thecaladrius

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I did something terrible: can I be forgiven?

Fuck no! Hell for you my friend.

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this is gonna enter my vocabulary for sure

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““Hell is other people” is only one side of the coin. The other side, which no one seems to mention, is also “Heaven is each other”. Hell is separateness, uncommunicability, self-centeredness, lust for power, for riches, for fame. Heaven on the other hand is very simple, and very hard: caring about your fellow beings. And that’s possible on a sustained basis only in collectivity.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre; in “Talking with Sartre” (p. 130) [edited] (via insearchofwisdom)

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Whoreoboros

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prompt: ready or not au, from @ohbluejay. naturally, trigger warnings for graphic violence and death. 

Oil and gas production, mass media, moneylending, weapons manufacturing — the Sydin, Xi, and Stagg families built their corporate empires on prayers to the Beast and made themselves gods among men through their sustained and violent reverence. But for every desire, there is debt, and the price of their greed is charged to the cowards foolish enough to join their parasitic bodies. On his wedding day, Javi draws the card that determines his contribution: the clan must kill him in ritual sacrifice, or die by sunrise.

A catalog of injuries so far: Minor skull fracture, from when Warden whipped an empty pistol at the back of his head. Gunshot wound and shattered metacarpal bones, from when Isaac (yes, the toddler) emptied Warden’s pistol on Javi’s palm. Bruised pride, from when Fei couldn’t remember his name as she aimed a rubber bullet gun at his ribcage, and bruised ribs, from when the rubber bullets landed. Sprained ankle from jumping off a third-floor window, and scraped knee from when the strain of running with a sprained ankle knocked him off-balance on the wooden floorboards of some stranger’s barn. Severed muscles and median nerve, because — a mere few seconds before Javi slit their throat and kicked their corpse off his lap — Pasi sank a dagger through his wrist into one of the barn pillars, and severed brain cells, because 1) since when was Pasi strong enough to do that? and 2) since when was Pasi related to these people?

Next on the list is probably chest pain, either from going into cardiac arrest while watching his sister-in-law raise an axe over his sternum, or from having his aforementioned sister-in-law split his aforementioned sternum open with the aforementioned axe.

Maybe it’ll be from holding his breath for too long. His wrist, raised above his head, stays pinned into the wood. Curiously, Delilah hasn’t swung. Maybe she has a soul after all. Or maybe she’s stuck on the mental math of murder — calculating whether the blood loss from chopping him up would drain the life out of him before she could drag his body to the ritual table. Either way, the axe hangs mid-air, which means he still has time to yank the dagger out of his arm and run.

His mouth spreads into a nervous smile. “Hi, Lila.”

She takes two steps forward. Javi holds her gaze, hoping to keep her peripheral vision from catching the way his free hand creeps toward the hilt of the dagger.

“You look beautiful,” he adds.

Her cold stare remains unmoved. “Do you really think that will get you somewhere?”

Javi swallows the lump in his throat. “Hard not to take desperate measures right now,” he says. “I’m covered in blood on my wedding eve.”

Fingers curl tighter around the dagger's hilt. His pulse point hammers against the blade’s flat edge. A slow tug nudges the dagger out by a centimeter and — fuck — jerks the blade at an angle that slices a new tear through nerve and muscle.

“Look at yourself,” she says, “and tell me you wouldn’t do the same to protect what’s yours.”

The dagger’s almost out. He just needs to buy more time. “You know, you just—” Javi winces when another wrong pull rustles the blade through the gaps between shattered wrist bone shards. “You’ve always been so reasonable. To me, you never seemed like the type to believe in all of this ritual sacrifice bullshit.”

“I don’t.”

One harsh swing slams the axe into his kneecap.

“But this would’ve had to happen eventually. We know what you are.” Her eyes darken. “If the media finds out that we made a convicted plunderer CFO and let him marry the CEO’s daughter, Syndin Group’s stock market value is going to collapse.”

Javi blinks. Eyes flick between Delilah and the lake of blood pooling in the new gap between his leg and thigh until his sheer disbelief dulls the inevitable pain into some strange numbness. The scream he’d been holding bubbles into a laugh and weakens into a shuddered breath.

“You’re killing me,” he says, “for STOCKS?”

Delilah raises the axe a second time; it falls over his leg and slices through bone and muscle and sprained tendons. Blood smears the path from the barn to the house as she drags his body to the ritual table: another martyr on the altar of greed.

