there, fella. Ya want me to stop? Hah! Knew it.

Rahya: “Um... the worst thin’? I ain’t sure. I figure like... blowin’ up the whole world! Like in yer last question! That seems like the worst thin’ cuz everyone lives here, yah? So... where’d ya even live after ya do it? On rocks an’ stuff floatin’ around? Cuz... that seems awful inconvenient. How ya gonna make roads? I ain’t sure chocobirds can fly that far without gettin’ tired and seems kinda mean to ‘em.”

Sayo: “Ah. The worst thing I can imagine is someone shaming another. Shame is a terrible thing indeed. Many would rather endure pain and misery than face shame and dishonor... at least that is what Sire says.”

Tsukiko: “The worst thing one can do is take another. That... is all I can say.”

Meichi’a: “The worst thing one can do? To give up on life. I am afraid I must disagree with the charming silver-haired crumpet. No shame is too great, no pain is unendurable. To live is the greatest gift and to toss it away is far worse than any other. ”

“Do you think death is the worst fate there is?”

Yuti: “No. N-not at all. D-death is sad, true, but it isn’t the end of life, m-merely a transformation. T-to live in eternal a-agony or have your aether d-devoured o-or to be trapped for eternity... t-those all sound much worse.”

Reri: “Gettin’ creative there, Snowflake. I like it. Ya oughta go a bit further. Well, for once, me and the girl agree. Death ain’t so bad. Probably hurts a shiteload but I see things a lot worse than death. Ya don’t hear of folks prayin’ for the sweet relief of death for no reason, yeah?

Rahya: “I... no, it ain’t the worst thing. I’m sure hopin’ not. If’n I gotta be true... I figure death ain’t so bad for the folks who be dyin’. It’s worse for the folks who ain’t dead cuz they ain’t got the person they like ‘round much, yeah? I mean I ain’t wanna be dyin’... but I’m more scareda bein’ hurt awful bad an’ bein’ all alone...”

Sayo: “I must go with the consensus here I am afraid. Death is to be feared but it is not the worst one can imagine. The ancestors have after-lives of peace and comfort after a life of hard work. It does not sound like something to fear if you’ve lived a worthy live.”

Tsukiko:

“Death is certainly by no means the worst thing! Why, I can think of several things quite worse. Enslavement, torture, suffering... many of which some would consider death a release from!”

Meichi’a:

“Alas, once again I must disagree with these charming ladies. All this talk of afterlives and mortal suffering is fine and good, but a life is a life and death is a great mystery. Even if one should survive in some form, it isn’t *life.* No drinking, no dancing and most certainly no carnal nights spent in the comforting embrace of a lover. Life is the greatest gift we have.

“Would you rather know the date of your death or the cause of your death?”

Yuti: “A-ah... t-that’s tough. Probably the d-date. The c-cause might make me tempted to t-try to avoid it but if I know anything from stories t-that would make me c-cause it! P-plus if I knew the date I’d h-have time to set my affairs in order a-and make sure I’m not leaving anything undone..”

Reri: “Hells below Snowflake can’t you even die in an interestin’ way? I agree on the Date though... but not for the reasons ya think. If I know when I’m gonna die then I’m godsdamn sure I ain’t gonna die BEFORE that. Gives me more freedom ta do shite.”

Rahya: “Um... I figure I’d wanna know the date cuz... if I know I’m gonna die because a rock falls on my head or somethin’ then I’m gonna spend all day bein’ scareda rocks? An’ that doesn’t sound real fun. But if I know I’m gonna go poof then I can just not be afraida stuff until then, yeah? Cuz... Aasifa’s already like than an’ he seems happy.”

Sayo: “I must disagree. Knowing the date of one’s demise is... not what I would want. It feels... restrictive. The cause would be better I think. I do not fear the day I meet my ancestors but I do not want it lingering over my head.”

Tsukiko: “ Ah! But Mistress Kususha! What if you are told that you would tortured to death over a period of many days! That would hang over your head far worse! Or if you were told you would be blinded and starve to death on a desert island or...” Rahya: “Um could ya maybe please stop? I ain’t wantin’ ta hear alla that...”

Tsukiko: “Oh, a thousand pardons, Mistress Miqo’te. I meant to no offense, none at all! I certainly wasn’t *intending* to frighten you with your ignorance and shortsightedness.” Rahya: “Aw shucks, thank ya!” Tsukiko: “You are most welcome. Myself? I pick neither. I apologize if it does not answer your question but I do not wish to know the time nor the means of my death.”

Meichi’a: “I must agree with the ravishing raven-haired delight. Date or cause, it would hang over my head. Unless I was told that I would die from exhaustion after a night with several del- .. oh please don’t glare, my beret-bearing beauty! I was merely joking, merely joking!”

“If you were trapped on an island, would you rather resort to cannibalism or die of starvation?”

Yuti: “N-neither! I-if I was trapped on an island a-and had to r-resort to cannibalism, t-that would mean there are others there. W-we could work together to b-build a raft... t-then I can use conjury t-to help propel it a-and get off the island!”

Reri: “Ya ain’t stupid enough to think that’s the actual question, Snowflake.”

Yuti: “N-no! B-but... I mean...I s-suppose I w-would fish?”

Reri: “Still ain’t the question, Snowflake. Why don’t ya answer it?”

Yuti: “F-fine. I’d s-starve. It w-would f-feel... w-wrong...” Reri: “Knew it! Hah. Lookin’ Miss Prissy over here, thinkin’ she’s too good ta eat. Me? ‘course I’d do what it took to survive. Ain’t no difference between Miqo and Marlboro at the end of the day, ‘cept Miqo flesh probably ain’t gonna poison ya.”

Rahya: “I ain’t gonna do not cannyballism! Them things is big and explosive an’ madea metal! I couldn’t eat it even if I tried real real ha... what?”

Sayo: *whispers quietly*

Rahya: “WHAAA?! What kinda question is that?! I ain’t gonna eat nobody!!”

Sayo: “I must agree. To eat the flesh of a fellow Spoken is shameful and dishonorable. It would taint your bloodline and your legacy for generations. Starving is a kinder fate than that.”

Tsukiko: “It is true that such an act taints your bloodline. As I am already an *unworthy* servant of a tained line however it would not be shameful to eat the flesh of another... assuming they were already dead of course. Otherwise I would be honor-bound to offer myself first. Assuming one would like to eat *my* tainted flesh.

Meichi’a: “ Well, as much as I do enjoy eating a scrumptious beauty, it would not be in THAT way. I may consider life to be important but I am a gentleman first and foremost and there are some things a gentleman never does.”

“Would you rather have an arm hacked off or a leg?”

Yuti: “... I w-wish this wasn’t a question. A-ah... I m-mean... N-Nate seems to be doing okay... I g-guess... I d-don’t... A-arm? Yes.” Reri: “Easy. Arm. Ya can get by one one arm. It takes some work ta relearn to fight but ya can do it. Leg though? Shite, yer gonna be hobblin’ along. Lookit the Flames general. He ain’t havin’ a bad time.”

Rahya: “Um... I like havin’ arms. I can draw an’ move stuff.... an’ hug! I ain’t able ta hug nobody if I only got one arm... I mean I guess I kinda can but it’d be all.. *awkward one-armed hugging motions* so.. leg. Leg ain’t so bad. Plus ya could still ride on a chocobird or somethin’!”

Sayo: “I would choose to lose a leg. One can be far more productive with two functioning hands than two functioning legs. Honored Uncle has but a single leg and has little trouble getting by.”

Tsukiko: “I would choose an arm. My job is to go where my Master orders. It would be far more difficult to do with a single leg.”

Meichi’a: “Why, not even a question. The things you can do with two hands are FAR more fun. I make my coin from music and playing a harp with a single hand would be... well, not impossible but challenging! And as for dancing, I knew a gentleman in Limsa who could dance better than most two-legged gentleman with nary but a single flesh and single wooden limb! The sound of his peg-leg against the dance floor was a music all its own!”

“If you murdered someone, how would you get rid of the body?”

Yuti: “...I... t-that is... I w-wouldn’t...” Reri: “It’s a QUESTION Snowflake, not a confession a’ guilt.”

Yuti: “I am aware, Mother. Ugh. F-fine. I w-would... I m-mean... I s-suppose f-fire?”

