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tragedy-of-commons · 4 days

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lay your life down and pretty

various hsr x gn!reader | wc: ~2k

In which you die (or they've already lost you).

tags/warnings: character death (reader), it's implied in dh's part but explicit and semi-graphic in hanya's, descriptions of mara and the insanity that comes with it, hardcore angst, hurt no comfort, there may be Lore Inaccuracies

notes: this was originally supposed to be four parts. i'm sorry it's only two but it's just been uhhh... hope you enjoy & thanks for the incredible support lately <3

Dan Heng makes the best pancakes.

You’ve expressed this undeniable fact to his face multiple times, louder in their progression just to see the tips of his ears burn that endearing red. These declarations are reserved for breakfast. At this time you also chide him for trying to weasel his way out of eating the most important meal of the day!

And he’d sigh, letting you hound him about food options until he’d crack under the weight of your grin and end up mixing batter at 7:30 in the morning.

(“I tried flipping them in the air once and the pancake slapped me in the face,” you’d regaled, head resting idly on your fist.

Dan Heng stared into the black of the skillet. “...Somehow, I don’t doubt it.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” you huffed.

He almost let not-quite laugh slip then, but because of his stuck-uppery, he just managed to look peeved. “I would appreciate it if you passed me the butter.”)

Instead it is around 9:00 in the morning, and Dan Heng is alone.

He’d stayed up late the night before doing some reading, causing him to oversleep and rush the process today. He’s almost burned his hand on the stove eye twice, nearly dropped an egg on the floor, and has just narrowly avoided burning the batch. Dan Heng is not clumsy (not like you were), and he is painfully aware that he is late.

After he plates the food, the oven clock reads 9:19. He gathers everything, including two sets of utensils and one awkward wad of napkins - before setting the table by heart. Your plate goes in front of the chair closest to the window, and his goes in front of the one adjacent to yours.

The rhythm of distributing each item eventually leaves him with empty hands. Everything is ready, but there is still something colossal missing from the scene.

Dan Heng stares hard at your empty seat before taking his own.

The pancakes are blackened around the edges, but it’s nothing a good heaping portion of syrup can’t fix, and the smell that wafts upward is sweet and inviting. The sun’s rays shining in from the outside world paint the kitchen in flecks of light that occasionally catch on his arm when he brings his fork to his mouth.

Resigned, his silverware clatters noisily to the table.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “I’m sorry that I was late.”

Predictably, there’s no response. Dan Heng’s throat feels like it’s closing up on him, and the syrup definitely isn’t helping. He dabs his mouth with his napkin for a good long while.

He is sorry. It wasn’t enough that he’d stayed up late the night before, but that he deliberately kept glancing at the clock and counting the hours until daylight arrived - reminding himself that if he drifted off, the next day would come much sooner.

He isn’t the type to procrastinate either. Even when you’re not here anymore, you seem to have a profound effect on his character. Dan Heng pinches the bridge of his nose. The sound of his voice echoing off the walls of the lonely kitchen is unwelcome. “Happy birthday.”

It’s strained, imperfect, and painful; which only serves to remind him of your insistence on celebrating his birthday as well. You had practically prostrated yourself at his feet, begging him to let you fuss over him - even if it made his vision hazy and palms sweaty. He needs to return the favor, even if the mere idea of another important date passing him up without you makes him want to hide.

So here he is.

Here he is, floundering terribly, missing you terribly, loving you terribly. Dan Heng wrenches his hand from its secure position in his lap to drum on the table.

“I got you something,” he says. “I… I didn’t know which color you’d prefer more, so…”

You’d tease him into an early grave if you were able to see the knitted oven mitt he’d picked out over two months ago. It’s an almost hideous shade of teal that he’s sure you’d love, especially since you forced him to bake with you regularly.

(He was shopping with March 7th when he’d seen it and then reflexively dumped it into his basket. His companion only asked him if he was planning on using it as kindling for the fireplace.)

Dan Heng closes his eyes and slides it over to your placement. For a second, he almost fools himself into thinking you might magically appear to brush fingers when you accept the gift with a bright smile. He has no such luck.

Your breakfast is getting colder, and there’s nothing to be done today; his friends, as much as he can say he appreciates them - also meddle quite a bit. His schedule was mysteriously cleared up and he was gently encouraged to go home and take the day off. The feeling of three pairs of eyes drilling holes into his back as he complied was a bit too potent to be coincidental.

So he sits there and pretends he’s eating with you for as long as he can. The stutters in the familiar rhythm that comes with today are things he can smooth out over time, even if it feels like a betrayal to you. You would never see it like that, which is why he can even live in a home without you in it at all.

(The oven mitt rests beside your full plate until the afternoon, because he cannot bring himself to clean up just yet. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to.)

Dan Heng is not a man who can afford to hope, but he’s already been in debt since the moment of his birth. If just one of his prayers is granted, he hopes it’s the one he runs through his mind every night:

In the next life, please let us cross paths again. And if there’s room for it, please let me love you for as long as I can.

He’s never been one for optimism, but it’s all he looks forward to.

Hanya’s hands cradle the expanse of your face.

Her fingers ghost over any healthy glow remaining in your cheeks. You’re slipping, rightfully so, but does it make her a monster if she wants to claw and rifle through the sands of time to search for any universe where you were spared from this cruel fate?

(She thinks it does.)

You can’t get the words out, but there’s a resigned film that glazes over your eyes - one that tells her that she needn’t lie about where you’ll be going. Your mouth forms silent syllables punctuated by wheezes that will surely send her careening under the depths of the unconscious at record speed.

“Han.. ya,” you croak, “Stay.”

“I will,” she promises, because she needs to - over and over, until you remember it always, even when you’re gone. Even when you’re suffering through the last moments of your fledgling life. “I will remain here.”

Her duty as a Judge of the Ten-Lords Commission is to oversee life and death on the Xianzhou. When Hanya drifts aimlessly like a spectre between inky darkness and blinding daylight, it has occasionally struck her that one day she might have to oversee yours.

Presently, your mind is being swallowed by the maw of mara, a madness that she’s all too familiar with; faced with her dull countenance, she must have witnessed thousands succumb to the fate of infernal life.

“D-Don’t cry,” you beseech. There isn’t much time until you’re no longer Hanya’s secret reprieve, but instead a writhing abomination - and she only has herself to blame. Had she not embraced you so tightly, would you be free of this curse? Would you still be smiling and dragging her by the hand through Exalting Sanctum?

“I will not send you there,” she breathes, “You are not deserving of—”

The agonizing cry you let out next is still beautiful. Even now you can mitigate the emptiness that’s dug its claws in her heart so deep that it’s become symbiotic with the organ. However, instead of the empty, Hanya feels its distant relative: the pins and needles. The hollow white noise crackles until she’s pierced with an arsenal of skeletal knives.

She could take it, and she would take it, if it meant that you weren’t about to die and then awaken again as a monster that desecrates the very concept of you.

She releases your now matching tear-stricken cheeks before seizing both of your arms. The thrashing has crept in, meaning that there isn’t much time before you start sprouting leaves and weeds like a statue abandoned by its devotees.

A sharp inhale through clenched teeth. “You have… to. M’gonna hurt—” you convulse in her grasp, “—somebody...”

Of course you’re worrying about others right now. Kindness is a relic of the past that you’ve somehow managed to exhume, restore to its full glory, and gift to Hanya like she deserves to touch others’ lives in the same way you have.

Every shopkeep knows your name, face, voice, and smile. Your warmth is infectious - even before she knew you in person, she knew of you by word of mouth. Xueyi had told her that the reason Huohuo was so resolute in her duties lately was because of “the person who defeated a bunch of reprobate hooligan bullies tormenting her”.

If her big sister held you in high regard, she figured you were one she wouldn’t mind exchanging greetings with if you ever crossed paths. However, the thing about you is that you always give more than you take; you too eventually gave her your smile over tea, your opinion on her writing, and a perspective from the light she usually only smothers upon first contact.

It seems that it was just a matter of time before Hanya extinguished you.

“You are not ready,” she begs pitifully, “You are not!”

She knows it’s never about being ready. Bad things always happen to good people - to sons, daughters, friends, big sisters, and lovers.

Lovers.

The word is foreign on the tip of her tongue. It’s strange to be actualized and even stranger to ascribe that label to your relationship, but Hanya doesn’t know what else to think when the knives stab her over and over to the elegy of I love you, I love you, I love you.

The trek from Fyxestroll Garden to the Alchemy Commission is sizable. The Dragon Lady could see you and do her best, but she’s seen where that’s led; best efforts gone to waste, inconsolable loved ones given false hope because they were too stubborn to let go.

Is that what she is? Too stubborn to let you go, even when she’s brought this karma upon you?

(Yes, something ugly whispers, this is your penance. Now it’s theirs too.)

“I...” you let out a strangled groan, and when your chest jerks upwards, it barely registers that you brush your lips against hers. There’s tears and snot everywhere, and you’re getting stronger - too strong for her to hold. Hanya’s forearms ache with the strain as gingko leaves begin to ravage your humanity and rip you apart.

The transformation process is cruel, but she promised to remain by your side. Twigs protrude from your neck, nestled between thorny brambles that poke and prod. You are not a Cloud Knight, so your screams aren’t muffled by armor - or muted by the numbness she feels when dealing with other cases.

It’s too real, it’s too much, and it’s not enough.

Drowned out by the previous mantra of I love you, the background vocals of I’m so sorry peter off into whispers that are soon lost among the sickening squelch of Xueyi’s blade cutting through you in one clean motion. The tip of the sword rests over Hanya’s heart, stained with your blood.

“...That’s not them anymore,” her sister says. It’s off-kilter, the way her brow is furrowed in a silent apology.

One can only hope.

taglist: @flower-yi, @moineauz, @aphrodict, @nomazee

#—stellaronhvnters.#dan heng x reader #hsr x reader #hanya x reader #hsr dan heng x reader #hsr hanya x reader #honkai star rail x reader #star rail x reader #danheng x reader #dan heng hsr x reader #hanya hsr x reader #hsr dan heng #hsr hanya #honkai star rail #✧ my works

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divinehedons · 8 months

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godless promethean, elektran rage.

navigation: masterlist

pairing: pirate!joel miller x siren!reader

word count: ~8.4k words (I KNOW I'M SO SORRY)

summary: when the wrath of poseidon brings in something not quite human, a hardened pirate with the harshness of a soldier at war faces a bright-eyed siren with the delusion of a dreamer.

warnings: this is a DARK, EXPLICIT fic. MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT or i will BLOCK you. so much plot, pirate!au, siren!au, joel is a violent motherfucker, reader is a metamorphic creature that turns human-like when not submerged in water, graphic depiction of violence and injury, mentions of abduction and implications of abuse, explicit p-in-v sex, oral (f!receiving), squirting, creampie, soooo much murder. it's like a greek tragedy without the incest.

note: THANK YOU FOR 600 FOLLOWERS!!! much of this work was inspired by me rereading the odyssey by homer, but the trope of joel x siren!reader is not of my own making! thank you so much for reading, and as always, comments and reblogs are much apprciated!

Be strong, saith my heart. A wave crests over the hull of the ship. Then another. And another. I have seen worse things than this. Synchronized hands haul the rope for the sails, a last attempt to regain control of their vessel. The Balkan sea stretches before weary sailors, endless and unforgiving, with one foot in their watery grave and the other clawing to live.

In the midst of this carnage is The Flounder, harbinger of chaos, populated by a crew of men who pillage, murder, and destroy anything that gets in their way. Joel once thought of him and his men as indestructible. The Wrath of Poseidon makes him reconsider otherwise.

“Goddamnit, Bonnie, we’re never gettin’ out of this mess!” Joel yells over the deluge of rain, tightening his grip and growling as the rope digs in to the skin of his palms. He sees another wave crest over them, sturdy as a wall, coming down upon their shivering backs, leaving them spluttering out seawater. He coughs momentarily, heaving in air as he digs his feet into the deck.

When he regains his breath, he hears his name being called. He looks, their Captain bellowing from where he steered. His new orders came through in the middle of the crack of thunder and the whistle of an unending storm. Check beneath the deck for damages. Fix anything that could sink them. He calls for someone to replace his hold and he runs for it.

In his head, he had begun to pen a letter back to his waiting daughter under the care of his brother. Dear Sarah, he thinks, climbing down the ladder and finding himself in knee-deep, ice-cold water. I promised you that this will be my last expedition. That after this, we shall live out however you want us to. I only hope that I can live up to that promise. He cusses under his breath when he finds a growing leak in the hull, crossing himself as he immediately went about to fix it temporarily with what materials he could find. You’re safer with your uncle Tommy than here in this misery. And should anything happen to me, know that I love you and I trust you to be good to him, too. He crosses the threshold to see if there was anything else, moving across floating bottles, bobbing up and down with remnants of booze. With a sigh, isolated from the chaos above deck, he leans against a column, grabbing a drifting bottle and swallowing down the booze to settle his nerves.

I grow old, I grow old. He mouths the words under his breath. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

The muffled sounds of the world melts away as he tries to catch his breath, gritting his teeth from the ache in his hips. Getting too old for this. He tries to think of a way that rest can be comfortable in this mess. Sleep, he thinks, delicious and profound. The very counterfeit of death. It is only when his nerves settle that he hears it.

A splash in the common room. Too loud to be some drifting object. Something that continues to move against the motion of the ship between the waves. He stills himself, the empty bottle slipping between his fingers. Slowly, he moves closer to the source of the sound, like a predator stalking his prey in the darkness. He retrieves a drifting harpoon, peeking through the threshold of the room to inspect. In the semi-darkness, interrupted by the flickering of lanterns and dying candelight, he catches the shimmer of something alive. He raises his weapon, looks through his good eye, his brows crinkling at the effort to focus.

Too old and too goddamn blind for this shit.

He blinks a few times more before he finally sees. And what he sees is you.

Your lithe arms reaching against the walls of the ship, trying to find a weak link that could let you escape. Were you brought in by the waves? Were you the very thing responsible for the leak he just had to fix? Initially, Joel made the movement to speak, to ask how you had ended up here—the sea is no place for a maiden like you. But his breath hitches when he looks closer to see… well, you. The incandescent flickering of a scaled tail, blending with inhuman yet somewhat human skin around your hips, and your upper body, glorious, unmarked, and completely fucking naked.

Perhaps it was the months at sea, conversing with no one but the same crew of men who, despite their intelligentsia and capabilities, do not exactly have the looks capable of producing in him the flustering exhilaration of some teenager. But he, of all people, know of the stories, too. The whispers shared in the saloons in the darkness. The shared thrill and excitement of such beauty and danger lurking beneath the temptresses’ skins. He has heard of claws coming for his companions’ throats, have heard of the trickery they can cause with the power of the ocean entirely at their disposal. He thinks of Odysseus again— tethered to the mast of his ship, The only one of his men to hear the voice of the sirens and have survived. Odysseus, who would have laid his life down just to come close to the very presence of something so divine.

Another thing he knows is that the price of one siren is half the bounty they had planned for. Months of work cut out for himself. Months closer to seeing his daughter again. It’s enough to give him the taste of freedom. His own little piece of heaven that, ironically, is someone else’s hell. The funny thing was, he does not feel guilt about it.

Perhaps he was not Odysseus. He was not as noble. Nor did he ever want to be. A noble character would never provide a good life for his Sarah, waiting for him oceans away.

That was the decision that sealed the creature’s fate before him. Without a second thought, he fires his harpoon, the sharp head piercing through the creature’s shoulder as an angelic wail emanates from her precious throat. With her pinned down, he had begun yelling, calling for the presence of men to see what they’ve caught in their vessel. Their ticket to riches. The honeypot herself.

The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.

He swallows down the guilt as the thunder of heavy steps descend upon their victim, her screams only growing louder and louder amidst the exhilarated, disbelieving laughter of his companions. He does not dare to look. Does not dare to see those doe eyes of yours begging for respite, pulling him into your charms.

An eye of an eye. A good life for Sarah in exchange for hers.

Fair enough.

—-

When The Flounder has escaped the barrages of the storm, the sea is quiet. Some would even say peaceful. Joel wouldn't exactly use that word. Not when he hears your wails breaking the silence. That first night, no one understood what needed to be done. No one even bothered to try and treat your wound. The very wound he had caused. Everyone had something more important to do. Clear the seawater beneath the hull, secure the sails, have a quick meal, get a few winks of sleep. Naturally, the mythical being, as all other inconsequential things, were tucked away, you dealt with the usual brusque nature of men.

So when he had been called to watch you before dawn broke, that's what he set his mind to. Stepping down beneath the deck, with spare scraps of cloth and booze in hand. They've cleared out the flooding. But the wood hadn't dried completely. Mick, who he had passed beforehand, gave him a questioning look. "Aren't ya scared she'd rip your throat out?"

He scoffs, tilting his head to the side as he speaks. "I'm more scared of the stench she'll make if she starts dyin' on us, Micky."

What he did not expect when he opens the closet you've been locked in is the metamorphic cross between a tail and legs you kick out at him. What he hears next is the snarl, your body knocking him over, small, webbed hands slipping around his throat. “You asshole!” That same heavenly voice, filled with so much malice that does not fit with the angelic features towering over him. You speak in a language he does not understand, a torrent of words driven by so much emotion that he sees a glance of what Homer was so distasteful about. You could kill him, devour him bones and all and you wouldn’t even flinch.

However, he sees how your rage blinds you, too. Blinds you to his precise movements, making you think you’ve subdued him, only to suddenly flip your positions, pinning you down by your wrists, trying to look into your eyes.

What you see, staring up at him as your last yells escape you, is the strands of silver in his hair. What follows next is his tired eyes. A sea of stories that you feel as if you can almost hear them if the world is quiet enough. However, you cannot deny the warmth to them. The fire that you failed to see in the other men that shoved you in the closet you have been suffocating in. It’s what makes you stop in your struggle as you finally hear his voice.

“Damnit, let me help you, honey, c’mon…”

It’s then that Joel finally comprehends what he sees. You, a mythical being that shifts from merfolk in one instance, to a walking goddess in the next. Perhaps it was what helped your kind survive; camouflaging yourself and disappearing amidst throes of people. “You turn when ya… when…?”

You swallow, breathless and trembling as you grit your teeth. He sees the panic in your eyes, the idea that he can just betray you if he wanted to. If it would benefit him.

“Let me help you, darlin’.”

“W-when I’m…” You breathe in sharply. “When I’m not in water.”

He nods, slowly, watching the lithe legs and your bare body, spotless and perfect in every way. “I see.” He removes himself from you, moving away from your periphery. You gather your breath, turning over to see him, kneeling over an upturned washtub, somewhat filled with some form of water or another. “Those men up there? They can’t see you like this, otherwise…” he trails off, preferring not to picture what they’d do. What they’ve all once done before at sea. “Ya hear me?” He looks back at you, watching the way your hands gripped your bleeding shoulder wound, evidence of what he had already done to you. “You don’t know what else they can do to a pretty girl like ya.”

So, gently, he kneels beside you with a pained groan from the ache in his knees. You flinch under his touch and he gives you a stern look. “Why did you do this?”

He shakes his head, opening the bottle he brought down with him to pour it over the gaping flesh. Your soft fingers grip on to his arm, the softest whine escaping your lips as you squeeze your eyes shut. “You’re not the only one fightin’ to survive in this world, honey.” He shushes you gently, moving to wrap what pieces of cloth he could find, using them to bandage your wound as you finally soften in his hold. He helps you into the tub, and he tries not to look into your eyes again.

You spoke again when he turned away, giving you the privacy he assumed you needed. “Just because you need to survive doesn’t mean I need it any less.” He stops in his tracks, looking down for a moment before clearing his throat. “Are men always this wretched? That one must tear down the innocent to survive?” He moves to answer, turning back momentarily, before sighing, turning back to continue cleaning up the mess. “Thank you, though. For… this.”

You know exactly how to describe it. You just don’t want him to hear it. The gentleness that comes, not in the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.

Joel hears the noise in his head, clouding his thoughts and drowning them out as he moves from one place to another.as he tries not to think about you, quiet in a tub of water, pretending to ignore him. Men are so quick to blame the gods…

He hands you a plate of scraps. The trimmings from a loaf of bread. A slice of some meat, and the last pieces of cheese he could find. “Eat,” he orders gruffly, moving to sit by the side of your tub, while he seats himself with a slice of bread. “Can’t have ya dyin’ of starvation either.”

You obey, weakened by the struggles of the evening, disheartened by your imprisonment, so close to freedom and at the same time so far away from it. You eat slowly, as if considering each little fragment you were handed, as if the world is unfamiliar in the presence of someone else.