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prompt: GET ME — a drabble about one character saving another. from @nvghtingale, ft. @gcdhoods. trigger warnings for drug cartels, not-that-graphic violence, and not-so-implied death. 

“Javi,” Pasi croaks. “Javi, please, please.”

Shut up, Javi wants to snap, but instead, he bites his cheek. For as difficult it is to think with a clear head in the midst of their weeping, he can’t fault them for reacting the way they are — not when Isabele’s still bleeding out in their arms from a gunshot wound to the lung, limp, barely unconscious, but still gasping for breath.

The last leg of their plan hinges on her. It is Isabele that has set up a meeting with the capo’s son, and it is only Isabele that can get him to surrender the passcode to the vault Behi and the others have found themselves trapped in.

No room for hesitation. He presses his hand over Isa’s shattered ribs. Pulls the fractures and the shredded tissues to his palm, feels the pain gnaw at his body. Head cloudy, now, he makes the mistake of meeting Pasi’s gaze, and winces.

“Javi,” Pasi sobs again. “Javi, Javi, Javi—“

The last of Isa’s bullet wound shrinks to nothing. She opens her eyes, looking confused, likely still lightheaded from phantom pains.

Only four minutes until Isa’s meeting. Only ten minutes until armed goons find the others in the vault. Nobody else is around.

He can find a way to place the wound on their body without killing them. But an alteration that major is going to leave him too weak to carry himself out of the base, much less haul a fatally injured Pasi out with him. If he leaves them, there’s no doubt the goon that finds them will shoot them dead.

He’s not a god. It’s not on him to choose who gets to be martyred. Pasi pulls their arms from Isa’s body, and puts their hands on his hands.

“Javi,” Isa says. “Don’t.”

He’s already closed his eyes, so her order doesn’t get to him. Yet another name on the list of people he’ll need to beg forgiveness from. Javi throws his arms over Pasi, pulls their body to his chest, and nudges their head to the crook of his shoulder. One hand curves over their neck, palm to carotid artery.

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prompt: KILL ME  —  a drabble about one character killing another. from @badrshadow disclaimer: this is not speculation or theory about future cc developments. im just making shit up to create a context in which i can write about my one true love: graphic violence. trigger warnings for graphic violence. 

Victory always comes at a cost. Swiping the Last Tear of Heaven was only the first part of the equation, and Blue Jay’s success, though helpful, put a target on the whole team’s back. With so many eyes trained on them, it’s a miracle that Javi’s held Badr’s threats off for so long, but stalling means giving them time to find stronger leverage.

He has a bad feeling about it, this time. As Javi stops at the door of the lone car parked in their agreed-upon meeting place, Javi throws his hands up. “I’m unarmed.”

Past the rolled-up window, Badr smiles. “Good. Come inside.”

He’s not sure if he’s ready to do what he’s about to do. His throat tightens. It’s already been hard to breathe ever since transference withered half his left lung that time he pulled a bullet wound from Mateo’s stomach. Doesn’t help that his head’s still cloudy from having healed Vulture’s broken leg on the way here. Still, he slides into the shotgun seat, leaning his exhausted body against the car door.

“Like we discussed,” Badr says. “The map.”

Javi scoffs. “Yeah, sorry. Some shithead already stole it yesterday. You good with directions?”

“I knew you wouldn’t be truthful.” With a small laugh, they pull something from the glove compartment. “So I brought you a gift.”

Badr slips a box into Javi’s open hands. It’s small, the size of a pocketbook. Javi stares at it, then narrows his eyes at Badr. They want him ruined more than they want him dead, so whatever’s inside isn’t going to blow up on him. Still, his hands freeze before pulling the ribbon.

“Please be careful with it, Sarmiento,” Badr adds. “It took my contacts a while to get that shipped here.”

Some sharp feeling sears at his veins. A slow hand pulls the cover out, and in seconds his eyes widen, glazed over with abject horror. His gaze stays frozen on the gift. Somehow, seven years distant, he still recognizes it: his mother’s wedding ring, finger still attached.

Badr’s smile widens. “There will be more of that, if you lie to me again.”

See, taking the tear didn’t earn them freedom, but it did give them a headstart. Erin’s shots curve toward their targets, defying every law of physics. Nour’s fabrics re-sculpt bodies in perfect metamorphosis. Mateo’s hands master anything they hold. 

And Javi?