Reri: “(In a whiny stuttering voice) I s-suppose f-fire. Aww, isn’t that cute. Fire ain’t bad but the best way ta hide a body is ta give it to the sea. Minimal fuss, hard as hell ta look for it, the fish do mosta the cleanin’ for you. You oughta weight it down so it ain’t washin’ up on shore or somethin’ but if ya wanna be smart about it ya lure ‘em onto a boat first. Less mess an’ trouble.” Rahya: I... i ain’t gonna murder nobody none but if I was gonna I ain’t gonna hide nuffin’ because I did a bad thin an’ I ain’t should be pretendin’ I ain’t.

Sayo: “I would never murder someone. Even in the unfortunate situation where I was forced to do so in self-defense, I would not deny my crime. I would be judged fairly by the administrators of the land so that no stain would come upon my family’s honor.”

Tsukiko: “Oh, MIstress Kususha. It is so very noble that you believe so firmly in the laws of the land and their fairness! You are a very fortunate woman indeed to never have had to hide a body by melting it into a easily washed away sludge using a careful mixture of alchemic and natural chemicals!”

Meichi’a: “... I am uncomfortable with that answer! Ah... me? I suppose I would bury it. I’m not really the murdering type but it at least feels respectful.”

“Would you rather hear the voices of dead people or see their ghosts?”

Yuti: “Ah... t-that’s tough. H-hear I suppose. T-that way I’d b-be able to help them i-if they needed it.”

Reri: “*snort* The last thing I need is some clingy dead folk cloggin’ up my hearing with moans and wails. I’d rather see the bastards. Maybe I can get some clue about what killed ‘em and if there’s danger about and I don’t gotta hear them whimperin’ and cryin’ because they were too stupid ta not get killed.” Rahya: “... I’d like ta hear folks ta be honest... be kinda nice. Like havin’ a buncha friends around. An’ if Aasifa... I mean... it’d be nice ta know I could still hear Aasifa, yah?”

Sayo: “Ah... to see, I suppose. The Kami and ancestors already speak in their own ways, but it would be... comforting to see my deceased family again. To see their smiles.”

Tsukiko: “Ah, what an unusual question. I would choose to hear. The words of the dead are wise more oft than not and not all of us are blessed enough to have worthy ancestors to whisper in our ears.”

Meichi’a: “I too would choose to hear. It is the least painful choice. To see a lost love and her smile and her beautiful eyes, knowing again I would never be able to hold her? That is a torture, my good sir, a torture. But to hear her voice, to speak to her again? That would be a blessing, if a small one.”

“If someone you loved committed a gruesome murder, would you help them cover it up?”

Yuti: “I-it would depend... I m-mean on why it happened.”

Reri: “Eh. Maybe. Depends on if it’s worth the trouble. Someone went an’ killed someone for no reason, nah. Ya can’t control yerself enough to not be stupid, I’m doin’ the world a favor lettin’ yer stupid arse get caught.” Rahya: “... I ain’t... n-no, prob’ly not I mean... I ain’t... gruesome is a real nasty word, it means all violent an’ bloody an’ stuff, right?”

Sayo: “No. Even if I loved them dearly, murder is a dishonorable act even if it isn’t violent and gruesome. They would need to stand judgement for their actions. If I was caught it would bring great shame to my family,”

Tsukiko: “If my Master commanded it.”

Meichi’a: “Absolutely. Love is love after all. Though I would dearly hope I do not fall in love with a serial killer. There is some spice in danger but ah... you’d have to be rather mad to be aroused by death.”

“Would you rather be kidnapped for six months and survive or die without any psychological damage?”

Yuti: “I w-would rather survive. I... I’ve h-had bad encounters before.”

Reri: “What the Hells ‘psychological damage’ mean anyway? Ya mean I’d be more fucked up after? Who the Hells cares. Survival is survial.” Rahya: “I’m kinda wonderin’ what psycho logic is too. I mean if yer logical then ya ain’t psycho right? It don’t make a lotta sense ta..”

Sayo: *whispering*

Rahya: “Oooooooh. Um... I ain’t... I mean... I ain’t wanna die but I ain’t wanna be hurt a bunch either... If I gotta pick one I guess I’d pick survivin’ so I ain’t... y’know.. dyin’.”

Sayo: “I would choose death. I do not know what would cause psychological damage but it would most likely involved great shame and leave me incapable of fulfilling my role as a second daughter. Death is the more honorable choice.”

Tsukiko: “I would survive, of course. I have no other choice.”

Meichi’a: “Survival, of course. Life is life and even the kindest days of life can damage our minds in some way or another. Why choose to die over something like that?”

“You can only save one… your worst enemy’s infant child, or your best friend’s true love. Who do you pick?”

Yuti: "I... w-would pick the child. N-no matter what, a child is n-not their parent. T-they are innocent and h-have their own life ahead of them.”

Reri: “Pfft. Easy. The kid. If yer too dumb ta avoid whatever danger is puttin’ a baby at risk, ya probably are gonna die when ya eat somethin’ poison cuz you thought it was candy. The kid ain’t trained enough ta stand on their own an’ frankly if it’s my worst enemy’s kid then they’ll probably grow up ta be a fun challenge.” Rahya: “Um... This is an awful weird question? I’m figurin’... um... I ain’t gonna let a baby die. I ain’t got no worst enemies but even if I did I ain’t gonna let a baby die. It ain’t right.”

Sayo: “... I... that is a difficult question. Sire would say that saving a respectable adult is more important unless the child is a Firstborn. I suppose that should be my answer...”

Tsukiko: “Why, whichever my master commanded. Truly it takes a cold individual to leave a child to a cruel and merciless fate but ah.. that may be what is ordered and I must obey.”

Meichi’a: “I am afraid I must say the true love. The child is innocent... but true love is the rarest thing of all. I would do my utmost to avenge the child but one who murders love is the cruelest beast of all.”

“Would you rather marry your most recent ex or spend five years in jail?”

Yuti: "T-that one is easy. My ex. S-she is a wonderful person. I-it would be by no m-means a bad fate.”

Reri: “Easy. Marry ‘em. Then I just ditch ‘em. Like what kinda question is this? Marriage ain’t important.” Rahya: “I ain’t really ever had an... ex-anythin’ so... um.. I guess imma get locked up.”

Sayo: “I have not had an ‘ex’ in any meaningful term... but it would depend on the circumstances. If it was marriage to someone my sire approved of then it would be my duty. If it was some sort of... tawdy kidnapping then I would choose imprisonment. I am certain Lord Vachir would come rescue me!”

Tsukiko: “*smile* Marriage, of course. Marriage is much easier to escape than prison.”

Meichi’a: “... Ah, what a question! How does one qualify an ex? The last woman I slept with? The last I took for a night on the town? I suppose she was rather charming but marriage? I’m not sure. It is a sacred bond and not easily broken. I suppose if I found love then yes. Otherwise.. well, jail it is!”

Thank you all for taking the time to answer these… ahem… questions. I appreciate your candor and I’m sure our readers do as well.  One last question of my own before we break. What’s next for you?

Yuti: "A-ah, I suppose I w-will continue my r-regular healing duties. I d-do have some e-exploration to do, m-maybe Lain will come along...”

Reri: “Same as ever. The four Fs. I hear there’s some kinda big arse monster bein’ spotted around recently, lookin’ forward ta tryin’ it out.” Rahya: “Um, I ain’t sure. Whatever happens ta me, I guess. i ain’t really plannin’...”

Sayo: “I intend to keep exploring Eorzea until I complete my mission.”

Tsukiko: “Whatever my Master commands. Until then, I suppose I will keep Kitakage out of trouble.”

Meichi’a: “Well, I saw this absolutely *beautiful* Elezen woman the other day, I am hoping perhaps to run into her again... ”

Tagged by: @peacekeeper-xiv

Tagging: @voidfirenate @anataerindottir @eyesseeingbeyondtheveil @onidephor @claihn Anyone else I missed!

[silenciawrites]

Day 2: Ayra and Lyssa

I’m not even a little bit ashamed. Have a gross romantic anecdote about my beloved demon children. 

