#...and say ‘nobody owes you forgiveness’ no sorry its not making sense to me

[sad-starsign-student]

So when do you guys accept apologies fr??

Like are apologies just not meant to be accepted anymore?

God, I don’t want to be that type of person but what are people meant to do, honestly

#cos here’s the thing no matter what they do you guys are just gonna say ‘we don’t owe you forgiveness’ #like okay i get that because toxic forgiveness and toxic positivity has silenced a lot of victims over the years #but at the same time for blatant mistakes made with no malicious intent?? #atp i feel like if you feel like u owe no one forgiveness we also don’t owe you sh*t either #like every mistake you make we’re gonna judge and hold it against you forever #now it’s gonna be an issue your gonna say we don’t let people learn and grow ‘you can’t expect people to be perfect’- well...babes? #idk maybe it’s the christian upbringing in my slightly and truss i’m not the christian to ‘turn the other cheek so it can be slapped’ #Jesus is better than me in that aspect (then again he’s-well-Jesus-so kinda expected) but i’m not tryna be taken fiya idiat- THAT being said #i feel like (in CERTAIN situations- watch it) you can’t in the same breath recognise that nobody’s perfect then turn around... #...and say ‘nobody owes you forgiveness’ no sorry its not making sense to me #once again this is for blatant mistakes with no malicous intent which can be rectified- not fot racism- homophobia-transphobia #like i say there’s levels to it and i don’t think the levels are that hard to read- sometimes the lines are blurred- but sometimes... #...the solutions so damn obvious and you acc just want to cancel for cancel sake like i promise you the amount of people you call out does.. #reflect on your morality at all it doesn’t prove you to be a good person- okay maybe a little it shows some responsibility but if that’s... #...all you can offer to show you’re a good person i’m-not impressed??? anyways this gone everywhereee and only makes sense on my head-barely #you know what- just always try you’re best- learn and grow and if u know you’re genuine- then anyone on the internet trying to paint u as... #...an irredeemable monster- they just don’t matter- like at all- they can try and get u cancelled all they want but who gaf honestly #deffo be self aware- but don’t live trying to please any of these internet people- they will never be satisfied- just try to do your best #all anyone can ask for—

[savathuns-pyramidscheme]

Smoke and Retribution

-Tell me, would you be so forgiving if Crow carried more of Uldren with him? Would you still accept him?-

Peregrine-3 had not responded to this. Had not spoken thoughts she knew would only enrage the slighted Queen. Knife's edge as the situation was, and with Savathun listening always listening, what could her answer possibly offer?

Nobody seems to understand this, airing their grievances like nasty laundry on open channels, for any and all to hear. Lost all their damn sense.

There is so much Peregrine wants to say, and cannot. Not until Savathun is dealt with. Not until it's safe.

'Crow, I have something you need to hear. It's...not pleasant.'

'Mara, Petra, if you talk about him like he's the scum under your boots one more time I swear to Light I'll...'

'Osiris, I'm sorry...I'm so sorry I didn't see...'

'Crow... Uldren... It doesn't matter. Whoever he is, whoever he chooses to be, however he wants to be called, however he wants to behave, to believe, to... I have his back.'

Would I forgive him? Would I accept him?

The truth is the time for this introspection had long since passed. Peregrine had spent her years running as fast and as far as she could from the vision she'd witnessed in Mara's throneworld.

------------------

Uldren, risen?!

A hoax. A little twist of the knife in her wound from a Queen who can't even see her brother's victim as a person. Surely...

And if not... If it were true and that peacock had gotten a second lease on life then...what? He's not her responsibility. She's not the Hunter Vanguard, not mentor to every new light that shines.

If she just ignores it, it won't be an issue.

If she just ignores it, she won't have to think about the morality of it. Won't have to ponder culpability. Won't have to ask herself 'what would Cayde think?'. Nothing, he's dead. Cayde-6-feet-under doesn't get a say anymore, does he?

Uldren's got his Ghost, he'll be fine on his own. Not my problem.

Don't make him my problem.

------------------

Running had obviously done no good. For either of them.

She is the reason he exists in the first place, and she'd neglected her duty to him. And he'd paid. Paid so, so dearly for a sin that wasn't even his. The astronomical debt she owes him is one she will owe til the end of her days.

-Tell me, does Crow cling to you with the same blithe disregard that Uldren did with me?-

She's responsible for his wellbeing whether she wanted to be or not. And she does want to be, now that she knows him. Stubborn, snarky, sweet Crow. Wants to see him become himself, whatever that entails. Wants to guide Crow the way those journals guided Cayde...wants to see him be a good man.

She doesn't know whether or not that makes her just as bad as Mara.

Can I forgive him? My forgiveness is pretty moot, now, dontcha think?

Peregrine-3 speaks aloud to the quiet of her apartment, chuckling bitterly, alone. Even her Ghost is absent. "If Crow carried enough Uldren in him to matter, I'd probably be dead."

She regrets saying it as it leaves her mouth. The clock on the wall tisks tisks.

"I've gotta be better than this." Setting her coffee mug in the sink, she leans heavily on the cool marble countertop, grateful Nolan had gone out to his Ghost bookclub for the evening. Perry shrugs on her coat, grabs keys. Datapad in hand she types out a quick little note for her Ghost - {Heading to H.E.L.M. Need to work. No rush.}

The sooner we can get Sov's Techeuns, the sooner we can save Osiris. The sooner we can deal with Savathun. The sooner I can tell Crow the truth. And wait for the axe to fall

Evening blankets the Last City in a wistful, smoky haze of fog and streetlamp light. The Traveller presides over her trek to the interim Tower, its will an ever irritating enigma.

I'm doing the best I can, you know. I'm sorry if it isn't always enough.

I'm only human

That hasn't been true in ages, even before the Traveller picked her up, brushed her off, and tossed her into the fray.

It's become increasingly apparent to her over the years that she simply doesn't have the luxury of righteous fury. Zavala had tried and failed to impress that upon her, once, fists clenched and eyes simmering with hatred and grief. She hadn't appreciated the difficulty of that restraint at the time. She still feels justified in her actions, still feels the heat of glorious retribution in her metal-and-wire gut. Younger days, creeping through into the present, declaring their right to be felt.

The line is thin indeed.

Savathun had played them all for fools. Riven had puppeted masterfully both the Prince and the Wolf hunting him. A multilayer cake of wrongs and injustices far greater than the death of one man, and a pair of puppets who couldn't see it for the icing.

The matter was settled. Had to be settled. I'm sorry Cayde, that's as far as I can take it. It's done.There's no room for another Taniks.

The doors to the H.E.L.M's command room slide open. The room is quiet at this hour, save for the squeak of hatchlings up past bedtime in the adjacent hall. The Awoken guard nearby nods at her as she passes. Peregrine wonders idly if she's glad for the posting, far from the Dreaming City's curse.

Perry never uses the wartable. Scooching a disgruntled Frame out of the way, she logs into the terminal in an alcove, reviewing scout reports of Xivu Arath's force movements. It isn't an optimistic picture, but it never is really. She tries to wrap her head around the intricacies of the leylines, the reports on their condition written in near incomprehensible Techeun-speak.

A tap on her shoulder. She hadn't heard anyone approach. He's learning.

"Coffee?" Crow asks, offering a mug and peeking around her to read the screen. "I really don't know why you bother with this stuff; knowing the numbers won't change the fact we're gonna have to shoot them all anyway."

[It's a GOOD thing to be prepared, Crow.] Glint admonishes from his resting place on the top of Crow's head.

They're adorable

"I am prepared! I've got the Guardian and I've got you."

"Because we do the footwork." Perry elbows him softly in the ribs. "Wanna help me read through this shit?"

"Not even a little bit. Give me a sec, I'll grab some chairs."

As she watches him turn and jog over to the supply closet, Perry wants never wishes nothing more than a million nights like this. A million nights where his faith in her is justified. A million nights where he doesn't know how monumentally she's let him down, time and again.

She'll always have his back, but not his trust. She doesn't deserve it. Doesn't deserve him.

But that's a worry for tomorrow.

#destiny 2 #destiny the game #peregrine-3 #crow destiny #pre crow/guardian #my selfindulgent fics

[gffa]

unpopular opinion:

Anakin may have embraced the light at the end of RotJ, but he was not a redeemed character and I don't think Obi Wan (or Luke) should have forgiven him for all the wrong he did while embracing the Dark. The way the narrative frames his death and final scenes makes me slightly uncomfortable in this regard.

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree I think “redemption” comes down to how you define the term, that I agree Anakin wasn’t redeemed in the sense that his actions were made up for, but disagree in that his soul was reclaimed from the dark side. I also think that it’s up to each individual to decide whether or not they want to forgive someone--was Anakin ever owed forgiveness?  No.  Nobody is ever owed forgiveness.  But I think Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Luke granting it to him anyway isn’t about saying that Anakin was narratively right, but more that these characters are Jedi, they let things go when its time.  Holding on to anger against Anakin wasn’t going to do them personally any good, they would rather forgive him. This is not the same as saying that, say, Leia was obligated to forgive him and I think it’s important that she never resolves this in the movies and still struggles with it in the expanded material, which are narratively framed as sympathetic of her. I’m not coming down on you for your interpretation--if you’re uncomfortable with the way the story frames it, then that’s valid for you and I’m sorry that you have to deal with being uncomfortable about it.  Genuinely and truly!  But for me, I don’t think the story is absolving Anakin, especially since George Lucas has also said stuff like: “It really has to do with learning.  Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can’t be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he’s caused. He doesn’t right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the Saga is simply Anakin saying, I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. “  --George Lucas, The Making of Revenge of the Sith (He’s also said SW is about redemption and I think the distinction is probably something like what we’ve been talking about--Anakin can’t be redeemed for all the suffering he’s caused, but in the sense of returning to the light/regaining your soul from the dark, that Anakin’s story is about redemption.  You know, assuming you put any stock in word of god commentary, which is also fine not to do! 😂)

#anakin skywalker #george lucas #meta #unpopular opinions meme #viola-cola

[swan--writes]

BJ’s V-Day

In which BJ fucks with reader’s chocolate, and reader is Upset.

It’s still Valentine’s Day in some places, right? Shut up. It’s been a busy day.

Warnings: food, swan-typical language

It started at the coffee shop. (Of course it did.)

You ordered the same coffee that you always did, from the same barista you always saw, but something was different that day. The coffee was darker and colder, and more viscous than usual. It was almost sour, and the way it sloshed around in the paper cup made your stomach churn. When you frowned at the barista who had made it, he gave you a too-wide grin and an unnerving wink. (His teeth were so pointy, was that normal?) You scurried out of the shop and onto the street of your small Connecticut town. You had not been back since.

That was only the first of February.

Next came the florist’s. You had been to the florist every week since you moved to this small town. It was cozy enough that you didn’t feel pressured to place a massive order, and you preferred small business flowers to the grocery store selection. And you loved fresh flowers. (Everybody has their thing, this was yours.)

Now, you would swear that when you chose your bouquet, it was beautiful. The blooms were fresh, the leaves were perky, and the roses were vibrant.

By the time the florist had packaged it for you, it was a red and black mess right out of an early My Chemical Romance music video. Great for art. Kitchen counters? Not as much.

Of course, you were too nice to say anything. You simply had to contend with half-dead roses, wilting on their stems. They were all blackened edges, wrinkled petals, and falling leaves. The florist gave you an even wider grin than the barista had, and you walked out even faster than you had the coffee shop.

It was only day four.

After the roses – which had only lasted two days in your house before the blooms fell dead away (literally) – was the truffles. This was almost your breaking point.

All of the convenience store chocolate was discounted for Valentine’s Day, just five days away now. It was on your way home from work, and you couldn’t force yourself to just drive past it. So, in you went, and there you bought, and then you went home. You had gone through the self-checkout, but one of the cashiers kept giving you sidelong looks.

At the convenience store, you had tried to ignore them, but they were all you could think about when you bit into the first truffle. The chocolate shell was mostly fine, if a touch bitter. The filling was dust. (Literal, actual dust.)

So, like any rational person, you spent the next fifteen minutes gagging over the sink, then grabbed a knife. You sliced clean through every single truffle. Most of them crumbled from the pressure of your knife, and all of them were the same. Truffle after truffle – two full boxes – were all filled with dust.

Well, all but one.

In the center of the second box, there was one truffle that did not crumble. It was densely packed with a thick, old piece of paper. The paper felt leathery between your fingers when you picked it out of the chocolate shell, almost like parchment.

When you saw what was written on it, you all but stabbed your knife through it.

Bad coffee? Okay. Dead flowers? Fine. But nobody fucked with your chocolate and remained in your good graces.

The next five days only upped the ante.

Your trusty diner somehow dropped every single Valentine’s Day éclair on the floor as soon as you arrived. Your supervisor lost her box of valentines before she could hand them out at your office. Your set of Valentine’s decorated mason jars somehow fell from your entertainment center and shattered when you walked by. (A good four feet away from the table, because that made complete sense.) But the final straw came on day fourteen, first thing on Valentine’s Day. (Of course it did.)

When you opened the door to take the trash out, you felt it knock something over. It was mostly dark outside, and you didn’t fully see what it was until you brought it inside. Once you were under proper lighting, you saw that you were holding a black teddy bear about the size of your torso.

When you shook the bear to make sure there was nothing inside, however, the head immediately twisted off and flew away to who knows where? A foul-smelling green slime began oozing from the severed neck. You shrieked and dropped the bear. Slime and wet dirt spilled onto your kitchen floor.

“Oh my--no, y’know what? Fine,” you groused. “Fine! I give up.” You backed away from the decapitated bear and stomped through the kitchen to your living room.

Your house was old, and you could hear the creaking of the floorboards underneath the banging of your steps. You could hear the sizzle of whatever the slime was doing to your kitchen floor. And you could hear the wind that kicked up when you spoke the words from the parchment you had found in your discount truffle.

“Beetlejuice!”

Something in the house groaned – a low, ominous sound.

“Beetlejuice.”

A layer of fog covered your windows. (Several layers.) It crept in at your window corners with a draft, and a gray murk. It nipped at your ankles, and leapt at your wrists, and seemed to amplify the sizzling in your kitchen.

You swallowed. “Beetlejuice!”

Lightning flashed. You closed your eyes, but it didn’t do much good. The wind whipped around you. You tried to turn your face against it, but it was everywhere and coming from all sides. Without thinking, you covered your ears and stumbled back a step.

Then, all at once, it stopped.

When you opened your eyes, you saw your demon boyfriend leaning on the doorjamb with his back to you. Beetlejuice gave a low whistle when he saw the teddy bear he had left you eating a hole in your floorboards.

“Damn babes, you’re gonna have to get someone out here to fix that.”

Rather than humor him, you glared at his back. His suit jacket was barely holding together, and you could see a long, thin strip of his shirt through it. “The mason jars? Really? You know I loved those.”

Without moving his feet, Beetlejuice’s head turned fully around to face you, nose wrinkled in a grimace. “Those cheap old things? C’mon baby, you can find a hundred of them at literally any Purgatory yard sale.” His eyes lit up. “In fact–”

“Oh no, I’ve had enough of that place. And hey, what have you been doing in town this month anyway? You said you’d be tied up until March.”

“Oh I was, sweet cheeks.” Beetlejuice waggled his eyebrows at you. You walked up to him and slapped his arm. “Whoa, babes!” The force of it seemed to radiate through his entire body. (Corpse?) His knees wobbled, his hips jostled, and you could swear you heard rattling from somewhere near his ribcage. “Easy! I’ve been doing a lot of strenuous physical activity this month.”

“Oh yeah? Fucking with me almost every day has been strenuous?”

“Hey, you coulda just summoned me when I asked you to.”

“You didn’t ask, you ruined my bargain-bin chocolate.”

“Oh, forgive me.” You rolled your eyes at his tone.

Beetlejuice turned around on his feet, facing you with his shoulders. Then he groaned, reached up, and spun his head around. “Whoa!” he cried. His head rotated a few times on his neck before finally coming to a stop.

When he brought his hands down again, Beetlejuice was holding the oozing teddy bear’s head. He held it out to you.

“I’m sorry for fucking with you all month.”

You gave him a look, but melted when you saw the pink creeping through the roots of his otherwise green hair. “Fine,” you conceded. “But you owe me.” Against your best self-preserving judgment, you took the stuffed head from him. A few clumps of wet dirt fell from the bottom where it was still severed and onto the floor. You kissed its cheek anyway, and only winced a little from its coldness.

Beetlejuice took the head back, flung it back over his shoulder, wrapped his arms around you, and dipped you. You gave a very undignified squeak that you would never admit to later.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, babes,” he growled.

“Happ--mmf!”

.

.

please like and reblog if you are so moved

tags list: @missihart23 @ballerinafairyprincess @thewolfisapartofmysoul

if you would like to get on the tags list, please let me know!

#editing? #who is she? #i've really missed writing for this goon #beetlejuice broadway #beetlejuice bway #beetlejuice musical #beetlejuice #beetlejuice x reader #beetlejuice x gender neutral reader #gender neutral reader #beetlejuice x self insert #beetlejuice fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #writing #not a songfic! #amazing! #fluff #shenanigans #hijinx #all that good stuff #valentine's day #valentines day

[patternblade]

The Way of Kings rp Sentence Starters part 3

Sentences taken from part three and the third section of interludes in The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Feel free to change up sentences and pronouns to suit your muse.

“I am beginning to hate the monarchy.”

“I’m not an expert on confidence, but I’d like to think that I could recognize it if it were before me.”

“Ignorance may reside in a man hiding from intelligence, but scholarship can seem ignorance hidden behind intelligence.”

“We children love things that are shiny and loud.”

“You have quite the mouth on you at times.”

“Never apologize for being clever, it sets a bad precedent. However, one must apply one’s wit with care.”

“You often seem to say the first passably clever thing that enters your mind.”

“But it’s unseemly for a young woman to speak as I so often do.”

“I prefer my wards to be clever, it gives me more to work with.”

“Please just remember that a woman’s mind is her most precious weapon.”

“Youthful immaturity is one of the universe’s great catalysts for change.”

“You’ll forgive an old man’s curiosity?”

“I’d be happy to draw your likeness.”

“If there is no punishment, there can only be chaos.”

“Isn’t it remarkable that, given the chance for personal gain at the cost of others, so many people choose what is right?”

“You owe me twice as much as this!”

“The last thing we need is a martyr inspiring a rebellion.”

“I can’t respond unless they do something.”

“You look distant.”

“Don’t force your beautiful wife to live away from everyone else she’s ever known or loved.”

“When men perceive the world as right, we are content. But if we see a hole--a deficiency--we scramble to fill it.”

“He is not the type to spare a man once he is beaten. He’s the type that keeps kicking.”

“If it’s worth anything, I didn’t know this would happen.”

“I am a poor judge of timing, am I not?”

“In many situations--if I’m encouraged--my tongue can be quite spontaneous.”

“You make me sound like a disease.”

“Euphoria passes. It is usually brief, so we spend more time longing for it than enjoying it.”

“Odd. One would thing that your type would be used to believing in fables.”

“If I may say so, that was exceptionally rude of you.”

“Sometimes it’s all right to lie.”

“It isn’t right, what they’re doing.”

“Do you want to be a miracle?”

“You’d better survive. Because I want some answers.”

“You are progressing more quickly than I thought you would.”

“Perhaps we have spent too much time indoors of late.”

“You look penned up. Anxious.”

“My wit is on temporary hiatus, pending review by its colleagues, sincerity and temerity.”

“When we are young, we want simple answers.”

“There is no greater indication of youth, perhaps, than the desire for everything to be as it should. As it has ever been.”

“The older we grow, the more we question.”

“I was never satisfied. I wanted more.”

“It seems to me that aging, wisdom, and wondering are synonymous. The older we grow, the more likely we are to reject the simple answers.”

“You are old enough to wonder, to ask, to reject what is presented to you simply because it was presented to you. But you also cling to the idealism of youth.”

“Am I a monster or am I a hero?”

“There’s a tie between a man’s home and his heart.”

“How long do you think you can defy me?”

“I’m not asking if you’re intimidated. I’m asking if you’re starving.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“I’m joining you.”

“Sorry we didn’t get you nothin’. We didn’t know you’d be awake and all.”

“My experience is that you care only about wars and the art of killing.”

“A surgeon must know when someone is beyond their ability to help.”

“Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right. If nobody starts, then others cannot follow.”

“You can be moral without following the law, and you can be immoral while following the law.”

“Morality applies to your intent and greater context of the situation.”

“You have nothing to say? I just accused you of murder.”

“I can’t imagine anyone as sweet as yourself uttering a single untruth.”

“It seems a shame that one such as you would lack for attention. That’s like hanging a beautiful painting facing the wall.”

“My father is a man of passion and virtue. Just never at the same time.”

“You don’t seem to care for your father much.”

“You look very touchable to me.”

“I told you, no more of that teasing.”

“I’ve helped men kill before.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“After all you’ve done, you’re abandoning us now?”

“If survival isn’t the the point then what is?”

“Journey before destination.”

“Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.”

“I know you want to give up. But you can’t.”

“Doesn’t the fight itself mean anything?”

“Things are never as bad as they seem. You’ll see.”

“Dear, you can be very odd, you know.”

“What’s the point in doing any good at all if it just creates more evil?”

“It might be religion but it still has to make sense.”

“You’re a very confusing woman.”

“I think you’re a beautiful, intelligent woman.”

“In courting you, I’ve also courted trouble.”

“It seems I’ve misinterpreted some very important things.”

“It has been my experience that no matter where you go, you will find some who abuse their power.”

“What did you do to him, out of curiosity?”

“I suggest you insist on being paid first from now on.”

“Your father is quite prudish then?”

“I’d rather be sick here than somewhere else.”

“What a sweet thing you are.”

“Keeping me here gives me health at the expense of my wellness.”

“I apologize for my weakness.”

“In order to be proficient at apologizing, you must first make mistakes. That’s your problem. You’re absolutely terrible at making them.”

“Pride is often mistaken for faultlessness.”

“I wanted this to be special, for you. And it turned out so horribly!”

“Is it so hard to believe that I could act for myself?”

“I couldn’t risk them telling what they saw.”

“How attached to your limbs are you?”

“Here, love, give this a try. I think you’ll like it.”

“You’re the brave one, my dear.”

“You think I didn’t know you were coming?”

“What are you?”