A broken surge of rage thrusts his hand at Badr’s face. Badr grabs his wrist to yank it away, but it’s too late: even with only the tips of his fingers grazing their skin, Vulture’s fracture slams into Badr’s bones with the force of a battering ram. Shards of skull and malar bone cave through their eyes into their brain, smattering blood into Javi’s hand, his sleeve, his face. Badr’s body falls into the steering wheel. Limp. Pulseless.

Gasping a shuddered breath, Javi collapses back into his seat. Closes his eyes. He places his free hand on his stomach, trying to palm out a feel of what the transfer took from his body. Lungs again, maybe. A rib, if he’s lucky. His sense of taste or smell. Maybe a limb will fall off. Or maybe the magic’s merciful this time, and killing a shadow won’t cost anything.

Javi opens his eyes. Ahead of him, there is only darkness.

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prompt: succession au, from @sweetstcrling. ft javi & tara, with mentions of behi, delilah, kasimir, warden, and fei. i guess trigger warnings for homophobic language bc behi’s dad is logan

Corruption's easy. It’s just criminal on victim: dirty hands prying food off those too starved to protect their plates. Corporations are harder. It’s criminal on criminal. The players are overfed predators with bottomless appetites, and the game is to not get eaten alive. 

That means charm and cheekbones won’t cut it anymore, sadly. Though Javi managed to earn his position as Sydin Group’s Chief Financial Offer without Behi’s help, it’s clear that Hadi Sydin still thinks he’s too soft for the role, as evidenced by the fact that, outside their few one-on-one conversations, he never refers to Javi as anything other than that string bean from the Philippines, or another one of my daughter’s bad decisions, or the Filipino maggot, except without the -ilipino or the space or the m.

The only thing giving Javi an edge over Cousin Delilah in their war for Hadi Sydin’s favor is his assistant Tara Khanna, who is as ruthless as Javi sometimes wishes he was, and as smart as Javi mistakenly believes he is. It’s her idea to stake on Birdcoin — a new Bitcoin copycat designed by some anonymous tech god who only goes by The Beast, which has quickly gained a cult of faceless supporters who want to, quote-unquote, create a New World of decentralized finance. 

It’s clearly a pyramid scheme, but if Sydin Group is smart enough with their timing, they can inflate the bubble and cash out before it bursts. Tara’s already found a buyer in her college friend Xi Fei, heiress to the almost-fallen Xi empire. She’s eager to get her hands on an investment that will help fund her next Twitch project. Javi’s not sure what that is, but he assumes it’s speedrunning bankruptcy. 

“The sale needs to happen soon,” Tara tells him. “I heard from Mateo that Kasimir Frei’s planning to publish an exposé on the electrical output of Birdcoin mining.”

Bad news. Frei’s already posted a well-articulated YouTube video breaking down how cryptocurrencies funneled money into the pockets of the mega-wealthy by preying on the financial insecurities of the middle class. The only reason Birdcoin hadn’t crashed then and there was that the internet was more interested in making memes pointing out the undercurrent of sexual tension in Frei’s subsequent Twitter feud with a certain Stagg Enterprises heir.

The ideal outcome: Xi Fei buys their Birdcoin reserves. Sydin Group runs off with five million dollars. Kasimir Frei starts a revolution against the faceless by publishing a four-hour video on The Beast’s carbon emissions. Public outrage drags Birdcoin’s value to the gutter, leaving Fei with nothing but worthless and barely-functional lines of code. 

Hadi Sydin might finally respect him after that, but something about it doesn’t sit well with him. It feels too much like a mistake he’s made before. “Does Fei even understand what a blockchain is?”

Tara rolls her eyes. “Nobody understands what a blockchain is. That’s why everybody keeps buying it.”

Javi folds his arms over his chest. “I just don’t know how I feel about fucking her over like this,” he says. “It’s, like... kind of against my principles.”

“Your principles?” Tara’s mouth twists into a disbelieving smile. “Javi, don’t be an asshole. You don’t have principles.”

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task ii: the nihilum.

healing transference: the ability to transfer harm to another person

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is anyone else on this hill or is it just me and sisyphus and kate bush?

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hi, ummm. this is awkward. haha. yeah um do you think you could push your boulder up somewhere else? like a different hill? because this one’s kind of already taken. yeah it’s the one i’ve decided to die on, so.