Home

“I’m tired of being alone, Father, and I know you are, too… Purifying the world is a hard thing to do by yourself. Let me help you. I know I won’t live long enough as a mortal, but there are other ways—you’ve made demons before, right? Can we make one out of me?” 

~ 

The ache still lies heavy in her bones and she knows she’d made a mistake getting up so soon. Logically, it had made sense at the time. There was no reason to hide in the hostel any longer, not when she had her own home, her own space, in Novus Aevum—a place where she and the girls would be able to speak freely, a place where she wouldn’t have to playact at humanity any longer. 

And besides, the hostel wasn’t hers; she didn’t like it. She was tired and still in pain and if she couldn’t go properly home, she’d wanted to at least be in her own space. She’d wanted to be home. She’d wanted…all right, damn it, she’d wanted Lyssa.  

Of course, now she’s regretting it. 

“Are your humans asleep?” Lyssa asks, standing in the doorway and studying her. Her blonde curls are coming loose from the attempt at a braid just like they always are; she’s buttoned her cardigan wrong just like she always does. Her socks don’t match. The only thing that’s not like usual is the snap of cold in her voice. 

Ayra brushes back her hair with an impatient hand, looking anywhere but at Lyssa. It’s rare for her to feel like she’s made a mistake these days, not when they know each other so well, and she hates it. Especially since she doesn’t even know what it was. “As far as I know. I piled them all into the…into my room. Ebony assures me they’re used to all sharing a bed—apparently it was all they could manage for a while. I suggested the living space, but they preferred that.” She’s talking too much and she knows it. But if she keeps talking, maybe the fight isn’t going to happen. “Besides, they weren’t sleeping much while I was…resting.” And now she’s walked right into it. 

Lyssa’s eyes narrow and her mouth goes tight. It probably says something that even that’s cute. “Good,” is all she says, but her tense posture says otherwise. “Strip.” 

Taken aback, Ayra blinks. Lyssa isn’t usually that aggressive. “Excuse me?” 

“Your father told me three days ago that you were in town,” snarls Lyssa, “he told me three days ago that you were hurt. Strip.” 

Finally, Ayra understands. “Lyss, I’m fine,” she says, holding out her hands like a peace offering. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home, I didn’t mean to leave you to worry, but the girls didn’t know I lived here. I was too out of it to tell them at the time. And I didn’t know Father was going to tell you.” One would think, after all, that after five thousand years, her father would know how to avoid scaring Lyssa like that. 

Lyssa’s eyes soften. But her voice stays firm, even as a hint of a smile plays around her mouth. “I know. Don’t blame him; I asked what was going on when I felt that power blast outside of town. But I also know that you’ve been healing at least since I knew you were back in Novus Aevum, and you’re still moving like you’re in pain. Strip and lie down. I want to see if I can help.” 

Ayra’s hands raise, palms out, like a shield. She can’t let Lyssa do that, she can’t let Lyssa get into trouble on her account. Her father has always been relatively lenient when it comes to Lyssa and her quirks, but one day it’s going to be too much. She can’t lose Lyssa over a fight with a worthless soldier. “Lyss, no, I’m fine, really,” she says. The hurried words tumble out over each other. Part of her knows she’s panicking over nothing, that her father knows what Lyssa is to her and wouldn’t do that to her (but suffering is learning and what would make her suffer more than losing Lyss?) The idea of even possibly losing Lyssa over something so ridiculous…“You know Father doesn’t like it when you use thaumaturgy to heal—that’s not what it’s for—” 

Lyssa takes a step forward, then another, and reaches out, lacing her fingers gently with Ayra’s. They’re long fingers, a deep golden colour typical for a Calan, startling against Ayra’s smaller, paler hands. “And you and I both know,” she says, “that your father would turn a blind eye to me using the power he gave me to purify water and heal small orphan children in the name of the Traitor herself, as long as I was doing it to help you. Ayra, he loves you. He won’t mind if I do this for you. And I hate seeing you hurting. Please let me try.” 

Ayra stares at their joined hands. She’ll heal eventually. She’s taken worse than this and made it through. But Lyssa will hurt, seeing her suffer. And she does have a point; when Lyssa uses thaumaturgy to heal, Father is angry. When she uses it to heal Ayra, anger downgrades to minor annoyance. And if Ayra can play it off as Lyssa helping her get back to her full potential as quickly as possible, that should offset even that. Her father will know it’s not entirely true, but he knows about her and Lyssa—it isn’t as though she’s ever lied to him about it. He’ll understand. 

“If he gets mad at you,” she says, reluctant, “tell him to talk to me.” 

There’s something like a laugh in Lyssa’s voice when she says, “I will. Now. Can you get your clothes off yourself or am I going to have to help you?” 

Since Lyssa’s version of “helping” usually involves ripping, and Ayra’s fond of this shirt in spite of the damage it took from the fight, she says, “I can do it.” 

 Lyssa’s eyes stay trained on her as she takes it off, and when she can see again, the tension is back in Lyssa’s face. Uncertain, she sits on the side of the bed and begins undoing the button on her jeans. When she’s fought them off (between the rips and the bloodstains, she thinks these are done for), she leans back and frowns at Lyssa. “What’s wrong?” 

“Lie down,” Lyssa snaps, crossing the room in a few long strides. Her voice shakes with anger, but there’s a frozen sort of horror just under it. “Who was he?” 

Ayra looks down at herself, and has to admit that she does look rather a mess. “Dead now.” 

“Your father has him?” 

She’d confirmed that as soon as she woke up. “Yes.” 

“Good.” There’s such brutal condemnation in the word that Ayra loses her breath for a second. Lyssa has always been the softer of the two of them, the kinder. She’s only heard Lyss like this a few times. “Oh, honey, look at you.” 

“It’s not that bad,” Ayra grumbles as she lies back to let Lyssa have a more thorough look. 

“You aren’t the one looking at it,” says Lyssa drily, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting her hand against Ayra’s stomach. “And I know for a fact you aren’t feeling all of it, or you wouldn’t be standing. Here now.” 

Ayra grits her teeth and prepares for pain. Perhaps other methods of healing, the ones in the distant past where mortals could wield magick, were kinder, but thaumaturgy damages—and healing with it hurts as much as the wounds themselves. But she’s promised Lyss she’ll let her try to fix this, and suffering is learning. She’ll manage. She always does.  

Lyssa’s other hand comes up and cups her face, thumb brushing over her cheekbone. “Come here,” she says, and leans in. As the agony explodes into her system, as fresh and new as when she’d been hurt the first time, Ayra focuses hard on the kiss, on the shape and texture and feeling of Lyssa’s mouth, on the warmth of the body over hers, anything to avoid thinking about how much everything hurts. She deserves this. These are the consequences. Pain is necessary. Suffering is learning. Pain is learning. Oh oh it hurts it hurts no, no, pain is necessary, pain is learning—Lyssa—Lyssa, please— 

“I know,” Lyssa whispers back to her through the Hivemind. Blood Diabolists, being technically alive, aren’t as intimately connected to the demonic hivemind as eye demons like Lyssa, but the two of them have used this connection so often that it’s practically second nature. “I know it hurts, Ayra, darling, I’m sorry. Almost done, I promise. Just try to breathe through it.” 

As though that reminds her body of its basic needs, Ayra breaks the kiss to breathe—and in spite of her best efforts, a muffled whimper escapes as a fresh onslaught of pain starts. Lyssa strokes her cheek and pulls her back in. “There, there we are now. Try to relax. There. I think that’s the worst of it.” And indeed, the pain seems to fade with the words. 

There’s a moment of quiet while Ayra catches her breath, at last becoming aware of Lyssa’s hand rubbing absent circles on her skin. Lyssa’s watching her again, but there’s no coldness about it this time. When Lyssa speaks at last, it’s aloud, and in a softer, lower voice. “You’re so beautiful it hurts to look at you sometimes.” 

Even after all these years, it feels strange to hear that, still feels strange to have someone look at her and see only her and not her mother. She’d never seen the woman, not even a portrait or drawing, but all through her childhood she was told she has her mother’s eyes, her mother’s smile, her mother’s everything—and sometimes she wonders if that’s why there are days her father can’t even look her in the face. Ayra’s immediate instinct is still to brush it off, brush off anything about her looks, anything that makes her think of the past, and so she laughs—if it sounds a little breathless, she can attribute that to the healing. “If you spent time with other people, you wouldn’t—” 

“Shush,” says Lyssa, amused. “I know what I’m talking about. Now turn over, I want to see if your back is any better than the rest of you.” 

