‘ you are not broken . ’ * pieck !
@vvasilisa (misc quotes)
------------ “... I’m not?” Marcel’s voice is but a croak in his throat, almost comically surprised - almost, for there is nothing comical about the way it forces it way out like nails digging into dirt to get out of a premature coffin. On Pieck his gaze remains, while his hand vaguely moves to designate and encompass the room, his room, his present den of misery. A frankly unreasonable amount of empty bottles, including a yet unfinished cognac, are the only company Marcel has been keeping for the past couple of days. The young Warrior has not asked for anybody, nor has anybody asked for him. Well, to his knowledge. At least until today.
A vague nausea, shame- and alcohol-induced, stirs within ruins of battered, feverish body, as he feels Pieck’s gaze, oddly soft, oddly piercing all at once, bearing down on him. He looks up, musters the courage to face her - after all, she has the heart not to laugh at his pitiful state, there is a kindness to repay; amber meets heavy clouds, but the former is tainted. “I sentenced Reiner to death.” He articulates, slow and low. Marcel always strives to present well, under more normal circonstances; today he sits and broods, unkempt, disheveled, a wreck even he can no longer contain. A vague part of him feels sorry that Pieck has to see him that way. She has always been the braver, wiser, more stoic kind - truth be told he always greatly admired that disposition of hers. Nevermind the bitterness or fatigue that may lie underneath - he knows too well there are always to sides to a shiny coin. “I lied to the army, to all of you, and I ruined my brother’s dreams.” Slurred words painfully roll onto his tongue, and he leans upon the table, elbows on smooth surface, head in hands, fingers gripping at the brown spikes of his hair. Laboured breathing, his chest compressed and crushed. “And all that for nothing.”
He knows that she knows. The unofficial news is already circulating among Warriors and candidates alike. Gabi and Falco are still locked in an arm-wrestling match for the Armored, but Porco will inherit the Jaw. His Jaw. How messed up is that? He looks back at Pieck, as though silently asking her that same question. Please tell me this isn’t normal. Please tell me I’m right. Please tell me you understand. “I don’t know what to do, Pieck.” A bomb is dropped - shockwave reverberating across the room, shaking whatever is left of his bones, and he prays the blast will at least spare her. Never once in his life had Marcel Galliard uttered the words ‘I don’t know what to do’. Well, here’s you goddamn first. Amber gaze, pained and sullen, screaming of drunken remorse and guilt, seeks some sort of comfort, of certainty, in her silence. Pieck has always been the smart one. The one with good judgement. He used to find so much comfort in that - her wisdom. Maybe she’ll know. Maybe she’ll see what he hasn’t been able to for nearly a decade. “What would you do?” .
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‘ sorry about the blood in your mouth . i wish it was mine . ’ * hisu :^/
@vvasilisa (misc. quotes)
---------------- Silence stuffs the room, suffocating presence between them: the queen on one side of those four walls, the Warrior on the other, trapped, encased in this glasstank of stones and sorrows. They stare at each other as wounded animals do, with bafflement and a hurry fluttering beneath the skin, only waiting to see what the other will do first. It is the first time Marcel lays eyes on the queen of the Walls; and yet, there is this feeling, that he has seen her before - in another time, in another life, a life that is not his to claim as his own.
Even her voice sounds vaguely familiar -- there is this odd sense of déjà-vu, that grazes at the back of his skull. And yet, a discrepancy, uncomfortable, grating; this is the voice that sometimes echoes in distant, alien memories, yet not quite. It is too quiet, too cracked, and the cracks are filled with misery in lieu of gold. He is familiar with misery. He too, wears it engraved on his face, in the harshness of his scowl; once a fearless young lion, today mere imitation of one. The queen is right - there is blood in his mouth. His titan has crushed many bodies under its powerful teeth - the only blood he cares for are those of the Jaws that came before. The blood of the woman he ate. The blood of a brother she passed on to him.
Marcel’s gaze hardens, amber turned from liquid to solid, edged and cutting. “There is still time to fix that.” He retorts somberly; but the hands buried in his pockets make no motion to edge towards the blade he hides in the crook of his palm. The curiosity is overpowering. Morbid as it is. Somewhere, there is a hole in his chest, which he knows not to be his - it is her legacy, in the shape of a cavern, and it has her name written all over it. Here she is, then. The girl whose face he sometimes sees when his predecessor’s memories slip through the veil between past and present.