Joel couldn’t help it. Perhaps it was your charm. Whatever it was, he started to tell you things.

He tells you of his life, so far away from the ocean, landlocked. He tells you how they make a living with animals. But he also tells you about Sarah. Sarah who dreamt of the world. Sarah who he was doing all this for. Sarah who asked him as a child to read to her every night. Sarah who was growing more and more with each passing day, the gap between the two of them becoming wider than he could ever comprehend.

“My survival may not mean much,” he says, “but hers is the most vital thing in my life, doll.”

He feels your gaze on him, becoming easier and easier to see as the sun slowly grows higher in the sky. In thirty minutes, his watch will end, and you do not know how the next man will treat you next. Will he be kind? Will he have Joel’s eyes?

He turns to leave, taking the plates with him as he stands up with a pained groan. “Don’t cause too much trouble, girl.” He only stops when you say his name, his gaze catching the blurry image of you, your tail sinking beneath you in the tub. “Yeah?”

“Will you read to me when you return?” you whispered, afraid to show fragility in your own internment.

He nods after a moment of thought, clambering up on deck to report back to the Captain.

Men are so quick to blame the gods.

—

For a while, a week or so, you believed things could be nice with Joel somewhat in your corner. Everyone else seemed to care less or cower in fear of you. Maybe because you do try to scare them away. At least, if you were going to be betrayed, it was Joel doing the betraying.

He returned at the same time just as he did the night before. And slowly, a routine emerges. He cleans your wounds, he feeds you whatever he finds. Then he reads to you. His eyes are too weak to read without you holding the lantern. So you learned that second night to emerge from your tub and to hold the lantern for him. He reads to you with the skilled words of a bard. He reads to you as if he’d read this tale before. Perhaps to Sarah? Perhaps to someone else?

You feel your stomach curdle at the thought of there being someone else in his life. You swallow down the bile and listen more closely.

When he leaves at dawn, you lie in the tub, dreaming of the words he had read to you, turning your back to the man that comes next. They do not bother you. You do not bother them. You become a ghost until he brings you to life.

Sing to me, Muse, of the Man of many wiles.

By the third night, he brings with him a blanket for you to wrap yourself in as you sit closer beside him, trying to follow the words he read, only to surrender because the letters are too rigid, too unnatural. You began shutting your eyes as he reads to you, learning of Odysseus, a once too familiar name you have heard in others of your kind before…

Sing to me, Muse, of these matters. Daughter of Zeus,My starting point is any point you choose.

You begin to talk to him too by the fourth night, observing your transformed toes as he hammered little areas he figured needed repairs. You tell him of the world beneath the waves, the languid distances you’ve traveled, never truly feeling as if you have found a home. You tell him, too, of wonders big and small.

You spoke of all these things, pretending to be unaware of the way he listens with such interest. It’s like you wanted him to be interested. How could you not, when night by night his eyes become warmer and warmer whenever they fell upon you? How could you not when he’s the only one that cared?

You try to read his thoughts, sometimes, when it’s quiet and he prefers to sit by himself, finding a few winks of sleep while you ate your food. He’s rather good at hiding them. You wonder if it makes his life easier. You wonder if any of it is easy for him.

Then he asks you something on his fifth watch.

“Is the whole singin’ thing somethin’ you actually do?”

You turn your head over your shoulder, setting down the snowglobe you’ve taken an interest in the last couple of hours. You saw it on a shelf this afternoon. And you had been impatient for Joel to arrive ever since. You consider the question, Then you smile and nod meekly.

“Do…” you pause, moving to face him instead. “Do you want to hear?”

He smirks, moving the chair closer to your seated frame, seating with the backing pressed to his front, legs straddling the seat, arms atop, covering that sliver of chest you had been sneaking glances from all evening. He had that thin linen shirt on again— the one that swoops down his chest. The one you see in your dreams.

“Only if it won’t kill me, sweet cheeks.”

You like that. Sweet cheeks. You barely understand what it means. You nod slowly, moving to lay on your back as you stare at the ceiling, monotonous and unchanged since you last looked. As you sing, you try not to look him in the eye. As if you cannot bear the sight of him seeing your capabilities and forever changing his perception of you. The hymn is warm, almost homely. A relentless Odyssey that means to take you home. A song that’s said to bring forth memories of home. You know Joel does not understand the language. Nor do you want him to. You won’t admit it, but you’re still terrified of what he could do if you remind him of how much he misses his home.

But what is even more surprising is this: instead of reminiscing about the tropics from which you have loved so deeply, all you can think about is him. All you can picture is his face. All you can see is possibilities of how he’s looking at you now.

When you finish, dawn is already breaking over the horizon. He has to go.

Quietly, you rose and slowly return to the tub with your snowglobe, watching as your body metamorphosizes— your last line of defense for survival. The shine of your scales so familiar, but never this clear under the water. The light is always so diffused— as distant as a foreign planet. Joel, on the other hand, stays there for a few minutes more, looking at the spot where you just were—at the plank of wood bearing the wet shape of your body. You started to think maybe he won’t leave when he swallows, rising from where he sat, and approaching you to hand the cheese he couldn’t eat from his portion of the meal.

“I quite enjoyed that,” he confesses, tucking the food into your palm. Just then, he encloses your hand in both of his, taking a moment to savor the feeling of your cool, changed skin against his. He wonders momentarily if you’ll feel different without your tail. “Thank you.”

He leans down, bringing your hand up to his waiting mouth, his lips pressing a kiss to the back of your hand. A shiver runs down your spine as you comprehend the sensation. His lips. How warm he is… the scruff of his beard against smooth skin. You feel him smirk against your hand, pulling away as he makes his way above deck.

And on your hand is the reddened skin that evidenced the smidgen of affection you were giving. And for now, it’s enough.

You turn your back to the world once more and into your own dream world, staring at your hand as you dream of Joel all morning long.

—

You suppose everything that goes around does eventually come around. You wonder why you're so optimistic. But, you supposed, just as things were getting better, the fates had other plans in store for you.

The call came just as you were coming of the stupor of sleep. From what you can tell, it was barely midday, and someone was yelling above where you resided. All hands on deck.

The thunderous noise of heavy feet trundle above head. The man watching you grumbled, muttering something along the lines of, "don't you dare think about running, li'l bitch."

You watch him slam the door, and curiosity gets the better of you. You rise slowly from the tub, slinking along the floor, struggling to lift yourself enough to peer out from one of the windows. But when you do, you've come to realize the gravest sin of your naivety.

There is a ship to be plundered. Slowly, the masks worn by the men where you are melt away. You see familiar men with their swords drawn, laughing maniacally, screaming and terrifying the ship they've found to appease their hunger.

You feel your body changing, and you begin to turn away from the window when you catch sight of silver hair and scruff. A visage that you finally see in broad daylight.

Joel is one of the men who almost seem to dance to the song of violence. Perhaps the stories were true. Perhaps the secrets of the shadows are laid bare in the light. Even Joel's secrets cannot escape the midday sun. When you see him, he is in battle with some toughened fisherman, their duel witnessed by cowering passengers and well-dressed women. For a moment, you think Joel will come to his senses, see how senseless all this violence is.

But then he takes the man by his hair, holding his head and facing him to the sun. His sword arches across the expanse of his victim's neck, rivulets of blood bursting forth in gush, an unstoppable stream. A squeal escapes you, the violent image burnt into the recesses of your brain, forcing you away from the window.

You run on shaky legs, screaming and yelling, reaching the doorway and attempting to push the door open, only to find resistance. Your fists pound the hard wood, your body pushing and shoving, unable to accept the fact that you can't call to him— show him that you saw and you demand an answer why.

For the first time, ever since Joel shot you with a harpoon, you truly understood something you tried so hard to ignore.

You sleep under the shelter of murderers. You think you felt affection from the hands of a man who just as easily took someone's life away. You are only loved because you're something else. Something not human.

You are only loved because you'll ensure their survival.

—

The blade itself incites the deeds of violence.

When the carnage ended, Joel raised his head to see the sky beginning to paint itself in bolder strokes of colors. He stretches his arms, only to feel the sticky plasma of drying blood sticking to his arms, his torso, spotting the expanse of his face. He is the last to leave their conquered ship, and he takes his time. He walks along the scattered piles of bodies, putting whoever hasn't perished out of their misery with the very same blade he wielded in battle. He's alive. He can go home. He watches the revelry on their vessel: men roasting the spoils from the kitchen, barrels upon barrels of ale and mead slowly being chewed through.

The stage is set. All they need is a little shock of entertainment.

But what he worries about is you. You who probably cowered from fear at the sudden influx of noise. You who definitely saw the things they are capable of doing. You with the wound on your shoulder, healing at a snail's pace with your imprisonment. So, he takes the time to find supplies to help you. He finds antiseptic. He finds needle and thread. It will have to do.

When he returns to his ship, He has spread oil across the deck where the bodies lay. With one bloody hand, he strikes a match to burn away the evidence of their carnage. The burning ship drifts further and further into the horizon, drowned out by the sounds of cheering. Joel is handed a mug of better than average mead.

As he watches the lights flicker and consume the rest of the ship, one question remains at the forefront of his thoughts, echoed and repeated by every voice in his head.

Do I dare?

Clarity comes when he's two mugs in, everyone else fucking off to see how much treasure piled up. He looks at the door that leads directly where you are and the question becomes clearer. It is in the iambic beat of his heart. I am, I am, I am.

It's in the excitement at the thought of seeing you tonight and having a good meal to offer. He begins to smirk, taking two plates and finding food he thinks you'll like.

Do I dare disturb the universe?

—

You do not look at him when he enters. You cannot, knowing the things you’ve seen today. Especially when you hear he’s happy, humming as he sinks down the stairs from the deck. The jump on his step was not there before. And instead of finding that itching curiosity to see if he was smiling or if you were responsible for this joy, you feel your stomach sour at one thought.

Perhaps the slaughtering of others brought glee to his bones.

“You must be hungry,” he says softly, placing a hand on your shoulder. You feel a strange stickiness to his touch. So strange that you finally look, only to be horrified by the sight of his bloodsoaked hand. You yelp helplessly, shrinking away from his touch. You shed tears, luminescent in the semi-darkness, as precious as pearls that only he can see. “Darlin’...” His hand comes to cup your face gently, trying to make you look him in the eye. In this form, your skin is cold, the warmth of his hands turning your skin red.

“Y-you killed them,” you finally manage, the iron smell filling your senses. Seeing you panicked, Joel reaches down into the tub to slowly bring you out of your tub and into his willing arms, slow shushes escaping him. “Are you going to kill me, too?”

So that was what you were so scared of.

You bury your face into his chest, his shirt smelling of him— of sandalwood and musk, tobacco smoke, and underneath it all, a few specks of blood. Meanwhile, he lets you, cradling you in his arms as you continue to shed your tears. He lets you, knowing you wouldn’t listen to him with so much emotion in that pretty little head of yours.

But when you do eventually calm down, he doesn’t miss a moment. He couldn’t.

“I can never harm you, honey.” He breathes in through his nose, finally close enough to smell you. The sea air in your hair, sunshine and honeysuckles from lands he can only dream of. “I can’t even if I tried.”

Slowly, he lays you down where he had dropped his sheet—the sheet you’ve been wrapping yourself around. The sheet that smells like the both of you; that way he could imagine waking up to you the past few times he had gotten sleep. Slowly, he straddles your changed form, naked and so fucking divine it has his head spinning. “Can I take care of ya, darlin’?” He waits for you. Even when everything is pushing him to kiss you— he has to know you want this.

He has to know you’re not miserable.

Seeing this, you take a deep breath. You hold his face. Your skin, smooth and not exactly human, bright against his, earth-marred, bloody, and burnt from days in the sun. And yet, you do not see those flaws. All you see are his warm eyes, so desperate to tell you he wants you, and yet so willing to walk away if you asked. So you grip him by his shirt, pulling him against you in a wanton, desperate kiss.

It is the first kiss you share. The first of the hundreds you’ll share that night. But you will always remember that first.

Because it’s burning against your cool skin. Because the scratch of his scruff is a sensation you have not felt in the long life you have lived. He holds your face, bringing your head closer to him, pressing against the front of his skull, making you whine from want as he deepens the kiss. You’ll always remember it because you know this kiss.

You can already see the ending before the two of you ever began.

His hand slips into your hair, his mouth pulling away from yours, only to drift down your cheek, your jaw… He chuckles against your skin when you gasp so meekly, melting like butter in his arms.

“Let me take care of you, sweetheart,” he whispers, marking the crook of your neck with his mouth. “Let me show you how ya have me wrapped around your pretty li’l finger.”

Already, you can see him in your memories, tangled up in him. His kisses on your neck, his spit drying against your skin. His fingers reaching and tearing you apart. In the eternity you’ll be facing alone… he’s there. Just there, a willing invitation to a dream.

He’s pushing your legs up, now fully transformed, and he comprehends everything. Without words, it seems, things simply come naturally to him. He cups your cheek with one hand, folding your body in half as your legs drape over his broad shoulders. His thumb brushes your lips, and you part them for him. You let him fuck his thumb into your wet mouth, groaning at the way you suck on him. “Good girl…”

Just then, his other hand reaches down, a warm sensation cupping your cunt as you whine softly against him, looking him in the eye. “Good God, are you always this soakin’?”

You slowly pull back, shivering softly from the sensation of him parting your folds. Only you, Joel. No one else can do this to me. He comprehends, and he groans again, leaning down to kiss you. His cock aches in the confines of his pants. Just like that, everything dulls out and he can only comprehend this: to have you. You, you, and just you.

“Guess I have some makin’ up to do to ya, huh?”

Just then, his head disappears between the valley of your breasts, marking a trail of blood-red hickeys down to your stomach, one hand pinching a nipple harshly enough to make you squeal, to which he shushes you again. Gonna get us caught, doll. He continues his way, finally finding your sweet cunt. He shifts his hands so he can slowly part your folds. He kisses the inside of your thighs just as you clamp one hand over your whining mouth. And, with nothing left to do, he takes a deep breath, looking at your face as he sinks his tongue down between your folds, tasting you with a longing groan of delight.

Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.

All you can feel is the flurry of rhythm Joel sets. His trembling jaw, as if whispering prayers to whatever powers may be. His tongue splitting you open and fucking you raw in a way so obscene, you think it’s unbecoming. Perhaps it is. Perhaps by letting him have you this way, you have turned your back on your world. But he fucks one finger into your surprisingly warm cunt and everything else fades away into the silence.

“Fuck, baby…” It’s so easy, you whining urging him on, calling for him and begging to just keep going, dear God. One finger becomes two, then three. Then he raises himself so he can see your face better. So he can see the way your features contort into a heavenly amalgamation of beauty and pleasure and wonder in one full spectrum. But there is nothing more beautiful when his fingers brush against something that made you keen closer to his touch, eyes wide open with your mouth trembling.

“That’s it, isn’t it, darlin’? It is, huh?” He chuckles, the rumble of it vibrating from his chest, echoing to the backs of your thighs, and finally, straight to your wanting cunt. He smirks, his upper body shifting so his arm was much more free— just so he can keep aiming for that one spot that made you keen so beautiful he gets a glance of your otherworldly beauty.

A long forgotten poem comes up from the back of his head, just as he was pulling your orgasm from your willing frame, his other hand covering your mouth before you get too loud just so you wouldn’t be interrupted, caught, and possibly separated.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. “Good fuckin’ girl. Such a good girl, honey…” I did not think they’ll sing for me.

You shut your eyes, grinding your hips into his touch, chasing a sensation you can’t even dare put into words. You whine into the palm of his hand, feeling as if your skin, normally so cool, set on fire with the desire you have for Joel. You peer through your damp lashes, making out the silhouette of his smirk, his warm eyes somewhat swelling with pride.

“Joel… there’s… there–” you barely get the words out when you feel it. Your vision going white, the electricity flowing through your body, and coming out of you in warm bursts.

Heaven, you think, from how Joel so lovingly described it.

When you come to, he’s pulling his fingers away, and a spurt of fluids follow in the wake of his absence. He chuckles, the sound of it emanating the very depths of your consciousness. “Didn’t know ya could do that, pretty girl.”

It leaves you warm, slightly sleepy. Slightly drifting in and out—the way the ocean climbs and recedes from the shore.

You don’t notice the way Joel watches you. The way blood smeared your perfect face. You do not notice his hand tracing down your torso, coloring it a faded, rusty red. Marked by him, and for him.

And yet if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep, even so will I endure. For already have I suffered so much, and much have I toiled in perils of waves and wars. Let she be added to the tales of those.

“Please eat,” he finally says as he kisses your forehead. “I saved a plate for you.”

So you do. You sit up, trembling, the cool porcelain pressed against your thigh as you feasted. Grapes, expensive nuts, and meats you could only dream of. You try not to think of the price he paid to lavish you with such an offering. Because now, instead of the guilt, you feel the rumblings of power in your veins. You have become his very god, the one he’d slay men for. The very god to which he offers a plate paid for by carnage. And if you’ve become god, what can you offer him?

Heaven was not fit to house a creature such as I.

—-

He makes love to you after dinner. Slow, careful. He doesn’t want to terrify you. He doesn’t want to get caught, either. He has you on his lap, your cool hands cupping his heated face, spineless from pleasure as he fucks up into you, giving you a moment to accommodate him and get used to the feeling of his cock stretching you wide open. Every vein, his very length, arching and filling you up in the best way there is to be filled.

“Tell me you want this,” he asks, and you oblige him. You whine for him, calling, biting your lip and throwing your head back. You lead his hand to your chest, heaving with slow, shaky breaths. He knows what you want without ever asking it of you. And that is why he squeezes the curve of your breast, sitting up to press his mouth to your collarbone. The kisses set your skin aflame, his fingers pinching and pulling the pleasure from your willing body.

So he gives you everything. You cum once again with you on top of him. You cum again after he bends you over the nearest table with his rough fingers rubbing circles on your needy clit. And on the third time, somewhere when it’s quiet, you both lie on the blanket, your back to his chest, his cock unmoving inside of you.

It’s a moment of respite. A lull. A moment to catch breaths.

“How much did you see earlier?”

His arm is around your waist, his mustache brushing against the back of your ear. It’s nice. It’s almost domestic, a word so foreign to you. Perhaps domesticity is something innately human. But he makes you have a taste of it. And it tastes so sweet. You hum softly, tilting your head so he can kiss more of your neck.

“I saw the first man you killed,” you tell him, to which he groans, pulling you closer. “I couldn’t watch any more after that. It was… too much.” You feel his teeth brushing against the curve of your ear. Then he bites gently just to hear you squirm.

“I don’t want you lookin’ anymore, sweetheart,” he whispers, “not if it’s going to upset you this much.” He leans up, peering over your peaceful face, with your eyes shut and your body languid. “But… I suppose I’ll try.” You open one eye, peering up at him. “Less murders, my queen, yes ma’am.”

You giggle, pressing your palm to his mouth as he continues to tease you with such pet names. He speaks behind your palm. Angel baby, cutie pie… Other pet names you don’t comprehend because the sounds disappear into your cool skin.

And then he’s fucking you again, with you on your side and him above you, caging you in his arms. You catch your lip between your teeth, gritting out half-choked moans. Already, the pleasure has begun to border the line between pleasure and pain. Already, you feel your legs quaking, but you feel the tremble in his spine as well.

He’s close. He’s so fucking close.

That’s when you notice how sporadic his bursts of movement are becoming. Fewer and shorter in between. So, you begin to give back, maneuvering your bodies so you’re laying on top of him once more, digging your blunt nails down against his biceps. You feel his hands on your waist. Bloody hands that have taken an infinite number of lives before you. Bloody hands that will take who knows how many lives after. Bloody hands, that, despite their track record, hold you as if you are so fragile in his grasp.

Gentleness incomprehensible. The best of the world in the palms of his hands.

The both of you, flying into deep, empty space. Alone with Joel in the aether.

Watching his orgasm wash over him just as yours does for the fourth and last time. He pulls you into his chest, letting you moan into his chest. The only thing that betrays his release is the stuttered breaths, the shaky fingers. That is all. And then you feel the warmth of his seed, buried deep within you, treasured and tucked away. It’s so much, you feel it reach places you didn’t expect it to be.

Even when he’s ending things, he’s giving you everything he’s got.

In the afterglow, he takes care of you. Already, the sun is rising Once again, you won’t see him until it’s dark again. You’ll be turning away from the world and dreaming of those eyes and his smile. But for now, he wipes you clean, kissing your forehead as he brings you back to your tub. For now, you hold his hand for another minute.