#rp sentence starters #rp sentence prompts #rp sentence meme

[strigwrites]

Lenience

(Previous: Conviction)

Father Sanson rubbed the edge of the parchment between his fingers until the corners began to yield and curl. A cloaked woman gusted through his office door not two minutes prior, bringing a bitter evening chill that stirred embers in the hearth and roused rebellious flames fed on fresh air. The snow-spackled wraith had then extended a folded note on steady fingers and he was helpless but to rise with a wooden creak and accept the burden of this cold messenger without so much as a hello.

“You can’t afford this,” he finally declared, lifting his chin to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You were kind enough to give me a grace period for the last,” she retorted softly, belying a kind of patience that he wished wasn’t so. It would have been far easier to evict anger and belligerence than this muted sorrow.

“I’m a priest, not a debtor.” He dropped the paper to the desk as though it were a written curse and urged it back the way it came with three fingers. “Please, my lady. This is much too expensive, and I don’t want to imagine where or how you came up with the coin the last you were here.”

“Let the matter of my finances fall to me, Father. Pray for me either to burn or to learn, if you like, but I ask that you do not deny me this.”

His gut churned sour with her insistence. He had been little more than a religious accountant before her arrival, keeping the books on sins no larger than unkindness or petty theft of cookware on loan from neighbors. It was twice now in the span of a moon that this scarecrow of a woman had shambled in and forced him to bring out the moral scales and weigh the blood spilled, ounce for ounce, in order to write an invoice that would ultimately forgive the unforgiveable. Even one time was too many.

“I thought against my better senses that it would be the only request of its kind,” he fretted, allowing the dissonance to crack his stern countenance. “I looked into your heart and saw a woman wounded, one who could perhaps find a sense of closure if she were allowed a single slip...”

“You saw me correctly, Father.”

“Then tell me why you’ve returned to beg another indulgence of this kind. You place a terrible burden on my shoulders, you must know this.” The pause she gave was enough to offer him hope that a change of course was still possible, that she might have been moved so much as an inch by his sincerity. For good measure, he added, “You have an abundance of life left to live. This is no way to spend it.”

With a single shake of her head, his hopes were shattered. “It awakened in me a desire to see the work finished more thoroughly. I have no life to live so long as these debts owed to me remain outstanding, but I can’t collect them without your blessing. You are the only one who can give me this.”

The temperate priest, in absence of a reply, merely adjusted his collar with a fixed frown. There was nothing in the polity that accounted for such a situation, nobody who had prepared him to consider the will of the divine on such wrenching terms. He had turned to the flail in an attempt to seek divine clarity after her first visit left him robbed of good conscience, and the phantom lashes still flared hotly over the muscle and sinew in a haunting reminder. His hands clasped together tightly at his front and he was forced to avert his gaze as his thoughts overtook all else present. Mercifully, her eyes granted him reprieve by gazing past his silhouette to the blackened tea kettle suspended over flames. Snow melted off her furs in slow drip, plinking dully against the faded rug underfoot. Ambient nightsong of northern winds and a sign beating fruitlessly against the side of the building made for a bitter drumbeat to drive their stalemate.

“Father,” she eventually offered with sudden, disarming tenderness. He was forced to meet her gaze once more with a distrustful flick. “Put some tea on that fire and let me thaw my boots. By the time I’m warm again, you’ll know everything. You can make your decision then.” She smiled timidly, as though her mouth were also slowly shedding the ice gathered there. “What do you say?”

#?? #who dis #i don't even know #is this XIV? #is this oc?? #who can say????? #enya.wav #writing #short story #drabble #strigwrites

[knicole0527]

How Did I Fall For Unwritten History?

So I’m in a whole relationship right? Like a whole fat ass relationship. Like me plus her equals nobody else . Its kinda dope and kinda like coccaine . If she was a drug I’d take it . She grounds me . She makes love to my mind , heart , and then my body . Her way of words sometimes makes me feel stupid because she uses words I cant imagine using . My vocabulary aint that big . But ask me about math or science ? I’m definitely ya girl . She was my missing piece . If that makes any sense at all . We definitely have our rollercoasters but I’ll killl anyone over her and I stand on that . Best part its with who I chose and not who my parents chose or approved of. I actually dont care whether they approve of me or not. Mom didnt want kids anyways. As she put it, she likes “ a return to sender kid “ I know she used to joke about it but I later found it to be true. So at this point either you like my happiness or you dont. But anyways, So we met the first time at work, Afni Call Center to be exact. She was a bet. By bet I mean with green money with coworkers. So I bet that I would get smashed by this girl and they would each owe me 50 bucks. I mean who can turn down money. Plus she was kinda cute and I know she was watching my little booty when I would walk away . I was 80 pounds lighter when we first met .

But here lately things have gone to shit . I can admit I fucked up . Well in the beginning . I cheated . She found out . But I was honestly gone tell her everything but she found out I broke her heart all that and then some . Since I put all my business out there . Only reason why I cheated was because I wanted a kid . I wanted her for sure but I wanted a kid . As time passed us by I realized she doesn’t want kids at all . So I had to make a decision , kids or stick around for my one true love in my adult life . So I looked her in the face , I probably had tears In my eyes and told her I chose her . She looked at me with confusion for a little and I dont think she anted me to flat out give up kids. But I was gone doe what I had to do to keep her by my side .

Now before we get to me cheating . I had an apartment on Old Morgantown Road . I loved that damn space man . Hard wood flooring . Storage unit . I had a w/d hook up . I had a good apartment and I could afford it and be able to live my best life . Rent was 475 a month . Utilities and water ran me about 80 . So I was well within my budget . But my dumb ass got involved with this man who I thought I could change . I was trying to hear from nobody about nothing . I wasnt trying to hear that he was cheating because I felt like I gave him no reason to cheat . I was giving him everything and then some . Hell I let his stupid ass cousin stay on my couch . So they were living rent free right , I know stupid Kendra always doing dumb shit . I should have opened my eyes but I didn’t .

Well he and I are definitely no longer together . He got my little cousin pregnant . I dont know whats worse . That she knew he was still living with me . That she knew we was kin . That he knew we was still together , fucking and living together and I never ask for a dollar . Or that my bosses had to call me in the office with another one of my cousins and sit me down to tell and show me that he was cheating and she was pregnant . It even shocked me that she tried to question me about my niggas car . Like girl he and I live together so yes maam I’m gone drive his car . and she was in shock to see me in the drivers seat . huh . Aint that funny how it all played out though ? But you know , karma got took his dick for a minute . He got the worst news of his life . His heart was just as shattered as mine . His trust was screwed if not worse than mine . He found out that while he was too busy cheating on me , she was getting knocked down by his cousin . LMFAO SERIOUSLY . He did all that cheating and got that girl pregnant and ended up getting played himself . So while I was his woman , he had a side bitch who had a side nigga , but THE SIDE NIGGA HAD A SIDE BITCH . I hadnt had sex with him in a while because things started getting to me and I was becoming very suspicious so I was still going to get checked anyways . But yea . What a fckd up love hexagon . Crazy how we all worked together . But when I reached my snapping point . I became a little on the ratchet side and called his mom and told her come get her sons belongings because he was homeless again . My cousin didnt have her own spot so somebody had to come take care of him because by that time I was done pretending .

Shit got bad for me mentally . I had me fckd up . I lost my job and went broke because I drank and popped it away . I know definitely wasn’t the right thing but I just wanted to feel numb to everything . I didnt really care how I got high just as long as I as high I was okay and at peace .

Alot of time went by and my past came back . She made me feel safe . And she saw me ; like the actual me . She knew something was up . Hell I gained 50 pounds since the last time we seen each other . But when she came back . I dont know if I was more so excited to see her or trying to fuck her right there on the floor at work . I walked in the door and the moment I seen her ... I didnt care who I was talking to , I think Wanda , I’m sorry boo but I seen my old boo and just had to do it . I could not help myself I had to hug her before I did anything else . I had a little more weight on me too because during our last encounter , hmm hmm , I was a bit smaller and hadnt grown boobs yet . So when she seen me running 90 mph to her ; baby girl was in for a shock .

Time went by and we started seeing each other a little more outside of work . Then she started to spend the night . But when she started doing that , I think I made things a little complicated for her at her moms . I had no intentions of doing so but it kinda got weird because she wasnt coming home very much any more . But yall , when I had her all to myself . Do you know how many times I undressed this girl with my eyes . I mean she standing there fully clothed and I seen EVERY INCH of her thru them clothes . It was bad yall . lol . She kinda eventually sorda moved in ; even though I thought she had already moved in . Time went by and things were okay ya know . We were just in the “ talking “ phase and just filling each other out . She started to grow on me a little more than I planned . and then I wanna say it was my birthday or after ? Baby girl was so drunk . She , our mutual friend , and I went to go grab food and drinks . Weeellllllll , I trapped her into drinking and drinking and drinking . We got home ? and she drank and and got funnier as the night went on . I remember that day like it was yesterday and the videos I have are absolutely the funniest videos I have ever recorded . “ butt clouds “ and the car honk that about gave her a damn heart attack .

Anywho times have went on . We decided to go to hilltop and live there . Who would have thought we would live together because I was stern on not wanting to live with her . It was weird living there . Always wondering if or when we were going to get a roommate . Then ? Thats the first time I ever broke a heart . See , she was always wanting to like distinguish a title. Meanwhile I am petrified of titles and labels and shit . Plus I have labeled myself for so long I didnt want to put a label on she and I . So I waited and waited and waited and decided to test waters . By testing waters meaning , I caught baby fever BAD . LIKE BAD BAD . I wanted a kid so bad I didnt think about talking to her first , I was just hoping one day I could be like , surprise baby we are having a baby ; butttttt I was gonna tell her how I got pregnant IF if actually happened . But she kinda beat me to it . She seen the messages on her tablet and as you know it went to shit from there . I broke her heart . I wasnt sure if or when she would or could ever forgive me . ( its JAn232021 ) and I know she still hasn’t forgiven me for anything . Not sure if she will ever get past it enough to love me love me .

We made it official , May 2019. By that time the only things that mattered to me were building a life with her. Come August 2020 . We got a place together and as time went on, I knew something was wrong but I would rather ignore it than have to go to the doctor because that just aint my cup of tea. I hate doctors.. they always wanna diagnose people with shit. I just didn’t wanna be one of those people so I held out as long as I could before it got to the point of being unbearable . I lost yet another good job . At first they thought it was covid and it wasnt . I tested negative for covid . Then I had like 5 appointments that following week . I was put on all types of stuff . I was throwing up everything . I was crying non stop . I was doing things not in my normal regimen . Thats when things fell harder on her . Harder as in bills , and stress and everything . I became that burden . I became the thing in the relationship that puts everything on the line . I became the complete failure in the relationship .

I wasn’t able to help like I planned . in fact my checks were so small that every pay day because I had all my bills and people I owed money to on auto pay and I kept making promises, put me in the negatives . I was in the negatives for 3 to 4 months . So imagine being the one in the relationship who didnt feel welcome . Who didnt feel like I deserved the love and things like that . All I wanted to do was help out and I couldn’t . Made me want to pack up and wait until I knew she was gone so I could leave . I didn’t know what to do . But I knew I was pretty much of no use . I knew that she resented me . I knew it pushed things back so far it may never come back to normal .

But now , Im better than I was still struggling though .  But I have this amazing job . I have a job where I can do my part and not hurt . I have a job where I can finally help out now . But its not enough . I’m not enough . The love is not enough anymore . I have became disposable . I have become the one who broke and shattered her heart and trust in her adult love life . How do I come back from it ? How do I rescue something that may have already died ? Am I worth it ? Am I better off without ? Do I deserve her ? She deserves the world and I want to give it to her I do .

But idk , maybe my mom was right . just maybe the only things I’m good at are singing and laying on my back . Havent accomplished shit yet . Got banned from a job because I tried to put my hands on someone . Got fired from 3 good fucking jobs because of my health .

Im crashing at this point . My future is on edge . I am on edge . this is not cool dude . But I will play the hand I’m dealt . Maybe I will win and marry the woMAN of my dreams . Or maybe I will just fck it up once again . We Will See .

[candra-hearts]

Heart of a Queen

This has been a wip on my computer for over two years, and I never really had any intention of finishing it, but @starry-serenade asked me to post it, so here it is!

also lowkey tagging @starswirlblitz and @jessucakes bc you might like it?

This story I think lies between KH2 and Dream Drop Distance, with the change that Kairi is present and has been helping Queen Minnie and the rest. It’s been a while since I’ve dived deep into KH lore, so please forgive any inconsistencies or incorrect applications of KH magic!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

When Sora and Kairi find a mysterious Heartless, they take a chance and bring it back to Disney Castle. Fortunately for them, one lucky rabbit is able to aid them in their quest to find out who it could be…

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

“What is that, how did it get in here, and why do you have it?” Donald asked harshly.

Kairi raised her eyebrow at the royal magician. “It’s a Heartless, and Sora and I brought it back for King Mickey to take a look at it.” She protectively laid a hand on the head of the small black creature that crouched at her side.

“Wak? Why?” Donald looked up at Goofy. “How did you even get it here? The castle’s magic should keep out all Heartless!”

“It should. I guess it doesn’t work all the time,” Sora said, shrugging.

“Ah-hyuck. Why would ya bring a Heartless here? What does His Majesty need to see about it?” Goofy asked, scratching the back of his head.

“It looks different than the others we’ve fought,” Sora said. He pointed to the top of the Heartless’s head. “It has pointy ear-things, and its eyes are green.” Which they were, and from all the time he spent helping his friends cleanse the darkness from their worlds, all the time he spent whacking Heartless back into dissipating shadows, he was pretty sure they weren’t normally that color.

“I can feel that it’s special. I don’t think it’s a normal Heartless,” Kairi added.

“But if it’s not a Heartless, then what is it?” Donald asked. “This makes no sense. I’m telling the King.” He darted out of the room.

“Okay. That’s fine!” Sora called after him. “Tell him to come out and see!”

“Sora, I hope your hunch is right,” Kairi murmured to him.

“You said you can feel it’s different than a normal Heartless, right? I trust you, and I think you could be right,” Sora said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. King Mickey’ll see what we’re talking about.”

Goofy bent down to look at the Heartless, which, frightened, hid behind Kairi’s leg. “Gawrsh. It’s kind of a cute little feller, ain’t it?”

Donald and Mickey arrived in that moment. “What’s all this about a Heartless in my castle?” Mickey asked, raising an eyebrow. He summoned his Keyblade in a flash of golden light.

The Heartless hid behind Kairi, and Sora put himself protectively between her and the King. “Your Majesty, this Heartless isn’t here to hurt anyone. We brought it here.”

“You brought a Heartless? Here?” Mickey put his Keyblade away and looked up at the boy in confusion. “Why?”

“It’s okay, sweetheart, King Mickey isn’t going to hurt you,” Kairi crooned gently, persuading the small shadowy creature to come out from behind her. It looked over at Mickey, still holding onto Kairi’s leg with tiny hands. “I just… I just have a feeling, in my heart, that this Heartless is special. It’s different… it looks a little different, its presence feels a little different…” The girl shook her head. “I don’t know why exactly…”

“Well, remember when I took my own heart?” Sora said, tilting his head. “I got split into a Heartless, and Roxas, my Nobody.” Goofy nodded, remembering. “I got turned into a Heartless, but Kairi…” he blushed, “…turned me back to my normal self.”

Goofy snapped his fingers. “So ya think this might be the Heartless of somebody we know?”

“We… we think it might be,” Kairi said. “Maybe that’s why the castle’s magic… isn’t really affecting it.”

“Hmmm.” Mickey pondered this. “Well, it makes sense. All right. We’ll keep it until we can figure out how to turn it back into whoever it is. But it needs to be watched at all times; we can’t leave it unattended.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Kairi said with plain relief, bowing her head to the mouse king.

“Aw, Kairi, we went over this,” Mickey chuckled. “Just King Mickey is enough.”

“Right. King Mickey.”

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *            

“BLAAAAAHHHHHAAAAHHHHRRRRGGHHAAAAAAAHHHH! OW! OW! OW!”

Oswald spun wildly out of the portal and bounced directly onto Disney Castle’s back lawn. He spit perfectly manicured blades of grass out of his mouth and rubbed his head, sitting up and groaning as his Keyblade Armor disappeared and the portal closed. “I hate between-world travel…”

He’d been a Keyblade Master longer than he cared to admit, but traveling through the Corridors was not one of his specialties. After a couple more minutes his vision stopped spinning and he was able to make out an enormous blue and white marble building towering over him. “Well, at least I’m in the right place.” He stood up and made his way toward the Gummi Ship Hanger, searching for the one mouse who could hopefully help him out.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Minnie looked around her. She, Riku, Kairi and Donald had spent much of the afternoon in the library doing research on the Cornerstone of Light and Disney Castle, among many, many other things. “Oh, now where were we?”

“The History of Disney Castle, Volume X,” Riku said, cracking a grin.

“The Keyblade War, Volume II,” Kairi added.

“That’s right. Oh, and where is the King? I asked him to meet us hours ago…”

“I’ll go find him, Your Majesty,” Donald offered, and before she could say yes or no he was already out the door and down the hall.

Minnie sighed and replaced a book on the shelf.

Less than ten minutes later, a familiar voice spoke up from the doorway. “Don’t worry, Your Highness, I’m here for ya!”

The Queen giggled. “Oh, Mickey.” She put her hands on her hips. “But you’re still late, what kept you?”

Mickey grinned and stepped into the library, followed by two other figures: Sora and Oswald.

Riku raised an eyebrow. The rabbit who had followed the King in the door was about his height, though his tall black ears added a good foot to his stature. He looked remarkably like the King, but his face was white instead of peach. He wore a similar outfit as well, simple clothes for traveling, he supposed, but it was blue, silver, and black instead of red, gold, and black. Unlike the King, he wore no gloves and no shoes, choosing to walk barefoot.

“Oh, King Oswald!” Minnie curtsied.

Sora and Riku bowed and Kairi curtsied as well.

The corner of Oswald’s mouth turned up in the ghost of what once might have been called a smile, but it vanished almost as soon as it appeared. He waved his hand for the teens to stand and turned his attention back toward Mickey. “Mick, I hate to admit it, but I need your help.”

“’Course, Oswald! Brothers gotta stick together, ya know.”

“Brothers?” Sora whispered to Riku.

“Half-brothers, actually,” Riku replied, remembering a long-ago conversation with the King in which he’d told him about Oswald, about the rabbit king who was his half-brother, who ruled a land much different than his.

“Yeah, but don’t forget, I’m older than you, mouse,” Oswald grumbled, shoving one of his hands in his pockets.

Mickey put his hands on his hips. “What’s the trouble, Os? I haven’t heard from ya in… well… time’s different in each world, but it’s probably been a while.”

“Well, my world was taken by the darkness and—”

Five different gasps punctuated the room. Sora, Riku, and Kairi looked at each other. Minnie looked at Mickey who looked horrified at Oswald. “Wasteland’s gone?” the Queen gulped at last.

Oswald winced but nodded affirmatively. “Yeah. I… I don’t know what even happened. I was out walking on Mean Street when a tidal wave of darkness surged down an alley toward me. I got out my Keyblade and put up a Refleza, but even that didn’t do much of anything; I blacked out and found myself in Traverse Town.”

There was silence in the room for the span of a few heartbeats. “Did… did anyone else make it out?” King Mickey asked with a soft gulp.

Oswald sighed, a deep sigh that seemed to travel all the way from his large black feet up and out of his mouth. “I haven’t seen Ortensia. I don’t know where she is. I looked all over Traverse Town, even asked around, but nobody’d seen her. My sweetie pie, my kitty…” He sighed and reached up to tug on one of his ears in an aggravated motion. “Not to mention my 420 Bunny Children, who knows where they all are… and Gus and all the other Gremlins, I didn’t see anybody and it’s just…”

Kitty? Something clicked in Kairi’s memory. “Oh! Your Majesty?”

Minnie, Mickey, and Oswald all looked at her. “Yes?” they asked with one voice.

“I’m sorry, I mean King Oswald,” the girl amended, twisting her hands in the fabric of her skirt.

The rabbit in question looked up at her. “Yeah?”

“Your wife… you said she’s a cat?”

Oswald smiled dreamily. “The most beautiful cat to ever live.”

Kairi glanced meaningfully at Sora, but he hadn’t seemed to put the pieces together. “Can you excuse us for a second? We need to go check on something.” Minnie nodded but returned her attention quickly to Oswald’s worries.

Kairi took Sora’s hand and dragged him bodily out of the library. “Kairi, what are you doing?” he queried as she continued to yank his arm out of his socket. When had she gotten this strong?

“That Heartless we found, it has pointy ears like a cat, right? I think… I think it might be Ortensia’s Heartless,” she explained.

“Oh. Oh, okay. That makes total sense,” Sora said, nodding like he’d known it all along. “Where did you leave it?”

“I left it in the garden, told Pluto to watch it… oh no.” The pair halted by the railing overlooking the back lawn. The Heartless was there, all right, but so was Donald, and out of the corner of his eye, Sora caught a glimpse of Pluto trapped in a cage made of great icicles. Angry barks echoed between the topiaries as the gold mutt tried to break loose.

Kairi inhaled a sharp breath and felt Sora’s hand cover hers in a comforting grip.

“You’re dangerous…” they could hear him muttering to himself. “You’re dangerous, I don’t care what the King says, I’m gonna take care of you once and for all…”

With a flash of white and silver Kairi was alone on the balcony. Sora had vaulted over the railing with smooth precision borne of much practice and flung his Keyblade at Donald… not to strike him, only to distract him. The Keyblade embedded itself in the lawn up to the teeth a foot from Donald’s beak.

“Wak! Who’s there?” he quacked angrily.

“Donald, don’t!” Sora shouted as he ran to retrieve his Keyblade. “It’s Ortensia!”

“Ortensia?!?” Donald repeated, his brows flying down into a confused line.

“Kai, go find the Heartless!” the boy shouted back up to the balcony.

Kairi nodded and vaulted over the railing herself, scanning the area for the little black creature.

“What makes you think that thing is Queen Ortensia?” Donald complained, folding his arms, his staff stuck under his arm.

“King Oswald’s here, he lost her, and we think this Heartless… might be her,” Sora explained as he summoned his best Fira’s to melt Pluto’s prison.

“She can’t be a Heartless, that’s ridiculous…” the royal magician said, waving his hand dismissively.