“I’ll admit, your Majesty, you are not what I expected. Not from what I saw in Ymir’s memories.” He continues; steadies his voice, anchors it in detached monotony, careful and apprehensive. Tries to, at least. But grief is so pervasive; it chips away at the amber of his eyes, it splits his own voice like misery does hers. “I suppose the past few years have not been kind to you.” He sees it in her eyes. There too, is a crack, a splinter. Poisoned, irreparable. She has lost something she is never getting back. A wave of pity overcomes his sorry remnants of a heart. “You were there, weren’t you? When she decided to return my brother to our homeland. She killed him, and returned him to us.” Oh, how it aches; keep it together, Galliard, push the pieces back together before you crumble before the enemy. “... I'm sorry it had to come to this for me to get my brother back.”
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‘ i wanted to let go of the pain even though it was the last thing that felt alive from you . ’ * porco :^)
@vvasilisa (misc. quotes)
------------- You should have. The words form in a mind that is no longer a mind, dance on a tongue that is no longer a tongue, and never fall, frozen like a raindrop in the dead of winter. There is an endless winter here, and he is very dead, so perhaps it is all very fitting, that he, in death, was robbed of his voice. There is not a word that can be uttered here, unless you are still alive; and the living are a rare occurrence in the Paths. Some of them slip through, sometimes; chance upon the clear, light sands and starry skies through an open crack in a dream, or a delirious fever. None of them ever stayed long - none of them remembered. Not really.
You should have. The pain is a tether that binds them; it weighs on their shoulders and strains a brother’s love, distorts it, until it nestles there, right where it should have no place, right at the heart of something that should be pure, and good, and bright and warm. There it is, his legacy: Marcel Galliard, holder of the Jaw, brother, traitor, tormentor. Behold your life’s work, my child: a brother grown up, and broken, and pulled down by your very own string of failures. He had wanted to save him, once. That is all he had ever wanted, in thirteen (thirteen!) blazing years of life: to protect his little brother from the gears and teeth of a monstrous machine that he knew would swallow him whole - the way the titan had swallowed him. He had wanted to save him; perhaps hell is being doomed to gaze upon the consequences of your bad decisions and watch, powerless, as others continue to pay the price.
Porco has not been able to access his memories. Marcel knows that, and he knows it all the more, to his core, as he gazes upon the folded silhouette of his brother before him, kneeling in the sand and grasping at nothing. Porco has not been able to access his memories, but other things has seeped through the Jaw, he knows. He feels it too, from this place, feels himself leaking into sand and down that tether that binds them, an everlasting, nagging presence, one that torments and tortures where it should comfort and reassure. A constant reminder of what they have lost, and a reminder of what Porco is being denied time and time again. Marcel cannot give him anything - save for pain. The excruciating pain of a life cut short; the pain of a promise broken; the pain of watching a beloved sibling walk into one’s blood-soaked footsteps; the pain of a cycle that never ends; the pain of gigantic teeth closing on one’s tender neck. All of it is Marcel’s - for a while, it had been the girl’s too. Now that Porco has inherited the Jaw, all of Marcel’s pain, unspoken and unexplained, is shoved onto him.
Had Marcel still had a voice, he would have screamed.
Let go.
Don’t let go.
He watches him, with wide, hungry, sunken eyes. He must retreat. If he stays, it will only make his brother suffer. He cannot; he stays in place, frozen, immobile, before this little brother who has grown so much bigger, so much older than he ever did. And he aches - aches, seeing his brother shackled to him so; aches, as a child too frightened (too selfish) to let him go.
I am
gone
I am
right here.