“Y’know… Sarah loved playing siren as a fuckin’ kid,” he finally says, cleaning up the plates in silence. “She loves the sea.”

You peer over the lip of the tub, smiling up at him dreamily. “She must be so beautiful. With your smile?” You sigh, leaning back as you look up at the ceiling. “You must miss her much.”

He brushes your cheek with a sigh, shrugging. “Every fuckin’ day, baby.”

He walks away from you, and you wait for him to look back. He does, with a shit-eating smirk at your dazed eyes, neck marked up by his own doing. “Don’t kill anybody today, Joel.”

He nods slowly. “Get some sleep, squirt.” As you turn away, the smile drops. He cannot show that vulnerability out there, amongst the men he’s shared blood, sweat, and tears with. Men he killed from and men he killed with. Men who’d want to tear you apart and swallow you whole. Men who’d kill him if they knew what the two of you did all night.

Then how should I begin to spit out the butt-ends of my days and ways? How should I presume?

He doesn’t have to presume for long. Not when he emerges on deck and he sees the dark shadow of land specking the endless sea of blue he had grown accustomed to. There stands the rise and fall of a mountain, a jagged line breaking the skyline.

The Captain speaks, and the shock burns through him so rapidly that he tries to hide it by leaning against the starboard side.

We hit land midday tomorrow. Our li’l baggage ‘bout to finally bring in some fuckin’ money.

The clock is ticking, what else can he do? Go, go, go.

—

When Joel returns, he’s waking you from a long, languid sleep. You turn to smile at him, but there’s a different look in his eyes. An urgency, a finger pressed to your lips to ensure silence. He carries you from the water and you’re brought up close to see the crease on his forehead. When he wraps you in the sheet, that’s when he speaks.

“Need t’get ya out of here, baby.”

The great escape. The prison break.

Now you feel the tension.

He waits for you to turn, to become inconspicuous. Meanwhile, he’s hot on his heels. He’s gripping a rucksack in his hands, heavy with some inconceivable baggage, muttering to himself. You start to understand the madness. You start to wonder if there’s two versions of Joel waiting behind every door. One of them is the lover— the man who’d kiss you as he introduces you to a world of pleasure. Then there was the monster— the man who sliced open the throat of the person he was robbing blind, the man who fired the harpoon that caused your imprisonment.

“So the monster has come to set me free of my bonds.”

You rise, shaky on your legs and clothed in that sheet that kept you modest. It’s when he stops in his tracks, looking you in the eye before sighing, tearing the cloth away from you to introduce a linen shirt of his. It smells of him; perhaps it even reeks of him.

“They’re going to butcher you if I don’t try, sweetheart.”

You do what you promised to yourself you’ll do when he asks you something. You put your blind faith into his hands and take a leap.

He leads you through a maze of rooms you cannot comprehend. You stop at the crosshairs. You duck under tables when he asks you to. And you know why. Because the men who thirst for your blood can be found on every corner. Because you’re running out of time. Because he’d rather lose you to the waves than those who shed blood like he does.

In a matter of minutes, you find yourselves in the cool evening air. It’s a blind spot, and it’s far enough that he helps you to the raft while it’s almost silent. The sounds of men beginning to have dinner so distant and far away, it’s like an entirely different world. Skillfully, Joel lowers you both into the ocean, the distant beating of the waves masking the sound of him cutting the rope that tethered you to the ship.

He keeps one hand on the behemoth you’ve escaped, and he audibly counts. Quiet enough for you to hear. Tens. Hundreds. Then, a thousand seconds passes.

He pauses, straining to hear. In the flickering light of the lanterns, you see the silver in his hair and his beard. You wonder, momentarily, if it’s the last you’ll see of him. That’s when you hear it.

Yells. But not of alarm. Not of you, their treasured prisoner, missing from her cage. It’s the yells of panic. Of suffering. Of pain.

Upon seeing your features, Joel finally reveals the hidden card up his sleeve.

“I poisoned them. I poisoned them and robbed them blind so they’ll never come after you.”

You look to him, waiting for another shoe to drop. But there is none. This is who he is, laid bare for you to see. Your devotee, giving you the ultimate sacrifice. This is not the monster nor the lover. This is Joel. All masks have fallen to their knees and prostrated themselves before you. Every post abandoned and conquered, only for you.

“Go.”

You blink, and his trembling fingers hold your cheeks, his shaky lips kissing the crown of our head.

“No one’s coming for you as long as I’m there to stop them.”

When you don’t move, he grits his teeth, as if caught between a rock and a hard place. A second passes, then his arms take you, throwing you overboard and into the familiar depths of an ocean below.

The waves welcome you with a surge of power, relentless and enduring. More immortal than you. More divine than you can ever hope to be. The moment you are released from Joel’s hold, the saltwater licks clean the wound on your shoulder. It washes away the scent of Joel’s shirt.

He’s already being erased from you.

From beneath the depths, everything comes back to you. The kiss on your hand, the scraps of food. His sticky, bloodmarked fingers marking you. All of it, slipping through your fingers like sand. In the cool darkness of the open sea, all you can see is a flame starting from the base where you last saw Joel. A fire spreading amongst the ship which you once hailed your prison.

You can see Joel’s boat, smaller in comparison, already racing away towards the shore.

All you can do now, with the power of Poseidon surging and bubbling beneath your veins, is to sing. To sing a hymn that begs before the very gods themselves. But it’s a song that begs Joel, too. Begs him to remember you.

Don’t forget me. You do not know if he hears you. Don’t forget me.

You attempt to follow him beneath the waves.

Don’t forget me.

—-

Against all odds, Joel Miller disembarks from the train to find himself in a farmland so familiar to him. Against all odds, it is three weeks later, and he’s followed all the roads and finds himself home.

He breathes in the smell of wheat under the scorching summer heat. He embraces it. He puts one foot ahead of the other, sea legs no longer present. The ground is too still that it still sometimes unnerves him.

A few meters away, he catches sight of the house. The windows wide open, the breeze making the curtains dance within. And on his porch is a familiar figure that had lowered her book and peered in his direction. He sees her face, and relief encompasses his bones. Sarah.

She’s running to him, yelling, loud and youthful and her face is like the sun. He feels himself smiling, too. The first time in weeks. Miles of walking and sleepless nights fade away with each step you take closer together. Then she’s running to his arms squealing as he embraces her.

Tell me. Is this really then Ithaca?

Finally, the years that separate the little family are slowly bridged. He rebuilds. He tells her stories. He tells her about you. When the sun sets, he tucks Sarah in and kisses her forehead.

Now, here he is. A couple of months that feels like decades have passed him by. He dreamt of you every night for the past three weeks. He sits in his bath, wondering if this was ever how you felt in those long, terrifying days. Did you feel peace, too?

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown.

His eyes fall shut. His breath slows.

A moment of peace as he sees your face, smiling at him, languid hands reaching and asking him to follow you.

He hears your voice, singing into his ear as he chuckles.

Until human voices wake us, and we drown.

taglist: @tuquoquebrute @boofy1998 @persephone-girl @lunxramour @none-of-this-makes-any-sense

#joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller #joel miller smut #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfiction #pirate!joel miller x siren!reader #pirate!joel miller #pirate!au #siren!au #mermaid!au

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kykyonthemoon · 2 months

Text

Limerence (noun) — a mental state of profound romantic infatuation, deep obsession, and fantastical longing.

⋆˚✿˖° This chapter is a part of a mini-series of dark fairy tales and romance sets in another universe. It consists of three chapters, each with a Male Lead and is separated from one another.

⋆˚✿˖° Character x Reader/MC, from another (OC's) point of view. Reader/MC's pronounce is "she/her/hers".

⋆˚✿˖° Warnings & tags: 16+, MDNI, angst, hurt, thriller, emotional and mind control, manipulation, love spell, obsession, unrequited love, major character death, dark fantasy, dark fairy tale, m.urder, s.uicide attempt.

⋆˚✿˖° Leonard is my OC.

⋆˚✿˖° Read more chapters:

✦ Xavier's ✦ Zayne's

⋆˚✿˖° Masterlist

⋆˚✿˖° My friend Cery made an art for this fic here: x

Chapter: The Muse — in which he brings the world his most significant work of art.

⋆˚✿˖° Word count: 3k1

These days, the artist community was vibrant, with some even competing for acceptance to the exhibition at Mo Art Studio.

So did Leonard. He had to rush around and ask for help everywhere in order to be given a chance. Money was not an issue, but the host of this exhibition was certainly not an ordinary person. He wasn't offering tickets to the highest bidder, but rather to those who possessed an artistic vision and passed his evaluation.

“The ticket will be sent to you within the next three days. Please keep in touch.” The other end of the line cut the discussion off, but Leonard's mind remained lightheaded, unable to believe the gift he had just received.

“Wait…” He spoke before the other person hung up. “Excuse me… May I do an interview with that artist in the exhibition?”

There was no response. Leonard believed they were reviewing his proposal. He held his breath and wait for a while, then the manager named Thomas spoke:

“We do not accept interviews. But a few individual queries could suffice. Of course, if you are able to leave a good impression.”

"I got it. Thank you."

Putting the phone aside, Leonard leaned back in his office chair. How to impress Linkon's most talented painter, or should he say - the world's best artist? Despite his young age, there was no one in this city who had never heard of his work.

The artist's name was Rafayel. He became well-known for his landscape paintings, which brought admirers to a dreamlike state when they stood in front of them. He seldom appeared in public, despite having organized hundreds of major and minor exhibitions. Who he truly was remained a question, and the most mysterious part was probably his disappearance a year ago.

For a whole year there were no new paintings or art activities. No one saw him in Linkon during that time. His manager and studio kept it silent, as if everything had evaporated overnight. Then, last weekend, he unexpectedly reappeared and made an important announcement, which was an exhibition called The Muse.

In contrast to his previous events, guests had no idea what they were about to witness. According to the majority of internet comments, Rafayel returned with a work of a lifetime, a painting that exceeded anything he had ever created. That was the final result of a year-long hunt for inspiration. Of course, there were those who believed he was steadily degrading since he hadn't been able to draw anything decent in a long time and had simply planned this event to earn some money.

For Leonard, either truth was fair. He must uncover all of the details and secrets surrounding Rafayel's reappearance. Since that was what he did for a living.

Leonard was a journalist who specialized in arts. Despite his greatest efforts over several years, he still had little hope of succeeding. He had been without a single decent piece for a long time. Then the opportunity to visit the Mo Art studio presented itself before his eyes. He was not going to miss the chance to see a place that had never been accessible to the public before.

The day of the exhibition approached. Leonard had purposefully showed up early, but as he reached the gate, he noticed that about fifty formally dressed guests were already present. They were enjoying wine and food as they walked in groups into the main hall, where the primary event was held. Leonard also entered with nervousness. All of the windows and doors were wide open, allowing the sea air to convey a salty fragrance into the hallway. Rafayel's famous works are framed, and hung or placed in the center of a floral garden that the host tenderly arranged himself, giving guests the impression that they had just lost themselves in the Garden of Eden.

However, that was not the primary attention of the event. Something massive and cylindrical appeared in the center of the hall. It spanned from the ground to an exceedingly high glass ceiling. It had a diameter of up to ten meters, and was covered in a crimson velvet fabric, protecting it from inquisitive eyes of guests. Even the personnel had not an idea of what was inside.

"Rafayel did all of this himself." Thomas, the manager, spoke up. "I can't answer your questions because I'm not sure what's there. But whatever it is, it will undoubtedly live up to the name of his Muse."

The flock of intrigued guests around Thomas nodded, then split out to stroll around and admire the pillar, as if its very presence was already an art. To them, the less they comprehended something, the more valuable it became.

Leonard found a seat close to the window but not too far from the center of the hall. He was afraid of missing the opportunity to witness Rafayel's Muse. Late in the afternoon, the sun glided across the horizon, casting golden rays into the place. The guests began to get tipsy, wondering if Rafayel would show up or if this was all a hoax, when, down the stairs, the host of the party appeared.

He donned a lavish dark blue suit with sculpted sleeves and shoulders that looked to be encrusted with spectrum fish scales. His presence was as magnificent as his name, causing the entire hall to fall silent. Guests held their breath as they watched the young artist stroll down the steps, the heels of his shoes reverberating on the marble floor as if a piece of music had just been executed.

“Welcome to the exhibition.” Rafayel spoke in a solemn voice. "It appears that all of the guests here are wondering; what exactly has he been doing during the past year? Why didn't he present any of his new work? What's the point of this exhibition?"

Rafayel halted for a moment, his dark eyes behind a few purple curls scrutinizing each guest individually, as if reading them all. The corner of his mouth twisted up in delight as he effectively piqued everyone's interest. He resumed his speech:

“It all began with a muse. My muse. That's a story perhaps a lucky visitor would unveil in this exhibition. But for now…” Rafayel lifted a hand. “Let me introduce you to my one and only, Muse.”

The scorched cloth transformed into crimson tiny particles that flew all about, blending into the fiery sunset outside. The crimson sun halted in the center of the room's largest window, and emerged as an illusion was Rafayel's Muse.

Leonard blinked. In front of him stood a tank of water with a thick glass cylinder. The inside was ornamented with flowers, coral, and white pillars of broken plaster encircling an oval of the glass tank, offering him the sense that he was staring at a lost city under the depths of the ocean. There were schools of brilliant small fish swimming around, weaving between the crevices of the broken world. In the midst of the tableau, there was a woman floating in the water in an upright stance, a few meters above the tank's bottom, conveying an illusion that she was flying. Her head was adorned with pearl jewelry, eyes were closed, as if she was in deep slumber. Her hands opened, allowing the orange-red fish to whirl around her wrists. Then they invited each other to swim along her tiny unclothed arms, to her exquisite neck covered in shimmering pearls, and down to the thin white garment that was floating in the water like her own body. Her bare feet lingered above the seaweed, as if to tease them with the fact that they were unable to grasp her no matter how hard they tried.

A beauty out of this world. That was what Leonard's mind could think of. When he came here, he was full of determination to discover Rafayel's secret, but now, when he witnessed its beauty with his own eyes, he was speechless. His brain felt empty, as if that beauty had filled it and he no longer needed anything else. A melodic rhythm could be heard somewhere, distant seemingly from another universe, but apparently emanating from the tank itself.

All guests were drawn to the center. Rafayel vanished among the crowd that was cheering him. Nobody suspected that Rafayel's Muse was not a painting but an entirely distinct thing. Whatever it was, she was the size of an adult in her mid-twenties. A statue or a doll that resembled a real person?

Leonard brushed past a few astonished others to get closer to the tank. Rafayel's exhibit could easily shock the entire art field. Leonard had already begun pondering concepts for his next piece. Unlike the other guests, who were merely engaged in the beauty in front of them, he was more enthralled by the narrative behind The Muse.

Who was she? Where did her story begin? Leonard sought around for Rafayel's silhouette but could not find him. However, near the stairs, he encountered Thomas with a look of panic and utter shock on his face.

“It can't be… No… It can't be her…” Those were the words Leonard could hear before Thomas bolted out of the hall.

There were just a few people invited to the show, and after approximately an hour, they had presumably spent all of their admiration and hypothesis on the tank. They met again in groups to tour Rafayel's studio. Who knows when they would be able to return here again, in ten, twenty, or even fifty years?

Leonard took advantage of the reality that people had left the area to approach closer and examine more, now that he was the only one standing nearby. The Muse was still inside, a smile on her lips, but why did Leonard feel a suffering coming from her? He strolled around the tank to better view her. It was hard to discern whether this was in fact a sculpture by Rafayel or a real person. That was also what the guests spoke about all day.

The Muse was so genuine. To the point that Leonard expected her to open her eyes and climb out of the tank. But she remained still, absorbed in her own undersea world. He stayed frozen, unable to move his gaze away from the tank, for Rafayel had previously stated that within this, his secrets hidden.

Yet Leonard, with his mundane eyes, might never discover it. The only thing he found was possibly a tiny coating of pinkish red water coming from The Muse's breast. That ruby hue seeped through the attire that enveloped her, and it looked nothing like the color that Rafayel often used in his paintings. There was something rather odd about it. It resembled blood, from The Muse herself.

The exhibition came to an end. Guests departed on their own after being notified. Rafayel returned to the lobby. Leonard took the opportunity to ask in an instance:

“Mr. Rafayel. May I ask you a few questions regarding the exhibition?

Rafayel gazed at him. To increase his reputation, he identified himself as a journalist who specialized in writing about art.

"Ah. "I remember you." Rafayel responded. "Among the guests, you were the only one who gave an impressive answer to my question."

Leonard tried to recall the survey he was required to complete before Thomas reached him to inform he had an invitation. These questions were all about Rafayel's career, and the answers were readily accessible online. There was just one question, the last one, that sparked a lot of consideration in Leonard, while having nothing to do with Rafayel's works at all.

"If you were given a magical spell that made the person you love love you forever, would you use it?" Rafayel reiterated his query. "You're the only one who chose not to."

Leonard nodded. It was truly what he had said.

"May I know, why?" Rafayel glanced at him with curiosity. Leonard was taken aback, as he had come here expecting to be an interviewer. Who would have guessed it was the other way around?

"A spell is just an illusion." Leonard responded honestly. "That is not love." "Love must come from a true heart."

"A true heart…" Rafayel repeated each word. His eyes were as sorrowful and deep as the tranquil water, yet it was terrifying since he had no idea when the storm would arrive. "Perhaps, she would choose the same answer as you."

"Pardon?…" Leonard interrupted Rafayel's thoughts. "Who are you talking about?"

Rafayel smiled but remained silent. Fearing that the young artist might leave without answering, Leonard impatiently said:

“Aren't you talking about your Muse? Can you tell me who she is?”

Rafayel gazed at the girl in the aquarium. He smiled. Just a small movement of the lips conveyed devotion, anguish, and regret.

"She is my true heart." Rafayel's voice resembled a song. But he said nothing more, and Leonard was asked to leave right away.

The Muse's story was forever a mystery. The mystery that Leonard had yet to come very close.

That story began a year ago. Or perhaps, it had originated a long, long time ago.

When a Lemurian gives their heart to someone, it will die if not reciprocated.

Rafayel had given his to a human girl.

He met her when she was a child. She was his savior when he was expecting such a painful death on land, and she helped him return to the sea.

She could not remember who he was, nor did she know that all those years, he had been watching her from afar. Amid the waves, behind the rocks, he watched her grow up.

He met her again as a painter many years later. She happily accepted his company. But it was not all he wanted. He longed for her. He craved her touch to make her become his, in the way he had determined his heart belonged to her.

But, her heart belonged to someone else.

A year ago, she told him that she was getting married.

Rafayel could not recall how frightening his emotions were. No matter how powerful the storms were at sea, they could never match his rage at the time. And, with a dreadful calamity brewing in his head, he did what he did to her.

He bound her with an ancient Lemurian enchantment. He made her fall desperately in love with him. She did everything for him, even abandoning her engagement and following him to a far away place. A secluded island only for them. Glorious summer nights lingered forever on the beach, when she and he were entangled, merging in the waves of never-ending love. He had her how he wished.

However, like an illusion, that spell did not persist forever. It drove her to insanity. She wandered alone on the shore, tears streaming and her mouth constantly crying out the name of the person she truthfully loved with each sob. She begged of him.

“Rafayel… Please… Let me go… Please… set me free… Set me free!”

Her screams were drowned in the ocean waves. Little did she realize that seeing her in this way made his heart bleed as well.

"Please…" She sobbed. Rafayel's dagger was in her grasp, and she pressed it to her throat. "If you won't let me leave... I must free myself..."

"Hush now, my dearest…" Rafayel quietly stretched out to her. This was not her first time in this state. He approached her, placed a hand on her forehead, and brushed away her wind-blown hair. Her fingers on the dagger tightened, urging him to back away. However, Rafayel seized the blade that was cutting into her neck, forcing his hand to bleed.

"You don't want to cut yourself, dear."

She trembled and stared at Rafayel. He hummed a very familiar melody, which made her thoughts muddled once more. The dagger slipped from her hand as she collapsed to her knees on the damp beach. Screaming.

“Be still, dearest love.” Rafayel gently lowered down. His knees were next to hers, as if he, too, was begging her to stay. “I can ease all our suffering… If you listen to me now…”

She covered her ears and shook her head with ferocity as if she never wanted to hear another word from him. Rafayel smiled in bitter. She had been like this lately, forgetting who she was and how profoundly she was in love with him. But that was alright. He would help her rekindle her love. She would obey at once as soon as he began singing.