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my doctor told me I have sisyphus

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@fairycosmos / Comic by @shhhitsfine / Comic by @incendavery

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𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐊 𝟎𝟎𝟏: 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

[CANON] [WANTED]

everyone in the room is essential personnel, julian k. jarboe // the cathedral, auguste rodin // as i was moving ahead i occasionally saw brief glimpses of beauty, jonas mekas // fleabag, phoebe waller-bridge

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sylvia plath, the unabridged journals of sylvia plath // margaret atwood, crow song // franz wright, god’s silence

javi calderon. 32 years old. formerly a nurse. currently a med student. perpetually rolling boulders.

skeleton | application | ability | pinterest 

absolutely miserable dead inside septic tank of a man (full of shit). the kind of brother you’d need a shovel to love

dad of the team! meaning: he’s emotionally unavailable and leaving to get milk

former prodigy conman/politician (synonymous words if you live in the philippines) turned nurse as divine punishment for hubris; god is beating the evil out of the genius

the team’s healer. very ambivalent about it because javi is by nature extremely self-centered, but is now in a situation where his survival hinges on his ability to care for and look after others. we will figure out how these dynamics play out once ive actually messaged people, but i do imagine that being the eldest in the group and having a position of significant responsibility over a rabid group of twenty-somethings with different flavors of unresolved childhood trauma speedgrinded his maturity levels until he evolved from manchild to legal guardian. like a pokemon

split between some passive acceptance of his fate and the active and vengeful desire to steal his god complex back from god

would sooner die than tell you a single thing about his past. is actively pretending to be a person that had A Regular Amount Of Money growing up even though he was actually fairly wealthy for all of his childhood & DISGUSTINGLY wealthy for all of his early twenties. hello comrades. how do you do fellow marxists.

HISTORY

born javier agustin tanjuatco sarmiento, but goes by javi because the philippines is a nickname-loving culture. lived a relatively ordinary catholic childhood in a very upper class part of manila. had supportive doctor parents. love, in the sarmiento household, is unconditional, non-transactional, and undemanding.

socioeconomic inequality in the philippines is a plague, and when you grow up wealthy in a place where conditions are so destitute that most people are willing to destroy their own dignity just to survive, you develop fucked up ideas about which lives have value

perfect grades and perfect life growing up and it gave javi a god complex; he tested the validity of said god complex by applying for a position in the government and then stealing 900 million pesos worth of taxpayer money (funds meant for poverty assistance projects, better infrastructure etc etc.) to fund his maserati collection, among other things. though it worked at first, journalists eventually found out and exposed him

1986: news of his scandal caught on and the rightfully infuriated taxpaying masses gave his parents shit for it. bc the culture places a lot of emphasis on family, whatever choice the sarmientos made would have had a consequence: protect your son and they’ll see you as selfish bastards who chose the welfare of a greedy fraud over justice. don’t protect your son and they’ll see you as heartless monsters who abandoned their child. it’s shit, but mostly they were just heartbroken that their son became capable of such damaging and unnecessary evil when they did everything they could to raise him right. as one last act of love, they fly him to verum to help him escape arrest, & then cut ties with him

diaspora’s a bitch. as anything uprooted is wont to do, javi’s withering

ruthless ambition melts away and turns into simple desperate homesickness. hoping to find a way home without getting arrested, he told the Beast that his desire was to be forgiven for his crimes

the Beast said: Repent, Bitch

gains the healing transference power. penance means going to nursing school so you can work in hospitals and find sacrifices who are willing to die in place of people whose lives the Faceless deemed more important (i.e. politicians, church officials probably, rich people). javi spends a lot of time with the elderly, suicidal, and the terminally ill, because they’re going to die anyway, and for his power to work, he first needs to gain the trust of the people he intends to harm. building these connections while causing death and suffering on a regular basis destroys him inside, and he comes to the slow realization that other people’s lives actually matter.

everything bad that has ever happened to him is his own fault, so he doesn’t allow himself to feel any sense of sadness or self-pity. the beast, probably: don’t act like this is new to you. you’ve always been a bloodsucking parasite. if you’re going to cause suffering, look your victims in the eye.

uncertain about whether or not his desire has been completed. slowly going insane because he’s not getting answers. wildly oscillating between “ohhh okay i get it forgiveness is about becoming a better person and correcting my previous inability to see value in other people” and “OKAY I GET IT HUMAN LIFE HAS VALUE OR WHATEVER CAN I PLEASE GO HOME AND GET MY MASERATI COLLECTION BACK”

this can be a redemption arc or a long, drawn out mental breakdown. choose your own adventure!

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from "The Man With a Hole in His Head" by Rick Bursky