Sora put his hand on his hip, still focusing the tip of his Keyblade on the icicles. “Uh huh. And when I got turned into a Heartless, who hit me on the head a bunch of times? I still remember that!”

“Wak! Oh, all right, maybe it could be possible…” Donald relented grumpily.

The Heartless had hid in a bush at the rear of the garden, and Kairi was on its tail. She knelt down and parted the leaves carefully. The Heartless scooted further back until it was touching the marble wall. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s me, Kairi, remember me?” Kairi said soothingly. “Are you okay, Ortensia?”

The Heartless seemed to perk up, turning its head toward the girl.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?” The Heartless began to crawl toward the front of the bush and Kairi moved out of the way. “King Oswald’s here. He misses you a lot. Do you want to go see him?”

The black creature parted the leaves, stepping out into the afternoon sun, and gave a very slight head motion that might have been a nod. “Good,” Kairi said, relieved. “He’s up in the castle.”

The Heartless took her offered hand and together they made their way back up toward where Sora had finally freed Pluto.

The second he was out, Pluto darted over to Donald and began barking at him angrily.

Donald fended him off with his staff. “Pluto, cut it out!”

“Ruff ruff gurrr rufff ruff ruff!”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry for freezing you.”

“Gurrrrruff ruff rrrr ruff grrr…”

“Oh, fine! And I’m sorry for trying to hurt the Heartless!”

Pluto stopped barking and snorted, nodding his head sharply.

“You’re such a good dog…” Kairi said, rubbing the mutt’s head affectionately.

Sora dismissed his Keyblade. “Kairi, you found it?”

“Right here. Let’s go find King Oswald.”

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Fortunately, he hadn’t left the library, as he was still in the midst of a heated discussion with Mickey. “…flung to all the worlds! It’s too reckless, and besides, it’s against the rules. Master Yen Sid wouldn’t be happy.”

Sora elbowed the door open and held it for his girlfriend and her charge. “We’re back, Your Majesties.”

“King Oswald?” Kairi ventured.

“Yes?” He glanced over at her, his arms folded and one foot tapping a frustrated rhythm on the tiled floor.

“We have someone we would like you to see.” Kairi gently ushered the Heartless in front of her, where it stood stock still, seeming to be frightened.

Oswald felt his heart give a soft flip. Only one person ever made that happen. “…Ortensia?” The Heartless looked up at him and tilted its head curiously. Oswald slowly approached it, feeling his heart grow warmer even in its presence. “It is you… isn’t it… Ortensia….” He took its hands, and in an instant had it in a warm embrace. “My Ortensia…”

There was a poof and a flash of light and the Heartless vanished. In its place stood a female cat Oswald’s height, wearing a lacy pink gown and gold gloves. A tiny gold tiara with a white-gold flower in the center was nestled between her pointed ears.

“Oh, honey bunny!”

They separated for only a second before Ortensia began to kiss him all over his face. Grinning he picked her up and twirled her around. She shrieked with laughter. “You’re all right after all! Oh, I’m so glad!” Oswald cried, his heart thrumming with joy and relief.

Mickey sighed and put his hand in his pocket. “Well, that answers that question.”

Donald tapped his foot, grumbling. “…can’t believe it worked…”

Kairi curtsied again. “Queen Ortensia, I presume.”

Oswald stopped spinning and put his wife down. She hopped a little, her black and gold heels tapping on the tiled floor. “Oh, yes. That’s right. Oh, it’s so nice to be me again! Thank you for being so kind to me!”

“Glad to help, Your Majesty!” Sora said, grinning excitedly.

“I… I don’t know what happened…” Ortensia sighed, touching her cheek softly. “I was doing the flower arrangements for the party and all of a sudden everything was shadowy and cold and there were tendrils of darkness everywhere. I tried Pearl and Holy and neither made the darkness retreat for long. I shouted and shouted for you, Oswald, hoping you would hear even though I knew you were out about town today…” She sighed again. “I guess I must have blacked out because I don’t remember much of anything after that.”

“Well, you’re here now, hon, and you’re okay, and that’s what matters,” Oswald said, taking her hand and weaving his fingers between hers, still plainly relieved. “And somehow we’ll figure out how to save our world.”

Mickey shook his head. “It seems like every time we take two steps forward with that, we get pushed three steps back. I thought all the worlds had returned, but if there are some that are still disappearing, then I feel like we’re just… at a standstill.”

Minnie took his hand. “We’re all working very hard to figure out what to do,” she said softly. “And as long as we’re together, as long as our hearts are together, the Light will guide us.”

Mickey pecked her on the temple. “You’re right, Min. We’re gonna figure it out together.”

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

BONUS:

“Oswald, where are the kids?”

“Missing? They probably got flung to all the worlds of light just like those puppies did a couple of years ago…”

“All 420?”

“Yes, honey, all 420.”

“What are we going to do?”

Oswald tilted his face up toward the ceiling, a frustrated groan escaping through his teeth before addressing the room at large. “Who wants to go on a quest?”

#kingdom hearts #kh #mickey mouse #oswald the lucky rabbit #sora #kairi #my fics #okay so i ultimately decided to just make it one long post #if the readmore doesn't work for whatever reason i'm so so sorry #this story is partially crack partially serious #this is everything i wanted after kh2 #and obviously it's not canon compliant with DDD and kh3 #but that's okay i guess #i need my dose of kh oswald even if i have to do it myself lol #i'm pretty sure that since mickey's a keyblade master that oswald would be one too #and that's that on that #also i really want more battle couple sora/kairi #or just the two of them going on boring missions and things together #hopefully the ending is okay #it is what it is #if you read it all thank you i know it's long :)

[rm-dimplemaster-blog]

Hikikomori

a/n: forgot I never posted my little namjin fic here. this is chapter 1!

summary:  In which Jin is a 24 year old social recluse and Namjoon is a computer techie who enters the house Jin hasn't left in 4 years to fix his gaming computer. Can Namjoon draw Jin out of his loneliness and enter his heart?

Hikikomori is a term that refers to adolescents or adults who withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement.

CHAPTER 1

Jin is sitting cross-legged on his bed, toes (clad in fluffy white socks+bunny print all over 'em) sticking out, chin in his hands.

He's pouting (hard!) at his computer. When he woke up at 3 in the afternoon today—cause when you spend your whole life locked up in your room cause society sucks, you snooze like a drugged horse during the day and slay zombies (and pig out on banana snacks and mom's awesome homemade kimchi like nobody's business during the night)—he tapped the spacebar like he always does, and the computer didn't start.

He never turns his computer off cause it's way easier that way (pressing the start button post waking up all groggy takes time+effort) so it may have kicked the bucket sometime during the day while he was sleeping.

Did he highkey freak out? All the yep. All the kudos to his phone for existing and being awesome, but you can't slay the undead on a screen that's not much bigger than the 'hip' wallet your grandma got you for the holidays when you turned 19.

"Mom, the computer's dead," he whine-walked into the living room, dragging his feet in his fuzzy slippers.

The family cat, Keikeu, blinked at him all pretty, holding one paw up cause he was just washing his face and Jin interrupted—rude!

"What do you care," Jin mumbled at him, "you're not responsible for a zombie apocalypse and a human colony on Mars, it's all on me. All you have to do is live the cat life."

His mom had a ready-made answer for him: "how about you go out and get a job so you'll have enough money to get it fixed?"

Jin hasn't stepped outside of his apartment for the past 4 years, no joke. It's not that he didn't want to, he just couldn't do it. Thinking about interacting with real people made his toes get all sweaty and made him feel like he wanted to lie down and die for like a year or two cause convenient.

He's 24 years old and his mom and dad do all the food shopping for him. The rest of the stuff he needs, Jin orders off the internet using his dad's card. Sometimes he doesn't even step out of his room for a while. He has his really bad days when he thinks all his parents do is judge. Judge him for still living at home. Judge him for having zero friends. Judge him for not being successful. Judge him cause he's not like everyone else, all the 'normal' people.

He hears them sometimes talking about him when they think he's not listening.

"Where did we go wrong," his mom would ask.

"I wish I knew," his dad would answer in his quiet, calm manner.

And Jin would press his cat-ear headphones tighter against his ears and sink back into his nice and soft computer chair and do his zombie-tracking-through-the-misty-grey-forest mission with a pout and sad eyes. He'd eat one choco-pie cake after the other, his sleeves pulled over his knuckles, nose and mouth stuffed under the neckline of his shirt cause hiding is the best thing he can do. Hide in his room. Hide in his shirt. Hide from life passing him by, day by day.

And with the controller in his hand or his fingers splayed out on the keyboard, he'd think that all he has to do in order to make a change in his life is put on fresh 'outside' clothes, pull his sneakers on, snatch his mom's car keys off the kitchen table with its floral table-top, and go look for a job.

He doesn't have a college degree, but he could manage. Anyone can earn a living, right? All they have to do is work hard.

But what about his games?

What about all his Murakami novels?

What about all the peace and quiet and calm his room has to offer?

What would happen to all of those? How will he be able to enjoy them?

And he just flops back down on the bed each time, drops his sneakers onto the floor and tries to think about something else to try and calm his racing heart that's all life change-resistant.

Jin wiggles his toes.

Blows his dark-brown bangs out of his eyes.

Stares at the blank screen of his computer with a growing sense of panic.

What if his mom and dad won't pay the money to fix it. What if what his mom said earlier, stays: for the computer to get fixed, Jin will have to get a job so he can fix it using money from his own wallet (that's where his grandma's gift would come in handy, right).

Well, if that's the case, he'll just have to live without it. There's no other way. Not every person on this planet has a computer, right? People manage just fine without—

Jin bites down on his thumb.

He grabs his phone super fast like someone's gonna snatch it away from him any second now. He hates it cause it survived when his computer didn't. But he also wants to kiss it to death cause hey, he can still run a game on this thing. Sure, there's the ads popping up every few secs and the characters are so tiny they look like corn kernels, but still.

Jin falls backwards on the bed with his legs still curled up under him. Phone on his chest, he stares up at the ceiling—100% depression mode activated. He wants to cry. He wants to stuff his face full of Pocky sticks and chocolate milk and wish that he'd never been born.

In his white sweatpants and pink sweatshirt, he curls up on his right side.

He lies there like that for two hours, contemplating just how unfair life is, when suddenly

FOOTSTEPS!

It sounds like a pair of Timberlands just making a ruckus in the living room.

Jin's mom mumbles something.

Then—

A crash!

Keikeu scrambles off to hide by the sound of his bell ringing all over the place.

A deep pleasant voice goes:

"Oh, ow. Sorry cat."

Something is being picked off the floor.

A chair?

Then—

"Nah, I'm okay."

Then—

"Some people live on earth. I live in Clumsyland."

A faint haha.

Another tiny crash.

"Wha—just leave it?"

Then—

"'kay."

And before Jin even gets a chance to try and make sense of what's going on, his mom goes: "—the door at the end of the hallway!"

!!!!!!!!!!!

THAT'S JIN'S ROOM!

SOMEONE'S COMING INTO HIS ROOM.

Do we panic?

Yes we do.

Jin sits up all ruler-straight just before the door to his room kinda flies open.

A guy stands on the other side, rubbing his knee, honey-colored bangs in his eyes.

The guy hooks one thumb over his shoulder, "think your cat almost burst an aneurysm over there. Do cats have aneurysms. I bumped into the chair it was sleeping in and the cat almost went through the ceiling, 100% fright." He smiles shyly, "tried asking for its forgiveness but it doesn't wanna talk to me. Do cats keep grudges? Cause if so, I'm screwed."

Jin probably stares at him super lost cause the guy goes: "oh!"

He then holds up a tattered notebook that has pages falling out of it, and says: "name's Namjoon. You can call me Joon for short, cause cool. I'm here cause your mom called me and told me you're having some computer issues. I'm here to help."

#namjin #jin #namjoon #bts #bts fanfic

[bakedpieceofchicken]

5am long personal vent

dont interact with this

note: this post mentions endeavor a lot.

context (very important!): I pretty much binge-read an entire tumblr user’s meta posts and I found them interesting and very informative. 

I also read through their salt tag and now I’m compelled to gather my thoughts together considering the literal title I’ve held for months now is “Hawks is a lov member already”. I’m extremely socially awkward, even on this online platform, so I’m not going to mention the aforementioned tumblr user’s name because I’m too anxiety-ridden to try to contact them. This is in no way shape or form an attack on the person’s opinions nor their character. It’s me... rambling about my thoughts about their opinions at 4 am. 

Is it defending myself? Well, not really, because I don’t feel personally attacked. Just because we have a difference of opinion doesn’t mean we have to resort to attacking each other. I found their opinions thought-provoking and wanted to pick my own brain... I picked this time purposely so nobody would see this post :eyes: so like uhm yeah

note 2: “you” refers to unnamed tumblr user. sorry about weird point of view...

anyways let’s get into the meat 

villain hawks

yay or... nay...?

Well, in fanon it would be such a fun idea to play around with. Personally I think there’s potential for League of Villain interactions with Hawks. I would LOVE to see Hawks interacting with the other pro heroes, but the only pro-to-pro interaction we get with Hawks is between Hawks and Endeavor. Because the atmosphere between the pro-heroes feels... disconnected.

Now, hear me out.

Let’s contrast it with the idealized version of hero society provided in future fics. Or hell, comparing the top ten pro heroes to Class 1-A itself. We want to think all the heroes are friendly with each other and have some sort of camaraderie with each other

But Horikoshi doesn’t present it like that. 

The closest thing to that we get is Endeavor and Hawks. Other than that, the atmosphere between hawks and the other heroes seem more strained or tense (the whole miruko hawks thing is fanon). And even then, it’s... well... Endeavor and Hawks don’t truly know each other. Hawks only knows the public perception and image of Endeavor, which is the only thing he’s been given while Endeavor doesn’t truly knows Hawks either. I’m not saying the interactions are fake, but... would Hawks be acting the way he was if he knew about Endeavor’s past?

No. I don’t have any predictor to how differently Hawks would act, but I definitely sense there’d be a lot of disappointment and loss of respect for the man he was rooting for. To what extent? Would Hawks just be in complete disbelief? Or would he react with immediate anger? There are parallels to Hawks and Todoroki Rei--both were picked from the crowd and had their lives controlled because of their “value” determined by Endeavor/The Hero Commission respectively.

But honestly from an objective standpoint, I have nothing to go off of other than the fact that Hawks deeply respects and idolizes Endeavor the most out of anyone in the manga we’ve seen and the fallout of that would be of an equally shattering magnitude...

Ahh i went off on a tangent. the point is... do we really know Hawks? Does Hawks ever get a chance to just.. be himself? Maybe we see a bit of that shine when he’s alone with Endeavor, but as we saw clearly in chapter 186 he puts on a care-free facade for his fans. But in reality... he’s always working because he’s one of the hero commission’s greatest assets. 

and... here’s where our opinions clash. I truly, in the depths of my heart, believe that Hawks is building a reality where heroes have more free time comes from a more selfish desire for himself. Don’t get me wrong--I don’t want to disservice what Hawks has done for society. But also it feels like he’s the type who overworks himself because he feels moral obligation to society when... technically he doesn’t owe anything to society. 

Yes, in superhero shows and whatnot, it’s usually a positive trait that “hey this person’s been born with an amazing power and they’ve chosen to use it for the greater good! Look what they’re sacrificing!!!” But let’s say theoretically that person decides “hey i don’t want to be a hero i just want to be a writer!” Are they morally wrong for deciding not to be a hero even though they would theoretically be good at it? Even though it’s not something they want for themselves?

Because I don’t think Hawks wants to be a hero. But he also doesn’t want people to die. He’s tied himself with these moral obligations to the point where he can’t leave now because he feels it would be selfish of him to. And that is speculation, but Horikoshi isn’t exactly spelling it out for us! So, that’s how I interpret Hawks’ character. Yes, he is a true hero in that he wants to save as many people as he can, even at the cost of his pride his dignity his fucking freedom...

but also, he never wished for that. he never asked to be one who has to deal with all of this. But now that he is, what choice does he have? 

So, yes, we agree on that. But I also feel that his personal desire plays as big of a part. Because we, as humans, naturally want things for ourselves. Our personal desire for ourselves shouldn’t be downplayed at all! That’s why I believe his inner thoughts are worded “more free time” rather than “make society more safe”. Because he has his priorities! He wants the best of both worlds-- it’s a form of negotiation. He can still play the hero and less lives would be taken but he can also having some breathing room for himself like he’s always wanted.

To free himself just a little bit from the stressful life of being a hero. 

There is nothing wrong with being motivated by personal desires. Hawks is one of the most grounded heroes we’ve seen--I think he’s cynical enough that he’s self aware of this selfish desire for a freer life. And it’s selfish to him only because he knows that it would never happen without the expense of a few lives-- lives that he knew he would never forgive himself for letting slip.

I think it’s a toxic mindset.

Because as heroic as placing others above yourself... that attitude is completely unhealthy and I don’t think it should be celebrated. What I want to see from Hawks’ natural progression as a character is recognizing that it’s okay to prioritize yourself. Hell, Midoriya learned this during the summer training arc and failed to retain that lesson during the Overhaul arc! THESE HEROES DON’T TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES!!! (ok i get midoriya’s trying). 

And if it’s selfish to desire more free time for yourself off from work, is it really that wrong of someone to do so? To want more control over your life? To want to do things you want to do rather than what others want you to do?

What does this have to do with villain Hawks? Well, I think a large desire for villain hawks is because it shows the departure of that mindset! Hawks doesn’t need to be confined to his hero persona anymore, he can finally do things he wants to do and be the free bird he’s always wanted to be.

But him becoming a complete villain is... far-fetched. This myself I recognize. I’ve only written villain!hawks once and that was because he snapped after the hero commission executed shigaraki and dabi as a show of power rather than going through the effort of trying to re-integrate the men back into hero society. I don’t want to go too deep because this isn’t the point I’m trying to make, but Hawks realizes how power-obsessed society is to the point where he doubts the legitimacy of the hero commission itself and what they do for society and its people.

But, again, that’s not going to ever happen in canon so I won’t bring it up another time. The point I was trying to make is yeah, you’re right that Hawks would never become a villain. He wouldn’t become a murderer- if he does, he definitely needs more incentive than what we can go off from canon.

And ohhh boy here we go, reaching the erm elephant in the room.

(These are the points made in the salt tag btw)

Is Villain!Hawks just an excuse to write hotwings? And what is the plausibility of Hawks turning to villainy? Would Endeavor being exposed as a child abuser be the trigger if Hawks were to turn villain at some point in the story?

Eh...

I don’t know if I even want to go into the whole “this is just an excuse to make hawks and dabi evil boyfriends” because I’ve never used villain!hawks as justification for that personally. And I’m actually not as attached to hotwings as I am to something like shigahawks... I don’t have any points to counteract this other than my desire to see Hawks interact with the entire league. Because it would be fun to see him interact in an environment he’s not wholly familiar with. With Endeavor or the other heroes or even the hero commission, he has some semblance of control or understanding so he thinks/acts like he knows what’s going on. 

Meanwhile, the League is a huge mess and they don’t have their shit together and wouldn’t it be funny to see Hawks as a part of their crew suffering with them!!! Well, that’s bias. My bias. For fanon. And for the jokes. So sad :(

So... I don’t just want to see more Dabi and Hawks interaction. I want to see more Hawks and League interaction. or just more hawks and anyone interactions overall. maybe thats all i crave

Actually going through the points one by one, let’s talk plausibility.

I already talked about villain!hawks being a... departure from Hawks’ faults in his own character. But it is pretty extreme, I’ll admit. If Hawks were ever to join the League of Villains, he’d probably never use killing as first resort. As we’ve seen in chapter 220, it’s not like the League targets only heroes... but i get the salt tag was made like 5 months ago so it’s not like new information hasn’t been released at the time of posting.

Reminds me of domestichobgoblins’ shigadabihawks fic where shigaraki even acknowledges “Whatever bullshit you’ve been telling Dabi, you aren’t a killer either, are you? So what, exactly, am I supposed to do with you?” And you know? The both are you are right. Hawks isn’t a killer and he wouldn’t become a killer willingly... unless he was pushed by some other greater force but I’m not here to address any of that. He could still provide support to the league in other ways, arguably, or just joining the league could be some kind of message to the heroes or supporters of hero society.

You are right to a degree. Hawks’ sole motivator to become a villain wouldn’t be because “OH ENDEAVOR IS AN ABUSER GUESS I GOTTA TURN EVIL NOW”.

Okay pushing past that, so why would Hawks be motivated to become a villain? In canon? I’ve already warped a lot of this post with my own fanon but I’m trying to keep within the realm of canon for this point specifically since you could take a second to push Hawks over the edge in fanon and be done with it. But why would Horikoshi specificially do it?

The fact is hero society sucks. A lot. And I think Hawks recognizes that fact being the most “grounded” and cynical of the bunch. His views and visions of hero society aren’t warped by fantasies and such (which is probably why he doesn’t like All Might...) so he understands what’s happening around him. He understands the mechanisms of hero society and how “valuable” quirks are viewed as in their capitalist society.

But also, he doesn’t  have that much of an option other than trying to lessen the burden placed upon him. Because he’s a single man, and even with his influence, he can’t change society. He’s powerless to do so, even considering who he is. He’s seen as a role model to those in society, but it’s because of his ranking that ironically fuels why people even look up to him: denouncing that would be kind of silly considering it’s the reason why people would listen in the first place.

And this is the point where I say... Shigaraki had a point. Hero society is flawed. It shouldn’t be so reliant on one person to carry it all.

But also hero society itself is bullshit. The ranking system? Horrible. The fact that the hero commission views them as tools for their own disposal? Horrible. The mere fact they basically bribe Hawks into becoming a hero? Like? “Hey kid you’re the best at being a hero so that’s what you should do. we’re only going to give you financial support if you become a hero so you might as well” like what is Hawks supposed to do in that sort of situation? Of course he’s going to succumb to the pressure.

I don’t believe in this whole “sacrifice for the greater good” bullshit. If Hawks wants to be a hero, that’s a whole another story, but if Hawks doesn’t, then he shouldn’t have been forced into that role. It’s about agency--it’s about letting him decide for himself if it’s what he wants to do. And it’s... a gray area for morality. “It’d be selfish for him to let people die!” Who is in the right to say whether or not he should use his “powers” for others’ sake? Me? You? The Hero commission?