He sang their song. He sang it the first time they met, and he still sang it day by day with her by his side.

She wept tremendously. She clutched her head and pleaded with him to stop. But Rafayel could never. Just like he could not stop the waves from crashing against the shore, who could ever stop his love for her?

After a while, she became quiet. No more yelling and pleading. She gave him an empty stare and a smile.

"Rafayel." She called his name. Her hand found his body, as though she had desired to be close to him since forever. Rafayel embraced her. He stroked and kissed the top of her head. His tears sank, condensing into pearls and nestling on her hair.

“I'm sorry… I'm sorry for turning you into someone like this…” Rafayel whispered in her ear. “But I've found a way to fix everything. You shall not suffer any longer... And neither shall I..."

Rafayel held her with one hand as the other sought the dagger's hilt in the moist sand.

“Will you do this for me?”

He gazed into the eyes of hers which were dreamy under the spell of love. She nodded.

"I vow to do everything for my dearest beloved."

"Very good." Rafayel smiled as he kissed her lips. "You will always be my Muse… Mine, forever..."

The dagger swung across the fiery sunset. The water chanted its melody in an ancient ritual. Then everything fell silent.

Rafayel watched her passionately as she slept within the water tank he had specifically built for her. That was her home, now and forever.

His hand stroked across the beautiful design. Her body was adorned with jewelry crafted from his teardrops. She was a masterpiece of his lifetime, which extended to no end. His Muse. His lips found hers on the other side of the glass, and he pressed a kiss.

From now on, she would weep no more. She would feel no pain.

A crimson light emanated from inside the pocket near Rafayel's chest. He pulled out a blazing red protocore.

This entire world will soon know that, her true heart shall forever belong to him and him alone.

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earlgarden-archived · 7 months

Text

my will to live.

"i used to hear a simple song, that was until you came along"

ft. Dazai Osamu

synopsis. his feelings for you have always been kept private, in fear that you might disappear someday just like his old friend. One day, he realises his feelings have grown too strong, so he decides to finally take action...

warnings. mentions of suicide (barely), might be ooc?

a/n. After watching episode 11, I decided to write this to celebrate that Dazai is alive! But rip Fyodor and Sigma (or maybe they're still alive?)

The dimly lit room was shrouded in a melancholic silence. Dazai sat alone at his desk, fingers idly tracing the rim of a half-empty glass of whiskey. His thoughts were as turbulent as the storm brewing outside, each drop of rain a reflection of the turmoil in his mind.

Dazai's melancholy had always been a constant companion, until he met you. You, the one person who managed to penetrate the layers of his facade, the one who made him feel something other than despair. But Dazai was terrified of admitting his feelings, for he believed that his affection for you could only bring you pain for when he would one day leave this world... Or if you were to leave this world...

As raindrops pelted against the window, a sudden realization washed over him like a cleansing rain. He couldn't bear the thought of leaving this world, not when you were in it. The very idea of never seeing your smile again filled him with a longing so profound it physically ached.

He reached for his phone, his trembling fingers struggling to compose a message. "I need to see you. Urgently," he typed, his heart pounding with each letter he pressed.

Minutes felt like hours until your response arrived, a simple "I'll be right there" that brought both relief and trepidation.

When you entered his apartment, the warmth of your presence dispelled the shadows that clung to Dazai's soul. You found him standing by the window, gazing at the rain-soaked world outside.

"Dazai, what's wrong?" your voice was filled with genuine concern as you approached him.

He turned to face you, his normally carefree eyes now betraying a vulnerability that took your breath away. "It's you," he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper. "I can't bear the thought of losing you."

You furrowed your brow, puzzled by his confession. "What do you mean, Dazai?"

He took a deep breath, his emotions a tempest threatening to consume him. "I've spent my life chasing death, but then you came along, and suddenly, I found something worth living for. I love you, and I can't stand the idea of leaving you behind."

Your heart skipped a beat, and tears welled up in your eyes as you took his hand in yours. "Dazai," you whispered, "I love you too."

In that moment, the rain outside seemed to cease, as if the universe itself held its breath. Dazai pulled you close, his arms wrapping around you as if he could protect you from all the darkness that haunted his past.

As you held each other in the dimly lit room, Dazai would then find out that love was a powerful force, strong enough to dispel even the darkest of shadows. He had found his reason to live in you, and he was determined to cherish it, to cherish you, for as long as he could.

And so, in that quiet, rain-kissed moment, two souls found solace in each other's arms, and for the first time in a long while, Dazai dared to hope that perhaps life was worth living after all.

#dazai bungou stray dogs #osamu dazai x reader #dazai bsd #dazai x you #dazai x reader #bsd x you #bsd x y/n #bsd x reader #dazai x y/n #bsd dazai #bungou stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs dazai #dazai osamu #osamu dazai #bungou stray dogs x you #bungou stray dogs #dazai fluff

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viintxgephrxg · 1 year

Text

— rodan.

pairing: simon ‘ghost’ riley/younger!reader [gn]

genre: platonic

fandom: call of duty: modern warfare 2

summary: rodan and ghost have been partners for as long as the younger could remember, after a tragic accident that resulted in the loss of their entire team they decided to stick with the masked man permanently…. surprisingly, he wasn’t opposed to that

c/w: blood and death, depictions of violence and gore, war/militant violence, gender neutral terms and pronouns (they/them), gender unspecified

a/n: there’s gonna be several different parts because the campaign is long as all fucking hell 😭 but i want to write out the entire thing w reader insert so.. hope you enjoy this little snippet!

—

the sun was scorching. blistering as it burned, it’s rays hot and stifling across the torrid desert plains of al mazrah, united republic of adal.

and even more stifling and oppressively warm against the back of one [y/name] [l/name]. callsign; rodan. an expert in pyrotechnics and demolitions, a ‘one hell of a shot’ sniper, and a pretty thoroughly trained medic. the callsign was their idea actually, being an avid godzilla fan growing up and having watched the entire series beginning to end at least a dozen times.

their commanding officer at the time of choosing it agreed wholeheartedly. though, his was less based on fantasy movies and more so based on [y/name]’s strange fascination with anything that is fire and demolitions. even stranger was their seemingly vast and deep knowledge of the subjects. “rodan huh? fire demon indeed ain’tcha kid?”

[y/name] swore through and through they weren’t a pyromaniac. though their partner, ghost, had a hard time believing that after a mission in peru. which not only resulted in a new scar across their face.. but also an enemy building being set ablaze and leveled to the ground at their hand. the tick that set him off about their weird love of all things fire and demolitions was their manic laughter as the building collapsed.

the callsign made sense to him now, but when he was first partnered with the kid he was set off by their strange obsession, and sharply polished fighting skills. now though, he knew the kid was —excluding their persona on the battlefield— relatively harmless.

couldn’t say the same for their incredible talent in working every last one of his nerves though—

“uuggghhhh.”

—ghost sighed under his breath, though he wouldn’t ever admit it the annoyed feeling he had was stitched with a deep and profound fondness and love for the whining sniper walking behind him.

“keep walkin’.” he grumbled.

“it’s so fucking hot,” they complained. halting for a moment to tug at the bunched up fabric of their tactical joggers creasing up their crotch.

“it’s just the fuckin’ sun kid,” ghost responded.

“well the sun is shitting all over me,” [y/name] grouched, “everything’s rubbing and pinching! i’m in need of some baby powder or something!”

“what you need is a fuckin’ muzzle.” ghost teased, though his comment was insulting his tone let the younger soldier know he was only playing.

“oh wow that was a good one,” they mocked, “it was still a good one the last seventy fucking times you used it.”

“if i’ve had to say it seventy fuckin’ times maybe it’s time to do a little self reflectin’.”

[y/name] feigned a laugh, then dropped their expression to annoyed as they glared at him from the corner of their eye. not that he could see them side-eyeing him past their black tactical goggles. or see their expression through the black tactical mask on the lower half of their face. “you’re so fucking funny. honestly, i’m in goddamn stitches over here.”

ghost let one corner of his lips pull up into a jibing smirk behind his mask, the banter between him and the pyromaniac succeeding in lightening his mood—

“i’m not havin’ a good time either but i’m not gonna whinge the entire time.”

—only slightly.

“well that’s the difference between you and me, that and i’m very good looking.”

“and humble.”

[y/name] laughed, an actual laugh spilling from their lips at his response to their arrogance. ghost spun around, having turned to face the sniper when they stopped to pull the pinching wedgie out of their ass and the pair remaining where the stood throughout the duration of their conversation. “let’s keep movin’. we’re nearly there.”

the masked man didn’t bother turning over his shoulder to make sure they were following, he knew they’d dutifully fall in step behind him as he stalked through the desert plain. and [y/name] did just that, after tugging the creases in their pants loose again.

the sniper didn’t complain much after that, finding a bit of solace in the cool shadows of the canyon they entered, and the way their tactical goggles blocked out most of the reflective light.

if they were to complain about anything other than the sheering heat and blinding sunshine, it would be the mask over the lower half of their face that was making it a touch harder to breathe. they figured ghost was well past his limits with their grousing though so they kept that little problem to themself.

they continued forward regardless, following their partner as he climbed rocks and vaulted over old and withered dead logs. until finally, they made it to their assigned checkpoint.

it was an overhanging ledge, one that had a crystal clear vantage point of the relatively large militia gathering several miles ahead and on level ground.

and that there was their assignment. an arms deal iranian terrorists were to make with russia, and the iranian’s qud’s force general; ghorbrani was due to be there. their mission was to assassinate him. with commander graves of shepherd’s ‘shadow company’ leveling the rest of the gathered militia with a short range missile.

[y/name] let ghost communicate to laswell, and everyone else on their channel that they were in position. graves responded he was ready to launch the missile when they were. with that the masked man turned to his partner at his side. “go ahead kid.”

[y/name] nodded then got down onto their stomach, inching forward in an army crawl until they could perch their rifle right at the very rim of the cliff they were on. when it was set firmly into the grooves of the sandstone they leaned forward and peered through the scope, swiveling the barrel until the crosshair aligned perfectly with general ghorbrani’s head. “set.”

ghost nodded at their word of confirmation then reached up to click the button on the radio strapped to his shoulder. “rodan is clear. launch the missile.”

“copy, sending now.”

[y/name] counted the seconds down in their head, listening in to graves’ countdown as well just to be sure they aligned the shot perfectly.

when they reached two together rodan clenched their finger and pulled the trigger, they watched through their scope as ghorbrani’s head jerked to the side with a geyser of blood before his body dropped.

the men surrounding him panicked, scrambling about and lifting their guns. and that’s all [y/name] saw before they pulled away from their scope and ducked their head into the crook of their elbow. bringing their opposite arm up to cover their head as the missile made contact.

a loud and piercing explosion erupted in their ears as the missile made contact, they felt the rush of wind from the explosive then the rumble of the earth through their gear and uniform.

when [y/name] lifted their head from the cover they saw the area had been demolished, and the smoke from the missile rolling outwards in a ring from the contact point.

“bloody fuckin’ hell,” they heard ghost mutter quickly followed with; “direct hit. target destroyed.”

[y/name] lifted themself from the ground and dusted off the front of their gear, swiping their hand quickly over their pants to get the dust collected on the fabric off.

the dust didn’t puff up in a cloud as they patted their pants though, the sandy colored dirt sticking to their joggers. they grumbled and let the rifle slide from their hands to hang at their hip before using both hands to try and pat it off. again… no avail.

[y/name] growled angrily as their patting and dusting turned aggressive to try and get rid of the shit all over their pants.

“quit fussin’ with it!” ghost growled grabbing their wrists and tugging them away from their joggers. having been watching them grow more and more irritated with the dust in their pants.

“it’s gonna annoy the hell outta me!”

“try to ignore it!”

“i can’t do that if i already know it’s there!”

“well it obviously ain’t gonna come off! just get movin’ back to extract!” he order firmly and in finality, the sniper grumbled under their breath as they spun around when he released their wrists.

ghost followed behind them as they both trekked back the way they came, walking just about a mile or two before coming upon the heli sat idle on a leveled plateau. the pilot still sat in the front with his arms folded and his head dropped forward on his chest.

[y/name] stifled their laughter at the ‘dad pose’ the pilot took to taking a nap and ghost huffed before he roughly pushed them forward. the sniper having stopped to leer humorously at the sleeping soldier. “get your ass in the damn helicopter.” he growled.

[y/name] didn’t say anything as they clambered into the chopper through the gaping door, settling relatively quick on the seat up against the wall of the chopper. they heard ghost knock on the window with his knuckle, the soldier awakening with a flinch as he turned to the source of the noise to find ghost gesturing they were ready to ship out.

the pilot nodded as he slid on a headset and flicked several switches above his head to get the helicopter going. the headphones over their ears muffled out the loud shriek of whirring blades as the bird started up.

ghost climbed in and took the seat directly across from his partner, after sliding on a headset of his own he found himself staring at them.

[y/name] didn’t pay him any mind, long since having grown used to the way he likes to observe and keenly watch everything around him.

they instead lifted their fingers to the sides of their goggles and pulled them off from over their eyes to rest on their hairline. then reaching back, loosened the tightening buckles of their mask, they held it while they tugged down the black tactical shemagh they usually layered underneath their metallic mask down to bunch up in their neck. then let the black steel mask drop to sit in the space of their neck atop of it.

ghost’s focus was immediately drawn to the scars on their face, the one spanning across the left side of their face particularly. starting thin at their hairline and thickening as it scratched over their eyebrow, eye and ended in the middle of their cheek.

then his eyes graced over the one across the right side of their lips, the small x scar on their right cheek, and then finally the medium sized one just above their right eyebrow. that was the one they obtained in peru, when one of the assailants they were fighting managed to knick them with his knife.

when they leaned their head back, closing their eyes with a sigh, ghost could just barely see the thick and jagged scar spanning across the length of the front of their neck. the scar anyone could tell was from someone slashing their throat. [y/name] still remembers that day. vividly.

and they’ve never ever spoken about it. not even to ghost. the only reason he knew the scar existed in the first place was because one day [y/name] hadn’t been wearing the black tactical shemagh they usually wear in their neck to obscure it.

and even now he barely saw it past the brim of said scarf, bunched up around their neck, the tactical mask resting in the dip of their throat obscuring it alongside.

he stared a moment longer before turning away and watching the desert plains as they sped passed. when they finally touched down in their temporary outpost, they both were quick to climb out and make their way inside.

meeting up with laswell and briefing her on how the mission went on their end. then, the pair were shocked to be told they’ve been granted a few months of leave. their station chief believing they could use the long over due off-duty time.

when they got this news neither [y/name] nor simon were too enthusiastic. they both didn’t have much, or anything at all to go home to.. there wasn’t really any reason for them to be excited to temporality be on a break from their militant careers.

what they did have was each other.. and they find solace in that and as usual ghost spent those months with the younger soldier, and as usual he was able to melt back to simon.

simon who was comfortable in [y/name]’s presence. not ghost; the cold and desensitized soldier who had an indifference to everything surrounding him. he could just be simon, the man behind the mask who felt a love like no other for the kid. the kid who had grown on him.

and he was afraid of those implications. for in his very long and very traumatic life simon had come to realize there was nothing good in this world for him. everything he’s ever had that came close to being something or someone he could love.. was incinerated and destroyed.

and he was certain the young soldier would meet the same fate.. but he couldn’t help it. they reminded him so much of himself that it made him dwell on their presence so much more.

he was a bit shocked that he had taken to them so quickly, but he was more so shocked that the sniper in turn had taken a shine to him too.

he knew very little of [y/name]’s background, only what they had told him when they first met about their trauma and nightmarish past. they, only doing so after he shared a bit about what he went through.

though, as the months and months continued to pass he found himself growing more and more attached to the younger. it was a strange thing… whenever in their presence he had felt a warmth he hadn’t felt in years.

a warmth he believed with every sliver of his being had been destroyed alongside any semblance of happiness or comfort he had or would have.

but alas… there they were. [y/name].

his [y/name].

and he would do anything to keep them safe… alive.. he had to. because for once in his entire damn life..

… simon would be selfish.

—

a/n: ik it’s short as hell but i’ve a plan for this okay.. and i’m also trying to finish up the last couple chapter of ‘anpu’ so this is what we’ve got 🌝 i’ve also grown to realize i’ve a habit of not only making [reader] crazy strong and badass but also refuse to reveal any of their history ever lmaooo

#gn!reader #platonic!reader #cod mw2 #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #john price #ghost x reader #soap x reader #gaz x reader #price x reader #cod x reader #x reader #reader insert #platonic imagine #platonic relationships

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chantsdemarins · 3 months

Text

The Breath of the Æsir 🏰 (Loki x Reader) Chapter 2: The Stranger

Okay friends, I re-wrote Chapter 2. I was not happy with it after a friend pointed out to me that it needed work. Making me remember I really need a beta reader! *Any takers?

I hope those who might have read the first one will give this version a try!! As always reblogging and comments are the most amazing experience for me as a writer in this community. Thank you for reading and waiting. I am trying to get on a schedule I can stick to!

Summary: This is Loki's side of the story so far, as the world he finds himself in stirs into turmoil. What will the nature of your relationship be under these circumstances?

Smut Meter: Calm wildfire status

Word Count: 3,141 (give or take)

Loki

Loki was hiding among the Æsir. His true origin was not of theirs. Fárbauti, a frost giant, had been responsible for pulling him out of the tight silence and into form, so he could live among the Gods. A thin agreement had occurred between Odín and the Jötunn. This agreement was unknown to Loki. Odín would raise him. All his life, stirring in his veins was the blood of another people, another realm. The ornate mirrors in Asgard reflected back to him the image of a handsome spell caster with Æsir features. There was only ever the slightest feeling, that perhaps, his near-constant discontent, was related to the architecture of a family lie.

He knew where there was limitation, there was often equal illumination. Therefore, this conflict gave Loki insight into many aspects of the universe, some of which he would never have known had he not been born for deceit. This dual vision of light and dark created a natural and gradual buildup of powers, which he had no reason not to abuse. Where he lacked morals, he was tempered by circumstance back into some code of character that appeased both his father and whatever party he had offended by his lack of grace and concern. However, from time to time, something would cause him to change, more permanently, more absolutely. These events were so profound when they happened that the Skalds, both in Asgard and Midgard, told of them. Sometimes humans would be caught in the lava of the Gods' path. You were one of those humans. The day Loki lay close to one of his possible deaths, you had found him.

He was banished because he had seen enough. His contrary disposition had rejected the Northman’s insistence on placing his royal family at the heart of their bloody conquest. Thor, Freyja, Frigg—and Odín—had been brought deep into the conflict moving across the belly of Midgard. They used incantations and sacrifices to move the will of the Gods in their favor. Loki disliked this immensely. He did not like to be appeased with tokens. The ground of Asgard was saturated with the blood of Midgard. This disturbed him so much and ate at his being until he could stand it no longer. He cursed Thor, cursed Odín for the part they played in encouraging such worship.

In the throes of his discontent, Loki quickly discovered a God cannot have everything. For example, he could not have his opinion and his magic. Odín told him to go see for himself. Go see why the humans needed the Gods. See their fragility and need for guidance. He would be begging him to return to Asgard. “Go experience their ignorance with only a sword to protect you from it,” Odín had said to him.

When Loki decided to take a great risk, a great calamitous excitement would concurrently erupt. His enduring life and the lives of the Gods needn’t be so pristine and eternal. He longed for the shorter life of the Midgardians. He wanted to feel what life would be like if you only had a few years before you became permanent food for the beetles and worms. He needed to feel time slipping away from his grasp. So, without any seiðr, he nakedly stepped through the Bifrost and fell to Earth, fell to the home of the Midgard serpent, one of his many children, of which he was not the only father.

When he opened his eyes and began to walk across the hillside, so indulgently green it hurt. He took a moment and said a prayer to the elemental spirits that spun such colors into life on Midgard. They were independent of any God's influence, even ones with their full powers. The elementals were bonded to Midgard herself as servants. Loki could only admire their spinning of forms; he still had incredible vision even without any magic. He could see into their structural design and could listen to the hum of their cellular respiration. Loki was not the God of such things as fertility, but he felt himself in a keen understanding of it. He truly saw his station in the nine realms as a God responsible for making life, more than the ending of it. Not that any of the Gods would ever understand this about him. Creators often end up destroying their most precious creations just because they can. Loki had come to Midgard to change this.