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𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐞 : 𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒆𝒐𝒖𝒔 𝒒𝒖𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒔
‘ i’ll find you again , wherever we end up next . ’
‘ the enormity of my desire disgusts me . ’
‘ please , one more kiss in the kitchen before we turn the lights off . ’
‘ i’ve been lost but i’m here now . you’re the only person who has ever been able to find me . ’
‘ almost dead yesterday , maybe dead tomorrow , but alive , gloriously alive , today . ’
‘ you are not broken . ’
‘ you can love and be loved , despite what may feel like the eternally brutal nature of the world . ’
‘ i did violence to my own heart . ’
‘ will i be forgiven for the sins i did not commit , but created ? ’
‘ i would never kiss anyone who doesn’t burn me like the sun . ’
‘ i would rather break the world than lose you . ’
‘ i think you and i have known each other in a few lifetimes . ’
‘ i didn’t know . i had no idea how greedy my heart really was . ’
‘ is that why the idea of losing you torments me so much ? ’
‘ how long have i been without you ? ’
‘ am i foolish for wanting this ? it will end in flames . it always does . ’
‘ sorry about the blood in your mouth . i wish it was mine . ’
‘ if i love you , is that a fact or a weapon ? ’
‘ tell me how all this , and love too , will ruin us . ’
‘ and you realize the one person in the world who loves you isn’t the one you thought it would be . ’
‘ it cannot be a mistake to have cared . it cannot be an error to have tried . it cannot be incorrect to have loved . ’
‘ finally , i plead guilty of adoring you . ’
‘ a child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort . ’
‘ without realizing , i find it in myself that i cannot stop thinking about you . ’
‘ tomorrow , when i wake up , i promise , i will be better . ’
‘ someone has to leave first . this is a very old story . there is no other version of this story . ’
‘ when i imagine myself , i am always leaving . i couldn’t draw my own face if god asked . ’
‘ do we simply stare at what’s horrible and forgive it ? ’
‘ i wanted to let go of the pain even though it was the last thing that felt alive from you . ’
‘ have i endured loneliness with grace ? ’
‘ i’ll be your slaughterhouse , your killing floor , your morgue and final resting , walking around with this bullet inside me ‘cause i couldn’t make you love me and i am tired of pulling your teeth . ’
‘ and then my soul saw you and kind of went , ‘ oh , there you are . i’ve been looking for you . ’ ’
‘ sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body . ’
‘ i spent my life arguing how i mattered until it didn’t matter . ’
‘ who knew my haven would be my coffin ? ’
‘ dead is the safest i’ve ever been . ’
‘ i’ve never been so alive . ’
‘ you know what i was gonna tell you before , but didn’t have the nerve ? you got your name written all over me . i got my name written on you , too . ’
‘ you already are something . you always were . and you still have time to be . ’
‘ you know me by heart . it infuriates me that you know me by heart . ’
‘ why am i waiting for you ? hungering and thirsting for you in every cranny of my soul and even in my ribs ? ’
‘ you came with a handful of pain and a smile which broke the ground under my feet as the earthquake does when two people meet . ’
‘ the only good thing is that i’m getting used to suffering . ’
‘ the return to time was not my choice . ’
‘ we are built to live inside each other . this means we are built to ruin . ’
‘ time does not bring relief ; you all have lied . ’
‘ time does not know how to keep our hopes safe . ’
‘ you needed me so much that you had to end me . ’
‘ there are days where i am morbidly in love with you , and this is one of those days . ’
‘ i know no end to desiring you . ’
‘ i fear that i am both too much yet not enough . ’
‘ yes , yes , yes , i do like you . i am afraid to say the stronger word . ’
‘ a heart’s a heavy burden . ’
‘ life , as i see it , is all about farewells rather than reunions . ’
‘ heaven is real and you only had two minutes to prove it to me . ’
‘ it was already love . ’
‘ everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that they deserve it . ’
‘ i’ll love you until i forget how to . ’
‘ i’ll love you until i forget how to and then i’ll fall like my knees aren’t already bruised from doing it and i’ll remember why you’re worth the ache . ’
‘ of course i’ll hurt you . of course you’ll hurt me . of course we’ll hurt each other . but this is the very condition of existence . ’
‘ nothing makes me sadder and nothing makes me happier than you . ’
‘ i love you and i do not want to love you , it is too much and too difficult . ’
‘ grief is just love with no place to go . ’
‘ i felt my life with both my hands to see if it was there . ’
‘ you do this , you do . you take the things you love and you tear them apart . ’
‘ i hope it’s love . i’m trying really hard to make it love . ’
‘ if you touch me again i might burn up in the cold air . ’
‘ i asked you not to leave several times . ’
‘ i’ve only adored you lifetimes ago and here we are . it’s nice to see you again . ’
‘ all time ever does is pass and all i ever do is remember . ’
‘ i feel as though we were never strangers , you and i , not even for a moment . ’
‘ i’d choose you ; in a hundred different lifetimes , in a hundred worlds , in any version of reality , i’d find you and i’d choose you . ’
‘ nothing about this is soft but we pretend . ’
‘ maybe you and i are just a dream . ’
‘ i know you loved me too , you knew me , and it gladdens my heart . ’
‘ i promise i shall never give up and that i’ll die yelling and laughing . ’
‘ i don’t do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision . ’
‘ the world was made so that we could find each other in it . ’
‘ you don’t meet the people you love , you recognize them . ’
‘ i think you and i have known each other a few lifetimes . ’
‘ this body knows fear like a front porch knows welcome – it is always coming home . ’
‘ i miss you more than i remember you . ’
‘ if i could have done it all again , i would have loved you better . but i could not have loved you more . ’
‘ we could have been happy . i know that , and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know . ’
‘ you want a better story . who wouldn’t ? ’
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