So if Horikoshi goes down the path of “hey hero society is extremely bad and needs to change” and Hawks recognizes the League as a proponent for that change, then with a lot of development, it’s plausible in the future. I understand that Hawks, as of what we currently see, is too upheld by his own morals to ever even think about crossing that line, but people change. Hell, you recognized how the High End arc changed Endeavor and made miles of metas about it.

So, is it really far-fetched to say villain!Hawks is just a dream?

Maybe I’m a fool or an optimist, but I’d love to see Horikoshi take that path. Not because I’m horny for evil boyfriends, but it’d be a nice change of pace and we’d get to see a complete contrast of Hawks’ experiences. And it wouldn’t be easy-it’d had to be done right. Just like Endeavor’s redemption arc--if Horikoshi is still planning it. (Let’s be honest: High End Arc was not a formal redemption. I think it was Horikoshi letting the readers know “there might be something worth saving in Endeavor!” but i digress because i don’t care enough about endeavor (his character and redemption has 0 appeal to me and thats FINE. YOU DO YOU AND I DO ME, I only talk about him when it’s essential to talk about the influence he has on characters I DO care about).

As to why people like to characterize the moment Hawks decides to quit being a villain being attributed to Hawks learning Endeavor is an abuser...

The fallout, as mentioned earlier, could vary. A lot. Hawks really looked up to Endeavor when he was young. Again, shattering to find out something so nasty about the one you idolized.

To know that the one Hawks looked up used his wife just like how the hero commission used Hawks. Like an object or tool at their disposal. 

Would he be vengeful or spiteful towards Endeavor personally? To others, probably yes. To me? I’m kind of in the “eh” skeptical ballpark so I guess we somewhat agree on that. To me, Endeavor being exposed as an abuser would  crush that small slither of childish hope that hero society represents something bigger than themselves. Did Hawks ever get to have the childhood Deku had where he was still cheering on the heroes from behind the screen, or did it get crushed just as quickly when he realized how hero society truly works?

Because hero society isn’t bigger than themselves. It shouldn’t be idolized so heavily as it is presented in BNHA.

At least, not in its current state. And people who don’t fit in that group or agree with its ideals suffer the consequences. Like Shigaraki. Like Twice and Spinner. Like Gentle.

These are all villains that are products of society that promised to stamp out villains. And when Hawks realizes that it’s just a never ending cycle where the people left in between the cracks are the ones who perpetuate the system itself...

Like you said, Hawks sees the bigger picture. And his goal is to lessen the burden of the workload for heroes. There will never be a shortage of everyday criminals using their quirks for petty crimes but what about the bigger picture organizations? How are they going to be stopped? What about examining the root core of the problem and going from there? No more short-term solutions to problems... What can Hawks, mighty number two hero, do even at the expense of himself? Hmm... 

I don’t know, just some food for thought. Something I’ve seen done for villain!hawks is the hero commission throwing Hawks under the bus for some reason and Hawks either a) joins the league to gleam more information but finds himself willing to stay or b) has nowhere else to go and it’s more of a push for Hawks to orbit towards the League.

I am really thankful for your thoughts! Even though we don’t agree on things, I think discussion is still possible (whenever my anxiety stops bashing me in the head) and I’m always willing to accept I may be wrong about something. At this point in time (3/27/2019), we have less than 10 chapters released that centers around Hawks, but he’s certainly intrigued a lot of people considering he’s already #4 in popularity from so little chapters released! I think he and his introduction to BNHA represent the more cynical side of hero society that we haven’t been able to properly see from Deku’s perspective!

And I’m interested in what direction Horikoshi is going to take Hawks’ character in! The one thing I’m truly against is Hawks staying the “good little hero” in the end--whether he dies, becomes a villain, or hell even just stops being a hero is good enough for me. Free the bird or kill him off is what I’d want to see. That’d be enough of a character arc for me. Characters change, and it’d be silly to expect Hawks to stay the same especially since he has a lot of baggage on his shoulders and his current situation as a double agent for the League is precarious--despite him stating that he was willing to sacrifice his own reputation for the good of everyone, there’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t feel at least some degree of hurt over losing the respect of everyone and his colleagues. 

My thoughts are pretty clunky but maybe someone was able to gleam something from my stupid 5 am vent...

I love Dabihawks, even though I’m not as invested in it as say Shigahawks or ShigaDabiHawks (which I’m sure you’d definitely have objections to considering your other salt posts... but not something I want to address here), and I still think DabiHawks is a great ship more so because of the dynamic than the aesthetic. But hey, you ship what you ship, you are allowed to express your disdain for the ship--I’ve certainly expressed my own disdain for the your ship in the past--and your salt posts which probably took like 10 minutes to type out provoked me to type out my own thoughts which took like 2 hours to fully process. Like I said earlier: you do you, I do me.

And again-- I’m not trying to “defend” here nor am I trying to “attack”. I just had things I wanted to say and I hope I DON’T have the attitude of someone looking down on you, because I think you have very valid opinions and thoughts and sometimes discourse can just be healthy discussions about how we interpret different characters. We are literally squeezing everything we can out of one character we love and there’s enough room for different interpretations of the same character ^^ If anything, I actually look up to you, which is why I’m too much of a coward to send this to you because oh my god i am so embarrassed about a lot of the shit that comes out of my mouth and i constantly worry about if im saying wrong things even though im open to people telling me why  im wrong about said things. 

tdlr; villains hawks very good. has nothing to do with dabihawks. villain hawks very good on its own. I agree with tumblr user on a lot of things, yet we see differently on other things. The world keeps spinning--I think it’s more interesting to address differences in opinions rather than ignore them. 

(the person this post was meant for will probably never see this unless i send it to them to whcih im like oh my god what if they roast me to hell and back despite me claiming yes i amn ot trying to destroy them or their reputation i just want to talk about this because i had fun trying to think about why i love villain hawks so much aaaaa maybe i am just a delusional fangirl but im also a delusional fangirl who wrote multiple paragraphs about this so... /shrug)

end. again please dont interact. if you want to talk to me about it, inbox/dm me but i dont want this post to get notes. thank you. hides what have I done... 

this has been sorta meta but not really just chicken fucking around at 6 am and good night. maybe sometime in the next... month... ill have the courage to send this to the tumblr user. maybe when i have confidence... or maybe when i make mel look this over. that was a joke- she couldnt even finish my other meta piece which was shorter than this. :)

#dont rb #i dont think anyone was going to #but i put it in case #indirect discourse #but this is actually an 18 year old idiot rambling on about fictional characters and ships and sounding like a crazy person by the end

[hovercraft79]

Winter Song

Ch 25 Carol of the Bells

Chapters: 25/31 Word Count: 5,228 Fandom: The Worst Witch (TV 2017) Rating: Teen Warnings: mentions alcoholism, bitterness, death. It’s based on A Christmas Carol, there’s some darkness there, y’all.

Summary: Hecate lets her fears and temper get the best of her, throwing her whole reconciliation with Pippa into jeopardy. Her father, and three spirits, help her set things right.

Notes: Write about a holiday myth or legend, you say? Plagiarize Charles Dickens, I say!  Sorry about all the angst that comes with that.

While not exactly a myth or legend, once this idea took hold, I couldn’t shake it. Certainly, a great debt is owed to the original – but an even greater debt is owed to the Palazzo young reader’s edition of A Christmas Carol that was abridged by Juliet Stanley. It’s well done and beautifully illustrated if you’ve got a young reader of your very own and would like to start a new tradition.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra does my all-time favorite version of this song.

Sparky returns from her holiday travels today. We can all rejoice.

This particular fic was written over a 24-hour time period – like, I haven’t slept in a hideous length of time, even for me. Please, if you spot any errors, be forgiving, but let me know. Thanks!

Hecate stared at her reflection in the mirror. The connection was dead, and she knew it. She’d cut the call herself and she wasn’t sad about that. She didn’t want to see any more of Pippa’s hurt, angry expression.

Their connection was dead, and she knew that, too. Dead by her own hand. Again. Exhaustion and worry had turned into cross words, a scolding for being so careless, a rejected invitation. Her own fears of losing Pippa morphed into a rigid silence guaranteed to push Pippa away. Again. This time, her own anger met with an equally angry Pippa. She would not allow herself to be sad about that.

Let their friendship be dead.

Just as it had been for most of the last thirty years.

It hurt less that way.

Hecate knew she was a difficult, uncompromising, and unsocial witch. She’d been described as cold many times in her life - was neither the first, nor likely the last. There was so much cold inside her it nipped her nose, hollowed her cheeks, stiffened her walk, made her lips purse and her voice icy. She knew the day the Founding Stone failed was not the only day she’d been frozen.

Nobody ever stopped her in the street to say, ‘Hello, Miss Hardbroom! How are you?’ No children asked her to tuck them in at night and no one ever asked Hecate to their birthday celebrations. But Hecate cared nothing about what others thought of her.

Hecate stood and moved to the window. It was a freezing, foggy Christmas Eve and she had work to do. She’d idled enough time away pretending she could be anything that made Pippa Pentangle’s life better. It was dark already, even though it was only a little after three o’clock. The fog was so dense that the trees of the forest looked like ghosts.

She needed to inventory the contents of her ingredient cupboard. Today seemed as good a time as any. She chose to walk instead of transfer, in the hopes that she would burn off some restless energy. She hoped the corridors would be empty. She did not get her wish.

“Merry Christmas, HB!” cried Dimity Drill, cheerfully falling into step beside Hecate. She’d obviously just flown in from somewhere – the frosty flight had given her a healthy, warm glow.

“What right do you have to be merry?” Hecate huffed. “You’re here.”

“What right do you have to be miserable?” Dimity grinned. “I’m only here for a bit.”

Hecate couldn’t come up with an answer, so she said, “Bats! And humbugs.”

“Don’t be cross, Hecate! It’s Christmas!”

“What else can I be,” returned Hecate, “when I live in such a stupid world. What’s Christmas when the Craft is in decline? When you have no fr—when you find yourself another year older but no better for it? If I had my way, I’d hex everyone who wished me a Merry Christmas.” She stopped and turned to face Dimity. “What good has Christmas ever done you?”

Dimity started to respond with a cutting, sarcastic remark, but the haunted look in Hecate’s eyes gave her pause. Something’s happened, she thought, and she’d bet her best broom that whatever it was, it involved a certain witch with a penchant for pink. “It’s the only time I know of when people seem to open up their hearts. So, Hecate, although it has never put money in my pocket, or a trophy on my mantel, I believe that it has done me good, and it will always do me good.” She placed a firm hand on Hecate’s elbow. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Hecate, but don’t be angry. Come and have dinner with us tomorrow.”

“Goodbye, Miss Drill,” Hecate said, pulling away.

“Please come? Mum would love to see you. She still natters on about you helping to make all those cookies.”

“Goodbye,” said Hecate.

“Very well,” said Dimity, relenting. “Goodbye, Hecate, and Merry Christmas.”

Hecate transferred the rest of the way to her potions lab.

****

Hours later and Hecate’s mood had only darkened. Somehow, she’d allowed her potions stores to become recklessly low – even to the point of not being able to make commonly used remedies. Clearly, she had allowed Pippa Pentangle to become a distraction. Well, no more. Back to business as usual.

She flicked her wrist and the door to the ingredient cupboard closed and locked behind her. Flipping open her pocket watch, Hecate decided a quick bite from the kitchens would be her best option for the evening meal. Making her way to the door of the potions lab, she reached for the knob, drawing back sharply when she saw her father’s face.

Startled, Hecate cast an illumination spell, looking closely, however, she saw nothing but the normal knob. No face, no shadows…just a regular doorknob. Shaking her head, Hecate dismissed it as the result of being overemotional and overtired. She transferred to the kitchens and made a cold sandwich from some leftover roast and heated a bowl of nettle soup.

Once she finished, Hecate decided to make the long walk back to her rooms, hoping the empty corridors would provide some soothing familiarity for her jangled nerves. Unable to help herself, she checked each doorknob she passed. Every knob seemed its usual configuration. “Bats!” she spat, as she made her way to her rooms.

Arriving in her quarters, she closed the door with a bang. Remembering her father’s face on the doorknob, Hecate checked her rooms. She went through the sitting room. Nobody was under the table or the sofa. She inspected the bedroom. No one was in the cupboard, under the bed, or in her dressing gown.

Satisfied, Hecate got ready for bed and sat in front of the fire to read. She couldn’t concentrate, though, and found herself gazing absently into the flames, Pippa refusing to leave her thoughts. As Hecate stared, each tile around her fireplace filled with her dead father’s face. Almost at once, she heard the tinkling of a bell, much like the one she used to call time during lessons. Soon, bells all over Cackle’s were ringing.

Hecate had no idea how long the ringing lasted, but it felt like forever. Then it stopped. In the silence, Hecate heard a clanking noise coming from the old dungeons. It sounded as though someone was dragging a heavy chain across the stone floor. She could hear the noise getting closer and closer, until it sounded as though it was right outside her door.

“Bats and humbugs!” She said. “It’s just my imagination.”

Her color changed, though, when the door to her room flew open and in walked her father’s ghost. The room took on a chill, despite the roaring fire.

“W-who are you?” Hecate stammered.

“You know who I am, Daughter. Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Hecate, “a stomach upset affects them. You may be an undigested bit of beef, or a piece of undercooked potato. You’re more gravy than grave, I think.” Hecate may have sounded brave, but she was trying to control her terror. The spirit of her father disturbed her down to her bones.

“Why are you here? Father?” Hecate asked.

Her father’s ghost stepped closer. “Anyone who does not share their spirit in life is doomed to wander through the world in death and witness what they might have shared on earth and turned into happiness.”

“But… the chains?”

“I wear the chain I made for myself in life, Daughter. You are making your own chains now.”

Hecate glanced down at her dressing gown, expecting to see chains, but none were there.

“Every withheld kindness, every rejected opportunity to connect with another… My spirit never left the confines of books and the Code and now… a weary journey lies before me. I would spare you that journey.”

“I’ve always followed the Code. I –”

“You will be haunted,” her father’s ghost interrupted, “by three spirits. Without their visits, you cannot avoid the same fate as mine. Expect the first one soon. For your own sake, Daughter, remember what I have said.”

Then, the ghost moved towards the window and it opened wide. Hecate followed. She heard confused noises in the air – the sounds of sadness, regret and pain. The ghost joined the choir and floated out into the night.

Hecate slammed the window shut and hurried to her bed. She magicked every light on and crawled under the blankets, falling asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

****

When Hecate awoke, the room was so dark she could hardly see. The clock chimed midnight, though she knew it had been later than that when she went to bed. She felt groggy, knowing she couldn’t have slept through an entire day and into another night. She tried to remember the visit from her father’s ghost. It couldn’t have been real, could it?

When a bell struck one, the lights flashed on and off again and her bedroom door flew open. Hecate found herself face to face with another spirit.

Long, white hair framed a youthful face. A girl, Hecate thought, looking closer. Her arms and legs were bare, and she wore a tunic the color of her old Amulet’s Academy uniform. In one hand she held a fresh, green holly branch, in the other, a bundle of fresh herbs.

“Are you the spirit Father warned me about?” asked Hecate.

“I am,” the ghost replied, sounding very far away. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” The ghost was holding a witch’s hat, but it was a crushed, moth-eaten thing, worse than Mildred Hubble’s hat ever was. “You don’t care for my hat? It was made by the behavior of people like you. I’m forced to wear it year after year.”

“I’m sorry,” Hecate whispered. “Why are you here?”

“To save you from yourself, of course,” she said, clasping Hecate’s arm gently. “Come with me.”

Hecate found herself transferred to the middle of a snow-filled courtyard. To their left, Hecate could see a group of girls in high spirits, laughing and playing together. Her muscles tensed. She recognized them at once: Agnes Monkshood, Piety Pendragon, Rosalyn Thornspike and the rest of her form.

“It’s end of term, though the school is not quite deserted,” said the ghost. “A lonely child, neglected by the others, is still there.”

“I know,” Hecate said, scrubbing a tear from her face. They walked to the school, entering a door in the back. There, in a long, bare room filled with desks, sat a lone girl with long, dark hair, reading. Hecate stiffened at the sight of her poor, forgotten self.

Suddenly, a vivacious blonde girl wearing a pink coat over her uniform, burst into the room. “That’s Pippa!” Hecate called out happily. “She was my friend.” Hecate smiled broadly as she watched her younger self be pulled out into the courtyard to join in with the others, Pippa’s hand never letting go.

“Let’s see another Christmas,” the ghost said, smiling.

Hecate’s former self grew larger, but there she was, alone again, when all the other girls had gone home for the holidays. She wasn’t reading now but looking nervously out of the window. Again, the door burst open. This time, a teenaged Pippa Pentangle darted in, flung her arms around her neck and kissed her on the cheek.

“If he doesn’t come, you really must come home with me, Hiccup! We can be together for Solstice and Yule and Christmas and we’ll have the happiest time in the world.” Pippa twirled around the room. “It will be fabulous!”

“She’s always had a large heart,” Hecate said fondly. She remembered their quarrel earlier today? Or yesterday? Shaking her head, Hecate murmured, “I’ll never understand what she saw in me.”

“Time grows short,” observed the spirit. “Come quickly!” Suddenly, they were in the Great Hall at Amulet’s Academy. Dozens of trees dripping with fairy lights lined the walls. The night sky twinkled against the ceiling while magical snow flurries filled the air. Hecate recognized it at once:  The Winter Ball of her final year at Amulet’s.

Soon, music filled the room and the girls began streaming in to the celebration. They talked and hugged and danced and laughed. There was cake, cold roast, mince pies and plenty of hibiscus punch. Hecate watched as the girls enjoyed themselves, looking for a familiar flash of golden hair.

There! Hecate spotted them, in the prime of life. Pippa was beyond radiant. Her own face lacked the rigid lines that appeared over the years, but she already showed signs of worry and stress. In an instant, they were closer, and Hecate could see the hurt in Pippa’s eyes.

“But… Hiccup? We’re already here? You look beautiful, darling. Who cares what those other girls think?” Pippa frowned at the girls behind them. “Will you at least dance with me once? We’ve been practicing all term.”

“Pippa…I can’t…” Hecate watched her younger self, willing her to change history. To be brave for Pippa. “You don’t understand…”

“I don’t. I’m here. Those other girls don’t matter to me. At all. I don’t understand why they matter to you.” She stepped closer. “I’ve always been happy with you, Hiccup.” A crowd of girls spotted them and began calling Pippa’s name. She waved them off and stepped closer to Hecate. “I’m here with you, Hiccup. You.”

“That’s just it, Pipsqueak. You should be here with them.”

“But…” Pippa trailed off as Hecate exercised her new-found skill at transferring. “But I love you, Hiccup.”

Hecate clapped her hands over her mouth, stifling a gasp. Pippa had loved her. Months before she’d derailed their lives by abandoning her at the broomstick waterski display, Pippa had loved her. “Spirit!” said Hecate in a broken voice. “Remove me from this place.”

Hecate found herself alone in her bedroom once again, every light ablaze. Sobbing, she flung herself into bed, soon sinking into a deep sleep.

****

When Hecate awoke, it was nearly one o’clock. She opened her bedroom door this time, so she wouldn’t be taken by surprise. Then she waited. And waited. Her stomach twisted in on itself as nothing happened. She turned and opened the window, leaning out into the cold air, still seeing no one.

Turning back into the room, Hecate noticed a strange light coming from the next room and a strange voice was calling her name. She stepped into her living room and saw that the walls and ceiling were covered in winter greenery and a mighty fire roared in the hearth. Her sofa and chairs were gone. In their place stood a large table, laden with a rich feast of meats, cakes, fruits and steaming bowls of wine. At the head of the table sat a jolly giant of a man. The man wore a loose green robe trimmed in white fur; on his head rested a crown of holly. His feet were bare and, in his hand, he carried a glowing torch.

“Well met, Spirit,” Hecate said, hand on her forehead.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” smiled the spirit. “Touch my robe!”

Hecate did as she was told. Everything disappeared, and they stood on the snow-filled city street on Christmas morning. It was still cold and gloomy, but the people bustling about were cheerful, calling out to one another as they hurried to their destinations.

The spirit led Hecate through the city and straight to Mildred Hubble’s flat. Hecate could see that Julie Hubble had followed her instructions to the letter. A slim Yule tree stood in front of the patio door, a handful of presents arranged underneath. The candles danced brightly from their place in the Yule log. An evergreen wreath hung on the door.

Mildred sat on the floor, working on her potions notebook. Hecate frowned. On Christmas Day? Why wasn’t she opening packages?

“Millie!” Julie placed a platter of pancakes in the center of the table. “Put your schoolwork away, love. It’s Christmas.”

“But, Mum… I have to get caught up. I’m tired of being the worst witch at Cackle’s.”

“Worst witch? How can you say that, love? You’ve saved that school more times… And you are from a witching family. You’re nowhere near the worst witch.”

“I wish Miss Hardbroom thought so.”

“Don’t you worry about what old lady Hardbroom thinks about you, love. She’s not as perfect as she thinks she is.”

“But –”

“No buts, love.” Julie tapped the back of the chair with her spatula. “Now come get your pancakes before they get cold.”

Mildred sighed and closed her notebook. Flopping into her chair, she picked up the bay leaf that sat in the middle of her plate. “What’s this for?”

“It’s a tradition of some witching families.” She pulled out a marker and handed it to Mildred. “We write a wish on the leaf and then burn it to release the wish. I thought it sounded like a lovely tradition.”

Mildred took the marker, thought for a moment and then carefully wrote her wish on the leaf. Julie took the marker and did the same.

“Can I light it?” Mildred asked, pointing at the bowl Julie put between them.

“Certainly.” She started to hand Mildred a lighter but put it down when she saw her daughter casting a spell. In seconds, both leaves were burning, filling the kitchen with fragrance. “What was your wish, Millie-Bear?”

Mildred shrugged and started spreading butter on her pancake. “I wished that Miss Hardbroom didn’t hate me so much.”

“I don’t hate you, Mildred!” Hecate dropped to her knees next to Mildred’s chair. “I’ve never hated you.” Hecate turned to look at the spirit. “Does she truly believe I hate her, Spirit?”

“Unless something changes, the child will carry the feelings of isolation and inadequacy for all her days,” replied the ghost. “The Craft is in decline.”