He walked with careful trepidation; he was mortal now, and even though his heart soared with the thrill of his new lot, he did not want his tenure on Earth to be over so quickly. So, he cautiously guarded his path over the verdant hillside in the quiet of the afternoon. Things were seemingly calm, still, which actually began to worry Loki. Silence could mean only two things: peace or death. As he continued walking to gain a better view, he encountered a sight he was not prepared to see just yet. The ruins of a village burned in a heavy cascade of smoke. He quickly remembered he had no power to change the circumstances before him. He thought of Thor—would he truly celebrate this use of his name? He wished they would have the courage to do as he did, to come and see the work of the humans. Loki would have to be the eyes of the gods this time. Just as his contemplation ended, he felt the ground beneath him bend in a rhythmic flutter—horses. It was the same in any realm; the beasts were among the most powerful of all creations. Some could even fly, but not these. These heavy beasts carried their masters, who likely spotted him from their outposts.

They saw a stranger overlooking their burned village and identified him as one of the raiders, one of the pillagers, not as the God who made such acts possible. He looked up just in time to see a sword brandished by one of the riders. With a quick and skillful blow, he was impaled in his stomach. It had only been a few hours since his arrival, and already he was vanquished by the Norns. He fell, consumed by defeat and physical pain, his armor pierced. They spoke in their language, seemingly arguing whether they should take him captive. Perhaps they would have if they had not just suffered such a great loss. They left him to die and rode away without looking back.

The Encounter

Loki was consumed with a pain he had never felt before; it was completely debilitating. No sooner had he arrived on Midgard as a human he was swept away into the saga of their fragility. He couldn’t believe he was once so interested to experience this, to feel his life expiring and his pulse weaken. His heart was slowing, and every breath felt like he was uncertain if yet another would follow. He now worried that if he were to die on Midgard like this, his death would remain unknown, and his family would not find him before the vultures tore the newly minted mortal flesh from his bones. He fell into a fever quickly and began to dream of the frozen landscapes of his true birth home, of Jötunheim. His Asgardian façade was fading with every labored breath.

It was just his luck that as he could take no further steps, he reached the courtyard lined with thorny gorse, which pierced the white of his skin as he fell through the yellow flowers, leaving droplets of blood forming from yet another location other than his stomach. He called out something from a tongue he knew from Midgard, although he knew not where and when it was from. He saw you in the doorway before he closed his eyes; he wasn’t sure if he would open them again. He hoped that if he did, you would be there beside him. It was the tiniest of wishes; he was sure you were a Valkyrie. Not having enough blood in his veins to remember there were no Valkyries on Earth, his eyes shut, and the world of Midgard faded from his senses.

He had felt the jostling of stitches, the pulling of thread against his taut skin. He saw you, Valkyrie, with golden threads weaving his wound closed. He swore he heard you tell him his body was a tapestry, one you could embroider. He laughed at the thought of being sewn together by a fierce battle goddess of the nine realms. He worried about his weakness. He did not like the vulnerability that consumed him as he fought to return to the living. Part of him remembered the icy cold feeling of space he once felt as he let go of Thor and drifted off into the void, only to be intercepted by a race of beings so deadly and diabolical, he knew he wouldn’t be able to die enough times to satisfy their lust for power and domination. Part of him rested in the knowledge that you would make him whole again. The Norns had led him to a warrior who was also a weaver, a tailor.

He Lives, for Now

"Gef þú seiðr þinn mér," Loki mumbled once he was finally able to awaken. Sweat covered his face. A chill coursed through him. You had saved him just as he had predicted. He was still alive, but he was not yet well at all. "What is seiðr?" you immediately asked. You did not have what this man was asking for, and you would not be robbed of what you did have. Leaping to your feet, you grabbed the knife you had uncovered from his person while the man slept. Loki found himself once again at the receiving end of iron—only this time, it was his own.

"How quickly I forgot this is how people communicate, regardless of their station," Loki mused, clutching his stomach, fingers running along your needlework which now adorned him. "Communicate? Sir, you are in my home. I saved your life, and now you ask me for something else. What else could you want, unless you are the thief and murderer my servants say you are? Are they right? Have you come to kill us?" Your voice was a barely audible trill, but every vowel entered his ear as if it were a drum beating away shadows inside of him. You looked so shaky and unsure Loki was immediately disoriented.

As a Valkyrie, you would be more skillful, potentially than him. Why were you not wielding your own blade? Loki’s mind puzzled in a million different directions. In the chosen tongue, he rattled off an inquiry about where he was, now remembering he was on Earth as he came to. He needed you to confirm it. You told him the name of this small village, and Loki more solidly realized you were actually a human woman, seemingly. He found his voice hidden beneath the swell of feelings rising in his chest. "Do you know how to use that knife, woman? Don't wield something you aren't prepared to use, and why would you undo your handiwork?" Loki pointed to the careful stitches across his body. "You know me not, sir," you retorted. "I have unraveled nearly all the needlework I started. I have thrashed threads from one tapestry to another; I have no finished embroidery to show for it, so sir, flicking the threads that hold your guts in would be no long consideration."

The words that flew out of your mouth betrayed all your education and training. Never in your life had you spoken to a man like this, not to your father and surely never to your husband, but this man seemed to be able to feel and hear anything you might say. You didn’t know why you knew that, but you did. Perhaps it was the sewing him up that gave you such a perspective. The candlelight study of his stomach. You thought of the fine line that jutted across his abdomen where you had let your fingers trace in a kind of stoic appreciation for a moment while applying your stitches to his wound. You suspected your husband’s stomach did not have muscular curvature. The stranger was the first man you’d ever seen naked. You let yourself consider that for the briefest of moments before you returned to your senses and your defense of your home. By no means had you an understanding of just who this man was and what he was capable of even in his weakened state.

Loki continued to consider your origins. You could not be a simple incarnation of a human. Perhaps you were actually Asgardian, another traveler like himself, grown discontent with the trappings of the ethereal realm and transplanted to Midgard. He had known others who had come; his idea of leaving had not been a unique one. The Norns might have given him some grace after all, by leading him to you. Yet if you were a fragile mortal with a much shorter life than his, you wore your timeline with such grace, that it completely startled him. You were closer to the end of your short life than the beginning, perhaps you knew this and were prepared to defend what little you had accumulated. Or maybe it was something else that inspired such bold words. "What do they call you?" you finally spoke again, daring to continue. "Loki." His name was a rune itself, a spell, the only magic he had left. He wondered if you would feel its power. "Loki," you repeated, his name flowed from your heart to your feet, causing your body to feel heavy. You landed on the velvet living room chair with a crash. Loki, who had been situated in the other chair, leaped up beyond the ability his body should have allowed. "Woman," he said, daring to near you. "Please wake." He had not expected you to faint.

As he drew closer to you, he wasn't sure if you had fainted or passed to some other realm. You looked so peaceful. He held your head and for a moment dared to place a strand of your hair behind your ear. Your eyes struggled to open. "Loki," you murmured, not having heard the name before, but its composition—the four sounds—collided, perhaps stealing your breath. His concern for you was evident on his face, but it quickly faded, replaced by something akin to fear. Loki was startled by how swiftly Midgard's emotions were becoming his own. He had known so little of fear and now he was becoming proficient in all its shades and hues.

Suddenly a deep knock on the door and frantic voices could be heard from outside in the courtyard. A group of tenants had gathered, yelling and frantic. Perhaps the worst of your fears had materialized. Not only were you harboring a man, but now the townsfolk knew and had come to confront you about it in your husband’s absence. You did not want to open the door. You glanced at Loki, who had stepped further back into the darkness of the living room while you found your footing. "Lady, you should answer them," Loki's voice was a mere shadow, yet you trusted it to your surprise. Elinor was also nowhere to be found, and you were once again left to make decisions by yourself. This introduction with the stranger would have to further wait. With all your strength, you walked across the room and unlocked the large, heavy door. Before you could open it fully, the crowd of tenants crashed into your home and fell against you. There were strict conditions under which the manor lords ruled, and such an intrusion was likely less a group coming to judge your guest but one of desperation you immediately recognized.

You gasped for air and tried to calm them, beseeching one of the tenants to explain what had happened. "They are here, the slaughter wolves," Æthaldan, the young blacksmith, finally spoke wildly. The rest of their voices were a blur, a scattered cacophony you couldn't decipher. The "slaughter wolves," who sought to take the land you managed, had been kept at bay by bribe or sword wielded in temporary acts to push them back, to change their minds about the worth of the land. Words had been spoken by the manor lords about the rocky soil being no better than the soils of where they came. Their crops would not find purchase here either. You knew this to be true in your heart since your land had been barren, and that barrenness had crept into all places of your marriage, including your womb. Nothing but the yellow gorse you had planted around the periphery had grown.

Suddenly from behind the crowd, you heard the sound of your closest companion, "What are we to do?" Elinor had been able to come back to the manor from where she had been in the village; she was now frantic as well as she pushed Æthaldan and the others out of her way to get to you. You surveyed the tenants, as you embraced your friend; none had weapons worthy of the name. One held a reaping iron, another something procured from the hearth, likely nothing in comparison to the weapons of the intruders. You needed time to think, but there was none. You looked down at the weapon you had lifted from the stranger while he slept. You had nearly forgotten you were holding it, clasped tightly in your hand. You tried to hide it in your skirt pockets, but it was clear no one had noticed what you were holding in their panic, not even Elinor.

"Please keep them safe until I return!" you finally shouted at your friend, knowing the best she could do was bolt the door once everyone was inside. Your instructions were curt, "Call to the others, have them come to the house," your voice trailed off as you ran through the corridor of the manor, looking for the stranger. You wondered where he had gone; he was still injured but not knowing his nature of intent you imagined all possible things as you searched for him in the curtained darkness of your halls. Your thoughts ceased when you came upon his nearly collapsed form; he was barely able to stand. Without thinking further, you handed him back his knife, taking his hand and placing it to it, folding his fingers around the hilt. "Help us now, I saved you, now you save us," you demanded. "This is your weapon, use it,” you reiterated when you noticed he was not stirred to action. His blue eyes were crestfallen, “Lady, I cannot,” were his words before he handed the blade back to you.

#loki #tom hiddleston #loki laufeyson #loki fanfiction #loki fandom #loki fanfic #mcu #loki fluff #loki smut #loki x reader #norse aesthetic #norse mythology #norse pantheon #norse gods #norse paganism

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webanglikethat · 3 months

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oh well … I just finished the episode and as a luke stan, this hurt in every single way and angle.

there’s a lot I could say (and I will) but I want to focus on how, during the confrontation Luke doesn’t act like your typical storybook villain. there's no malicious smirk, no sinister laughter, no scornful remarks about Percy's trust. there is no “I can’t believe you trusted me” or berating in any way. he doesn't belittle or exude confidence; instead, he stands devoid of arrogance, pleading.

he is there, and he’s begging him. he’s pleading him to understand. because they walked on the same path. they lost their mothers to a God. and sure, you could argue that Sally never described Poseidon as a monster and neither did May. but I wonder, to what extent can the love of a profound being envelop you without sculpting you into a poignant victim of its depth? “trust me I know” and it’s the second time Luke agrees when Percy talks about his mother. he knows, he’s been there. history - fate - is repeating itself. he can’t stop it, he tried with his mom. but he is still trying and trying and trying. he tried so desperately, to alter the narrative etched in the stars, to rewrite the script that destiny had penned. but it didn’t work back then. but maybe this time …?

when I say I’m thinking about the parallels between Percy and Luke I mean I am thinking about their relationships with their parents, with their mothers, with how their fathers left their mothers (albeit Poseidon’s actions didn’t make Sally go insane) and thinking about how everything Percy does is because of and for his mother and thinking about how Luke sees himself in Percy and thinking about how Luke never got to have the type of relationship with his mom that Percy has with his because of the gods and I’m thinking of how home is the first place you learn to run from, and how losing faith in your father is like losing faith in a God. but what when he’s both? and I think of how Percy almost lost his mom because of the gods. I think of their shared pain, one fighting for the love he has and the other for the love he lost.

and oh, the hesitancy to pull a sword on Percy. he still saw Percy as his brother. they could’ve been a family, all of them. him, Percy, Annabeth. they could’ve been one happy family, without the burden of their parents, the constant quests, the fighting, the dying.

because, imagine this. you are seventeen and coming back from a failed quest that your father tossed at you like trash, with a scar that will forever be imprinted on your face. the gods, once the pillars of your purpose, have now withdrawn their interest, rendering you a discarded pawn in their divine game. and the realization strikes like a thunderbolt – you are useless to them. you are useless. years of training and fighting and bleeding until you were on your knees, yet you are of no use to them. so who are you then? and despite all of this, the younger campers still look up to you. and you see it in their faces how they still yearn for a chance to embark on a quest themselves, to be chosen, to catch the fleeting attention of their unknown godly parent. and there you are as you realize that their highest aspirations are to put their lives at risk while running an errand for a parent that does not care and will never care. they hope that in death, they’ll get the recognition they didn’t get alive. and some souls, still to this day, yearn for the acknowledgment that eluded them in the realm of the living.

so truly, you can’t be mad at Luke for thinking “do the gods find pleasure in our begging? does the aroma of our need, our desire, our pleas, not reach the pantheon of the heavens, or do you simply choose to turn away?” because wouldn’t you be filled with fury too? wouldn’t you want a better world? wouldn’t you too be easy to manipulated by a titan?

he didn’t betray Percy, he wanted a better world for them both, for all of them. but Percy betrayed him the moment he mentioned his father, this mention became an unwitting weapon, inflicting a pain that would forever bleed. this cut deeper than his own scar. he could’ve had it all. but he lost it again. and why does no one understand him? someone please understand him. he’s not going insane, why can’t anyone else see it?

the gods, in their relentless whims, have cruelly drained the essence of their youth, offering hollow promises of glory that crumble into the tragic reality of sacrifice and unending celestial burdens. the gods are the ones who shattered it all, but they hate Luke Castellan. it’s always him, isn’t it? first he couldn’t achieve that damned quest and now he wasn’t able to save what mattered the most in the end. his family. again.

#and in this essay #JB is thinking about pjo #percy jackson #percy jackson series #pjo series #percy jackson disney+#percy jackson spoilers #pjo tv show #luke castellan #luke castellan apologist #pjo luke #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo show #percy jackson show

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thedemoninme141 · 8 months

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Blade Of Miquella Chapter 10: Remember Me My Woe.

Summary: A life spent with Wednesday... but a death left unshared. Warnings: ANGST! HEAVY ANGST! HeartWarmingMoments, EmotionallyWhippedWednesday!!! Previous Chapter 👉 Here Blade Of Miquella Chapter-List 👉 Here "Would you mind if I sit here?" You opened your eyes to see the braided girl. A playful smile tugged at the corners of your lips as you leisurely unfurled your eyes, acknowledging her with a glance. "Yes, I would mind." you retorted in a jesting tone, a smirk playing on your lips. "Pity, It seems fate has already conspired against your preferences." Her words carried an undertone of amusement as she settled herself beside you, seamlessly claiming her place in your tranquil haven. "You aren't like the other students," she remarked, a wisp of nostalgia in her voice. It was a playful attempt to recreate the memory of your initial encounter, a memory that you held dear. "Neither are you." You smiled. Her next words bore a hint of whimsy, a spark of lightheartedness that underscored the gravity of her statement. "It seems the threads of fate have woven us together, doesn't it?" The distance between you closed as she leaned in, capturing your lips in a tender kiss, a silent affirmation of the bond that had steadily grown between you.

It has been a week since you were discharged from the hospital, and Wednesday remained a constant presence by your side. Her typewriter found a new home in your room, a testament to the intimacy that had taken root between you. Since you had one less period than her you waited under your maple tree that had become both of yours since she also spent the lunch time with you there.

As Wednesday felt the gentle weight of your head against her shoulder, a rare sensation of lightness enveloped her. The touch of your skin against hers never failed to stir a warm feeling within her otherwise cold and unyielding heart. Even within this moment of tranquillity, her thoughts meandered back to the private conversation she had shared with your brother the previous night.

The moonlight had cast a soft glow as they spoke, the gravity of the topic hanging between them like a shroud. John, your steadfast and devoted brother, deserved to be informed, despite the heavy burden of truth it carried. He had the right to know. "So... you think there is no cure for her?" John sighed. "I can't claim certainty, but it appears more likely that it's neither a malady nor a curse. Y/n and this entity Malenia... their souls are intricately intertwined, each reliant on the other's existence," Wednesday's voice carried a weight of sorrow. The truth pained her as much as it did him, but the revelation was necessary, he was risking his life to find a cure after all. "Did you tell her yet?" John's inquiry cut through the heavy air, his concern mirroring her own. "No, I couldn't, I..." Wednesday couldn't find the right words. "Because you're not ready to shatter the hope she clings to." John's words held a profound understanding. "And neither am I," he added "So, would you still tell her?" Wednesday's question hung in the air, a plea for guidance, a plea for your sake. "I don't think I have the strength to do so." he confessed, his voice tinged with the burden of his emotions. He looked at Wednesday, "You don't have the strength either, right?" He asked, Wednesday looked down and nodded. "What are you going to do now?" she asked. "Even if there is no cure for her, the Golden Order still poses a threat to Y/n," John replied, determination entering his tone. "They'll continue their pursuit to get to her." "How will you stop them then?" She inquired. "By getting to them first." He answered.

"Would you come with me to the train station Wednesday?" You got her out of her thoughts, "For you, I would traverse the ends of the world," she replied, her words filled with a sincerity that resonated in the air. The smile you directed at her ignited a warmth within her heart. "Is there anything you wouldn't do if I asked?" you inquired, affection glittering in your eyes as they met hers. "No, there isn't," Wednesday answered without hesitation, her voice a steady affirmation of her devotion. "Then I ask you this one thing – remember me," you implored, your hands gently finding hers as you moved before her, your head tilting to rest atop hers. Your whispered words, a plea for a promise that carried a weight beyond their simplicity, hung in the air. Confusion flickered in Wednesday's eyes, her brow furrowing in question. "What do you mean?" Your hands tenderly found hers, and as you moved in front of her, your head gently met hers, a whisper shared in the fragile space between you. "Just promise me that you will remember me as much as you can." Wednesday found herself hypnotized by your touch, her heart resonating with the sincerity in your gaze. Your words resonated in the air, etching a promise into her very being. "I promise," she whispered On the journey back from the station, Wednesday wanted to remove that sad look from your face that had seemed to settle there after saying goodbyes to your brother. Right when she was about to drop you off in your room, she finally asked, "Do you need me to stay with you tonight?" She needed more time with you, She needed You. She knew you would accept, or that's what she thought. Your hesitation was palpable, a flicker of uncertainty in your eyes that tugged at her heartstrings. Inwardly, Wednesday questioned herself. Why? Did she do something wrong? Was it too early to ask to spend the night with you? Enid told her it's something that couples do together. She cursed herself for listening to Enid. "I am scared." You whispered. Confusion deepened, her brows furrowing in concern. Scared? Scared of what? The emotions that danced within your eyes were a complex array of emotions she struggled to interpret. "I am scared that I might.. hurt you in my sleep. I might lose control in my sleep, I don't want to hurt you like I did to my mother." Your vulnerability was a raw wound, and in that moment, Wednesday understood the depth of your apprehensions. Without hesitation, she drew you into an embrace, her presence a shield against the fears that threatened to consume you. "You won't, you didn't when she had full control of you, instead you protected me. That's how I know, you are the one I would follow." Her voice, soft and unwavering, was a testament to her unwavering faith in you. As you looked up at her, your eyes shimmering with hope, Wednesday's heart swelled with a mixture of emotions. She held you tighter, as if trying to convey through touch the depth of her commitment. "I am sorry. I.." "One day at a time." Her words cut through your apologies, "One day at a time is fine by me. As long as those days are with you, One day at a time is all we've got." She said.

One day became One week,

"Just BE NORMAL WITH HER!" Enid said pushing Wednesday out of the door. "And don't you dare even think about suggesting a graveyard for your date!"

Confidence had always been her ally, but now, as she stood before your door, her heart pounded with a nervous fervor that she had never before experienced. 3 knocks. Then she waited for you to open the door with her heart trying to jump out of her chest. When you did open, however, She was pretty sure it did jump out of her chest, you stood there in a black dress, a bit brighter than her own but still black enough, She couldn't move. Though she had always recognized your profound beauty, tonight, you were a revelation, a goddess in human form. "Wednesday," your voice carried a tender note, a shy vulnerability that only served to heighten your captivating charm. Inwardly, Wednesday longed to offer a compliment, to convey the depth of her admiration in a mere phrase. Yet, her thoughts tangled like a web, her attempts at articulation falling short in the face of your resplendence. How could mere words encapsulate the grandeur that stood before her? Enid's lessons in compliments seemed woefully inadequate in the face of your magnificence. You seem to notice the reddening in her cheeks as you smiled. "So which grave are we going?" You asked jokingly taking her hands as a hint for her to guide you. She smirked. "Not a grave," she answered.