From the way she feels now that the first round of healing is over, Ayra knows it isn’t. She turns over anyway, propping her chin on her hands and waiting for the inevitable rebuke. 

Lyssa doesn’t disappoint. A low hiss escapes—just from the sound, Ayra’s pretty sure Lyssa’s clenched her teeth. (They know each other much too well.) “Did you even shield?” 

Well, no. She’d had to cover the girls; she can defend herself, they couldn’t. Can’t. Yet. Once they’ve served their purpose, perhaps she can talk her father into making them demons, too—she rather likes Ebony, and should she be able to keep them, Azaliura’s little time tricks are certainly worth more study. “The girls—” 

Lyssa cuts her off. “Were not and are not more important than you,” she snaps. “Ayra, you need to stop taking chances like this! Do you ever stop to think about what happens if you die?” 

She tries very hard not to, actually, since it would get in the way of doing her work. But Lyssa wouldn’t like to hear that. “I know what Father says,” she says instead, her voice gentling automatically—Lyssa doesn’t like to talk about losing Ayra any more than Ayra likes thinking about losing Lyssa. “But you would be there. You could talk him down. He listens to you.” Sometimes. 

“Absolutely not,” says Lyssa, her voice just as quiet. “If you die, I will not talk your father down. If you die, I will encourage and damn well expect him to ensure that everything happens just as he says it will.” 

Really, she should have expected this. If the idea of going on without Lyssa is so hard for her, when she’s at least got love elsewhere in her life, what would it do to Lyss if she dies? “Lyssa…”

 Lyssa bends forward and presses a kiss to the back of her neck. Gently, carefully, as though she’s afraid to hurt her. “I love you, Ayra.” They don’t say the words much, rarely need to, because they both know already. But that doesn’t make the impact any less when she does hear them. “We both do. We love you, and you’re the only thing worth going on for. You’re his rock. You’re my everything. Please be more careful.” 

Ayra stays quiet, lets the words sit until she has the breath to answer. “…All right. Fine. I’ll try.” She turns over again, tugs the elastic out of Lyssa’s braid so that her hair spills loose. “As long as you promise the same.” 

Lyssa laughs, lowering her head until her curls fall like a curtain, shielding them both from the outside world. “All right.” She rests their foreheads together for a minute, and Ayra closes her eyes. “All right.” 

~ 

“You’ve served me well, Ayra, but you’re still learning, and it cannot be easy for you to be surrounded by these…lost souls. I promised you that you wouldn’t be alone, even there, and I will never lie to you. Come to the desert, to the Black Dunes. I’ll send my newest creation to you there. She’s agreed to travel Vretoaz with you as a demon in exchange for freedom from Nekhril. Her name is Lyssa. I think the two of you will work well together.” 

[fangfucked-a]

NAME: Angel Michael Graham. ALIAS: Francis Elijah Carter. NICKNAME: Frankie, Fran, Franny, asshole.

AGE: Twenty eight. BIRTHDAY: August 12th, 1990. ZODIAC: Leo. BIRTH PLACE: Charleston, South Carolina. CURRENT LOCATION: L.A, California. GENDER: Non-binary. PRONOUNS: He/him, they/them, she/her. Really does not give a shit, uses masculine pronouns because he presents very masculine and it's just easier for most people. SEXUALITY: Bisexual, biromantic. SPECIES: Vampire. POWERS: Enhanced senses ( though taste has completely shifted, blood has several different tastes depending on person, human foods taste like copper ), enhanced strength, compulsion ( mind control ), accelerated healing, limited immortality, supernatural detection to a certain degree. He can smell someone's not human or catch onto a specific scent through their blood if he's encountered their kind before, but he doesn't always know what someone is. CONS: Sunlight will cause him to burn if he's not wearing his cloaking ring though even with it on, he's sensitive to sunlight. Needs blood for survival, if he goes too long without it his body will begin to shut down; not so much to kill him but he won't be able to do anything until he gets blood. RELIGION: Christian. Raised with that faith and he still holds it very dear to him despite constantly going against what he believes in. OCCUPATION: Hitman, uses baker as a cover. LANGUAGES KNOWN: English and some Spanish. ACCENT: American. VOICE CLAIM: Dan Stevens, specifically his accent in The Ticket. FACE CLAIM: Joseph Gilgun, Dan Stevens. Just depends on who I'm in the mood to use tbh. EYE COLOR: Bright blue. HAIR COLOR: Naturally dirty blond, dyed his hair brown. It's fading so it's a bit of a mix between the two colors.. STYLE: Short, just kind of a mess. Flat and not styled. HEIGHT: 6'6". TATTOOS: Two solid black bands on his wrist, a twisted Cheshire cat that takes up most of his left leg, an arrow on his right arm, 'die with memories, not dreams' in typewriter font on his left forearm, a galaxy design on his left hand, the word FUCK on his right knuckles, a tree that takes up his back and under that tree is the name Alex in red cursive font. Never bring up the name to him. He pretty much has small random tattoos all over his body that would take me too long to list, almost anywhere you can think of has some sort of tattoo. PIERCINGS: A helix piercing on his left ear. SCARS: He has several scattered across his body from the years of constant abuse, however most are actually covered up by his tattoos. The only ones that are really noticeable anymore are one by his right eye that leads from the inner corner to the top of his cheek bone, one on his right hand that goes from his knuckles to the top of his wrist, and one going down his chest from the heart surgery he had as a child. It's mostly covered by his tree tattoo, but if you look close you can see a large scar of a cross shape on his back. CLOTHES: Surprisingly colorful. Wears a lot of skinny jeans, douchey tank tops, high tops that vary in colors. He tries to avoid wearing dark colors unless he's on a job, then he'll do whatever he can to remain unseen or unnoticed. DISTIGUISHING LOOKS: Tall figure, bright eyes, and his fangs are always out. LABEL: The dirtbag, the addict, the conard. POSITIVE TRAITS: Adaptable, fiercely loyal, loving, clever, a damn good survivor. NEGATIVE TRAITS: Impulsive, obsessive, egotistical, selfish, just an asshole tbh. GOALS: Really wants to kill Alex and give her a taste of even a little bit of what he endured through their relationship. Also to keep his family strong and knit together. FEARS: Alex, abandonment, failure, grief, and spiders. HOBBIES: Music is a huge factor in his life that he's trying to get back into and learn even more. Cooking is also a big hobby of his as well as his career, he enjoys video games from time to time, and he loves anything social. He just likes meeting and speaking to people. HABITS: Smokes heavily, bounces his leg, chews on his lip even though he can't retract his fangs. FAVORITE WEATHER: He loves the cold which is why he thrived in New York during the colder seasons, but now that he lives in California, it makes him want to Die(tm) FAVORITE MUSIC: Rap and pop tend to be his most listened to, but he can listen to most things! His favorite band is Mindless Self Indulgence. FAVORITE COLOR: Blue. FAVORITE MOVIES: He's not a movie person, he doesn't really watch them ever. He does however love Boondock Saints and will watch it continuously so he tends to watch action or romance if he does watch anything. FAVORITE SPORTS: Also not a sports person. He knows a bit about baseball, but that's mostly due to his brother's involvement back in school. PHYSICAL: None. He's very healthy despite not looking like it. MENTAL: ADHD that was diagnosed at eight. BPD and OCD were diagnosed at fifteen and seventeen. PTSD is undiagnosed. He really only has a handle on his ADHD but he's actively trying to better himself nowadays and get a better grip on his other disorders. ALLERGIES: None. SLEEPING HABITS: Doesn't sleep much. He doesn't need much anyway, but he also suffers from nightmares that will keep him up for hours after and spike his paranoia. So he tries to avoid sleeping as much as possible. EXERCISE HABITS: Occasionally goes for runs because it's good for him to clear his mind, but other than that not much exercising. His body won't change and he's already supernaturally strong so he doesn't see the point. EATING HABITS: When it comes to blood, he uses his hits as his main source for meals, but he'll also eat human food to keep up appearances. SOCIAL: Practically the definition of an extrovert. BODY: Has some muscle, but still pretty lean and doesn't look exactly healthy. ADDICTIONS: Nicotine. DRUG USE: Recovering heroin addict ( going on three years clean ) so he stays away from everything at this point. ALCOHOL: Recovering alcoholic ( one year clean ) so none anymore. MOTHER: Meghan Graham. FATHER: Nathaniel Taylor ( birth father ), Jacob Graham ( adoptive father ) SIBLINGS: A twin brother named Abel and a younger sister named Celestina, though he has no idea she exists since she was born after his disappearance. PETS: A tabby named Patches and an Egyptian Mau named Gamora. PARTNER: Faolán Mackenzie. wife. CHILDREN: Nova & Sirius Mackenzie.