Hecate winced upon hearing her own words turned back on to Mildred. “You are not the worst witch, Mildred Hubble. You are clever and resourceful and kind…” Everything she’d always considered Pippa Pentangle to be, she realized.

The spirit stepped closer, holding out an arm. Hecate nodded and climbed to her feet, clutching at his robe.

They appeared on the porch of a stone cottage. Warm light glowed through the windows, flooding into the garden along with the sounds of music and laughter. One laugh carried over the rest and Hecate recognized it immediately.

“She said she’d hex anybody that wished her Merry Christmas, if she could!” cried Dimity Drill, “and I think she would, too.”

A young man Hecate recognized as Dimity’s brother handed her a mug of wassail. “I don’t know how you put up with her, Dim-bulb.”

“Oi!” Dimity playfully punched him in the arm. “Actually, I like the old crone. A lot. I feel sorry for her, though. I couldn’t be angry with her if I tried.” Her brother scoffed at the idea. “S’true! She’s the one who suffers the most because of her attitude. That’s why I will always give her the same chance every year, whether she likes it or not. I just wish she’d pull the broomstick out of her arse long enough to realize she has friends – and a beautiful woman that’s head over heels for her.”

“Sounds like that woman is you, Sis!” her brother teased.

“You’re who needs a bloody hexing,” Dimity muttered, flicking a blob of magic into his wassail and causing it to splash all over his holiday sweater. “But I reckon if HB doesn’t figure things out soon, she’s gonna lose Pentangle all over again.”

“Wait!” Dimity’s brother shook his head. “They were dating? The glamor girl and Mistress of the Night?”

“Don’t call her that,” Dimity said, punching him again. “I don’t know what they were, but they were definitely something. And neither one of them ever got over it.”

After dinner, the spirit took Hecate to visit sick beds, and foreign lands, struggling people and poverty-stricken families – and all these places were rich with hope, friendliness, patience and love. Their last stop found Hecate standing in very familiar territory: Pippa’s rooms at Pentangle’s. She expected to find Pippa with her family, or singing along to modern Christmas music, or at the very least enjoying a quiet evening with friends.

She didn’t expect to see Pippa curled in a chair, wearing the purple sweater Hecate had loaned her weeks ago, her tear-streaked face glistening in the firelight. Hecate stepped closer. “Pipsqueak?” A tumbler of Witch’s Brew rested on her knee. Hecate tried to pry it from her grip, but her own fingers passed right through it. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry I was cross.” She looked around Pippa’s living room. Everything was a tasteful mix of pinks and blacks. Hecate saw her name embroidered on one of the stockings hanging from the mantel. Why couldn’t she just say ‘yes’ when Pippa had asked her to come for Christmas? “I’m sorry I was so me, Pipsqueak. You’ve always deserved more than I’ve given you.” She glanced down, seeing her signature prominently displayed on Pippa’s cast. It was still the only one there. “Please, Pippa… I’ll make it up…” She couldn’t even finish the thought. How do you make up skipping your first Christmas together in over thirty years? Hecate scrambled backwards as Pippa shoved herself to her feet.

“Merry Christmas, Hiccup. Maybe next year.” Pippa took a long gulp from the tumbler then threw what was left into the fireplace, unflinching in the face of the flareup. Without another word, she summoned her crutches and made her way to her bedroom.

“I didn’t…” Hecate turned to the spirit.

“Shall I wait while you hex her?”

A bell began to chime.

****

Hecate hardly had a chance to get her bearings before another phantom slowly and silently approached. She could see no face, no features. Everything was hidden under a black cloak, save one outstretched hand. The spirit’s mere presence filled Hecate with dread.

“W-well met, Spirit. Are you the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be?” Hecate pressed her hands against her thighs. “You are the spectre I fear above all others.”

The spirit said nothing. Its hand pointed straight out in front of them, but Hecate understood.

“Lead on, then,” Hecate said, resolutely determined to see tonight through.

The village seemed to spring up around them, the same but also different. Hecate found herself standing among a cluster of wizards and witches.

“No,” said a great fat wizard with a massive chin, “I don’t know much about it. I only know that she’s dead.”

“When did she die?” asked another.

“Last night, I think,” said another. “The funeral rites ought to be interesting.”

The crowd strolled away, and while Hecate hoped the spirit would explain, the spirit only pointed at two women. Hecate knew these women.

“Do you think she finally drank herself to death?” Dimity asked. “I don’t know how she lasted as long as she did.”

Marigold Mould shook her head. “I hope not. Do you think she knows yet?” Dimity shrugged her shoulders and hurried on through the cold.

They left the busy scene and went to a part of town Hecate had never been before. She knew it by reputation, though. The narrow streets were filled with crime and misery. As they watched, a lorry pulled up, boxes stacked haphazardly in the back. A dark-haired wizard came out of one of the shops.

“I didn’t think you’d be back with the goods this soon!”

“Well, when you don’t have any heirs fighting over yer ev’ry last button, it don’t take too long.”

The dark-haired wizard opened one of the boxes and had a look at what was inside. He offered a small sum of money for the lot.

Hecate shuddered. “Is the dead witch me, Spirit?” Suddenly, she was standing in a morgue, a sheet-covered body on a table before her. Hecate glanced at the phantom. Its steady hand pointed to the body. Hecate could easily have pulled the sheet away, revealing the face. But she couldn’t do it.  “Please, can we leave this horrible place? Surely, someone is affected by this woman’s death.”

The phantom spread its dark robe and Hecate found herself in the middle of a launderette. Puzzled, Hecate studied the people inside. Who spent Christmas Day in a launderette? No one looked familiar, in fact, everyone seemed to be Ordinary. She was beginning to wonder if the spirit had made a mistake when she felt a slight prickle of magic on the back of her neck. She spun around and came face to face with Mildred Hubble.

Sort of.

Mildred stood outside the launderette, paintbrush in hand, as she repaired the painted window murals. Hecate couldn’t help but smile, even if she didn’t understand why Mildred was here, of all places. She found herself on the other side of the glass, examining the woman that Mildred had grown into.

Her clothes were well-worn, barely above ragged. In her thirties, Hecate guessed. She looked angry, her expression bitter and pinched. In the space of a heartbeat, Maud Spellbody appeared by her side.

“Millie! Your mum told me you’d be here.” Maud waited for Mildred to respond in some way. When she continued painting a snowman, Maud doggedly kept on talking. “Have you heard?”

“I’ve heard. Mum told me.” She finally dropped the brush to her side and looked at Maud. “What’s that got to do with me? You know I left the magic world. I do this now.”

“NO!” Hecate looked from Maud to Mildred and back again. “Left? How on earth did that happen?”

“I know. But I know you have to feel something, Millie. Even if it’s been a while.”

“It hasn’t been long enough,” Mildred snorted, taking up her paintbrush again. “You know I was never really a part of that world.  HB told us all often enough.” She stepped up on a stool so that she could reach the top of the painting. “I have to work, Maud.”

“She left.” Hecate said, confused. “Why did you leave, Mildred Hubble? WHY?” Of course, Mildred didn’t answer.

Hecate turned to the spirit and found herself standing in the middle of a churchyard. The spirit pointed to one of the graves.

Dozens of witches and wizards in formal robes crowded around the grave. “Oh! See Spirit? People remembered. I was mourned!” Hecate pressed through the crowd, trying to see who had come. It didn’t take her long to realize that she didn’t recognize anyone.

“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” an older witch said. “She died all alone, heartbroken.”

“No heirs, no living family at all,” said another. “I heard she spent her entire life pining away for some mysterious lost love.”

“Pathetic.”

“It wasn’t pathetic!” Hecate shouted. “I never stopped loving her…” Hecate pushed through the crowd, still trying to hear everything being said about the woman in the grave.

“Drunk herself to death is what I heard, not that you could ever tell.” A sorrowful young wizard shook his head. “I never would have guessed it at school.”

Hecate froze. She every cell in her body turned to ice – it burned far more than it did when the Founding Stone died. Cackle’s didn’t allow boys. Hecate staggered to the front of the crowd, finally breaking through, the phantom back at her side.

The ghost said nothing and only pointed down at the grave. Following the finger, Hecate looked down at the headstone and read the inscription: PIPPA PENTANGLE.

“No… NO…” Hecate dropped to her knees, stomach churning. “Spirit, are these shadows of things that will be, or of things that only may be?” She clutched at the phantom’s robe. “I swear, I am not the witch I was before… I can change… I will change… I-I will value my friends, Spirit. I will tell her how I feel. I swear I will live a better life!”

But as Hecate clung to the phantom’s cloak, it shrank, collapsed, and dwindled down into a pillow.

****

Hecate saw that the pillow was her own. That the bed she was in was her own. In her own room. She scrambled out of bed. “I promise I will change,” she rasped. She was so hot and aflutter with good intention, and she had been sobbing so much as she had pleaded with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be, that her broken voice could barely make a sound.

She raced through her quarters, eyes darting everywhere. Her things were still there. Her books still sat on the shelves. Her tea set still sat on the table. She spun around. Pippa’s snow globe still sat on the mantel.

Pippa.

Hecate ran back to her bedroom. As she hurried to dress, Hecate laughed and cried to herself. She turned her clothes inside out, then put them on back to front, forgetting she could simply magic herself dressed.

“No matter,” she said, rapping on her vanity mirror with her knuckles. “Dimity! Dimity Drill! Are you there?” She knocked impatiently until a half-asleep sports witch appeared on the other side.

“Bloody hell, HB, what do you want?”

Hecate sat up, suddenly afraid she was too late. “What day is it?”

“Are you kidding me? It’s Christmas Day, you batty old crone! What do you want?” Dimity tried opening her eyes wide, but she just couldn’t keep them that way.

“I’m not too late, then. May I still come for Christmas?”

“What?” That jarred Dimity into wakefulness. “Why?”

“I want to celebrate with my friends. Please, may I come? I’ll bring food.”

“Yeah, yeah, you can come,” Dimity said, rubbing her eyes. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Hecate bit her lip, working up the nerve to ask her next question. Dimity noticed.

“What else do you want?” she asked.

“Is it all right if I bring a guest?” Hecate waited, rocking back and forth slightly in her excitement.

“If I say yes, can I go back to sleep?” Dimity waved her hand at the mirror. “Whatever, HB. Yes, bring whoever you want.” And with that she closed the connection.

Hecate stared at her refection in the glass. The connection might be dead, she thought, but all it takes is a moment to make another one. Their connection was not dead.

It hadn’t been, not even over the last thirty years.

Their friendship would survive. Thrive, even.

It hurt too much to think of it any other way.

Hecate took a deep, steadying breath before tapping the glass. “Pippa Pentangle,” she said, clearly and calmly. Faster than she thought, Pippa was there. “Pipsqueak… I’m sorry…”

“Hiccup? Is that you? You look like a jumble sale.”

“That’s the one place I haven’t been tonight, actually,” Hecate grinned. “I wanted to… I know we quarreled, and it was my fault… but I wonder –”

Pippa held her hand up to the glass. “Yes. Whatever it is you’re about to ask, yes.”

Hecate placed her hand on the glass against Pippa’s. “I want to spend Christmas with you, Pipsqueak, if you will.”

Pippa’s response was drowned out by the sound of church bells ringing in the village below, so she nodded.  Vigorously. “Happy Christmas!” she said once they stopped.

“Happy Christmas, Pippa, and may the spirits bless us, everyone.”

#ww2018winterfluffevent #alcohol abuse and bitterness warnings #hicsqueak #hecate hardbroom #pippa pentangle #ghosts

[thatsadorbsyo]

Spark - An RP Story

My #ffxivwrite2018 entries spanned a number of my original characters and several of my ongoing roleplay plots, but I also had one self-contained and completed story in the mix, and I wanted to collect all of its parts in one place and set them apart from the broader challenge.

Below is the story of how K’tara Tyatu, an Ala Mhigan malcontent, came to Kugane with her best friend, a lapsed Qestir named Kimi, to learn how to sell drugs and do arson from a young Hingashi yakuza named Makoto Matsuoka.

It’s a romance. Of sorts.

This story spans multiple character viewpoints and contains themes of violence, sex, drugs, arson, manslaughter, ritual mutilation, and depression. Several parts contain explicit sexual content. The full story is about 10,000 words.

Letter (K’tara)

Serendipity (K’tara)

Glow (K’tara)

Validation (K’tara)

Plateau (Makoto)

Marked (Kimi)

Spark (K’tara)

Undertone (Makoto)

Not A Weapon (Makoto)

Fling (K’tara)

Dote (Makoto)

Close (K’tara)

Click the links above to visit each post in its original place, or click-through below to read the story in full. 

You may also wish to read Ichika Tanaka’s story, which provides some background information on Kiyoshi Matsuoka’s interest in the Star Sapphire Theater.

1. Letter (K’tara)

Somewhere in the stack of mail scattered all over Wyra’to’s floor when he returns from Gyr Abania is tucked a letter.

—

Hey.

Yeah, so, I don’t wanna drag this out or anything. I’m going to Kugane.

Kimi finally got enough gil to pay back that guy she owes (I told you about Kimi, right? I introduced you?) and she wants to stow away on a boat back to Othard and see if she can, I don’t fucking know, beg for forgiveness, suck his dick, whatever she can do to to have him not kill her.

I don’t know why she’s going back. I keep asking her why she doesn’t just stay in Eorzea, but she says she misses home. It almost makes sense to me sometimes, but I still feel like she’d be better off in Ul’dah. And then I spend too much time thinking about Ul’dah and I sorta want to throw up. Did I ever tell you about that dumb cunt who told me that if I never left this city I’d just end up with my thumb elbow-deep in my own ass, helpless, while the Sultana bends my people over just like Garlemald did?

I wanted to kick her teeth in, but part of me thinks she’s right. I can’t do shit here. Nobody wants to give me a chance, they’ve already decided who I am the moment I open my mouth. Maybe I’d do better somewhere else.

Maybe I can’t actually help Ala Mhigans. I’m still gagging on that pill, but it’s starting to go down.

I can help Kimi, though. She needs backup, if she’s going to go into this snake den of whatever the fuck Hingashi is all about. I can help my friend. That ain’t nothing.

Sorry for not mentioning this before you left. You have your own shit to deal with, and I didn’t really wanna pile on. You don’t need to be worried about me while you’re, uh, busting your skull open on rocks and sand worms or whatever you’re doing. I’m glad you have that to focus you, but the monk shit never really worked for me. All that focus, discipline, fuck, dude, that ain’t me. That ain’t me at all. I do wanna honor Ralgr and shit, but I need to find another way.

I wish I could tell you when I’ll be back (I’m pretty sure it’s “when” and not “if”), but to be honest, I haven’t thought that far ahead. Assuming we don’t get arrested for stowing away as soon as we get to port, I planned on winging it from there. But, hey, if you’re ever in Kugane, please come visit. I don’t know where I’ll be sleeping, but chances are good I’ll be in linkpearl range.

[Something is scratched out here.]

Stay safe.

K’tara

2. Serendipity (K’tara)

Makoto ended up being one of those guys who liked to spread out at the table, slumped down in the couch with his knees in different prefectures. Unfortunately, so was K’tara, which made finding space for all three of them around a tea table in the dingy back room of a sushi joint a bit awkward.

Kimi had to perch on the arm of one couch so that K’tara could take over the rest, squatting forward with her arms resting on her knees and fingers dangling toward the floor. She looked over the paraphernalia on the table--tiny bottles, droppers, some stray powder, a deck of cards--and then studied Makoto like she was looking down the barrel of a blasphemously gaudy gun.

One unkempt eyebrow raised in mild disbelief as she appraised the hoard in front of them. "All that gil… for this much?" She jerked her thumb over at Kimi, who was trying her best to look as demure and inoffensive as a Xaela can. "She worked for the better part of a year! For--what--one, two… five bottles? What’s this shit?" K’tara picked up a small packet of powder and flicked it back onto the table with disgust.

Makoto leaned forward, mimicking her posture to pick the packet back up and set it off to the side, leaning it upright against some liquor bottles. He rested his hands on his thighs and stared silently at K’tara for long enough to make her leg start jittering--long enough for the violent shade of yellow on his robe to make her eyes want to water--before finally answering her question.

"Oh, that? You can't have that. That’s Serendipity." He dismissed her with a small smile.

"Uh, no. We want it. We want Serendipity or we're gone tonight."

Kimi shrank into the corner and hissed into both hands, which were cupped around the linkpearl hanging from her horn. "If you’re trying to get us killed, just tell him he has a girly name."

K’tara brushed her off, aiming an elbow in the general direction of Kimi's knee. Her eyes were deadlocked with Makoto's, which was nice because it meant she could focus on his face instead of his clothes. He wasn't a bad looking guy--he had an impressive jaw for a hyur, a tight haircut, a firm build. No wonder Kimi had fucked him with her guard down until he'd fucked her over.

He pointed at Kimi without looking at her. "Your Qestir friend can't help herself around Serendipity. She fucks like a Roegadyn in international waters, did you know that? She tried to put her tongue in my ass. Disgusting." He spat at her. It fell a bit short of hitting her leg, but it's the thought that counts.

"Did you really?" K'tara blurted before she could stop herself, and immediately regretted it. She shook her head, no, focus up. "C'mon, man, give me a shot. I'll keep it away from her."

Makoto dragged his hand over the shadow of stubble around his mouth, deliberating her request for a good few minutes. Chatter from other rooms of the restaurant filtered in, the merry sound of plates and glasses clinking together coming from the basin down the hall. A whole city was bustling around them, and K'tara was stuck here in a tiny little room that stank like fish while this smarmy prick measured her worth. It was like she never fucking left Ul'dah--same jackasses, different smells. Her knee bounced restlessly, making her whole body shake with thinly contained rage.

"Maybe we take it together," he finally grumbled, looking back and forth between K'tara and Kimi. "You. Me. Her. See how well you handle yourself. See if I can trust you with it." His eyes settled on K'tara, lingering over the exposed midriff under her short jacket. Her flat stomach rose and fell with metered breaths as she squashed her initial reaction, which was to flip the table and fight her way out.

This wasn't the place. Even she knew that.

Kimi's carefully blank expression gave no clues as to what K'tara should do. Thanks for the help, whore. She covered her eyes with one hand, resigning herself to a stressful evening. "Yeah, okay. Can we bug out, though? I don't wanna be high here. This place fucking stinks."

3. Glow (K’tara)

Despite his protestations, Makoto ended up also being the kind of guy who liked getting his ass eaten. Who would've thought?

He took K’tara and Kimi up to the balcony of a hostelry on the edge of the city, where the sea air smelled pleasant enough for K’tara to want to get high. Cheerfully colored paper lanterns were strung along the balcony overhang, lining the view of Kugane. Similar lanterns dotted nearby buildings and along the streets, a cacophony of lights unlike anything she’d ever seen. They were bright enough that when K’tara slumped against the railing and looked up at the night sky, she couldn’t see the stars.

Kimi insisted on wearing her mask, only tugging the bandanna down long enough to lean forward in Makoto’s lap and inhale a bit of pale pink powder from the tea table at the back of the deck. The two of them whispered quietly to themselves, passing telling gropes between them as they laughed, and K’tara probably would have just left them alone to their inevitable conclusion if not for the fact that she wanted some of that Serendipity.

She walked up to the table and sprawled out on the floor across from them, legs spread apart and arms draped over her knees. Small piles of powder were scattered across the glass tabletop, with rolled up straws of paper and a few stray bottles of sake. K’tara looked around for some matches. “...I can’t smoke this?”

Makoto regarded her with a lazy glance that soon turned to mirthful derision. “That one asks if she can smoke it,” he rumbled into Kimi’s horn, and her eyes narrowed at K’tara, crinkling with good humor at a friend’s expense.

Frustration bloomed hot in her chest, overpowering the undercurrent of embarrassment. “Yeah, so I’m not a fucking addict, forgive me. What do I do with it?”

Kimi gave a small yelp of protest when Makoto picked her up and planted her on the sofa so that he could join K’tara on the floor. He sprawled out in a similar fashion to her, draping one arm over her shoulders and reaching across her lap to pick up one of the paper straws.

“Here,” he passed it into her hand. K’tara turned it over between her fingers, staring at it like it was some esoteric technology that she had to decipher how to use. “Inhale it through the nose. It will hurt.”

“I’ll show you!” Kimi added helpfully, tugging her mask down again and picking up another straw. She snorted the Serendipity like a professional, closing one nostril with her finger while the other swept up a line of powder through the straw. If it really did hurt, she either hid it well or had gone numb to it already, because she surfaced with a serene, unhidden smile.

K’tara watched this with a steel gaze while Makoto’s hand caressed her shoulder and slid down her side, his fingers brushing over the sideswell of her chest. She didn’t hate how warm his palm felt on her skin, and that was the moment when she decided that if he tried to fuck her, she’d let him do it.

She put the straw to her nose and tried to mimic Kimi, quickly inhaling a small amount of powder from one of the tiny piles. Makoto grabbed both of her shoulders and held her firmly in place while he pain radiated through her sinuses, making her drop the straw and grab her head. “Ohhh gods, what the--you guys do this for fun? This is fun to you?” she moaned.

Kimi gave a breezy shrug, putting her mask back on and leaning back into the couch. She crossed her legs and kicked her foot absently. “It gets easier.”

Makoto slid K’tara’s ponytail over her shoulder while she was slumped over and clutching her face in pain, dragging his finger across the back of her neck just along the neckline of her undershirt. His lips were as warm as his hands when he pressed a kiss under her hair, breathing hot on her skin. “You are going to feel very good. Give it time.” His voice was quiet and not unkind, almost soothing.

She watched Kimi’s face while she waited for the pain to subside, a series of emotions flitting across her friend’s eyes over the mask while she watched them. It looked like she eventually settled on jealousy, but it was hard to tell, because over the next few seconds, Kimi’s limbal rings started to glow. More than usual, bright blue lights leaving motion trails through the darkness when Kimi stood up and walked over to Makoto, resolutely unbuckling his pants.

“What the fuck...?” K’tara whispered softly, her face twisted with confusion. She looked around, and the lanterns were glowing too. Gentle purples and blues leaving trails across the black sky as they rocked back and forth in the light breeze.

“There. You see?” Makoto laughed, untying his robe and letting it slide to the ground so Kimi could pull his dick into her mouth. Underneath was a network of tattoos that covered his entire back and upper arms--dragons, fish, trees, swords, all of them glowing with dazzling color and shifting as his muscles flexed.