Vulnerability of emotions was a foreign terrain for Wednesday, a territory she had spent her life avoiding. The concept of being open and exposed had been anathema to her existence. But now, as you lay beside her near the tranquil lake in the heart of the jungle, a location she had meticulously chosen for this very purpose, you spoke of your past and your preferences, sharing fragments of your life that wedged their way into the cracks of her defenses. You opened up to her and she found herself captivated not just by your words, but by the way the moonlight played upon your features, casting an ethereal glow that matched the enchantment of the surroundings.

She realized that this was a different kind of vulnerability – one she willingly embraced. The walls she had built, fortified by years of detachment and isolation, seemed to crumble in the face of the connection she shared with you.

In this moment, beneath the star-studded sky, Wednesday acknowledged that allowing herself to feel vulnerable for you wasn't a weakness, but a profound testament to the strength of what you both shared. It was a vulnerability she was willing to explore, for in your presence, she found a sense of solace that no amount of morbid detachment could offer.

One week turned into a month,

"Would you mind if I sit here?" You heard the voice of your love as a smile formed on your lips. "Would you mind if I hold your hand while you join me?" With a tender gesture, you extended your hand toward her, a silent offer laced with affection. "Never." She said as she accepted your hand, settling down beside you. This time, her head found a comfortable resting place on your shoulder, a touch that conveyed an unspoken intimacy. "Semester is almost over. Enid and the others are planning to go home." You said. "Good, that means we will finally have some peace from their obnoxious chattering." Wednesday quipped. A soft chuckle escaped your lips. "You do realize you're free to leave too, don't you?" you said. "To exchange the quality moments I can have with you for my clingy soul-sucking family? Pass. The only torment I relish is the affectionate one you bestow upon me, not theirs," she quirked, her lips curving into a playful smile. "But what if they miss you? And your brother?" you inquired, your curiosity genuine. "My decision is already made. Pugsley is welcome to visit whenever he pleases." "I guess, I would love to meet with him." You said. "He is weak. He always needed my protection." "Wednesday!" You reprimanded smiling. "Do you think I am weak too?" you mused, your head finding a place atop hers, your cheek resting on her hair as your fingers intertwined. "Quite the opposite, Your courage in the face of adversity often leaves me envious. Not that I lack bravery, but your fearlessness, coupled with your innate kindness, makes you the most exceptional person I know. While those imbeciles fleeted, you went against the storm. You stood against a threat you had no idea of just to protect this school." Her response was swift, yet brimming with honesty. You gently lifted your head from its resting place atop hers. "I never did it for the school," you confessed. Wednesday raised her head from your shoulder, her eyes meeting yours. You gazed into her eyes, darkness encircling a core of unwavering affection, a love as unique and profound as she was. "I did it for you. And I would do it all over again, just for you." You said.

In that moment, as the weight of your words hung in the air, even after she hurt you back then, you still risked your life to protect her. Wednesday found herself drawn further into the depths of your unwavering devotion. Your confession resonated with a sincerity that was undeniable, and as she gazed into your eyes, she saw nothing but the truth of your feelings reflected in their depths. The allure of your love was irresistible, a magnetic force that tugged at the very fabric of her being. Without a word, Wednesday closed the remaining distance between you, her movements deliberate and sure. The atmosphere between you was charged, a palpable energy that seemed to envelop you both. And then, your lips met in a gentle, tender kiss – a moment suspended in time, a fusion of emotions and desires that words could never adequately capture. The kiss was a silent promise, an unspoken vow that affirmed the depth of your feelings and the sincerity of your commitment. It was a moment of vulnerability and intimacy, a shared space where your souls danced in harmony, entwined by a love that had a light inside it surrounded by a dark shadow protecting it. As the kiss came to an end, Wednesday felt a sense of clarity settle over her. This was a new beginning, a fresh commitment to her love for you, a love that she knew she would share with you in life... and in death.

One month turned into One year.

"IF YOU EVEN ENTERTAIN THE THOUGHT OF CONJURING ANOTHER PATHETIC PRANK LIKE THAT WRETCHED DISPLAY YOU UNLEASHED LAST YEAR, I SHALL TAKE GREAT PLEASURE IN PEELING YOUR FLESH FROM YOUR BONES," Wednesday's voice carried a chilling cadence, her words laced with a macabre promise that sent shivers down the spines of Lucas and his hapless companions. She still feels guilty for not going with you to last year's Raven dance which you were looking forward to, however, she also was quite relieved as she knew how badly you might've reacted to the pathetic prank Lucas and his friends pulled. But this time, since she has plans to ask you to the dance, she had to make sure they won't even think of doing anything like that again. Not just them, anyone. She pretty much sent a silent threat to everyone who witnessed her berating Lucas and his friends. Of course, her strategy was precise, her execution meticulous. Dispatching Enid as her proxy, she ensured you would remain blissfully unaware, a calculated move in her symphony of protection and intention. "Would you mind if I sit here?" She asked your resting figure as always. "Only if you ask me a question about a certain dance," you responded with a mischievous glint in your eyes, playfully challenging her. Wednesday took the sit beside you, under your maple tree, which had grown bigger than before, blossoming with scarlet red leaves. Her dark eyes remained fixed on yours as she gathered her courage to speak, her voice a blend of vulnerability and determination. "Would you do me the honor of being my partner at the upcoming Raven dance?" A playful smile tugged at the corner of your lips, and you couldn't help but tease, "Ah, but there might be some formidable competition." A flicker of amusement danced in Wednesday's eyes as she responded, "It seems my collection of knives will finally see some action after quite a hiatus." A genuine laugh escaped your lips, the sound mingling with the rustling of the leaves overhead. "Yet how can these contenders hope to match someone who resides leagues above them?" You said. "And who might that exceptional individual be?" Wednesday decided to indulge in your playful banter. "A certain Raven who holds the key to my heart with her smile." You said.

"Would you mind if I held your hand in there?" The question slipped from your lips with a delicate blend of hope and trepidation, your heart fluttering with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. The party hall's entrance loomed before you, a gateway to an unfamiliar world. "I've.. never been to any parties before. I feel so nervous in crowds of unknown people." You confessed. Wednesday's expression softened as her hands met yours. "I am pretty sure if there's anyone succumbing to unease, it's the unsuspecting souls on the inside. They'll find themselves awestruck by your radiance, a brilliance that effortlessly outshines the mundane. It's a spectacle they won't be prepared for. And as for your answer, I don't want to hold your hand, I NEED to hold your hand, my desire to grasp your hand is not a mere whim; it's an imperative. A declaration to the world, a proclamation of possession. I want them to see that you belong to me, and me alone." She smiled. And that was enough to let your nervousness go away, soothing the tumultuous waters of your apprehension. Once again, you found solace in her unwavering presence, a light in her darkness, a radiant beacon cutting through the obscurity of your doubts. With her by your side, you knew that life's challenges could be confronted and conquered, one step at a time.

"One day at a time." She reminded you again.

"One day at a time is all we've got." You answered smiling.

With a graceful gesture, Wednesday extended her hand toward you, her pale fingers delicate against the backdrop of darkness.

"Would you honor me by giving me this dance?" She said.

You took a step forward, your fingers intertwining with hers, and the world around you seemed to fade into the background. The dance floor became a universe unto itself, a realm where only your presence and hers held significance, cocooned in a moment of shared intimacy.

Come to me now And lay your hands over me

As you moved together, the dance became a slow, intimate conversation, an unspoken exchange of feelings and emotions that words could never capture.

Even if it's a lie Say it will be alright And I shall believe

Wednesday's gaze held a depth that stirred something within you, her usually guarded eyes revealing a vulnerability that resonated deeply. The realization of how much she yearned for your presence, for your companionship, was poignantly evident in the earnestness of her eyes. It was a silent plea, an unspoken confession.

I'm broken in two And I know you're on to me That I only come home When I'm so all alone But I do believe

Her presence was both comforting and electrifying, and you found yourself drawn into the dance with an innate sense of belonging. The world outside the ballroom seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of you in a timeless embrace.

That not everything is gonna be the way You think it ought to be

You found yourself clinging desperately to this moment, your heart fiercely determined to seize every precious second shared with Wednesday. The fear of losing her gripped you like a vice, urging you to hold onto her presence as tightly as you could. In the midst of the dance, there was an unspoken understanding that time was fleeting, and the fragility of the connection you shared was a reality that couldn't be ignored.

It seems like every time I try to make it right It all comes down on me

Then again, Wednesday's gaze gave you hope, Amidst your worries and doubts, her gaze became an anchor, grounding you to the promise of a lasting bond. Her unspoken commitment encouraged you to have faith in the connection you shared, dispelling any lingering doubts.

Please say honestly you won't give up on me And I shall believe

Wednesday felt so lost, so hypnotized by your eyes, the sensation of your fingers intertwining sent a thrill of electricity through her. The world around you seemed to blur, leaving only the two of you in a slow, entrancing dance.

Open the door And show me your face tonight

With every turn and sway, she allowed her guard to slip, revealing the vulnerable core that lay beneath her stoic exterior. But she knows, it's all worth it, as long as you are glued to her. This gave you enough reason to believe. As your eyes met, a silent understanding passed between you, stronger than any words or uncertainties.

I know it's true No one heals me like you And you hold the key

Her gaze remained fixed on you, a mixture of intensity and vulnerability that left you breathless. Her touch was gentle, her hand resting against your shoulder with a tenderness that belied her reputation.

Never again Would I turn away from you

Never, she would turn away from the feelings she holds for you again, She is ready to confront the emotions that have long been concealed within the shadows of her heart. You made her ready.

I'm so heavy tonight But your love is alright And I do believe

She can see the fear of the uncertain future in your eyes, she hated to admit it, but even she was afraid of that.

That not everything is gonna be the way You think it ought to be

There might be something worse awaiting you and her in the future. Something that might hurt you...

It seems like every time I try to make it right It all comes down on me

But Wednesday knows she will protect you, She has already committed her life and soul to your protection. As she grasped your hand and guided you through the dance's deliberate pace, just like she would do in every step of your life, her eyes remained fixated on yours, she can see the unspoken vow being communicated, a plea being exchanged.

Please say honestly You won't give up on me

There was a sense of shared vulnerability, a willingness to confront the challenges together. As long as you are with her, she can hope, you can hope. Despite the unpredictability of life, despite the challenges and doubts, both Wednesday and you were choosing to believe.

And I shall believe

One year turned into two,

John came back, He did it, he killed every single one of the golden order, You could live safely now, with no threats, no danger to your life. Yet both he and Wednesday knew you had the right to know, they were afraid that you would break down after knowing there is no cure to this curse of yours, they were afraid they would lose you to grief and sorrow again. As John and Wednesday sat you down to convey this bittersweet truth, their eyes clouded with apprehension, your response was surprising. Instead of breaking down, you bore the weight of the revelation with a resilience that left them speechless. It was as though you had already walked the path of acceptance long before they even laid out the truth before you. Wednesday watched you with a mixture of awe and concern, her heart aching for the strength you displayed. "Thank you for not giving up on me," you whispered, your voice carrying the weight of years of shared experiences and unspoken support, hugging him dearly. Tears glistened in John's eyes as he held you close, his embrace a testament to the depth of his love and his unyielding determination to protect you. But it was your next words that reverberated through the room, echoing in the hearts of those present. "I know you tried. I know you already knew that there was no cure. Yet you didn't give up. I've already accepted that there is no cure for me. I've already accepted that my time is limited." Your voice carried a calm resignation, a sense of serenity that belied the gravity of your revelation. Wednesday's heart clenched as she absorbed your words, a mixture of admiration and anguish swirling within her. It was a bittersweet truth – your acceptance was a testament to your strength, but it also hinted at the fragility of the time you had left. "Don't go again, please," you implored, your grip on John's shirt tightening as though he were your lifeline. Wednesday's heart clenched at the vulnerability in your voice, at the raw fear of losing yet another person you held dear. Your plea echoed in the room, a testament to the depth of your emotions and your desire to hold onto the few constants in your life. But then, you continued your words a soothing balm for her conflicted heart. "I've accepted this already. You don't have to keep searching. You've already kept your promise, John. You are my cure." you pleaded. It took all of Wednesday's strength to contain the tears welling up in her eyes, her emotions a turbulent sea within her chest. Your acceptance, your gratitude, and your plea resonated with a melody that seemed to strike the deepest chords within her. It was a reminder of the stakes, the fragility of time, and the love that bloomed amidst the darkness. A sigh escaped Wednesday's lips, carrying with it a mix of emotions that were as complex and intricate as the person before her. The weight of her feelings was a burden she was willing to bear, for you had become the beacon of light that had illuminated the darkness of her existence. In the silence that followed, as you and your brother shared a moment of understanding and connection, Wednesday felt an unspoken promise take root within her heart. She would be there, by your side, through every moment that remained. The love she held for you, unconventional and profound, was a force that could not be diminished by time or circumstance.

"I am not going away anymore." Your brother promised you,

So did Wednesday.

Two turned into three,

Your affinity for the natural world had always been apparent. The way you found solace in the embrace of flowers and trees was a testament to your connection with the living, breathing entities that adorned the world around you. It was no surprise that you aspired to become a florist, a guardian of nature's beauty, using your skill to heal even the most ailing of plants. That's how you were handed a pot of a small plant that seem to be sick by Wednesday, "Found it on the street. I wanted to save it," she said, her voice carrying an unusual softness. You smiled, even though it was very un-Wednesday-like, but you thought nothing of it. As you placed the potted plant on a nearby table to examine it, you noticed signs of distress – the leaves were wilting, and the soil seemed to be in poor condition. A deeper instinct guided your hands, and you carefully removed the plant from its pot to inspect its roots. Your suspicions were confirmed – root rot had taken hold, threatening the plant's very survival. As you examined the roots within the soil, something unexpected caught your attention – a glint of metal, a spark amidst the decaying roots. You carefully removed it from the roots, it was a ring. You put the plant down and turned back to Wednesday, "Wednesday why there is a.." Wednesday didn't let you finish. "I have a problem, You see... I am not sick of you, I am honestly pretty much in love with you, hopelessly, helplessly." Your heart swelled at her admission, the authenticity of her emotions washing over you in waves. It was a confession that laid bare her heart, her fears, and her desires. "I don't know how much time we have left," she continued, her voice a blend of raw honesty and determination. "But whatever time it is, I want to spend it with you. Having you by my side is enough for me, if that's enough for you." In that moment, words seemed inadequate, insufficient to convey the maelstrom of emotions that surged within you. With unshed tears in your eyes, you found yourself drawn to her, your heart guiding your actions. And so, with a tenderness that spoke of all the love you held for her, you leaned in, your lips meeting hers in a soft, delicate kiss.

Four, five, six, seven years have passed, One day became seven years.

Seven years etched their stories into the tapestry of your shared existence, a life painted with hues of love, fortitude, and a quiet understanding that bound you and Wednesday together in an unbreakable bond. The roots of your relationship grew deeper, intertwined with the passage of time, weathering storms and blooming with the promise of a shared future.

Through the ebb and flow of life, your relationship evolved into a haven of comfort, a refuge against the chaos of the world. From the cozy apartment that you and Wednesday called home, to the shared moments of laughter over breakfast and the whispered secrets exchanged beneath the moonlit sky, your love story unfolded with a quiet intensity.

Wednesday of course continued her writing profession, the darkness that once cloaked her was now transformed into words that resonated with readers, her narratives a mirror to her journey of self-acceptance and growth. While Wednesday crafted tales of introspection and mystery, you nurtured your love for nature into a flourishing career. Your flower shop, a sanctuary of vibrant colours and delicate fragrances, stood as a testament to your nurturing spirit. Each bloom found its place under your care, blossoming into radiant displays that reflected your deep connection with life.

As the sun cast its golden hues across the horizon, you found Wednesday in the living room, engrossed in one of her journals. You approached her, your smile playful. "What's the enigmatic Miss Addams writing about today?" Wednesday's lips quirked up in a faint smile. "Jotting down observations on the human propensity for chaos." You chuckled, taking a seat beside her. "Ah, yes. Chaos seems to be a common theme in our lives." Her gaze softened as she closed the journal. "But amidst the chaos, there is a solace I find because of someone." "And who might that be?" You asked knowing the answer, "A certain florist." She smirked.

In your flower shop, Wednesday observed you arranging a vibrant bouquet with an air of fascination. "You have a remarkable affinity for breathing life into these blooms." You grinned, placing the finished bouquet in a vase. "Well, I did promise to bring life to anything that needs it." Wednesday's eyebrow arched, a playful smirk gracing her lips. "Even to a walking corpse like me?" You turned to her, your eyes dancing with affection. "Especially to you." She stepped closer, her fingers brushing against the petals. "Then I suppose I am in good hands."

A rainy afternoon found you and Wednesday huddled by the window, sipping tea and watching the droplets dance against the glass. The pitter-patter of raindrops created a soothing backdrop to your quiet conversation. "I always found solace in the rain," you mused, your gaze fixed on the world outside. Wednesday's eyes gleamed with a hidden emotion. "Rain has a way of cleansing the world, washing away the dirt and revealing the hidden truths." You turned to her, captivated by the intensity in her gaze. "What hidden truths have you discovered?" Her lips curled into a half-smile. "That even amidst darkness, there's beauty to be found. Just like in you." Wednesday cringed at her own words but it was worth the smile on your lips, Trying to avoid becoming her mother, she ended up like her father. As you both wandered through a local art gallery, Wednesday's eyes fixated on a particularly macabre painting. She turned to you with a small smirk, her dark eyes glinting mischievously. "I think this one would look splendid in our living room, don't you agree?" You chuckled, knowing her affinity for the morbid. "You really have a way of finding the most unique pieces, Wednesday. I'm sure it'll add quite the atmosphere to our home." She raised an eyebrow playfully. "Atmosphere? Is that your polite way of saying 'spooky'?" You laughed, your fingers finding hers as you leaned in. "Well, I've learned to appreciate your unique taste, and I do love how it reflects your personality." She smirked, her lips brushing against yours. "Just don't be surprised if we start getting visits from ghosts."

A chilly winter morning, you both found yourselves sipping hot cocoa by the window, watching the snowflakes fall. Wednesday's fingers traced delicate patterns on the rim of her mug, her eyes distant. "You seem lost in thought," you observed, concern lacing your voice. She turned to you, her gaze softening. "I was just thinking about how different my life has become with you in it. You've brought warmth to my world, more than I ever thought possible." You reached over to grasp her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "And you've shown me a depth of love and understanding I never knew existed. We've come a long way, Wednesday." She smiled, her fingers interlocking with yours. "Indeed, we have. And I wouldn't trade a single moment of it."

However within all those warm moments, Some cold ones lingered. Cold ones that increased rapidly as time went on. Your tormented soul awoke you with a gasp, a lingering nightmare's grasp refusing to let go. Almost as if sensing your distress, Wednesday's arms enveloped you in an instant, her touch a lifeline in the abyss of your fear. Her voice, a soft, soothing melody, broke through the darkness. "Hey, it's okay," she whispered, her words a tender caress against your tumultuous emotions. "You're safe, I'm here." Tears swelled in your eyes, a testament to the terror you had just experienced. You clung to her as if she were the anchor holding you against the storm, your body trembling against the remnants of the night's horrors. Your voice trembled as you tried to put words to the maelstrom within you. "I can't… I can't control it. She's getting stronger." Wednesday's hold on you tightened, her grip a symbol of unwavering need for you in her life. Her voice, soft but resolute, cut through the darkness that threatened to engulf you both. "We'll face this together, just like we always have."

Days turned into weeks, and the heaviness of your curse only grew. It wasn't long before another unsettling incident unfolded, leaving Wednesday's heart racing with worry. She entered the house, finding the door already ajar – a sight that struck fear into her heart. "Y/n?" Her voice quivered with urgency as she called out, dread coiling in her chest when there was no response. She hurried to the bedroom, her heart pounding like a drum. The sight that greeted her was enough to send a shiver down her spine – the bathroom door stood wide open, and there you were, standing frozen in front of the mirror. "Y/n!" She called you again, but only if she knew what you were seeing in the mirror. Malenia.