Francis' backstory contains heavy mentions of abuse, murder, heroin addiction, and alcoholism.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

He wasn't always like this. So monstrous, so violent, so bloodthirsty. Nobody starts off as the villain of the story, sometimes they're made that way, and in Angel's case, that's exactly what happened. He starts off mild mannered, polite, a drive to do something great in the world, and an aspiration to fall in love. He witnessed the world through rose colored glasses, so when he meets what he sees as the perfect girl, it's easy to ignore the red flags about her. The snide comments, the little lies, the almost a little too possessive behavior --- he just shrugged it off because they're small compared to the good he sees in her. Alex gave him the love he desired, the attention he craved, and somehow always knew what to say to have him as putty in her hands. Never mind that she's older or that he has to keep her a secret from his family.

Eighteen and she forces him to move to New York with him. He wasn't sure why he said yes, but there was an overwhelming force that made him agree, so one night he packed up a bag and he was gone. Without a word to anyone. It's not long after the move that she begins to show her true colors, the violent tendencies, the controlling behavior ---- it was starting to scare him. His life became walking on eggshells, watching his every word and action around her, and he was starting to become numb to it all. She teaches him how to fight, claims it's because he should know self defense, but he's not sure if it's not just another excuse to hit him.

It gets worse with time. The physical violence was more often, but she had also shattered any resemblance of his self esteem. He was numb, apathetic, and living a life that revolved around her to try and save himself. He wanted to leave, call his family for help, anything ---- but he couldn't. There was that pull again, the one that made him do whatever she told him. The supposed love of his life had also become the scariest thing in it. He falls into bad habits, alcohol and drugs, anything to try and make things seem a little more bearable. If he was too numb then maybe it wouldn't hurt so much, maybe he wouldn't be so god damn scared, right? His life had become survival day in and day out, he wasn't alive anymore. She had drained him of anything he once had.

DEATH

Then the dreaded day came, four days after his birthday, just like when she took him away, she decides to end his life. He comes home from the bar and immediately she slams him up against the wall. He doesn't even register what she's saying, something about how she was waiting to do this for a long time, something about a game, and something about a weapon. She forces a metallic liquid down his throat and the one thing that properly processes is the pain he feels in his abdomen. The feeling of the knife twisting in his gut and the nightmare fueled grin across her face as he realizes what's happening. He was going to die and it was really going to be at the hand of her.

That's the day Angel Graham died, but it's not the end of his story.

BECOMING A MONSTER

He wakes up in a place he doesn't recognize, his hand chained to some rusty pipe. His head's pounding, teeth throbbing, and the tears couldn't be held back. The pain was unbearable, everything was so much louder than it was before, the light on his eyes made him want to tear them out, and the sudden hunger made him want to scream. He begged for mercy, death would have been kinder than whatever the hell he was feeling now. His path may have been lost at a young age, but he never imagined he deserved any of what he was experiencing. Alex shuts him up quickly, forcing more blood down his throat and covering his mouth with tape. He thinks he might be in hell, but then she explains what's happening. She changed him into something more than human, a vampire. A fucking vampire.  It's terrifying, panic quickly sets in, but he realizes there's not much he can do but succumb to whatever she has planned.

The years leading up to his death had all been setting it up. Breaking him down to the point where he didn't know who he was without her, the dependency and loyalty to her despite her cruelness, the fighting training, it was all for her. She made him into her own sick little game. Pushing him to see how far she would go, making him into a weapon for her own amusement. The bloodshed follows quickly after his turn as she teaches him how to revel into the chaos. Any sense of his human self had begun to fade away. He was just everything she wanted him to be. A violent monster, one that would attack on command, one that would do anything to please her.

 MOVING ON  

After his twenty fourth birthday, he starts to come to terms with everything. He starts to finally see past the lies and manipulation, thoughts finally fighting against her commands. This wasn't the life he wanted to lead. The compulsion she had over him was gone, he was fucking tired of it and he didn't have to sit through the abuse anymore. So he packs up one night and leaves without a word, much like he had with his own family. He&'s not done with her, but he knows that the state he was in wasn't enough to go against her. She's older and much much stronger than him. He'd have to train more, make a goal to get even.

His powers and charm get him by for a while. It's difficult at first, he's homeless but it was better than staying with his abuser. He gets a new identity to hide himself so Francis Elijah Carter is created. He's not innocent by any means, his mind still corrupted and twisted by Alex, the violence is still a part of him now, the love for chaos. He wasn't ashamed of what he had become, he reveled in it, but he would be damned if he remained a victim. He uses his skills to start killing for cash, figures a good meal and some decent cash could get him by. He even gets clean and sober after he finds himself a new family, one that treats him a hell of a lot better than the relationship he had been in for the last few years. Life's not bad, he's made it his own again, but he knows he's coming for her head as soon as he gets the chance.

[togreblog]

Dream Catcher

So the tenses are a little bit weird in this, I was trying to write in present tense, but there were parts where she is remembering things so that is in past tense. Any writers (or just people who are good at English) and want to actually give constructive feedback instead of just liking, reblogging and supporting, will be much appriciated.

It is Nessian and nightmares basically.

Nesta POV - (3200 Words - yeah it’s quite long)

After the ordeal in Hybern, Mor left us at a cabin in the mountains, there were 5 rooms when we arrived, but as Mor explained, the cabin magically adapted to it being just the two of us, becoming smaller and cosier. It seemed to understand that we were new fae and provided foods that were not too heavily spiced so as to overwhelm our powerful new senses, but far more spiced than human food. I could see why Feyre had gagged at dinner in our old house. I would have to remember to apologise to her about that, now that I had a.. new perspective.

It also provided us with large amounts of the food, because I don’t think either of us kept much down during that first week and we needed to stay strong and healthy. I knew know, that Feyre had become awfully thin after being under the mountain due to the nightmares causing her to bring up her meals late into the night. That was another benefit of the magical house. No matter how much mess we made from the uncontrollable, nightmare-induced vomiting in the early hours of the morning, when we woke up, the cabin was fresh as a daisy.

After the first week, Elain began to crawl into my bed after waking up in the cold sweats which made the memories of the cauldron more vivid, often screaming too as she relieved it. We noticed that the nightmares stopped, sleeping next to each other, subconsciously knowing that the other person was alive next to us. So we began just sleeping in the same bed, magically accommodated by the cabin.

When the time came that we were trusted and safe enough to move into Velaris with the inner circle. I was grateful that Rhys could read my mind and gave us adjoining rooms. I didn’t want anyone in the inner circle to know about my uncontrollable weakness, the nightmares I couldn’t fight against. Once we had both started sleeping through the night, we were slowly becoming stronger and healthier, but with a war looming, Rhys offered combat training in both magic and weapons. Much to my disdain, he extended his offer to Elain also. She gratefully accepted and over the weeks seemed to become stronger. She took to magic easily, finding that it obeyed her as if it were simply an extension of her elongated fae limbs.

I, on the other hand, struggled. Every time I tried to conjure it, it burst out of me. A reminder of how I had fought against the cauldron, taking more than it wanted. I hoped at least that I had weakened it somehow. If I was going to live my life as a ticking time bomb, full of magic I couldn’t control.

The weeks passed and though my fighting was better than Elain’s, my magic evaded me. The natural aggression in me allowed me to swing and thrust the strong metal blades harder, faster and more precisely than Elain’s hesitant and defensive sweeps. It was for this reason, that when the time came for Elain to be allowed to train with the Illyrians, the offer was not extended to me also. No, Cassian would remain behind to train me, since he was a better commander than Azriel (Besides which Elain would rather go to the camps with Azriel, he is much kinder and gentler towards her than the others. More understanding of her nature.) and Rhys was needed at the camps and Mor in the Court of Nightmares. 