K’tara was rooted to the spot, unable to look away. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. Powerful, decorated, well-connected, sexy. She didn’t want to fuck him--she wanted to be him.

Well... okay, she still wanted to fuck him, but suddenly she was a third wheel. His eyes fluttered closed to focus on thrusting up into Kimi’s mouth, one hand on the back of her head, and something about the intimacy of the moment made K’tara feel awkward about watching them. She peeled herself up from the floor and trundled over to the railing, leaning against it to look down at Kugane spreading across the beach below.

What was already a dizzying view before made K’tara have to clutch the banister now, Serendipity amplifying the glow of the city until it was an indecipherable mess of light noise. It almost hurt to look at.

The Ruby Sea glowed turquoise from the edge of the pier, fading to a dark purple at the horizon. Kugane itself was a mess of pink and white, with the pleasure district a notable strip of red down the center of the thickest part of the city. Spires of light rose all around her, the tallest buildings with glowing yellow from every open window, and still more paper lanterns dancing in the sea breeze.

K’tara was so enthralled by the view that she almost didn’t notice him approach her from behind, groping at her waistband. She shifted her stance, wordlessly letting him tug her pants down while Kimi got on her knees behind him. He was either too high to act like he didn’t want her tongue in his ass, or too focused on K’tara to care.

Makoto gripped her chin firmly and held it in place, keeping her senseless gaze locked on the city while he pushed himself between her legs. Each point of bright light got brighter and blurrier as he fucked her against the railing, the glowing auras widening in radius until a formless glow was all that K’tara could see.

4. Validation (K’tara)

Makoto’s boss mostly dealt in fancy powders, so it took K’tara a while to find something she could smoke that wasn’t opium. Fortunately for her, moko grew pretty much everywhere on Hydaelyn, and Hingashi was no exception. About half a bell of scanning people on the street was all it took for K’tara to find a guy selling pre-rolled cigarettes out of a little box at the end of a line of market stalls. She bought half a dozen of them with Makoto’s money and carried them back to the hostelry with a bounce in her heel, hands jammed into her coat pockets.

She lit one up on the walk back, but decided to save the rest for after sex or after a job, whichever came sooner.

And as it turned out, what came soonest was Kimi. That selfish bitch passed out in a sake coma on the floor immediately after she finished, drooling on the floorboards with her panties still looped around her ankles.

K’tara dragged herself over to the side table to grab her packet of cigarettes, staring at her friend with a half-hearted sneer of sympathy. “I love her, but she’s the sloppiest sack of shit I’ve ever known.” Her matches weren’t on the table, so she parked a cigarette between her lips and walked around the room, tugging her shirt on straight and looking for her pants.

Makoto watched her wander from his spot on the bed, where he pulled absently on his dick and followed her ass with narrowed eyes. “Not all cunts can be made of flint like you,” he said when she bent over, leaning to the side on his elbow for a better view.

The comment struck her as uproariously nonsensical. She held the spasms of laughter in her stomach with one arm while she dug through her pants pockets, eventually surfacing triumphantly with a half-wasted pack of matches. “If my cunt was flint I’d be serving up a eulogy for your cock right now,” she mumbled around the joint, cupping a flame in her hand to light it.

“Mmm, come here.” He let go of his dick and spread his arms wide across the bed, inviting her gaze. She crossed one arm over her chest while she smoked, leaning against the wall to partially accept his invitation by openly staring.

A moment passed quietly this way, neither tense nor relaxed as they silently probed each other’s intent from across the room. Late evening light filtered in through the paper windows, diffuse and indirect on the bright white sheets that lay rumpled around Makoto’s naked body. His muscular legs were loosely spread, one leg lazily hooked under the other, and K’tara’s eyes trailed up to the cock standing up straight against his tattooed belly.

She sighed on a resigned exhale, smoke pluming in front of her face as she came to terms with her own desire. “Yeah,” she said shortly, pushing away from the wall and padding the ten fulms over to crawl into the bed.

He put both hands on her waist when she grabbed him, holding him at an angle so she could sit down on his cock, knees spread on either side of his lap. They both felt the fluttering throb when they connected, but at first neither of them moved. She simply sat like this, still smoking her cigarette and blowing the smoke in his face with feigned disinterest. “Okay. I’m here,” she rumbled, voice low and quiet. It could have been a challenge.

Makoto watched her thoughtfully, his chest rising and falling with a relaxed rhythm in the muted sunlight. “You have a neglected little spark to you.” His thumbs trailed back and forth over her hipbones as his eyes searched her face, piercing through the haze of her defiant smoke with a placid confidence that she couldn’t quite meet. “Cultivation. That’s what you need. You like drugs? You like fire? I have so many uses for you.”

K’tara felt painfully seen. She had to look away, at the paper windows glowing orange, but Makoto grabbed her jaw and jerked her face back to him, forcing her to meet his intense gaze. Instead of speaking, he pulled her forward and kissed her, opening wide against her lips to pull the smoke on her breath right out of her mouth.

He blew it back in her face and laughed, and her return laughter made her body squeeze him tight. “Well... fuck, yeah, that’s why I’m here. I can handle myself. Use me.” A feedback loop of nervous chuckles tumbled out of her that made them pulse together until they were both panting with the need to move and feel more of each other, grinding on the bed and passing smoke back and forth between them.

5. Plateau (Makoto)

"You must think I'm real fucking pretty, Makoto. You owe my wife reparations for how much you've been fucking me lately. She likes rubies. Go on, write that down." Matsuoka flung a notebook across the desk at Makoto's chest, the pages fluttering loudly in the small office until the book fell at his feet with a quiet thump.

The desk bench gave a moaning creak each time Matsuoka moved. He was a big guy, liked to say his grandma was half-roegadyn, but everyone knew he was just part highlander. None of the brothers ever said that to his face, and Makoto bit back whatever words came to his mouth as he looked down at the little notebook on the floor.

"I bet if I went down to all your little hidey holes," he mimicked a running motion with his fingers, zooming his hand across the desk, "I'd find half a dozen unconscious darkscale sluts with more of my product coating the phlegm in their lungs than you've sold in the past six months. Have you ever fucked a woman who was awake? You should try it sometime."

Makoto clenched his jaw and suppressed the urge to pick up the book. He stared at a freckle on Matsuoka's cheek, letting the lieutenant talk about whores until he was finished, as if he had any room to talk on that subject. Losing his vice grip on that cold cunt of a dancer had apparently hit Matsuoka hard, right in the pride. This could take a while.

"I literally pulled your frozen body out of a dumpster because your mama mistook you for garbage..." Not true, Makoto's mother had left him in a basket in front of Miyoko's home back when she was still the boss's wife and not the boss herself. The joke had been that she gave Makoto to the lieutenant because there were decent odds that any abandoned orphan was a Matsuoka anyway. "...And this is how you repay me. I didn't raise you to piss away your potential on whores. When did you stop growing, son?"

This seemed to warrant a response. Makoto shifted in his seat, bending down to pick up the notebook and putting it back on the desk. "You ask this like you don't already know, sir."

Matsuoka pursed his lips, staring at Makoto with paternal scrutiny. He rumbled thoughtfully from somewhere deep in his barrel chest. "Losing Nishiki was hard for all of us, but that's the price of doing business. You cry at the funeral, and then you move on. Mmh." He pulled the book toward him and scribbled down an address before shoving it back across the desk and into Makoto's lap. "You've got a week to show me you can actually make us money instead of flushing all my drugs into the sewer. I want to see results, Makoto. Real gil, on my desk. One week."

The address on the paper blurred as Makoto looked down at it, suddenly unable to focus his eyes when Nishiki's name was mentioned. "It will be done. What's this?"

"You're familiar with the Star Sapphire Theater, aren't you...?" Again, Matsuoka was asking questions he already knew the answer to, his voice adopting a breezy quality that belied the tense way his bench began to creak. Makoto nodded to pacify him, and Matsuoka leaned in conspiratorially, resting both hands on the table. "The family isn't in the business of arson, but all our efforts to buy that shithole out have turned up fruitless. We don't like any of our remaining options, so we thank the damn kami that somebody outside the family is gonna take matters into their own hands."

The pointed look Matsuoka passed him didn't require further explanation, which is fortunate because none was going to be given. Makoto nodded tersely, pushing his chair back as he stood. "Yeah, that's awfully accommodating of them. I already have ideas."

"Excellent! Don't tell me any of them. Just get it done and get out of my sight," Matsuoka called at Makoto's back as he left the office, sliding the partition door shut with a deep sigh of restrained frustration.

He left the office and turned down the street toward the hostelry, fingers clenched into fists inside the pockets of his robe. His whole body throbbed with a dull, impotent anger at Matsuoka, at the family, at his inability to perform lately for no good fucking reason. Drugs didn't sate it, sex didn't sate it, but that didn't stop Makoto from trying them over and over again, like he expected new results every time. He needed something new to get him out of this slump.

Some kind of spark.

6. Marked (Kimi)

The Star Sapphire Theater was one of the crown jewels of Kugane’s pleasure district, with a gaudy facade that enticed passers-by with the promise of girls--dancing girls, singing girls, girls who read poetry, girls who did magic tricks--and woodcut posters that teased even rarer delights, assuming you had enough gil to cover the price of admission.

Kimi stood outside the building in the evening darkness, gazing up at the woodcuts and holding an unlit cigarette. Other theater-goers milled about idly during the intermission under the light from the lanterns, chatting among themselves, smoking under the awning to hide from the light drizzle, or going back inside the club to get drinks from the bar. K’tara was in there somewhere, fighting the urge to assault all the rich people in favor of sneaking around and finding her mark--namely, a point of entry for later and anything that looked conspicuously flammable.

K’tara had her mark, and Kimi had hers. She smiled with her eyes over her mask at the roegadyn bouncer, a grim-looking man with thick sideburns and a braided rat tail who was doing his best to ignore all the customers. Kimi held up her cigarette with a self-deprecating little chuckle and spoke in a thick Steppe accent, “No matches. You have, yes?”

The shock of being spoken to by a Qestir was just enough to pull his eyes away from the middle distance and toward her face, which he studied through squinting eyes. She got a rumbling grunt in response, and the spark of a match coming to life in hands that were larger than her head. Kimi tugged the mask down and put the cigarette to her lips, leaning in toward the flame and tilting her cheek slightly into his hand, just enough for him to notice the difference in size.

“How to get a job here?” She pointed up at the woodcuts covering the windows, tilting her head and appraising them with mild disdain. “They have tits? Okay, so I have tits. Better tits than that. You want to see?” Before she could pull her neckline down, the roegadyn was covering her hands with his own, glancing around furtively with an expression that clearly wondered how this had escalated so much in the space of two breaths.

“I’m sure you’ve got specious tits, sweetheart, but you can’t just pull them out on the street. We’ve had enough decency infractions for the week, we don’t need darkscales stripping down on the patio.” He firmly removed her hand from her decolletage and placed it at her side.

“Mm. Okay, yes, that is fair.” Kimi nodded quickly, puffing on her cigarette and staying in the bouncer’s personal space. “I don’t want trouble. I just want a job. I show you later then, yes? Inside?”

He gave a put-upon sigh and scratched his chin through the braided goatee, weighing his options. “Yeah. Yeah, sure, why not. This place clears out after the eleventh bell, why don’t you come by then. You can show me what you’ve got, how about that?”

Kimi beamed up at him and tossed her cigarette on the ground, snuffing it out with her boot heel even though she’d only taken about three drags from the damn thing. “Of course! Kimi will be here. No funny business, yes? I want job, not, what you say, casting couch.” She poked his chest with one claw and walked off before he had an opportunity to react to that, disappearing into the crowd heading back into the theater.

“I’m good here, how ‘bout you?” K’tara chimed in over the linkpearl.

The flow of people swept her through the entrance hall and back toward the stage, where Kimi pulled her mask back up over her mouth and nose, returning to her seat. “I have a date with the bouncer at eleventh bell. You should be fine to poke around while I keep him busy, yes?” Almost every trace of her accent was suddenly gone.

“Take your mask off, I can’t fucking hear you.”

Kimi rolled her eyes and said nothing, folding her hands in her lap and crossing one leg primly over the other. The show was about to start, and she wouldn’t be the one talking rudely through the performance!

7. Spark (K’tara)

The eerie, quiet darkness of the Star Sapphire Theater offered no resistance to K’tara’s intrusion, and she snuck through the vacant hallways without interruption, creeping slowly toward the auditorium. Distant fireworks and other festival noises could be heard from the matsuri downtown, where the occasional cracking flicker lit up the theater windows whenever the night sky bloomed with sparkling color. The theater itself was empty, as was much of the pleasure district. Most of the city’s populace was crowded into Kugane’s main plaza to eat festival food and watch fireworks, including Kimi and Makoto.

But K’tara had a box of matches clutched in one hand, and Kimi’s mask tied over the lower half of her face. She was here and she was ready to do this, for no other reason or excuse than because someone had looked her in the eyes and asked her to.

The massive red curtains that hung over the main stage stood open in a silent yawn, indifferent to K’tara’s approach. These curtains had endured thousands of performances, offering years of service as window dressing to all varieties of titty shows and even a few notable class act performances, but all K’tara could see in them was chaotic potential.

The tail of the curtain left a dusty grime in the palm of her hand when she reached out to touch the fabric. It had a textured, velvety feel to it, and an unsettling stickiness from years of sitting through the elements. Ugh. K’tara wiped her hands on her pants and pulled three matches out of the box, striking them all at once on the rough strip and tossing them at the curtain’s feet.

At first, nothing happened. The matches burned dutifully down their wooden sticks, cradled in the red fabric. K’tara snarled and lit three more matches, holding them under the curtain instead of tossing them on top. Still nothing happened for a long moment, the match burning down until points of pain bloomed on the tips of K’tara’s fingers. She grit her teeth and held still, waiting... until...

It was the dust that caught first, the sticky film lighting up with a sudden flare that burned out quickly, but not before lighting embers in the fabric itself that soon began to spread, bursting the fire to life. K’tara dropped the match tips and darted over to the other side of the stage, sneakers squeaking on the wooden floor as she slid into place and repeated the process on its twin. Soon, both sides had a sluggish flame creeping up the length of the curtain, embers slowly flickering into lively flame that gave off a stinking black smoke.

She was rooted in place, watching from the edge of the stage with wide, rapt eyes as the two flames raced toward the ceiling, turning the yawning mouth into a fiery, crackling maw. Her heart thudded in her chest with a hammering force that she’d never felt in her life until now. Her fingertips felt like lightning and her head buzzed, ears ringing with the scream of warping wood. K’tara put both palms flat on her head, pushing her hair out of her face and staring at what she’d done, raw jubilation taking her over as she summoned a decent approximation of Ifrit’s face.

The yellow tips of the flame tickled the wooden support beams overhead, smoke slowly filling up the whole top half of the room as the curtain withered and snapped. Paper partitions melted away behind the stage, the fire rolling with an angry fervor as it worked through the wooden walls. One of the curtains fell apart under its own weight, dropping like a blanket onto the carpet and setting several tables on fire beneath it.

She should move.

She should get the fuck out of here.

But she couldn’t stop watching.

The fire took over the entire back wall of the auditorium, creeping through the ruined partitions and into the backstage area. The beams that crisscrossed over the seating area began to squeal menacingly as the embers burned away their supportive core, but that wasn’t what finally got K’tara to move.

A sudden wave of hot air rushed through the theater from the backstage area as countless rows and racks of performance outfits--ruffles, crinoline, giant bows, silk dresses, elaborate headpieces, unique items without number or price--sparked to life. As soon as one piece lit up, two more next to it caught and spread, passing the fire through the dressing room not with the sluggish quality of the heavy curtains but with the airy speed of light, breathable fabric. It spread like gossip.

Someone from the depths of the theater started to scream, and K’tara’s heart stopped. The icy pain of fear gripped her chest and forced her into action, sneakers once again squeaking loudly on the floor as she bolted out of the auditorium and into the lobby, arms held out over her face as she darted into the back and ran through the hallways toward the service exit at the rear of the building. Two hallways were filled with flame as she passed, spewing smoke into her face that made her eyes water and lungs ache, even through the protective mask.

Someone else was running, the frantic clack of high heels interspersed with the sloppy stumbling noise of hands and shins hitting the floor somewhere down a fiery hallway to K’tara’s right. “Is anyone here?!” a woman’s voice called, croaking through a mouth full of ash. “Help me, I can’t--”

K’tara didn’t have time to think. She looked down the hallway, squinting through the smoke, but she couldn’t see anyone in the shadows. The exit door stood right in front of her, safety just on the other side, and perhaps a small part of her wished that this was a more difficult choice, that she would struggle with it a bit longer, but she didn’t.

The night air on the other side of the rear door was cold and clear, filling her dry lungs with crisp and overwhelming freshness. K’tara stifled her coughs in her sleeve and strolled with as much calmness as she could muster through the shadows, not looking back until she’d gotten all the way to the end of the street. There was nothing to see but a few thin wisps of black smoke rising against the blacker night sky, only really visible where it blotted out the stars, and there was no sign of the woman who had called for help.

She pulled the mask down from her face and jammed it into her pocket, turning on her heel and walking with purposeful footsteps toward the sounds of the matsuri. Each step took her further from the inferno, and each fulm made it feel less real, her face cooling off and the adrenaline draining away as she descended into the town square. Her heartbeat was almost back to normal by the time she saw Makoto’s face in the crowd.

8. Undertone (Makoto)

K’tara had a new, bitter flavor on her that morning, and even though it had been years since Nishiki, it didn’t take Makoto long to place it. Her hands at the back of his head trapped him between her legs, and despite this novel detail, he wasn’t in a hurry to pull away. The early sun filtered dimly through his apartment window, granting a sleepy warmth to the sheets of his floor futon and his bare legs, making him feel slow, lazy as he lapped away at his companion, cataloging the flavor.

It didn’t bother him, but maybe something else did.

When she finally let him up to breathe, Makoto crawled up K’tara’s body, planting a kiss between her breasts and another in her wild black hair. She looked sleep-stupid and half-awake, her eyes barely opened into slits that focused on his face, with puffy bags resting just under them on her cheekbones.

“Who did you fuck?” he asked, pressing their bellies together and resting the weight of his cock in the crook of her thigh.

“None yer business,” she croaked in reply, pushing her hair out of her face and tying it up in a loose bun at the crown of her head. She left her hands up on the pillow, elbows spread wide on each side of her face as she stared up at him, daring him to ask more questions.

Makoto reached down to line himself up with her and push inside, not giving her any time to savor the sensation before pressing on. “You let him come inside. You don’t let me do that.”

“You’re not my boyfriend.” She lifted her hips to meet him, legs spread just as wide as her elbows, so that her body was completely open to him despite the clipped and closed nature of her words. His face was blank as he scanned her for any sign of weakness or doubt. He wanted to take her at her word, but something just didn’t match up. Something about how she was here with him, waking up in his apartment to find his face between her legs, even though he never brought girls home.

He couldn’t find what he was looking for, so he dropped his head and fucked her, grabbing her ponytail with one fist and snapping his teeth at her throat. K’tara’s deep groans filled the sparse apartment room as she was rocked around the mattress by the force of his jealousy. He raised up on his knees and grabbed her around the throat, watching closely as her face grew red and her eyes finally opened up, wild and angry. “I could be,” he spat at her, letting the undercurrent of his thoughts break through.

K’tara raised her hands between his forearms and spread her elbows, forcing his hold on her throat loose and gasping harshly for air. “No, you couldn’t.” She wrenched him to the side, rolling them over until his back was on the warm floorboards and she was riding his cock, pushing him into the floor with both hands on his chest. The ruined ponytail flopped messily to the side of her head. “...'cause I’m not stayin' in Kugane.”

Before he could talk back, she clamped a hand over his mouth and shoved his head until it clattered against the floor, rattling his teeth. Makoto rolled his eyes with pain, but she only rode him harder, with deeper urgency that left her moaning openly and him struggling to breathe hotly through his nose over her fingers. He tried to speak, to warn her, but all he could manage was a strangled noise in his throat.

“It’s okay,” she panted. “This is what you want, right? It’s fine. Go ahead.” Her words had an uncharacteristic kindness to them, a softness that wasn’t matched by the vicious way she fucked him, unrelenting, until Makoto closed his eyes and chose to let the current take him.

9. Not A Weapon (Makoto)

The knife sitting on Matsuoka’s desk had never seen a fight. It’s purpose was purely ritual, and as such the wooden sheath was still shiny and unblemished, without any dings or scratches marring the painting of a tree that wrapped around one edge, nor the gleaming black lacquer that covered the rest. Matsuoka pulled the blade free and sat it down on a wooden board, sliding them both across the table until they were directly in front of Makoto.

“I used to wipe your ass, you know,” his voice grumbled lowly. “I could do this for you too.” It was both a challenge and a genuine offer, perhaps the closest thing to a kindness that Makoto could expect from the man who raised him.

Makoto splayed his fingers over the pristine wood block, pressing down until the tips of his fingers turned white. Fear sat curdling in the pit of his stomach at the same time that expectation weighted his shoulders into a hunch. Still, he picked up the knife. “I can do it. Just... let me think.”

He was probably supposed to be meditating on why he was in this situation to begin with, something about atoning for K’tara’s mistake, but all he could think about was Nishiki. Dumb shit like going fishing as kids and dangling their dirty feet off the docks, wiggling their toes in the water and scaring away all the fish. Or the first time they had to fight together, because some merchant’s son mistook them for the guys who had been harassing his kid sister in the markets. Nishiki almost got his eye cut out, and Makoto’s jaw had never gone back into its socket correctly, but they made it out alive, drunk on their own stupid luck.

Less dumb shit like getting a little older and sucking each other off under the docks, the scent of zinc and seaweed overwhelming him as he held tightly to Nishiki’s tan hips and tried so carefully not to gag or cough. Then laying around on the beach like bums for the rest of the evening, letting a film of sand cling to their exposed stomachs and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes until the pinks and oranges of sunset turned to indigo and black.

Makoto felt nothing, the fear and pressure evaporating in the face of the depressive void that crept in like vines and pushed everything else out. Now was as good of a time as any. He could delay all he wanted, but there was never a right time for ritual mutilation.

He started screaming a few seconds before it actually happened, working up the nerve to jerk his hand down, slicing the knife’s blade through his little finger just behind the first knuckle. Everything that came after was static.