"Y/n!!" Her voice seemed to jolt you from the grip of that sinister trance, and you collapsed to your knees. The world around you refocused, but the horrors of what you had seen in the mirror still lingered. Wednesday was there, her arms wrapping around you protectively, her presence offering solace amidst the chaos. "It's okay," she murmured, her voice a gentle balm against your shattered nerves. "I am here. She won't take you. I won't let her take you." Your heartache poured out in sobs, the fear, and the darkness that threatened to consume you finally finding release. Wednesday held you close, her words and touch a lifeline that pulled you back from the brink. The pain in her voice, the unyielding determination to protect you, it all echoed the depth of her love. "We'll fight this together, Y/n," she whispered against your hair, her vow a testament to the unbreakable bond that had sustained you through every trial.

"Y/n please stop! It's me, your love, Wednesday." Wednesday screamed, begging you to stop, but you didn't, flying high with your delicate wings, letting the Goddess of Rot control your body fully, you take over the sky once again with your Scarlet flower of Aeonia. Ready to take over this world by your Scarlet rot. Then, like a comet hurtling toward its destination, you descended, a blur of crimson and despair, you went down on her, you went down on your love Wednesday. With a sudden jolt, you awoke from the nightmare that had ensnared your mind. Your breathing was ragged, and your eyes darted around the room, trying to discern reality from the phantasmagoric images that had haunted your sleep. Beside you Wednesday slept peacefully, she always had slept peacefully by your side. As your gaze settled on your own hands, you saw the faint traces of Scarlet roots emerging, tendrils of your curse that nearly brushed Wednesday's arm. The realization hit you like a lightning bolt – you had come dangerously close to repeating the tragic fate of your mother, infecting someone you loved with the rot that dwelled within you.

One day at a time, Wednesday used to say.

No...

You won't risk the most important thing, the most important person in your life, not for one more day.

As the first rays of sunlight painted the room with warmth, Wednesday stirred from her sleep, her eyes searching for you on the bed. Confusion quickly transformed into worry as she realized you were nowhere to be found. Her heart raced, fear clawing at her as she called your name, her voice echoing in the emptiness. Her eyes fell upon a letter resting on your pillow, a silent messenger that held the truth she wasn't yet ready to face. Trembling fingers reached for the paper, her heart pounding in anticipation and dread. With each word she read, her world crumbled further, the weight of your decision pressing heavily upon her chest.

And so, she found herself retracing the steps that had led to this moment. The place where it had all begun – the maple tree, the witness to your first meeting, now a sentinel to your final act. The sight that met her eyes tore at her heart – there you lay, surrounded by delicate petals, an ethereal contrast to the tragedy that had unfolded. "Would you mind if I sit here?" The words escaped her lips, carrying a tremor of sorrow. Her voice quivered as she spoke, the depths of her grief threatening to consume her. Oh, what Wednesday wouldn't give to see you smile and look up to her, accepting her offer, taking her hands. She settled beside you, putting her head on your shoulder, clutching the letter in her hands, The promise you had made years ago echoed in her mind, its significance now clearer than ever. "Promise me that you will remember me as much as you can." In that moment, Wednesday understood the weight of your plea, the plea that had driven you to make the ultimate sacrifice for her sake.

As tears blurred her vision, she leaned into you, her heart heavy with the realization that she would have to carry on without you by her side. The mornings would be colder, the talks quieter, the smiles and kisses a distant memory. But she clung to your promise, the symbol of your love, believing that one day, beneath its embrace, she would be reunited with the soul that had captured her heart so completely.

"My beloved Wednesday, I love you with all my heart and soul and I hope you can understand my decision.

Our love story has been unconventional, marked by darkness and curses, yet you have been the beacon of light that guided me through the shadows. From the moment our paths crossed, I felt a connection that transcended the boundaries of life and death. You became my sanctuary, my home, and my reason to endure the trials that fate hurled our way.

The years we spent together have been a tapestry woven with laughter, warmth, and shared dreams. Your presence has been the salve to my wounds, the answer to my silent prayers. Every touch, every smile, and every stolen moment etched into my memory like precious jewels. Even as the darkness within me grew, your love remained unwavering, a steadfast pillar that held me upright when I faltered.

But I can no longer ignore the truth that has become painfully evident – the curse, the rot, it has taken a stronger hold on me. I've seen glimpses of a future I cannot bear to subject you to, a future where the darkness consumes me completely. I refuse to let that happen. Our love is too pure, too precious, to be tainted by the curse that plagues me. You are too pure to be tainted by my curse.

I want you to find solace in the knowledge that my decision is not born out of despair, but out of love. Love for you, for us, for the future we could have had. It's a choice I make willingly, as the only way to protect you from the grip of this curse. I need you to remember the promise you made me under our tree, our beautiful scarlet red maple tree that has borne witness to our love... where you can find me...

Please don't grieve for me, my love. Instead, find happiness in the memories we've created, in the love we've shared. You deserve nothing less than a life filled with joy and love and maybe some horror too.

As the sun sets on my time in this world, know that I carry your love with me into the next. I've seen that our souls are bound by a love that transcends even death, and I will be watching over you, cheering you on from beyond the veil.

Thank you, Wednesday Addams, for being my love, my anchor, my haven, my everything. You've given me a lifetime of love in the few years we've had, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Remember me till the day we will meet again my beloved woe.

With all the love my heart can hold,

Y/n" Author here, This is my last fanfiction ever, I have to stop writing because I have some personal issues going on, That's why I poured my heart into it, I would really appreciate if you guys tell me how much you liked it, It's been an amazing journey with you all- Love , Celine. PART 11 EPILOGUE: Reunited With Woe. The lines used on the Raven dance were from Sheryl Crow's I Shall Believe song. The inspiration behind this ending was, some you might have already guessed it, "The Haunting of Bly Manor" ending.

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rageprufrock · 7 months

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Sneak Peak: Untitled Mysterious Lotus Casebook Fan Fic Because I Make Bad Decisions And Don't Sleep Enough

Instead of sleeping last week, I watched Mysterious Lotus Casebook. And instead of sleeping next week, I expect I will be working on this Mysterious Lotus Casebook fan fic.

It takes Li Lianhua almost an hour to claw his way out of his own grave.

It’s another shichen before Li Lianhua manages to drag himself out of the yawning arms of the earth. His legs shake, his arms shake; the air that expands his lungs hurts going in and breathing out. But no matter how meticulously he catalogs his suffering, each revelation is disquietingly ordinary: he’s thirsty, he’s tired, his body hurts from immobility–from very recent death. He feels staggeringly, unfathomably alive.

Gasping, dizzy with some sizzle of power still shivering out of his bones, he props himself up against his own funeral stele and realizes that he can no longer feel the necrotic, rotting hunger of the Bicha poison, and–when he looks around, across the sweeping mountains, toward the misted pink of dawn–that he had been buried, lavish, in the private family cemetery of Tianji Manor.

When he’d died, when he’d discarded the last of his worries, cut all the vermillion silks and half-formed hopes that had buoyed him, Li Lianhua had given himself to the sea. He remembers the bitter bracing salt of the water, the forgiving lap of frozen waves, how he’d buckled—left, then right knee—the jade colored water closing over him, absolving. He remembers the searing ice of the ocean, the swirl of his worn linen clothes, the weight of his cloak at first suffocating and then nothing, nothing at all.

Now, Li Lianhua takes one step after another through a greener sea, a canopy of late summer leaves, marveling at his robes of emerald silk brocade, embroidered gold with gold and silver threads–flawless on the right and wrong sides of the fabric, as soft as new grass under his fingertips. Now, he listens to the trilling of magpies, spies the velvet ears of half-hidden rabbits, the fleeting russet flanks of swift-moving deer, feels the soft veil of summer light, smells honeysuckle and the petrichor of recent rain.

He crosses a brook, through the forest as it thins to a glade and in the distance now, Li Lianhua can see the curled-up roofs of a home he barely knows, and that is at once as familiar and well-loved as its young master.

“Xiaobao-ah,” he says, the first words he’s said out loud, his voice a startling rasp, rattling out of his chest, “what on earth have you done?”

A little while later, when he’s being thrown ass over elbow into the street by a full phalanx of Tianji Hall’s most ferocious enforcers, Li Lianhua realizes the answer to his question is, ‘plague me in my second life, just as he did the first.’

***

Getting from Tianji Manor to the headquarters of the Bai Chuan Court takes more than a week, a journey funded by strategically pawning off a jade thumb ring he’d acquired sometime between dying at the shore and waking up buried in a fucking mountainside.

Along the way, he buys a set of less ostentatious robes so that people stop trying to rob him like a guileless fop and hears no fewer than two dozen stories–each more absurd than the last, which is frankly astonishing given the truth–of his death and resurrection and death again. At least three of them include morally questionable methods of yang energy application, and a woman who sells him a skewer of tanghulu assures Li Lianhua that a friend of a cousin heard from a reliable source that Li Xianyi had managed his miraculous revival as a result of a profound bond with his martial rival and marital match, Di Feisheng. It leaves him speechless with horror for a full 30 seconds before he implores her to stop spreading the story, because sooner or later Di Feisheng will hear about it and raze her entire village to ashes.

“Now, everyone knows the heroic story of Li Xiangyi’s death and resurrection and death again,” says an old storyteller at an inn the next night.

Around him, the crowd gathered close and eager to hear over the sound of a roaring storm outdoors, the wind and sleeting rain too dire for any more travel that night. Li Lianhua is hiding in a back corner on his second jug of wine, still far too sober for another, ever more fabulist recounting of his so-called adventures.

“But tonight,” the storyteller goes on, “I want to tell another story, one of a legend in the making: a most tragic romance–”

“Thank God,” Li Lianhua murmurs to himself.

“–For while the story of Li Xianyi is well known,” the old man says, “that of his second love with the young master of Tianji Hall is not.”

Li Lianhua chokes on his wine. “What.”

“Now listen as I tell you of a remarkable young man, a brilliant scholar, a refined gentleman, and a generational martial arts talent,” the storyteller invites. “And so passionate in his devotion to Li Xiangyi that he turned down the hand of a princess to wander the jianghu in mourning, as faithful as a widow.”

“What?” Li Lianhua asks again.

By the end of his tale of woe, there’s not a dry eye in the inn and Li Lianhua has progressed through two further jugs of wine, too mortified and then too drunk to go anywhere or do anything about the abject slander he’s hearing.

At no point during any of the cases he’d investigated with Fang Duobing had anybody made any stoic declarations of unwavering devotion during any driving snowstorms, and they were both far too skilled with their weapons for any cutting of sleeves, accidental or otherwise. There had been an extended interlude on how–as they were both dutiful men, and having honorably severed any other previous betrothals–they’d engaged one another in a match of swords that had progressed into a dance of the clouds and rain. It speaks well on the miraculous nature of whatever sorcery had revived him that Li Lianhua does not immediately vomit blood and expire again.

It’s dawn by the time the storm lets up enough for the storyteller’s captive audience to disperse into the city, and Li Lianhua staggers out of the inn a shattered ghost of himself. He hitches a ride with a farmer traveling two cities over, toward the place where where the provincial border is drawn by a fast-moving river, and along the way he reflects that with this additional information, it makes much more sense that all the loyal attendants and members of Tianji Hall had taken one look at him, threatened his life, and violently chased him off property. Nevermind Di Feisheng–He Xiaohui will kill him first for allegedly dishonoring her precious son, and Fang Duobing will be stuck with the tedious work of burying Li Lianhua all over again, which feels churlish given how thoughtfully Xiaobao appears to have done it the first time.

In another life, with the privilege and the right to such sentiments, Li Lianhua would be outraged with anybody at the root of such defamations against his lone disciple. In this one, where Li Lianhua is only–with extraordinary reluctance–willing to admit to another living soul he has any sort of affection or sense of responsibility toward Fan Duobing, it is of course fitting and just that he is the source of said defamations, and will likely suffer untold tortures for his part in sullying Fang Duobing’s reputation.

At the river, he buys passage on a boat and stares out at the steamy gray-green of the fog over the banks, the way that the sun paints the surface of the water a blushing pink. It is, just as he remembers from his final walk to the sea, all so very, very beautiful. He closes his eyes to focus on the susurration of water against the flanks of the boat, to feel the damp wind against his face, the way it blows the loose strands of hair back from his face, how it catches in the rough-spun collar of his hastily purchased robes. He can hear the other passengers telling stories, exchanging gossip, the sound of someone snoring as their journey brings them from the chill of morning into the hot sun of high noon.

A shichen later, the boat is being pulled in toward a little cluster of docks, and Li Lianhua disembarks into the a marketplace transitioning from its daytime of vegetable sellers and grain merchants to its nightly amusements of street food stalls and performers setting up their stages. And by the time it takes for him to navigate the dozen li to the front gates of Bai Chuan Court, it’s nearly full dark, lanterns orange-bright against the midnight blue evening.

Li Lianhua is sweaty, filthy from travel, and ravenous, and it is only the certainty that if he evades the guards and arrives unannounced in the receiving room, someone will think he is a ghost that has him bothering with the heavy brass knocker at all.

When the terrified guards bring him to Ji, Yun, and Bai, they think he’s a ghost anyway.

“Sect Leader Li, I’m sure you can understand that we must investigate your miraculous return. Again,” Shi Shui tells him, at once peerlessly respectful and with absolute disapproval. “Although this certainly contextualizes some recent events in the Capital.”

Li Lianhua smiles ruefully. “I have a theory that useless disciple of mine may have overreached.”

Shi Shui scowls, not at the words or even at the thought of Fan Duobing, but very clearly and directly at Li Lianhua. It’s absolutely terrifying.

“Well, if overreach was what brought you back to us, then Fang-gongzhi’s seven days of fasting at your funeral would have had you here three years ago,” she tells him, matter-of-fact and utterly gutting, before she waves for one of the junior disciples. “Ye’er, send a runner to Fang Manor–I’m sure the investigators and doctors there will need to know of this latest development.”

Li Lianhua tenses. “Doctors? Investigators?”

Shi Shui slants a look toward him, watchful. “According to our network, seven days ago, Fang-gongzhi was grievously injured, and hasn’t regained consciousness since–seven days, that’s when you say you escaped death once more, if I remember correctly?”

“Yes,” Lianhua croaks, remembering all the hundreds and thousands of small and seismic ways that Fang Duobing had tried to save him in their months together, imagining Xiaobao in roughspun mourning, honoring a ghost in a way so intimate and harrowing it shames Li Lianhua to acknowledge it, to know how well he was loved.

“Quite a coincidence,” Shi Shui says, acid, and tells the doctors, “You had better do some painful, invasive testing on him–just to ensure it’s really Sect Leader Li, of course.”

Li Lianhua gets about as far as saying, “Ah–that’s–” before the doctors, clearly reading the room, swarm him armed with bitter medicines, silver needles, and accompanied by a shaman who’d been summoned in a cacophony of shrieking that should have been beneath three of the four hallowed directors of the almighty Bai Chuan Court.

#mysterious lotus casebook #fanfic #wip

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nanomooselet · 22 days

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Visual Motifs: Tesla

So, one of the benefits of an adaptation like Stampede - a retelling, rather than just lifting from the page - is that they know where it's leading, and they can add context or foreshadowing. For some characters, they can even add presence. In addition, Stampede is required by the limits of the medium to do some streamlining. From all I've heard about their consultations with Nightow, their concern was with themes first.

But there an issue arises in Tesla. What is there to say or do for her? She isn't a presence; she's an absence. There's not much you can add without undermining the gutwrenching horror and thus the thematic impact of her character.

But Orange found a way. In fact, they found multiple ways.

Tesla can never let anyone know what she wanted because she was so thoroughly stripped of action or speech. While she lived no one cared to listen to what she had to say, and she's forever silenced by death. Nightow had to bend the rules to give her a last, ambiguous word.* Memories and assumptions are all that's left. Those are all undoubtedly themes in Trigun. I think it's all still true in Stampede, with an obvious exception.

After all, silence is a statement.

Congratulations to Orange on making it even more horrifying. Though I'm at least reasonably sure that she wasn't conscious in suspension... I hope she wasn't. I suppose it adds to the argument to suggest her fate in the manga was kinder.

It also opens the question of what happened to her in the Fall, but helpfully (?), Nightow had already introduced a means of resolving it. It tidily both suggests a possible future plot point and further characterises Knives in the way he protects what he loves. He says her discovery was to him "but one grain of sand", and he's a fucking liar. (Also, note Dr. Conrad in the picture on Tesla's file. Nai had to learn he was involved somehow.)

My trash boy never disappoints.

Personally I do believe it's jumping the gun to assume Knives actually bears her consciousness, but she had a profound effect on him, much as red geranium petals are now foundational to Vash's identity. While the icon of the Eye of Michael represents a number of things (I'm gonna talk about them too, if I ever get around to it), the variation on it used in the Windmill Village isn't so ambiguous. The arrangement turns up over and over.

Behold the single most obvious way Tesla's made more "present" in Trigun Stampede. (It's sure beholding you.) The motif of Tesla's eye is as central a symbol in Knives as geranium flowers are in Vash. Tesla might not literally be a ghost, but she haunts Knives anyway. He's determined that she'll haunt everyone else too, though they may not know it's her. In his mind, he's her avenging angel.

But he isn't the only one who holds onto her.

And a certain panel in Maximum...

Though those particular eyes actually represent the eyes of humans. Eyes weren't prominently linked to Tesla in the manga, but this may have been the inspiration.

Speaking of the manga... what about Rem? Though we know it or something like it occurred, in Stampede we don't see the confrontation with Vash where she confessed to her anguish over failing their sister, and how far she was willing to go ensuring he wouldn't be hurt. I understand feeling that it flattens her. The narrative is being dictated by Knives in that moment, who wasn't there to witness it and had a vested interest in removing Rem from the story.

That doesn't mean there's no sign Tesla haunted Rem. If Tesla hadn't suffered what she suffered, maybe Rem would have served an uneventful term as Navigation Officer before going back into cryosleep, while the SEEDS fleet peacefully continued on its journey. It was still because she failed Tesla that Rem adopted and raised the twins. Knives's anger/fear at the perceived betrayal by both Rem and Vash still led to him crashing the fleet, Rem's death, and all that happened in its wake.

It's an interaction we never witness - it may not even have been a direct encounter - and yet Tesla, through Rem, instigated the plot. And that's also still true.

Comparing the discovery scenes in Stampede and the manga directly, there's a change. The flower Rem left as a memorial for Tesla in the manga (looks like a white lily, which represents innocence and purity in the Japanese language of flowers and is often used for funerals) is instead a red geranium.

I'd chalk it up to reinforcing Rem's connection with the flower and minimizing the 2D background painting budget, except...

Almost every time the twins as children are together on the screen with Rem, a geranium in a glass dome is there too. The only time it's not present somehow is when they're visiting the Plant room at the start of ep twelve.

And when they find Tesla, there's a shot where this happens:

The red petals are almost invisible in the darkness... and then pop out when she's revealed, like a wound. As if they emerged along with her.

The geranium, to Rem, represents Tesla. When she can, she has it accompanying the twins. The presence of this small, red, glass-bound thing - suspended, mute, so easily stripped of its petals - is perhaps an inadequate gesture, just as Tesla herself never grew to be what she could have been, and adopting the twins may not make a difference. But Tesla can be with her family in spirit and her baby brothers will get a chance to grow. That's all that Rem can do for her now, a regret she bore until the end of her life.

In Stampede, Rem and her successors are positioned as Knives's most direct ideological opposition in a number of ways, and I think one of them is in how they honour the memory of Tesla. Would the twins' older sister have wanted the vengeance Knives wreaked in her name? Or would she have had the grace to hope the humans would learn better? Would she have been happy those who came after her were given the love and the choices that she wasn't?

She can no longer choose. No one will ever know.

And that brings me, finally, to how Tesla haunts Vash.

Unlike the manga, in Stampede it's not as though Vash has any reason to fear being abused, or dismembered, or consumed, or exploited. In the manga he very much feared all those things, and accused Rem of raising them to continue the experiments. He was very angry and frightened to realise he was surrounded by humans and he was "not like them". But in Stampede Vash might as well be a human.

That's definitely a way Stampede thematically diverged from the manga. Nai's the one who's perfect and more like a Plant, because of his powers. Right?

It's Vash who tends to be physically closest to the geranium.

In the SEEDS database, Vash and Tesla are in the same folder, while Nai has his own. There are all sorts of potential reasons, but in my mind it'd be because their colouring matches (yellow-blonde hair, blue eyes). It's Vash (his hands on the left) who notices there's an extra file and starts scrolling through them. He unlocked the database, and he caused the jars of what was left of Tesla to be revealed.

He wears red. Specifically his outfit is red over black - his shirt and pants. And his eyes are the first ones in which Plant patterns are highlighted.