Elain was hesitant to accept at first and I understood the reason when I noticed Elain glancing back at me before declining. I knew Rhys could tell something was off and when he asked her again, I caught her eye and nodded. I would not hold my sister back. If she was ready to help Feyre, then she should. 

It was this series of events that lead to tonight. I had trained with Cassian all day and as I walked up to bed, I was hoping that the tiredness would do what Elain's presence had previously. I may not have had a nightmare in a long time, but I remembered vividly what it had been like to see Elain drowned and mutilated in various other ways which never failed to cause me to scream and thrash against the covers which began to feel restraining and suffocating in my sleep. It was never me being pushed into the cauldron, always Elain, as I stood helplessly, waking in a fervour before my turn could come.

I walk towards the bathroom shared by mine and Elain's rooms. I have enough time and just enough energy to wash away the sweat and relieve the tension in my body, with a hot shower. I hiss when I step into the water. The hot shower shouldn't have felt so scalding, but the air outside had been cold and my body hasn't warmed up yet. I allow myself time to adjust to the temperature of the water before scrubbing my skin with brutal efficiency. Not bothering to appreciate the delicate orange fragrance of the soap we have been supplied with. I get out and wrap myself in a luxuriously soft towel, big enough that I didn't even feel the cold as I step out of the steaminess of the bathroom. Not that I would have cared even if I had, I was exhausted and headed straight for the huge mattress that Elain and I shared. Had shared.

That thought reminded me of the nightmares I had suffered before Elain had begun crawling into my bed at night reassuring me she was still alive. Suddenly the idea of sleep is aboundingly less appealing. I glance around the room in hope that there is something to keep me occupied for the night. There isn't of course, so with a sigh of resignation, I leave my towel on the floor and slip under the covers without making the trip to the walk in closet. The townhouse has stupidly large rooms so the closet os too far away and Elain isn't here so it's not really a problem. I almost reach to turn the light out, but thinking better of it and simply roll over. It takes an hour of distracting thoughts before the lids of my eyes become too heavy for even the threats of looming nightmares to keep me awake. I fall into the sweet embrace of a dark and restless sleep, still trying to think distracting thoughts to keep the nightmares at bay.

It didn't work, not halfway through the night I have woken up and am lying in bed, my throat hoarse from the screaming which I couldn't not control during my sleep. I couldn't control it, not only because of the unconsciousness but because of the visions. 

Tonight, now that they had me back in their grip, the cauldron and the darkness had shown me myself, watching Elain being drowned. I could see the pain on my own face as I struggled to get to her. I was still screaming, but this time at the Nesta in my dream who couldn't do anything, who was held, helpless and mortal, by soldiers, leaving her only able to watch and thrash as the life was forced from her sister and replaced with a dark magic, but then the scene changed. A new dream, one I didn't recognise. Elain was back in the Night Court, my heart calmed, the beating slowed. My screams in the real world quietened and ceased. Why was the darkness showing me this? The Nesta in my dream was sat in one of the big armchairs, made to accommodate Illyrian wings, laughing at the fact that Cassian was left without a seat and had tried to sit in one of the smaller chairs. Ending up sat on the bottom of his wing. He howled in pain and tried to get up, but each time he tried, he fell back down because his wing was still pinned underneath him. In the end, Mor and Azriel got up to help pull him out of the seat, running back to their chairs quickly so he still couldn't claim one. He ended up sat on the floor. Elain and Dream-Nesta were giggling in the corner and I started to relax.

The cauldron and the darkness had deceived me, as Cassian settled himself on the floor, the door burst open.

In marched Graysen. He immediately ran over to Elain, his men too fast for the fae and armed with ash arrows. Even as he quickly embraced her, Graysen failed to notice her taller, leaner frame. It wasn’t until he pulled away and turned to pull her from the room that he noticed her pointed ears. His own ash arrow was drawn from the quiver on his back in an instant, pointed at Elain.

I could feel the thrashing return to my body as Dream-Nesta screamed and pleaded him not to, an ash arrow now at her throat too.  Ash, not iron I tried to tell myself, the humans in the real world didn’t know about the capabilities of ash, but I didn’t wake up. Even seeing it from an out-of-body perspective, I couldn’t convince myself that this wasn’t real and that I could just wake up. My screams did nothing, but convince Graysen to leave us till last, I watched as the dismembered each of my new family, then Elain. For the second time that night, I watched helpless and restrained as Elain's body was broken. I woke, as before, just as they turned on me, not because this was so horrific that I could finally wake myself up. No, quite the opposite, I woke because the nightmare was over because watching myself die without having to live with the tragedies I had let happen to Elain... that would be a gift.

So here I was, awake in the middle of the night, no way of checking on Elain at the camps to ensure my dream hadn't become a reality, no chance of falling back to sleep. I lay in wait for the daylight hours to come, so that I could train with Cassian and try in futile to force the magic from that damned cauldron to behave and throw punches until I collapsed, so that maybe, tomorrow night, I would be too tired to imagine that which I didn’t want to see.

No matter how many punches I threw, how much magic I allowed to leave my body in the large deadly explosions which Cassian had to stand at least 100 m clear of and use a shield of his own magic, so powerful he needed seven siphons, to sufficiently avoid, the nightmares came. Sometimes bad enough for me to run to the bathroom gagging, but always causing me to scream and sit in bed awake for the remainder of the night.

The house became quieter as I stopped eating and sleeping, having less energy to expend talking to Cassian and with only the two of us in the house, tiptoeing around each other as I deteriorated and shut him out to try and hide the weakness.

It is ten days after Elain left. I didn’t manage to keep last night’s dinner down in the early hours of today when I saw Elain, once again drowning in the black waters, swallowing it as she opened her mouth, either to scream or to breathe, Nesta didn’t know which because shortly after, Elain was dead and Nesta was awake remembering the gulps of murky liquid she herself had swallowed, causing her to gag. 

So, I sit at the breakfast table feeling weak from the accumulated lack of sleep and an empty stomach, trying to eat enough to replenish my strength for training. For the first time in a few days, Cassian ignores my walls and speaks.

“We aren’t training today.”

My head shoots up questioningly and I finished my mouthful before trying to ask him why. He cut me off, “you aren’t strong enough. I know you don’t sleep Nesta, I heard you screaming the first few nights after Elain left and though I moved to a room further away from yours, I can see in your eyes every morning that you still don’t sleep. Judging by the amount you’re eating this morning, you also threw up this time.” With each of his words, I can feel myself slumping in my chair, curling in on myself out of embarrassment. Refusing to meet his gaze, I hear him sigh. This is not a conversation either of us wants to have. “Nesta, nightmares are nothing to be afraid of. I had them after my wings were shredded, you just have to tell yourself they aren’t real and try to continue sleeping, if you go to bed exhausted every night and refuse to go back to sleep, you are creating more fear about the nightmare, than by trying to ignore them. If you are scared of your nightmares when you are awake and can think rationally, you are never going to get away from them.” He makes sense, which is just even more annoying than him refusing to train me today.

"I know how to get rid of them, they've just... come back." The moment I say those words, I know they were the wrong choice. I can almost hear the cogs turning in Cassian's brain as he comes to the correct conclusion about why my nightmares have returned.

"You and Elain were sharing a bed weren't you?" It's not exactly a question because we both know it's true. He understands the implications. I dare to meet his eyes and see him staring at me pitifully. I can feel the overwhelming emotions rising up inside of me. I never cry, I scream and I lash out. I never cry, but the tiredness is getting to me. I never cry, but I am crying and in front of Cassian of all people. I try to get up and leave, but he beats me to the door. I expect him to make some stupid comment about how he stupid it is or to look at me with pitiful eyes. He doesn't, he simply offers half of his bed, not out of pity or shameless flirting, but because Cassian knows what nightmares are like. He knows that maybe sleeping next to anyone, even if they’re not Elain, may help. I don't want to show even uncontrollable weaknesses, so I hang my head and quietly decline. Cassian informs me that we're still not training today and moves, silently, out of my way.