10. Fling (K’tara)

The script was simple. Every afternoon, K’tara stood a certain distance away from a specific stall in the Rakuza district, dressed in simple Hingashi peasant clothes. She leaned against an adjacent building, feet splayed out in the dirt in front of her, and half-heartedly passed out a pamphlet from a stack in a large basket to anyone who passed by.

The pamphlets were about some guy named Maeda, a vagrant preacher out in Yanxia who was supposedly giving an allied clan some degree of trouble in Doma. Makoto didn’t elaborate, and K’tara didn’t ask. She did flip through the trifold pages whenever she was bored, looking at the colorful woodstamp images and trying to decipher some sort of meaning from the foreign script until her eyes started to cross and the lines blurred, like maybe she thought an answer would pop out of the page if she stared long enough. Were they pro-Maeda? Anti-Maeda? She had no idea.

Mostly all she felt when she gazed at the strange writing was dizzy, but it was almost like meditation. White noise for her restless soul, forced by a combination of ambition and circumstance to stand idly in one spot until somebody said exactly the right phrase when she passed them a pamphlet. Being here, doing a whole lot of fucking nothing and waiting for something to happen, was the negative space on the canvas of her nomadic existence, and it invited questions to fill the void.

Questions like: What if I stayed in Kugane after all?

The thought bubbled up from nowhere while she focused on indecipherable kanji, tapping her feet without rhythm under the afternoon sun. K’tara blinked with surprise and put the pamphlet back into the stack, withdrawing her arms into her sweeping robe sleeves and hugging her chest tightly.

Okay. So the question was out there. What if she stayed?

Kugane was always meant to be a short stop on a longer journey, but there was nothing that said she had to go back to Eorzea after Kimi moved on to the Steppe. Another two-week boat ride didn’t sound particularly palatable, and besides, Kugane had plenty of work for somebody like her. She couldn’t say as much about Ul’dah, where everyone she met had already made up their minds about who she was the moment they met her and noticed the Ala Mhigan dust on her nose.

“Do you bring tidings from the West, ijin?” A middle-aged man asked her, approaching from the nearby stall with his hand outstretched and an expectant smile on his face, interrupting the tranquility of her uncomfortable navel-gazing.

Oh, fuck. That was her cue. “I bring messages of Serendipity, if you’ll have them,” she recited the line she’d been taught, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand so she could get a better look at the guy. He was clean, with colorful robes and a funky-looking mustache. Rich, probably. Eccentric.

“I would take them gladly,” he returned crisply with a decisive head nod, exactly on script.

K’tara pulled a pamphlet from a second, smaller stack in her front pocket, one that had a little flat package of Serendipity powder inside it. She passed it to him with a curt bow, which he returned in kind before swiftly moving along down the corridor of stalls, leaving her alone with her thoughts once more.

Her head thunked heavily against the wall behind her, rolling back and forth on her shoulders as she grappled with indecision. There wasn’t much in Eorzea that she’d miss. Not the charity that never actually solved anyone’s problems except for inflating rich people’s egos, letting them believe they’ve made a difference in a small folks’ lives. Not the way the Sultana constantly found ways to funnel money from K’tara’s people into her coffers, no matter how much she deluded herself that she was ‘helping’.

Makoto--

No. Makoto was a fling, and it would be stupid to ever think he was anything other than a fleeting... albeit bright and shining... blip on her life’s radar.

Something in her chest lurched, making her stomach nauseous and her skin tingle. A question dug at her, a sliver of doubt that had taken root in her lungs and blossomed into a garden of uncomfortable choices that she couldn’t ignore forever. But... Makoto had helped her, in a real and active way, instead of just showboating in front of her and telling her pointless platitudes about how pretty she was, as if that was something she cared about. He’d seen potential in her, cultivated it, breathed a spark of life into the clay of her pointless existence.

When was the last time she could say that about anybody?

K’tara wiped angrily at her face with her long sleeve, aggressively shoving an empty pamphlet into the hands of some bewildered passers-by. That ache in her chest felt more and more like an obvious answer that she didn’t want to accept.

She had to stay in Kugane.

No sooner had she had this thought than she heard familiar footsteps, the sharp tap of sharper shoes through the dirt in a specific cadence that could only mean one thing. The vice around her heart loosened as she turned around to see Makoto’s face towering over her, blocking out the Hingashi sun.

She was so glad to see him, so lost in her own thoughts that it took a few beats before she noticed how pale his face was, the olive tones of his skin washed out into a sickly grey. It was another few beats before she noticed the bandage around his hand, carefully wrapped but still seeping blood. Her heart, only just freed, leaped into her throat.

“What the fuck happened to you?” she hissed under her breath, the basket of benign pamphlets completely forgotten.

He stared at her with a stone expression, hard and blank but not cold. His eyes searched her face in that way they always did, scanning the myriad fronts she put up until he found a weakness, and then digging in until he found the spot where she really lived. His hand--the good one, the one not dripping blood--grabbed her shoulder, caressing absently but also pinning her subtly to the wall.

“We have to leave for Eorzea. Tomorrow. Kimi must come too,” he whispered into her ear, which flicked automatically with annoyance.

All she could do was gape at him with disbelief. What rotten fucking timing. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you at the hostelry. Come on, your shift is over.” Makoto slid his arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the edge of the city, a pit of confusion growing harder in her gut with every step.

11. Dote (Makoto)

Makoto couldn't remember the last time he'd cried, but now fresh tears gleamed on his cheeks while K'tara cleaned the mangled stump of his finger. His lips stretched over his teeth in a grimace, and his eyes squinted with sickened disbelief at the crude hackjob that wiggled where the tip of his pinkie finger used to be. He'd actually done it. He really fucking done this to himself. If he hadn't been there, he didn't think he'd believe it.

Yeah, and if he wasn't in so much pain right now, this would be really funny.

K'tara did her best to pull the skin over the stump of bone and sew it shut, a grim determination on her face just like she wore whenever she had a job to do. Her mouth was a thin, dark line, lips pressed together in concentration, head ducked low to the table while she worked so that she could really keep close eye on what she was doing. That girl had an iron fucking stomach--she was ride or die and crazier when sober than a namazu on Matsuoka's finest powder. This was maybe the closest thing she'd ever done to taking care of him like a traditional girlfriend, and here he was crying through the whole fucking thing like a little bitch.

Eventually she sat back, puffing both cheeks in a comically forced exhale, pushing the hair back from her forehead with both hands. "Tha's the best I can do." The needle sat on the table in a pile of bloody bandages, a white thread turned pink with his blood trailing off the end of it. "I'm tryna think of a joke to like, make this less heavy, but all I can come up with is somethin' about how this is gonna make fisting a lot easier for you real soon."

Through the tears, he managed a tight laugh, quickly followed by a pained hiss as his hand throbbed insistently. "Oh, it hurts when I laugh. Why. It's my fucking finger."

She dropped her hands to her knees, spreading them wide under the table and laughing once, deep in her stomach and dark in its fascination. "Laughing puts pressure on everything. Like, uh, like a sneeze. Or like when you cum." Her eyes stayed fixed on her inelegant stitches. "Did I really fuck up that bad?"

"Arson and a murder is a different story than arson alone. Matsuoka says that bouncer knows Kimi's face. They know her name too. If they find her, and she gives me up, that's not just trouble for me. It's trouble for the whole clan." He looked over, and K'tara's eyes were doing that swimmy thing like maybe she wanted to cry but couldn't quite make it happen. Makoto was kinda jealous of her for that. "Is she gonna come easy, or--"

"She'll come," K'tara said firmly, before he could finish. "She's not happy--she really wanted to go to Reunion first, you know? Wanted to see her family, although between you and me, I don't think they'd wanna to talk to her." A moment passed before she realized what she’d said, and when it registered she gave a cruel little chuckle. "I mean, well... you know what I mean."

His finger was throbbing so hard he could feel it in his eyeballs. He could feel it in his fucking teeth. It took everything he had to concentrate on this conversation, so he nodded dumbly without adding anything, simply watching her face.

Silence filled the room like lead, heavy and cold. There wasn't anything to say.

Eventually she picked up his good hand, cradling it in both of her own with her bloody fingertips. She lifted it to her face, turning it over to plant her warm lips right in the center of his palm so that he could feel every hot puff of her breath. He had just enough time to wonder what the fuck she was doing before she curled three of his fingers into his fist and sucked the other two in her mouth, staring at him over his own knuckles. Her eyes were full of deliberate intent, almost defiant, daring him to mention his dumb little finger or the blood that still covered everything.

"You're fucking disgusting." His dick twitched weakly, willing to listen to her argument but struggling to compete with the horror show on his left hand that still firmly demanded his attention. "This isn't the..." He frowned, looking around the room for an excuse not to get turned on with carefully contained desperation, gradually resigning himself to his fate. "Gods, you're a sick bitch," he finally whispered, coming up with nothing to counter her proposal when she slid out of her chair and onto the floor, crawling over to him on her knees.

K'tara dutifully unfastened his pants and pulled him out, taking all of him into her mouth even though he was only half hard. There was a tenderness to this, a naked honesty. She was too polite--or maybe she still felt too guilty--to point out his more reluctant than usual erection. "You wanna slap me?" she asked, and his whole body pulsed with desire. "You wanna punch me? Yeah? Go ahead, this is all my fault anyway, I des--"

The words stopped abruptly when he leaned forward without thinking and dropped his shoulder to aim a short jab at her gut, all the air leaving her body as she gazed dumbly at him with open-mouthed bewilderment. She fell sideways onto the floor, curling up into a little ball until her knees were under her chin and her sneakers were tucked up against her ass. Makoto sagged back in his chair, breathing carefully through a spike of pain in his hand.

"Get up," he growled down at her. When she didn't respond, he shouted it. "Get the fuck up and look at me."

She pulled herself up his legs, gripping his knee with one hand and surfacing slowly while the other arm cradled her guts. Her eyes were sharp steel, and when he opened his mouth to speak, she gave him a return punch to the jaw, hard enough to make him forget whatever he was about to say.

Black blossoms threatened to drown his vision, but he had just enough wits left in the tank to grab her wrist before she could do it again, jerking her forward and into his lap. She kept her momentum until the chair fell backward, sending them both clattering to the floor, panting loudly with pain and fury. Makoto rested his mangled hand up over his head on the floor, out of the path of retribution.

His dick was rock fucking hard now, sitting firm against her belly as they lay sprawled out on the floor, and K'tara spat in his face when she grabbed it and pushed it between her legs. Makoto closed his eyes against the spittle and let her take it out on him, all of her sharp teeth and angry tears on one end, and the squeeze of soft, wet oblivion on the other.

This was how they cared for each other.

This was how they showed it.

12. Close (K’tara)

Their room on the boat from Kugane to Mor Dhona was little more than a broom closet with a mattress on the floor. It had no windows and no ventilation to speak of, which meant that it constantly stank of cum and moko from their desperate attempts to entertain themselves. It was either fuck or go crazy–there was simply nothing else to do during the two week journey, which meant it was torture for K’tara’s stimulation-hungry existence.

She flexed her feet off the edge of the mattress, stretching out her calves and blowing smoke up at the wooden slats on the ceiling. Makoto mirrored her about three fulms away, putting space between them the moment they were finished. K’tara’s hand curled in his direction, trailing after his torso when he slid away, but this was for the best. After six days at sea, everyone was a little bit ripe.

The dim light that permeated everything below deck was just enough to see the blankness on his face as he stared up at nothing, one palm resting lightly above his navel to rise and fall with his breath. Where did Makoto go, after they did this? His expression held no clues, and he never voiced his thoughts.

K’tara curled away from him, leaning to one side to ash her cigarette into an empty cup. More of him slipped out of her as she shifted position, hot and sticky between her legs, clinging to the small hairs on her body. Cleaning that up later with nothing but a sponge bath was going to feel tacky and miserable. “I’m prob’ly gonna be sick of your face by the time we get home,” she offered, spreading her fingers in his direction on the sheet.

He rolled his head to the side, scanning her naked body dispassionately. The wood all around them creaked and moaned in the silence, shifting to keep up with the constant pressure of the ocean’s subtle but forceful turbulence. K’tara felt trapped but not seen, her heart fluttering in her chest like a scared bird.

“I’m already tired of yours.” Makoto sat up with a grunt, resting his elbows on his knees and rolling another cigarette, his back hunched over to focus on his work. Their cigarettes were uneven and shoddy, the result of having to re-learn how to roll with one hand so heavily bandaged as to be functionally useless, but they were getting better.

The tiger on his back watched her with more interest than he did, stalking close to the ground with wide, observant eyes glaring at her through a curtain of bamboo. It’s mouth was closed–no bark, no bite. Not unless it had to. K’tara couldn’t relate. “Yeah. I guess that sucks for you, since I’m the only person you’ll know.”

The careful, deliberate motions in his lap paused. Makoto raised his head and looked over one shoulder at her, the lazy glance not quite making it to her face. “We have other people in Eorzea. I plan to find them.”

Anger flashed hot in her belly when he stepped around her bait, making her nostrils flare and her ears curl back to sit flat on her head. “Oh, okay, sure, fuck me then.” She bit down on her cigarette and sat up, untangling her limbs from the sheets to storm off naked through the underbelly of the ship.

Before she could do that, Makoto grabbed her wrist and held her in place as she moved the other way, his patient eyes piercing up at her with disdain. “Shut up and sit down.” His order was quiet but firm, and when she complied, crossing her arms under her breasts in impotent defiance, he leaned close into her space, bringing with him the stink of old sweat and fresh pussy. “I still need you.” The cigarette bobbed limply between his lips when he spoke, and he held her jaw in place so he could press the tip of his to the cherry of hers.

It awoke briefly in flame between their faces and then cooled to dull embers. Eight more days of this forced, artificial intimacy. They’d be lucky if it didn’t kill them.

#ffxiv #ffxiv rp #mateus #mateus rp #crystal rp #ffxivwrite2018 #k'tara tyatu #makoto matsuoka #ic post #an ala mhigan catgirl in hingashi #spark

[riancraigjohnson-blog]

Hi, I just saw your post about having legitimate complaints about TLJ... I haven't seen it yet, but was wondering what your complaints were (and whether it's worth me spending my money going to see it). I'm not bothered by spoilers.

good evening dear! to make things easy, i’m just gonna make one hugeass post and do a bullet list.

no consistency to story-telling

you wanna add new force powers? fine! great! but keep them consistent!

yoda appears to tell luke that the jedi are garbage & should end ( yoda???? of all people???? instead of someone who would actually think that given personal experience, like, y’know, ANAKIN )

also somehow yoda can call down lightning and cause real-world damage to a tree by setting it ablaze? why hasn’t yoda or obi-wan or anakin literally just come down and stop the order by doing something like this if they can literally control nature from the afterlife????

someone ( leia )…. with no proper force training…. can somehow defy…. dying in space? and also project themselves through space while barely conscious?

rian seems to want to keep this narrative of ‘evERYonE caN HAve ThE foRCe’ but when given the chance to make one of three kids force-sensitive, one kid being a black boy, one a white girl, and one a white boy, in a series where we have leading white female and black male protagonists and a white male villain………. somehow rian decided it was best to give the white boy the force? in a trilogy where the leAD CHARACTER IS A FEMALE AND ONE OF THE LEADING MALES IS A BLACK MAN?????????? GROUNDBREAKING

snoke connected rey and kyle via force skyping, but if his whole goal was to just……….. get rey to come to the supremacy after he manipulated her to believe in kyle’s redemption, like….. why do all that shit. why not just….. read her mind. clearly he can influence people and affect people from long distances so what the fuck why would he bother with that weird force bond shit. like if vader can fucking force choke a guy over a video conference, i don’t see why it’s that much more of a stretch to just have snoke read rey’s mind or manipulate her without using kyle

luke fucking astral projecting himself onto crait, despite not knowing they were on crait, after shutting himself off from the force like 10 years prior to tlj– somehow he’s able to hold a long-term projection of himself to taunt kyle and buy time for the fleeing resistance? and then, at the end, he just….. gives up and dies? becomes one with the force? ???????

lame foreshadowing/repetition

so, when kyle and rey’s first skype session goes live, kyle makes a point of asking rey if she was causing this, this almost astral projection skype convo from light years away, only to say ‘no….. the strain would kill you.’ cue the end of the movie, where it’s revealed luke was just projecting himself all along, and…. he dies.

there’s also this scene where luke asks rey what the force is, and being inexperienced in it, she makes a comment about it being about making things float. luke says no, everything you said is not-true– its not about making rocks float, ( which is then brought back as a concept at the very end of the movie, when rey has to float rocks to free the resistance from the caves they ran into, again, bad foreshadowing. ) this is then brought back later when astral luke is facing off with kyle, and kyle says something about destroying the resistance and the jedi…. only for luke to, verbatim, say what he said to rey about every word he said being not-true.

this almost bashing it into our heads notion of ‘kill the past, it’s only holding you back’ that’s mentioned by kyle, that seems to be the central thread– the past is just that, the past. it’s time to completely ignore it and never look back. it’s time to wipe away the misty-eyed wonders of your hero worship of your childhood… the reality is that people fuck up and your heroes are nothing and in the end we all die, jan. ( what a fun, hopeful message. )

but with this message, this idea of all your heroes are dead and don’t even think of people as heroes because that’s just unrealistic and you’ll be disappointed when they fuck up because we’re all human :))) – with that message we’re then meant to leave the theater somehow emboldened because luke took up the mantle of being a legend in the end…. even though there’s no reason he should be considered one when the only people who witness this astral fight technically are kyle and the first order– the resistance didn’t watch because they were trying to escape through the base’s tunnels with the time luke was buying them. so we’re supposed to treat luke as a legend now….. or are we supposed to hate this idea of hero worship? i’m getting mixed signals.

literally everything built up in tfa…. rey’s parents/backstory, snoke’s history/why the resistance even knows about him, why kyle became evil, why rey was able to call the lightsaber over him, why luke exiled himself but left a map………… so many questions to be answered! and tfa laid out a beautiful table for johnson to sit down at and serve dinner.

only johnson decided to say fuck you, fuck your dinner, fuck everything you thought about this movie because it doesn’t matter

rey’s parents? nobodies– drunkards. sold their daughter into literal slavery for drinking money.

snoke’s backstory? doesn’t fucking matter if we hyped him up as more dangerous than vader or palpatine– he’s dead now because he apparently couldn’t sense kyle about to kill him. the man can bond two people across light years of distance, but he doesn’t notice the lightsaber that’s slowly being turned towards him? hm.

why is rey so strong with the force? because it belongs to everyone and not the elite skywalkers who literally came from slavery so fuck you for that too

luke’s exile? because he felt bad about considering killing his nephew when he probed his mind and felt he was completely evil. luke skywalker considered killing his nephew, the son of his twin sister, son of his best friend– let that sink in.

kyle’s evil…. but he’s good, right? there’s good in him? or not. for someone who rian says we can all relate with ( sorry but i don’t relate with fascists :/ ) he made it pretty clear that he wanted kyle to be the end all be all villain by the end of 8. so ??????

also why is kyle so obsessed with vader? what the fuck? guess what? you don’t get to know. fuck you again.

character assassination / regression

luke was……… not luke. clearly. mark hamill has said it’s not luke. that’s more than a bit telling.

rey’s whole story literally revolved around following luke around ahch-to while learning jack shit only to then follow kyle around trying to say there’s still good in him. ( another fun fact rian……… luke only was willing to forgive vader when he realized that was his dad. why would rey feasibly trust her abuser / han’s murderer / man who put finn into a coma so quickly unless maybe they had a prior connection, particularly familial? )

finn was turned into a joke, called a coward, called selfish, tased by rose, slapped by hux……. like finn had literally no character progression at all.

poe went from well-decorated commander of the resistance, former officer with the new republic, to hot-headed flyboy who doesn’t take orders and just needs to learn from his white superiors :)))) like……………… do i even need to say it

leia was practically non-existent, and when she was, she slapped poe and later shot at him, stunning him. which, she…. y’know………. never did to han.

chewie and r2 were literally there as props, don’t even try and tell me otherwise. r2 showed luke leia’s hologram back from anh as a means to like…. spur him into action, but??? luke literally did nothing as well even after that?

lack of lando. can i include that? rian said he ‘wanted’ to include lando but he ‘wouldn’t work’ so i think rian just owes me money for having to even try to comprehend his bullshit

hux??? y’know, the fascist general with that terrifying speech before he decimated an entire star system? that hux? he’s just comic relief now. :)

he even has a ‘your mom’ joke thrown at him which is super funny when you remember he’s a bastard and never knew his birth mom so like #goodwriting

kyle is redeemable now!! even though he’s shown no remorse and has already been offered the chance to redeem himself but he took the opportunity to say ‘fuck you’ and kill han so…. ignore all that, ignore the fact that he’s a fascist leader and massacred children and countless others………….. his uncle tried to kill him so he must be in the right :)))

phasma…. you liked phasma? strong villain woman? yeah, well, watch the most unsatisfying fight that ends in finn winning purely by luck because she falls down into a firey pit. mmmmmm that sure was satisfying? :/

regular star wars rules need not apply?

bombs can just be dropped in space because gravity exists in the vacuum of the stars apparently

but a body on a blown-open bridge can remain on the bridge instead of getting sucked out into space….?

a slow-speed ship chase where one ship is running out of fuel? cinematic gold, apparently

for some reason the first order ships chasing the resistance couldn’t have just….. sped up their ships a bit and plowed them over / took them out with tie fighters for no other reason but….. it wouldn’t be convenient that way?

there’s a lot more than this but i’m tired and should have gone to bed hours ago, so i’ll probably just reblog this sometime tomorrow and add more, but here’s this for starters!

#anti tlj #anti rian johnson #tlj spoilers #this movie makes me so tired and i haven't even touched on the handling of new characters yet #in-relative-time

[thekaeb3412-blog]

The Story of How I Fell In Love With Unwritten History

So I’m in a whole relationship right? Like a whole fat ass relationship. Like me plus her equals nobody else . Its kinda dope and kinda like coccaine . If that makes any sense at all . We definitely have our rollercoasters but I’ll killl anyone over her and I stand on that . Best part its with who I chose and not who my parents chose or approved of. I actually dont care whether they approve of me or not. Mom didnt want kids anyways. As she put it, she likes “ a return to sender kid “ I know she used to joke about it but I later found it to be true. So at this point either you like my happiness or you dont. But anyways, So we met the first time at work, Afni Call Center to be exact. She was a bet. By bet I mean with green money with coworkers. So I bet that I would get smashed by this girl and they would each owe me 50 bucks. I mean who can turn down money. Plus she was kinda cute and I know she was watching my little booty when I would walk away . I was 80 pounds lighter when we first met . 