I spend the day around the house, Nuala and Cerridwen offer assistance with various activities, but I continue to politely decline. In the end, I put on some Illyrian music and let the noise fill my head, leaving no room for my own thoughts. Though not what you would expect from Illyrian’s, the music is that used in their traditional dances at formal gatherings. It is mostly string or wind instruments, peaceful and melodic, but also rousing and upbeat at times. Cassian spends his time upstairs, I don’t know what he’s doing, but occasionally I hear him enter the room above the living room. His footsteps are heavy and it is only when the music slows and the thuds keep in time, that I realise he is dancing along to the music. The thought cheers me up and though I don’t know where I stand with Cassian after this morning, I make a note to see if he will perform or teach the dances one day.

This evening, I am not tired. Today has been a good day overall, but I don’t go to bed believing the nightmares won’t return. I am right. Only this evening, I see real events, Elain drowns, but when she comes out alive, she is breathing and is greeted by her mate, who wraps her in his jacket and tried to comfort her. I wake up and it is light outside. I close my eyes against the morning sun allowing my pupils to adjust. It is only when I open my eyes for the second time that I notice the sheets. On the other side of the bed, the pillow has been slept on and the sheets are not straight. My first thought is Elain, but she would have told me if she was coming back. I remember the conversation yesterday and my triumph fails. Cassian snuck in here and chased away her nightmares, just like he said he would. She is only grateful he picked a day when she had had enough energy to walk to the closet and put on pyjamas.

I get up, get dressed and prepare myself for Cassian’s smugness. When I walk into the kitchen, he says nothing. We eat as normal, in silence. Before we go out to train, though, I catch his elbow he turns around confused and concerned. “Thank you.” I murmur, rolling my eyes as if to pass it off as no big deal, lest his ego inflate, but he hugs me instead. It is awkward as I go rigid at first but then he leads over me and kisses the top of my head. Not a romantic gesture, just comforting and reassuring. "You don't need to face it alone," he whispers. After a brief pause, he finishes, "ever again." I know what he means and for the last 10 days of Elain's, Azriel's, Rhys' and Mor's time away, Cassian and I eat, train and sleep together. I was wrong about Cassian's ego, where he could brag about being right or tease me about relying on him in this way, he is quiet about it, helping maintain the strictly platonic way in which they share the bed. I regain my strength and finally get a hold on my magic. Not well enough to fight with it, but given time, I can form objects and wield the magic into different shapes. When they return, they wonder what had happened between us because the bickering pair they left behind now work together like a beautiful machine, a mutual understanding and respect allowing us to work together in perfect synchronicity. 

When the evening comes and three people retire to the double bed, it is Elain that I apologise to. Quietly explaining, but making her leave instead of Cassian, none-the-less. Cassian doesn't remark on this either, but I can tell that he and I are both a little bit shocked at the step. However, in the past 10 days, the invisible boundary down the middle of the bed has disappeared and my scent is definitely starting to smell a little bit like Illyrian. Leading everyone to wonder just how long this is going to remain platonic.

[quinnsisland]

My leg

I always think I’m perfectly happy until hard times come. Then suddenly I see myself as the most depressed person who has ever lived. I fail to take proper care of myself, I miss meals, I let myself fall apart. I may even encourage myself to fall apart, spending far too much time doing emotional bloodletting instead of focusing on real life. I sense that there’s some huge hole in my heart. Like theres this enormous inner sadness, a disconnect, my self image is simultaneous self righteousness and self hatred. I’m either the greatest person to ever live, or the worst, and there isn’t much in-between when I’m going through something tough. I start questioning everything, desperately trying to understand myself and my situation. I’ll spend three hours watching psychology videos, reading articles, trying to find any solution to the problems at hand. But I rarely research ways to help myself and my own personal problems. It’s always research over ways to help others, or help mend our relationship. I would say that I am very bad at self care, but once again, I seem to lie on both sides of the fence. In my day to day life, I am reserved in an almost rude and selfish way, not even saying thank you to people, just keeping my mouth shut and doing whatever needs to be done. I can seem like I don’t care about anyone or anything, but truly I don’t care about myself. My care and attention is always given to others. Often when I’m reading articles or watching videos searching for help, my immediate thought is how I can apply this in my life to people I care about, never how I can apply it to myself, and I know that this is wrong. My automatic response to advice is to give it to others, not to give it to myself. I feed upon helping others, but it only festers an inner dislike towards myself. I’m always giving, but always as a function of denying my own wants and needs. It’s a reflex to keep people around. I’ve read that you have to be selfish first, and only after you learn to put yourself first you can be truly selfless. Clearly I’ve dug myself into a deep hole. Convincing myself that if I love and care and help hard enough then it will be reciprocated. But this has never been the case. I always love and care and help harder than the other person. This is because I give hardly any of it to myself. If I can learn to love myself, take care of myself, and do things to help myself instead of harm myself, then I’ll be better able to reciprocate it. This is an uphill battle. I have to rewire my brain. I feel like an emotionally inept baby. No matter what strong sense of self I have, I’m realizing I hardly know myself half the time. I don’t really know how to make myself happy, I can’t name many things that bring me joy, at least nothing that comes from within. I’m extremely self critical, so much so that I avoid making music because it frustrates me and ruins any creativity I’m feeling. I feel best when I’m with others, but for about half of the day, I like to be alone. My relationship with being alone is complex. I enjoy being alone, I enjoy silence and calm, but I also feel terrible, and some form of self-loathing ensues in my brain. I become depressed, question why I feel how I feel, then double down on that depression by feeling depressed about being depressed. Feeling like I’m not adult enough to be alone and happy at the same time. Never letting my brain really slow down. Not using my alone time to do things that bring me joy. When I’m going through hard times, so many things make me feel like I’m not good enough. A lot of people in my life have made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. This is simple enough to understand, but I was also often told I was too good. Whether it was in sports, music, art, or just being a good person. I was always “too good” for other people and not good enough for myself. This creates a lot of discord and stress in my brain, and is most likely why I struggle so much with feeling superior to everyone and simultaneously lesser than. Like everyone around me has life figured out, and I’m still dragging around the same anchors from childhood. That feeling of “Everybody else gets it, and I’m the only one who doesn’t.” This is how I feel constantly. How am I supposed to teeter between these two extremes? How am I ever supposed to be able to accept everyone’s high regards of me when I despise myself, even without being conscious of it? How do I process these mixed signals, how do I cross reference, who do I trust more, me or them? It’s too confusing to process most times. I’d like to say that I don’t compare myself with people very often, but I do. It may be a very rare occurrence, but when I’m feeling inadequate, suddenly I am all alone in the world, and everyone is going to hurt me. Suddenly I’m not tall enough, not the smartest in the room, not a good person, not talented, not loved. I let the feeling of inadequacy reign over me, sending me into a depressive spiral. Letting the self fulfilling prophecy take hold. I get beat down by life so hard that I can’t find the seemingly magical “purpose” and “strength” that I always hear about from people who used to be where I am. Every day is a battle, and I’ve run out of energy. My purpose and strength wither away, and I sit there in self loathing, doing absolutely nothing about it. Rock bottom no longer seems like a temporary place, it becomes a home for me to live and die in. Any trace of optimism disappears. My mind goes to dark places, and the voices of reason become distant. Failure and anger and sadness and isolation become comforting. They are the feelings I can expect as a baseline, which makes life more manageable. I don’t have to worry about the unknowns because I know that tomorrow I’ll feel like I’m losing. The feelings of abandonment and loss become normal in my brain. How sad is that? Maybe that’s why I struggle with happiness. I feel like growing up, I was taught that happiness wasn’t like other emotions. It wasn’t random. It stuck around. I thought happiness was the baseline feeling, and occasionally I would feel sad when sad things happened. But in my life, the roles of sadness and happiness that were displayed to me as a child have reversed. Melancholy is the emotion that is usually at the forefront. Desolation. Decay. Loss. Little victories are overshadowed by great defeat. I know this is no way to live. I know that I need to be kinder to myself, be more proud of myself, doubt myself less, and learn to be a little self centered. It is extremely difficult to put myself first, it makes me feel evil. If someone I care about is suffering as much as me, possibly even moreso, then why would I ever put me first? Wouldn’t that make me a bad friend? How do I help the one I love by letting her go for awhile? Maybe this is easy for other people to understand. But for me, it’s almost impossible to wrap my head around. Nearly every waking second of me putting myself first makes me feel like I deserve all the bad things that are happening to me. Like I deserve pain, suffering, and abandonment. Like I am nothing more than an instrument of suffering. I have convinced my brain that I’m not worth it. But I will convince it otherwise. It is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I will learn to love myself. I will learn to think higher of myself. I will discover the things that bring me joy from the inside, things that don’t depend upon others. I miss my best friend like a leg. Life is infinitely harder without her, and like losing a leg, I have to learn to walk without her. In my heart I hope she feels the same way. We both need to learn to walk without each other before we can walk together again. I adore you. I love you more than the sun and the moon and all the stars. More than all the flowers in the world. More than the air I breathe. More than I could ever begin to explain. But I need to love myself first. And I will.

[lenaglittleus]

To The Woman Addicted to Working Out

A year ago I shared this post on the blog about what happened when I stopped working out for a month.

I alluded to it in the post, but chose not to get into too much detail about my history with overexercising and how deep my disordered thought patterns had gone. I think it all still felt a little too fresh and real and per usual, I needed some extra time to process everything before I could share my experiences.

I finally feel like I’m in a good place with my body. A really good place. This doesn’t mean I’m immune to insecurities or feeling like my jeans fit a little too tight some days, but I no longer let that dictate my life. I think how you react to these thoughts, that are normal and human, is truly what’s indicative of recovery.

Because for many years of my life I let these thoughts and subsequent actions dictate my entire life.

But let’s rewind.

I’m 23 and staring at myself in the mirror in a tight-fighting dress and I begin to cry. I told C I wasn’t going out that night because I was “too fat”. I was 114 lbs and at the smallest I had ever been. I had a flat tummy, lean legs and what many girls would have defined as “fit”. I, however, could not see any of this. What I saw in the mirror was someone completely different. I saw someone who was inadequate. Who lacked willpower. Who everyone would be staring at for not have worked out that day.

Yes, I know this sounds crazy. But all I could see in the mirror was the girl who skipped her workout that day because well, life happened. I couldn’t get to the gym and therefore could not wear the tight-fitting dress and subsequently would never be able to attend the party that night. This was how messed up my thought-patterns were. And we haven’t even tackled the headspace of not being able to drink because I hadn’t worked out…

Clearly, I was in a pretty bad place.

But of course, I was the only one who couldn’t see it. No matter what people said to me or probing questions that were thrown my way, I did not see anything wrong with my behavior. I mean I worked out (albeit A LOT), I ate healthy and it maybe isn’t the worst thing in the world that I didn’t want to drink or party.

On the conventional health scale, I was off-the-charts. On the mental health scale, I was a whopping zero.

At that point in my life, there was nothing that anyone could say to me that would make me realize how bad things had gotten. I needed to learn that lesson for myself.

That lesson came a few months later when I did some major damage to my knee while running on a treadmill. I was in denial for a while. The pain was excruciating, but I ignored it. If I couldn’t run, I would jump. If I couldn’t jump, I would lift. I did whatever I could tolerate until a physiotherapist finally told me that if I ever wanted to live pain-free again, I would have to take a break. A long break.

What I see now that I couldn’t then was that she saw me struggling. She saw the issue as far deeper than knee pain. She saw the girl who cried into the mirror and whose life revolved around exercise. Perhaps she had been one of those girls. Perhaps you are one of those girls. If so, I hope this post speaks to you.

Life is not about what is on your workout plan for that day. It’s not BBG or TIU or how many miles you ran. You are not defined by your ability to push your body to its limits. Your strength is not measured in curls or deadlifts. And you are not defined by your body.

It’s easy for me to say this now after 5 years recovering both physically and eventually, mentally from the awful place I was in. If you are in it now, I see you. I feel you. I was you. I know exactly how you are feeling and I know you fear what will happen when you let go of the reigns.

But those chains you grip are doing you more harm than good.

If your life revolves around exercise, I can assure you that other areas of your life will suffer. You will lose friendships, miss out on relationships, burn your adrenals and potentially have long-term health consequences that I’m only now just learning about.

What is challenging about being addicted to exercise is similar to the obstacles of having an eating disorder. It’s not as though you can go cold turkey on food or exercise and continue to live your life without them. It is a drug you will never quit, but instead have to learn to live with in a far more moderate and kinder fashion.

This is the hardest part of recovery. Redefining your limits. Learning what it means to listen to your body. Accepting that moving is simply enough and that some days even this isn’t possible.

So how did I get from the girl crying in front of the mirror to the girl writing to you now? Honestly, it took a lot of work. I shed a lot of tears and I learned to vocalize all of my fears.

First things first, I took a break. Actually, I took several breaks. For someone who is addicted to exercise, the thought of not working out is terrifying. To me “not working out” meant doing a power flow. It meant going on a light run. It did not mean rest. But rest is what you need. Whether you’re injured or are feeling the mental effects of burnout, my biggest piece of advice to you is to SLOOOOOOOW DOWN. Be kinder to yourself. Go on a walk, take a nap. Drink some tea. Find other things in your life that bring you joy and do those.

Secondly, talk about it. Maybe it’s with a friend or a therapist (I highly recommend you seek professional help btw) or maybe it’s with the entire internet. One of the most healing pieces of my journey, was you guys. Talking about life outside the gym, my changing body and discovering other areas of joy beyond the gym with you was a huge help in being where I am now. I’ve quoted my friend Natasha Adamo about this more times than I can count, but “you don’t need to be healed to help”. I’m still not fully healed, but helping any of you has helped to heal me.

Lastly, educate yourself on the long-term impacts of overexercise. Learn what adrenal fatigue means. Check to see if your hormones are out of whack and truly listen to the signs of your body. My knee pain, turned into leg pain and then turned into back pain. I ended up in the hospital after passing out several times from a combination of adrenal fatigue, b12 deficiency and severe pain. All induced by overexercise. What I would do to give back that flat tummy to avoid all of these experiences…

Eventually you will get to a place where you can move intuitively, but only once you learn that exercise must come from a place of love and not from a place of hate.

You will have to rediscover what feels good for your body and you will have to be humble in your pursuits. It’s not always about pushing yourself to extremes, but about listening closely to what your body needs. Oftentimes your strength is shown not in how much you work out, but when you choose not to.

This is where I’m at these days. I have seasons of my life when I workout more than others. I don’t follow a plan, but I listen instead to what my body needs. Most of the time it’s a walk. I walk a lot. It feels so so good and I’ve never come back after a walk feeling worse than when I left.

Sometimes I need to sweat it out. Sometimes I need some death trap pilates equipment that makes walking a real challenge for the next 3 days. And sometimes I want to spin my heart out at SoulCycle. But if life gets the best of me and I need to relax on the couch, instead of working out, that’s cool too.

I gave up a lot when I quit my obsessive exercise, but what I got in return is priceless. I had room for friendships, instead of long runs. I learned all about hormones (and subsequently what NOT to do), which also introduced me to the world of green beauty. I discovered what self-compassion meant instead of numbing my pain with anti-inflammatories. I had room in my head to think about things besides when my next workout would be, which meant I could finally start living my life instead of planning it.

When I look back on pictures of that girl, I don’t see someone who was fit. I see someone who was sad. Who lost her identity in her body instead of using it as a tool to create the life she wanted.

My story ends happily. But there are so many young women out there who are struggling. I hope I can speak to that girl staring back at you in the mirror. I hope she hears me when I say that you are NOT your body. That the gym will never give you the love you are seeking. That you have so much to offer the world so it’s time to start exploring what that means.

I also want her to know that it’s okay to take a break. And that eventually you will find a more moderate way to move your body. Movement that is rooted in compassion and not manipulation.

So if you’re that girl. I’m sending you the biggest hug. I know how you feel, but I also know that with a little patience and a lot of love, you will be okay. There is so much more to life than reps, weights and runs. I’m so excited for you to uncover what that means.

Much love,

D

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about my exercise philosophy and how I move my body, check out my latest YouTube video HERE.

*pictures courtesy of Bettina Bogar or me

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