But here lately things have gone to shit . I can admit I fucked up . Well in the beginning . I cheated . She found out . But I was honestly gone tell her everything but she found out I broke her heart all that and then some . Since I put all my business out there . Only reason why I cheated was because I wanted a kid . I wanted her for sure but I wanted a kid . As time passed us by I realized she doesn’t want kids at all . So I had to make a decision , kids or stick around for my one true love in my adult life . So I looked her in the face , I probably had tears In my eyes and told her I chose her . She looked at me with confusion for a little and I dont think she anted me to flat out give up kids. But I was gone doe what I had to do to keep her by my side . 

Now before we get to me cheating . I had an apartment on Old Morgantown Road . I loved that damn space man . Hard wood flooring . Storage unit . I had a w/d hook up . I had a good apartment and I could afford it and be able to live my best life . Rent was 475 a month . Utilities and water ran me about 80 . So I was well within my budget . But my dumb ass got involved with this man who I thought I could change . I was trying to hear from nobody about nothing . I wasnt trying to hear that he was cheating because I felt like I gave him no reason to cheat . I was giving him everything and then some . Hell I let his stupid ass cousin stay on my couch . So they were living rent free right , I know stupid Kendra always doing dumb shit . I should have opened my eyes but I didn’t . 

Well he and I are definitely no longer together . He got my little cousin pregnant . I dont know whats worse . That she knew he was still living with me . That she knew we was kin . That he knew we was still together , fucking and living together and I never ask for a dollar . Or that my bosses had to call me in the office with another one of my cousins and sit me down to tell and show me that he was cheating and she was pregnant . It even shocked me that she tried to question me about my niggas car . Like girl he and I live together so yes maam I’m gone drive his car . and she was in shock to see me in the drivers seat . huh . Aint that funny how it all played out though ? But you know , karma got took his dick for a minute . He got the worst news of his life . His heart was just as shattered as mine . His trust was screwed if not worse than mine . He found out that while he was too busy cheating on me , she was getting knocked down by his cousin . LMFAO SERIOUSLY . He did all that cheating and got that girl pregnant and ended up getting played himself . So while I was his woman , he had a side bitch who had a side nigga , but THE SIDE NIGGA HAD A SIDE BITCH . I hadnt had sex with him in a while because things started getting to me and I was becoming very suspicious so I was still going to get checked anyways . But yea . What a fckd up love hexagon . Crazy how we all worked together . But when I reached my snapping point . I became a little on the ratchet side and called his mom and told her come get her sons belongings because he was homeless again . My cousin didnt have her own spot so somebody had to come take care of him because by that time I was done pretending . 

Shit got bad for me mentally . I had me fckd up . I lost my job and went broke because I drank and popped it away . I know definitely wasn’t the right thing but I just wanted to feel numb to everything . I didnt really care how I got high just as long as I as high I was okay and at peace . 

Alot of time went by and my past came back . She made me feel safe . And she saw me ; like the actual me . She knew something was up . Hell I gained 50 pounds since the last time we seen each other . But when she came back . I dont know if I was more so excited to see her or trying to fuck her right there on the floor at work . I walked in the door and the moment I seen her ... I didnt care who I was talking to , I think Wanda , I’m sorry boo but I seen my old boo and just had to do it . I could not help myself I had to hug her before I did anything else . I had a little more weight on me too because during our last encounter , hmm hmm , I was a bit smaller and hadnt grown boobs yet . So when she seen me running 90 mph to her ; baby girl was in for a shock . 

Time went by and we started seeing each other a little more outside of work . Then she started to spend the night . But when she started doing that , I think I made things a little complicated for her at her moms . I had no intentions of doing so but it kinda got weird because she wasnt coming home very much any more . But yall , when I had her all to myself . Do you know how many times I undressed this girl with my eyes . I mean she standing there fully clothed and I seen EVERY INCH of her thru them clothes . It was bad yall . lol . She kinda eventually sorda moved in ; even though I thought she had already moved in . Time went by and things were okay ya know . We were just in the “ talking “ phase and just filling eachother out . She started to grow on me a little more than I planned . and then I wanna say it was my birthday or after ? Baby girl was so drunk . She , our friend Ladaya , and I went to go grab food and drinks . Weeellllllll , I trapped her into drinking and drinking and drinking . We got home ? and she drank and and got funnier as the night went on . I remember that day like it was yesterday and the videos I have are absolutely the funniest videos I have ever recorded . “ butt clouds “ and the car honk that about gave her a damn heart attack . 

Anywho times have went on . We decided to go to hilltop and live there . Who would have thought we would live together because I was stern on not wanting to live with her . It was weird living there . Always wondering if or when we were going to get a roommate . Then ? Thats the first time I ever broke a heart . See , she was always wanting to like distinguish a title. Meanwhile I am petrified of titles and labels and shit . Plus I have labeled myself for so long I didnt want to put a label on she and I . So I waited and waited and waited and decided to test waters . By testing waters meaning , I caught baby fever BAD . LIKE BAD BAD . I wanted a kid so bad I didnt think about talking to her first , I was just hoping one day I could be like , surprise baby we are having a baby ; butttttt I was gonna tell her how I got pregnant IF if actually happened . But she kinda beat me to it . She seen the messages on her tablet and as you know it went to shit from there . I broke her heart . I wasnt sure if or when she would or could ever forgive me . ( its JAn232021 ) and I know she still hasn’t forgiven me for anything . Not sure if she will ever get past it enough to love me love me .

 We made it official , May 2019. By that time the only things that mattered to me were building a life with her. Come August 2020 . We got a place together and as time went on, I knew something was wrong but I would rather ignore it than have to go to the doctor because that just aint my cup of tea. I hate doctors.. they always wanna diagnose people with shit. I just didn’t wanna be one of those people so I held out as long as I could before it got to the point of being unbearable . I lost yet another good job . At first they thought it was covid and it wasnt . I tested negative for covid . Then I had like 5 appointments that following week . I was put on all types of stuff . I was throwing up everything . I was crying non stop . I was doing things not in my normal regimen . Thats when things fell harder on her . Harder as in bills , and stress and everything . I became that burden . I became the thing in the relationship that puts everything on the line . I became the complete faliure in the relationship . 

I wasn’t able to help like I planned . in fact my checks were so small that every pay day because I had all my bills and people I owed money to on auto pay and I kept amking promises, put me in the negatives . I was in the negatives for 3 to 4 months . So imagine being the one in the relationship who didnt feel welcome . Who didnt feel like I desrved the love and things like that . All I wanted to do was help out and I couldn’t . Made me want to pack up and wait until I knew she was gone so I could leave . I didn’t know what to do . But I knew I was pretty much of no use . I knew that she resented me . I knew it pushed things back so far it may never come back to normal . 

But now , Im better than I was still struggling though .  But I have this amazing job . I have a job where I can do my part and not hurt . I have a job where I can finally help out now . But its not enough . I’m not enough . The love is not enough anymore . I have became disposable . I have become the one who broke and shattered her heart and trust in her adult love life . How do I come back from it ? How do I rescue something that may have already died ? Am I worth it ? Am I better off without ? Do I deserve her ? She deserves the world and I want to give it to her I do .

But idk , maybe my mom was right . just maybe the only things I’m good at are singing and laying on my back . Havent accomplished shit yet . Got banned from a job because I tried to put my hands on someone . Got fired from 3 good fucking jobs because of my health . 

Im crashing at this point . My future is on edge . I am on edge . this is not cool dude . 

[anotherinternettrash]

Prompts

Angst

“Not you again.. ”

“Leave me alone. ”

“I don’t love you anymore. ”

“Why do you hate me? ”

“I thought you loved me. ”

“I don’t need you anymore. ”

“I can’t believe you! ”

“We cant keep this up forever. ”

“You’re a monster. ”

“I hate you. ”

“Don’t leave me… ”

“You’re a disappointment. ”

“Don’t die on me– Please. ”

“I never meant to hurt you. ”

“Are you upset with me? ”

“I wish I’d never met you. ”

“I’m going to kill you! ”

“Please don’t hurt me like this. ”

“Thanks for nothing. ”

“Give me a chance ”

“Don't call this number again. “

“Why did you spare me? ”

“You need to leave. ”

“I’m sick. ”

“I’m dying. ”

“I wish I’d never met you. ”

“I thought we were family!”

“There was never an us. ”

“So that’s it? Is it over? ”

“I fucked up. ”

“I came to say goodbye. ”

“He’s dead because of you. ”

“I don’t deserve to be loved. ”

“About the baby… It's yours. ”

Love:

“I’m so in love with you. ”

“Dance with me! ”

“Isn’t this amazing? ”

“I wish we could stay like this forever. ”

“Will you marry me? ”

“I need a hug. ”

“You’re special to me. ”

“I’m going to keep you safe. ”

“Do you trust me? ”

“Can I kiss you right now? ”

“You’re cute when you’re angry. ”

“I’ve liked you for a while now. ”

“We’d make such a cute couple. ”

“I want to take care of you. ”

“Can we cuddle? ”

“It’s lonely here without you. ”

“I can’t stand the thought of losing you. ”

“Shut up and kiss me already. ”

“Are you flirting with me? ”

“Is that my shirt? ”

“How did we get here? ”

“You own my heart. ”

“I want to protect you. ”

“Whats the matter? ”

“You’re so beautiful. ”

“Stop being so cute. ”

“You’re teasing me again… ”

“This is why I fell in love with you. ”

“You’re the best! ”

“They’re going to love you, don’t worry! ”

“Oh, Are you ticklish? ”

“Of course I remembered! ”

“Are you jealous? ”

“Hold me and never let me go. ”

“Stop hogging all the blankets! ”

“Let's run away together. ”

General:

“I’m fine. ”

“Are you drunk? ”

“Are you high? ”

“We cant go in there… ”

“Give it back! ”

“Well, this is just great. ”

“Don’t touch me. ”

“Not sure if you could tell, but I’m not exactly a people person. ”

“This was fun— Let's do it again sometime!”

“I didn’t do it! ”

“I did it… ”

“I don’t remember that! ”

“Well, that’s pretty rude of you to say. ”

“Get that thing away from me! ”

“You owe me. ”

“Do you believe in aliens? ”

“Do you believe in ghosts? ”

“Are you hitting on me? ”

“Why are you naked? ”

“You did what?! ”

“You have… Superpowers? ”

“Why are you bleeding? ”

“Where did all these puppies come from?”

“Don’t make me come over there myself! ”

“That wasn’t funny. ”

“This tastes horrible. ”

“This is delicious! ”

“Are you mad at me? ”

“Stop ignoring me… ”

“I love that show too! ”

“Can I borrow that book of yours?”

“Let's blow this joint. ”

“Let me help you with that. ”

“Take that back! ”

“Wanna go see a movie with me? ”

“No way, that’s so lame. ”

“What are you listening to? ”

“ I brought you your coffee. ”

“Don’t fuck this up. ”

“Run! ”

“Let's run away together. ”

“I haven’t slept in four days… ”

“Your turn to do the dishes. ”

“Was I really that drunk? ”

“Was I really that stoned? ”

“Give me back my phone! ”

“You’re an asshole. ”

“Are you cold? ”

“This place gives me the creeps. ”

“I swear my house is haunted. ”

“Did you hear that? ”

“It’s just your imagination. ”

“Just how stupid do you think I am? ”

“Stop being such a baby. ”

“Go back to bed. ”

“Are you okay? ”

“I can take care of myself just fine.”

“Thanks for helping me back there. ”

“Since when have we ever been friends? ”

“What on earth are you wearing? ”

“I can’t feel my legs! ”

“Stop texting me weird stuff so late at night. ”

“Put me down! ”

“There’s only one bed… ”

“It isn’t what it looks like! Okay.. Maybe it is… ”

“How did I lose it? ”

“I read your diary. ”

“This is awkward. ”

“Didn’t you read the sign? ”

“Do you think you can teach me that? ”

Below is NSFW prompts.  Sexual:

“Bite me.”

“Make me.”

“Fuck me.”

“Stop teasing me so much… ”

“Do you like it when I touch you like that?”

“Okay... This is new. ”

“Want to head back to my place and have a little fun? ”

“You’re in trouble now. ”

“What a pretty sight. ”

“Bend over. ”

“On your knees. ”

“The food looks great but... There’s something much more delicious I’d like to eat right now.

“Lay back. ”

“Take off your clothes. ”

“Well, fine; just this once. ”

“I’m waiting. ”

“You’re so beautiful. ”

“As you wish. ”

“First one to make a noise loses.”

“You have no idea what you do to me. ”

“If you’re bored; Wanna have sex? ”

“I've wanted this for so long. ”

“Car sex looks so much easier in the movies. ”

“Can I touch you? ”

“No strings attached. ”

“Already? Do I really have that much of an effect on you? ”

“Mine. ”

“The nights still young. ”

“We cant do that here! ”

“Behave. ”

“What did you just say?

“Come here. ”

Random ones I had in a draft (i dont know where they are from)

“Stop moaning you big baby”

“Stop winking”

“Why did you have to be a smart person?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me”

“Why the hell are you drinking. At this hour?”

“Take. A. God. Damn. Break.”

“Shit, I'm sorry”

“How did you manage to be this stupid?”

“Your hair is so soft”

“Sorry. I just got lost in your eye’s”

“What are you writing about?”

“I love you”

“Is that my t-shirt?”

“Please don’t leave me”

“Please say something…”

“That's a stupid rule”

“How are you so pretty?”

“What the fuck?”

“You wanna go!?”

“Even the best fall down sometimes”

“You and i. We’ll be alright”

“What are you even saying?”

“Do that again”

“Please don’t”

“Hold me back!?”

“Oh its on”

“How are you so tall?”

“Not in that drawer!!”

“Don't touch that”

“I'm always going to be here”

“Help me up asshole”

“I'll show you where my shoe fits!

“Don't tell me to shut up”

“Don't dare touch me.”

“Could you kindly get the fuck away from me for a moment!?”

“Don't you know how to clean?”

“Why so flirty all of a sudden?”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“Don't you dare throw that snowball-OKAY THATS IT!”

“I'm a little drunk on you”

“I touched the butt…”

“It's too cold! Come back”

“No. I'm not letting you go. It's too early to get up”

“C'mere, you can sit in my lap till I'm done working”

“I'm not going to stop poking you until you give me some attention”

“Just pretend to be my date”

“I think I'm in love with you. And I'm absolutely terrified”

“Your lips are so soft. I could kiss them all day”

“It's not bad to cry. In fact, i think it makes a person stronger”

“I remember practising asking you out in the mirrior..”

“Let’s just stay in bed”

“We live together, you can’t blame anyone else for this.”

“I want to marry you”

“I want to take a shower so you should probably join me. It’ll save water”

“You lost your chance.”

“Don't look at me like that”

“Pack your shit and go. Get out of my sight.”

“I don't want to live in a broken home.”

“I cant do this anymore. Not with you.”

“I tried to move on but nobody is you.”

“Please take me back.”

“Maybe I'm meant to be alone.”

“I fell like everyone has forgotten me. Like I don't exist.”

“I've been alone for so long…”

“I can’t belive you’d do this to me.”

“What about me!? Did you ever think of that?!”

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

“I'm going to skip the "how?” And “why?” And go straight to your cleaning this up.“

“Sorry I'm rambling” “it’s okay. I like hearing you talk”

“You were supposed to be my forever”

“Pfft. the stars have nothing on your eye’s”

“I'm mad at you because I love you.”

“The heater broke and I'm freezing, can I sleep with you?”

“hear cuddling helps you sleep better, wanna try it out?”

“Are you eating a jar of Nutella in one sitting?” “I have problems. Leave me be”

“If you insist”

“Thank you kind sir” “your welcome m'lady”

“Seriously?”

“I hate you.”

“Stop being cheesy.”

“I’ll slap you.”

“You know what! I love you. I fucking love you okay!?”

“Could you help me”

“Fuck off.”

“You lied.”

“You think that I'm going to forgive you after all you put me through?”

“You broke what?!”

“It's not nearly as bad as it looks, Darling”

“Frankly I couldn’t care less.”

“I don’t know where she gets it from”

“Bring that pretty little butt over here”

“We have to pretend to be married”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“At what point did you think this was a good idea?!”

“You had me at ‘free pizza”

“Why are you always pushing me away?”

“How did you even get that up there?!”

“You’re evil”

“The sign said not to push the button, so naturally I had to push it”

“That came out wrong”

“I think you’re just afraid to be happy.”

“I just came to dance”

“You know my name?!”

“Oh, you beautiful weirdo”

“How bout dat!”

“I've never felt this way about anyone before…and it scares the crap out of me”

“None of this makes sense”

“You have a wicked sense of humour”

“I won’t let you fall.”

“Do you remember me? We were only 15”

“Your voice is like a melody, I could listen to you all day”

“I'm your’s”

“I'm only human!”

“Must be love on the brain”

“What do you want from me?!”

“Don’t mind if I do”

“Shut up and kiss me”

“Dork”

“Asshole”

“Ah, but I am cute”

“You will forever remember this as the day you nearly caught captain jack sparrow.”

“You did all this for me?!”

“What ate you afraid of?”

“What the hell was that?”

“Well the powers out”

“What now”

“Well. This sucks.”

“Awkward”

“May I have this dance?”

“Hand’s and eye’s off mate.”

“She’s mine.”

“Don’t freak out….but I think we got married last night.”

“Somebody is in love”

“You what?!”

“Did I stutter?!!”

“Fuck you.” “Please do.”

“I can’t wait to grow old with you”

“Why are you covered in mud?”

“You take one more step towards me and I will knock you off your ass.”

“Let him go. It’s me you want”

“Don't deny it.”

“Okay. This is seriously creeping me out”

“We have to find a way to make this work.”

“Is that…my picture on your wallet/ home screen?”

“If he asked. I’d be his”

“Come over here and make me.”

“Wanna bet?!”

“Pfft. Hold my beer.”

“Is there a reason why you’re naked in my bed?”

“Kiss me.”

“Marry me?”

“I wish I could hate you.”

“You heard me. Take. It. Off.”

“Please…dont do this…”

“I love you….”

“Is it really you?!”

“I’ve missed you”

“Boo.”

“Have you seen the- oh…”

“Shit.”

“Who crawls through someone’s window at 4 am to go and get ice-cream?!”

“Our first date is a picnic on a beach under the stars? Have you swallowed a romance novel? Do I need to call a doctor?”

“The only thing I want is you.”

“Are you ticklish?”

“PILLOW FIGHT!!!”

“Fight me”

“I will knock you on your ass if you even think about it.”

“I need you to pretend we’re dating…”

“I'm not leaving you.”

“Please…let me go.”

“You weren’t even going to say goodbye. Were you?”

“I'm hopelessly in love with you.”

“I bet I can make you scream my name”

“Pervert!”

“Childish. That's all you are.”

“I love you a lot. But stop trying to cook me dinner. You suck”

“If you shove cake in my face. This will be the worst wedding night of your life.”

“I bet its a girl/boy”

“IF YOU USE ALL THE HOT WATER ONE MORE TIME IM BANISHING YOU TO THE COUCH FOR A MONTH”

“Our kid is totally the one who wanted to build a pillow fort. Not me”

“Your dad is really excited to see you soon…it's driving me crazy”

“Are you drunk?”

“I'm flirting with you”

“I had to see you again”

“I can't wait to meet you”

“literally everything about this is illegal.”

“you just want attention, you don’t want my heart.”

“you just want to make sure I’m never getting over you.”

“I can’t quit you.”

“I know I just spit blood all over you, and this is a really bad time but I have to tell you something.”

“there’s something you should know, in case I don’t come back.”

“I thought you forgot about me.” “never.”

“was that supposed to hurt me?”

“Maybe I should stop and start confessing.”

“it’s okay, I didn’t expect you to love me.”

“I trusted you!” “that was your first mistake, you're second, falling in love with me.”

“I have a plan.” “Is it a good one?” “I have a plan okay!"

“well, unfortunately, the best of the best was unavailable so we got the best of the mediocre.”

“you just hate the thought of me with someone new.”

“you shouldn’t be so trusting darling, the world is a dangerous place.” “you don’t scare me.” “I should.”

“oh god, you’re in love with him.”

“I don’t want to die.” “I won’t let you, if you die, I do too.”

“how long have you been standing there?” “longer than you’d imagine.”

“I am the one that listens when the line is dead.”

“that has got to be the lamest pick-up line in existence.” “Oh, honey that was just plan A.” “okay then what’s plan B?” “take you, hostage, duh.”

“they’re afraid of me. I don’t blame them, I’m afraid of me too.” “I’m not.”

“well, this is a nice change of scenery.” “we’re in a jail cell?” “oh for the love of god I was being sarcastic!”

“I wanted you to fight for me and you didn’t, you just let me walk away.”

“A small fire, my exact words were set a small fire, this is not small!”

“you know I can kill you right?” “I’m already dead.”

“what do you mean work with him? He tried to kill me. Twice actually.”

“If I knew that would be the last time I held you, I would’ve held on tighter.”

“I always knew it was you.”

“she doesn’t love me, she’s not that stupid.”

“I’ll be the first to tell you, I’m a terrible liar.”

“am I going to regret this?” “probably.”

“I’ve lost count of the promises you’ve broken, so please don’t make anymore.”

“I’d take a bullet for you, I told you that before.” “except you’ll heal, and if you tell me one more time, I’m going to be the one pulling the trigger.”

“wow can we pretend for one second that you’re not a complete douchebag?”

“you’ve got to believe me.” “sorry I tend to not believe compulsive liars.”

“shut up.” “but I didn’t say anything.” “I don’t care shut up.”

“uh, you have blood on your shirt.” “I suppose I do.” “You don’t just go nowhere and get blood on your shirt.”

“just take a deep breath or something.” “take a deep breath? It feels like my insides are being ripped out, and you want me to take a deep breath?”

“I’ll be there for you, but you gotta be there for me too.“

"So I uh notice you’re kind of naked, is that intentional or..”

#writing #prompt #fanfiction #request