Ever noticed that Tesla's missing both arms?

But it's hardly as though Vash is in any position to understand what Tesla felt, or what she wanted.

And it's not as though Knives, in his loneliness and fear and denial of responsibility, would puppet his sibling for the power to take revenge.

Right?

* Don't get me wrong. Nightow's relaxed approach to worldbuilding could have made her reveal in Maximum a plot hole, but it's not. Plants really are weird enough that just about anything seems possible. Nightow created the impression that discovering her remains was so painful for the twins they came to a mutual, unspoken agreement to avoid mentioning it, let alone using her fate as a rhetorical tool. When Knives finally does bring her up, it's just before trying to meld with and then imprisoning his brother aboard the Ark. To me, it feels like his declaration of total war.

#trigun stampede #trigun meta #tw body horror #tw medical abuse #trigun tesla #(but i repeat myself)#no more space left in my soupy brain this one fought me to the last #tl;dr can i just give the poor child a HUG #uh. watch the uh. bits and pieces #shape of a lost girl

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yns-world · 8 months

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'Till Death Do Us Part

Pairing: Johnny Silverhand x Fem!Idol!Reader part 1 and part 2 A/N: V goes by she/her pronouns. Y/S/N = Your Stage Name Bold Italics is Johnny speaking. WC: 1.5k this was requested by the lovely @diabolusdevia, i hope you enjoy :)

When V was first introduced to Johnny’s engram, she was overwhelmed with this indescribable rage; a rage so deep and sharp that she was afraid it would kill her right that second.

But like the waves of a summer storm, the pounding rage gave way to a duller, more prominent feeling in the background— a profound feeling of anguish that consumed her.

The anguish was followed with memory after memory of a woman— a woman that performed side-by-side Johnny, a woman that was curled into his side— those memories gave V the tiniest bit of hope, before those feelings were ultimately crushed by the images of the same woman crying and lashing out.

V’s eyes flicked back and forth as she processed the memories, and she felt and heard everything that Johnny was feeling in those moments. She could feel the nostalgia that Johnny experienced, she could feel the love and adoration he still felt for her even when the woman was pushing him away.

The memories of the woman faded out, and all that was left was an empty gray space of time. V expected Johnny’s last memories to be of the Arasaka bombing, but no.

Johnny’s last memory was of a bird’s eye view of that same woman, walking out of the very tower he would destroy.

In that memory, V’s heart was torn to shreds before they were spat in hate and resentment.

“Y/N L/N.” V whispered, and she immediately felt the aching of her heart.

“Y/N L/N, Y/S/N, Mother of Cyberpop, key to my heart. Architect of my death. That heartbreaker goes by many names.” Johnny reiterated, appearing next to V and lighting a cigarette.

“I think that bombing is what killed you but okay…” V thought to herself, but only earned a scoff from Johnny.

“I can see and everything that pops up in your mind, wise ass.” Despite the harsh tone, Johnny carried a longing in his own mind.

Johnny would never admit it to himself, but V was witnessing every fleeting thought that Johnny experienced every waking second, and they were all immersed in Y/N.

Where V had thoughts of survival and how to get rid of the terrorist in her head, Johnny could do nothing but replay the last few years of his life. And among those few years, all he thought about was Y/N.

It was nonstop, V couldn’t even hear her own thoughts.

“Enough!” V shouted, startling the both of them. “It’s been 40 fucking years! You still haven’t moved on?”

“It hasn’t been 40 years for me. The Arasaka bombing happened just yesterday. Just yesterday I saw her for the first time in a year.”

V rubbed her face in agony.

“Does Y/N still make music?” Johnny’s question took V by surprise, but what was even more shocking was the twinkle in his eyes at the thought of listening to Y/N’s velvet voice once again.

“Not that I know of.”

And just like that, Johnny’s hope shriveled up and was tossed to the side just like the rest of his emotions.

“How about we go find her and ask her yourself?” The words just slipped out of V’s mouth without a second thought and her heart jumped at the worst case scenario. The last thing she wanted to do was upset an already ticking terrorist.

Johnny lifted his head and looked at V with a stone-cold face and for a second, V thought he was plotting to kill her right then and there.

“Alright kid. Let’s do it.”

It didn’t take a visit to a fixer to find Y/N, a simple internet search was all that was needed to find out that she was residing at a nursing home out in the countryside by the sea.

It was a 10 hour drive to get there, but Johnny didn’t let V have a wink of sleep once they arrived.

Sleep deprived and urgently being pushed through the entrance, V walked up to the front desk.

From the outside, the residence was a beautiful building that sat by itself on acres of open land. The sea was only a few hundred feet from the building, and there were miles of beautiful grass dotted with trees. The wind carried the smell of salt and tranquility, and eased both the minds of V and Johnny.

At the front desk of the lavish lobby, V introduced herself. “Hi, I’m here to see Y/N L/N.”

The secretary’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh? And what is your relation?”

V’s brain started scattering around for a response before she sheepishly responded. “Uh…I’m a family friend.”

The secretary sent a suspicious look but didn’t prod further.

“Right this way.” The secretary ushered V—and Johnny—to follow her outside to the backyard.

Sitting on a bench under a tree, an elderly woman stared out at the gray sea.

“Ms. Y/N, you have a visitor.” The secretary calmly approached the woman, to which she glanced over at the visitor in question before turning her gaze back to the sea.

“She’s a quiet one, doesn’t speak much.” The secretary noted before leaving them alone.

V took a step forward, but Johnny stood back, frozen.

With a glance back at Johnny, V spoke.

“Hi, Ms. L/N. I’m V.”

Seconds passed with silence. V thought she hadn’t heard her and was about to repeat herself when a soft voice spoke out.

“V…short for Valerie?”

Under normal circumstances, V would lash out at the mention of her real name, but this time she kept her mouth shut.

“Yes, Valerie.”

A few more seconds, and then— “What a beautiful name.” The ends of Y/N’s lips curved just slightly into a hint of what could be called a smile, but was gone with the next wind.

“Uh..thanks.”

“Sit, child.”

V did as she was told, and looked back to see Johnny but he was already gone. Weird.

Neither of them spoke for the next few minutes, and V relished in that peace. There was no expectation to fill the silence. The two women stared out at the sea, lost in their own thoughts.

Except V’s thoughts were not her own, rather they were Johnny’s scatterbrained anxiety running a mile a minute.

It was clear that Johnny wasn’t coming out anytime soon, and there was no point in waiting it out. Might as well rip the band aid off now.

“This might sound crazy…but just hear me out,” V took a deep breath before continuing, “Johnny…Johnny Silverhand is technically alive…” V didn’t know whether to stop or tell her the full truth, but there was no point in omitting anything now. “His soul resides in an engram that’s in my head.” V pointed to the microchip slot behind her ear.

V wasn’t expecting an immediate response, but minutes had passed without a reaction and worry began to brew in both V and Johnny.

“This was a stupid fucking idea. Why the fuck did we come here in the first place. I doubt she even remembers me. Why would she remember me? Why would she even want to remember me? After the hell I put her through-”

Johnny’s usual cold persona was beginning to crumble and it felt worse than the shitty attitude V had to put up with.

But breaking through Johnny’s spiral was that same soft, steady voice.

“I believe you.”

V was gobsmacked and Johnny immediately materialized next to her.

“What- how-” V stammered.

“You just have a feeling about these things.” That same, small smile graced Y/N’s lips, but this time, they were accompanied with the flow of tears. “Oh, Johnny.” She whispered.

“I’m right here, baby.” Johnny was kneeling in front of Y/N holding onto her knobby, fragile hands. His own face stained with parallel trails of tears— trails of the pain he’s endured, with and without her.

“You want to tell her anything?” V thought to Johnny.

At the moment, Johnny made firm eye contact with Y/N but spoke through V’s mouth.

“I’ve never stopped loving you, my sweet little rockstar. Not once, not ever.”

V and Johnny sat on the bench, underneath the tree, closest to the sea.

Johnny’s fingers brushed over the newly-made plaque—

“Y/N L/N, Y/S/N, and key to our hearts.”

“Guess we gotta give her a drink at the Afterlife, now.” V stated with a sniffle.

“It’s the least she deserves.”

“One Y/S/N and One Johnny Silverhand, coming right up!” Claire shouted before heading back to get the ingredients.

“Pink lemonade, a dash of vodka, and a pretty green lime.” Both Claire and V recited at the same time.

“Enjoy.” Claire smiled and pushed her Y/S/N’s drink.

“To Y/S/N and Johnny, the coolest rock stars to have ever lived.” V clinked glasses with Claire and threw her head back.

a/n: i hope you enjoyed! if you did, please consider reblogging since it helps my account! :) DON'T BE A GHOST READER!!!! i would love to hear your thoughts and opinions, and comments are what keep writers going <3 i'm open to cyberpunk requests so feel free to send me one <3 as always, have a great day and i'll see y'all in the next one <3

#yns world #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk johnny #cyberpunk 2077 fanfic #cyberpunk 2077 v #cyberpunk 2077 x reader #johnny silverhand #johnny silverhand x reader #johnny silverhand x v #cp2077 #cyberpunk 2077 johnny #cyberpunk 2077 johnny silverhand

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hrefna-the-raven · 6 months

Text

Web of faith

Masterlist- BG3 masterlist

Chapters: 1 - 2 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7

Words: 790

Chapter 3

"Oh you're serious?", you exclaimed in surprise, brushing a strand of Kar'niss' white hair behind his ears.

"Yes", he murmured, feeling a blush creeping up his cheeks.

He wasn't totally completely oblivious of the little daily life gadgets that were used but some of them were not as common in the noble district, just like that small lantern you always brought to your secret sanctuary.

"Well it's just an ordinary lantern, my beloved", you giggled, holding it up for him to see.

"But it glows like the moon."

The warmth of his smile and the innocent wonder in his eyes never failed to melt your heart.

"Silly Niss, you've never seen the moon."

"I may not have seen it, but I still know about it," he replied, rolling his eyes playfully as if offended by your comment, "besides I find its light almost as beautiful as you, my tiny beloved", he chuckled, pulling you into a tight hug.

You had strongly advised your companions against journeying through the depths of the Underdark to reach the shadow-cursed lands, sparking many heated debates. They all acknowledged that taking that route would have been quicker and easier, considering your extensive knowledge of the alternative paths and its inhabitants, but you adamantly refused. Each and every aspect of the Underdark served as a painful reminder of the profound loss you had endured - the day your beloved, the one who still held your heart, failed Lolth's test and perished. Deep within, a small part of you clung to a glimmer of hope, perhaps unaware of the concealed truth behind that fateful trial. However, your mind implored you to bury that hope, recognizing it as treacherous, for its revelation could inflict even greater anguish than the mere contemplation of his death. It took you a considerable amount of time to develop enough trust in your companions to share the heartbreaking tale of your past. However, it brought solace to your heart when they eventually grasped the magnitude of your pain. With their understanding, you embarked on the journey through the mountain pass. It took an unnatural amount of climbing, an unexpected travel to the astral plane, where you finally met your dream visitor only to defy a githyanki queen, whom you barely escaped with your life and the long rumbling abd mumbling of a legendary wizard. Now, as you finally sat here by the campfire, fixating on the dancing flames, you struggled to suppress the overwhelming sense of dread that lurked just down the path. The shadow-cursed lands, a corrupted place inundated with necrotic energy and harmful to any living being that passed within.

Kar'niss bowed before Ketheric Throm in the throne hall, graciously accepting the bestowed moon lantern from the chosen's outstretched hand.

"You will be the light of the Absolute and guide her True Souls and faithful to this safe haven", the general's words reverberated throughout the hall as he addressed the drider, "your task shall start tomorrow. For now, you're free to spend the rest of your time in the chamber you chose."

"We have our queen's favour. She speaks to us. Protects us. Graces us with her blessing. We bring more to her church every day", Kar'niss murmured with an almost zealous fervour, tightening his grip around the lantern, "we live to serve our Queen."

With a dismissive gesture from Ketheric, the drider turned and made his way towards the upper levels of the tower. A strangely familiar warmth enveloped his thoughts as his gaze fixated on the lantern, holding it up with one hand, bathing in its gentle glow. An almost innocent giggle escaped his lips.

"We are silly, yes my Queen, but we do know the moon, we have seen it now and you graces us with your blessing."

Climbing up the walls of the library's top floor, he squeezed his way through a gap in the ceiling. Kar'niss carefully laid a soft woollen blanket on the dusty attic floor, propping the moon lantern against a wooden beam before settling down. This was his new home, his small sanctuary, in close proximity to his beloved new queen, where he could hear her speak only to him, the place he'd finally found purpose and worth. With a contented sigh, he reached for a small silver ring adorned with diamonds, which he had previously placed in this space. As he held the ring, something deep within him stirred, as if a faint echo from the past beckoned him to keep it. The true significance of the ring was lost within his fragmented mind, a hazy fragment of a memory whispering to him. Though not as loud as his queen's voice, it persisted with an alluring beauty he was drawn to and felt almost treasonous towards the Absolute.

#baldur’s gate 3 #bg3 #kar'niss #karniss #bg3 kar'niss #kar'niss x reader #kar'niss x you

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emotionallychargedtowel · 1 year

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The Eighth Sense e5 & e6: portraying trauma with nuance

Episodes 5 and 6 of The Eighth Sense have really blown up a discourse bomb in tumblr’s BL scene. I had been putting off watching these episodes because I had gathered that episode 6 ended with something pretty distressing, and stuff like that sometimes hits me pretty hard, especially when it’s left as a cliffhanger. But I was already tempted to rip off the band-aid and watch it anyway, and then everyone has been debating aspects of these episodes. So I just had to see what all the discussion was about and figure out my own take on it.

In case it’s not obvious, the following will have spoilers for the series up to and including episode 6. I have a lot to say about this, because it touches on subjects that have been a major focus for me in my personal life, in my previous work as a trainee therapist, and in my research and writing. But I want this to be a manageable read, so I’m going to put things in bullet form when I can to keep them brief and organized and I’m going to make some section headings to help with skimming or skipping around. But before I launch into the rest, there’s one thing I should get out of the way: I don’t think any part of episodes 5 or 6 are a hallucination, a dream, or otherwise did not occur. I do think that there are aspects of the way the show portrays certain things that indicate dissociation and/or an acute trauma response. I’ll talk more about that below. (Hey, @waitmyturtles, this is the epic TES post I’ve been writing off and on for two days! I hope it’s of interest.)

Here are the section headings I’ll use below, to give a sense of what I’m going to talk about:

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

We don’t know how his younger brother died, but we know that he died in front of Jae Won when they were together, and it’s clear that he blames himself. I would be shocked if he was actually at fault even a little bit. But it does appear to have happened “on his watch” in a sense that lends itself to blaming himself. This is a huge issue, one that I’ll discuss in more detail later on.

Even before his brother’s death, Jae Won was clearly under a ton of pressure from his parents. And his father appears to be emotionally and, almost certainly, physically abusive. This is also far more likely to have pre-dated his brother’s death than to have only developed afterward.

In addition to pressure and abuse, I think it’s pretty clear that Jae Won was a parentified child. This means that he was put in a position of having to take care of his parents’ emotional needs as a child. This kind of role reversal has profound effects throughout the parentified person’s life.

Jae Won’s self-blame about his brother’s death means he was always going to be predisposed to stay stuck in the chronic version of the acute trauma response instead of moving through the natural healing process. In other words, he was almost certain to develop PTSD.

This is less clearly shown in the show, but my impression is that Jae Won has a deep-seated depressive tendency that existed before the loss of his brother. This would make sense for someone who faced the family-of-origin difficulties that he did.

When he did develop PTSD, as I have no doubt he did, Jae Won’s existing challenges were going to make him even more likely to develop the depressive symptoms of PTSD than others. We’ve seen some of these in the show already:

feeling alienated from others, unable to form meaningful connections with them,

anhedonia (an inability to feel positive emotions), and

negative beliefs about himself, other people, and the world.

All of this is happening at once. He’s dealing with PTSD, but he also still has all the same habits and beliefs he had before due to the parentification and training in people-pleasing, so he’s supposed to bottle up all of this pain. And if it’s his fault (in his mind) that his brother died, how much more does he owe his parents than he ever did before? This is a distorted, unhealthy way of thinking about all of it, but these kinds of maladaptive thoughts and expectations happen all the time with trauma survivors.

Jae Won’s therapist really sums all of this up very well when she says, “All your worries, not doing what you want to do because you do not want to let your parents down, and trying hard to be a good person to everyone because you do not want to disappoint others. Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother? Your younger brother, who got into an accident while with you. Your younger brother, who you couldn’t protect. And you are struggling to live your life for him as well.”

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

I went into this series feeling nervous about its portrayal of therapy. I was very excited that therapy was being portrayed at all, mind you! It’s horrifying how seldom we see therapy mentioned as an option, much less shown, either in BLs or kdramas, and I’ve hoped for this to change for a long time now. But therapy is shown in an inaccurate way so often in media. And often, we see therapists and other mental health professionals breaking ethical rules. So I was on my guard, big time.

There’s one thing I really take issue with about Jae Won’s therapist, and it’s somewhat of a small thing: her office is way, way too dark! I just don’t think that kind of low lighting, with a lot of the illumination coming from her aquarium and other tinted light sources, is professional or conducive to therapy work. Of course, it’s obvious that her office is lit in this way because it looks cool and sets a certain mood for the show. And that’s fine. It’s a very stylized show in a lot of ways. But it makes me a little tweaky to watch it.

Some of the things she does in the therapy space with Jae Won are a bit open to interpretation, and could be debated. But I view her in a fairly charitable light, and I found that a favorable interpretation wasn’t difficult to justify at all. I ended up viewing her (so far, at least) as a very skillful and effective therapist.

I loved it when she joked, in the first scene after the credits for episode 1, “For God’s sake! Just tell me what your worries are!” Jae Won isn’t great at sharing. He’s been trained from early childhood not to show his messy, vulnerable emotions around authority figures. Jae Won is not an easy client by any stretch, so she may have been showing a mild version of some real frustration with him when she began that comment with mock-hostility. But he seems really sensitive to criticism, real or perceived. Coming at him directly about this could be risky. Using humor is a good way to get around this sensitivity pretty effectively. It’s worth noting, though, that I wouldn’t endorse this kind of move by a therapist unless they knew a client very well and had built a solid rapport with them.

The comment I quoted above (”Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother?”) connects so many of Jae Won’s interpersonal difficulties to the loss of his brother in a skillful way. It was very astute and well-put. But there are some things I would quibble with about it.

First, I’m kind of surprised that she is only saying this explicitly this far into therapy with Jae Won. It seems rather late to make such an observation considering this constellation of issues has, without a doubt, been in place the entire time they’ve been working together. This could definitely have been done sooner.

At the same time, paradoxically, it’s delivered abruptly, as if she blurted it out too soon. Actually, the abruptness comes from the fact that there’s not sufficient lead-up to the comment in their discussion beforehand.

Though the show’s treatment of mental health is strong overall, I think this part of this scene suffered from flawed writing. If I had written this scene, I would have made a change that I think would have resolved both of these issues. Instead of introducing this insight as if the therapist has just voiced it for the first time, I would have presented it as something she and Jae Won have touched on together more than once during their work together. Anyone who’s been to therapy knows that the same ideas, which appear as shocking revelations at first, often have to be returned to many times and worked through before we can benefit from them. She could have said something like, “This is that issue we’ve talked about before, right? It seems like another case of your beliefs about your brother’s death causing trouble in other areas of your life.”

Even better, she could have been shown quoting some kind of metaphor or shorthand Jae Won came up with himself when they’d spoken about this previously. For example, I had a client once who used to talk about metaphorically carrying around a giant, heavy book where he wrote down all of his failures. He described it in a similar way to “the catalog of mistakes” (I’m not going to share his actual wording, of course). Whenever I would use his wording, saying “the catalog of mistakes” or even “the catalog,” all of our prior discussion of that issue came into both our minds immediately. It also served as a reminder of our rapport and the importance I placed on his perspective.

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

There’s one other area of Jae Won’s interactions with his therapist that is a bit hard to interpret. The exchange he has with his therapist about the amount of medication she’ll prescribe to him certainly seems important, but it’s hard to tell what exactly it means.

One thing that complicates this is the fact that he is receiving therapy and medication management services from the same provider. In other words, she seems to be a psychiatrist who provides therapy services. In most parts of the United States, this is rare (though that wasn’t always the case). I haven’t been able to tell whether this is more commonplace in South Korea.

Because she’s a prescriber and a therapist, asking for three weeks’ worth of medication instead of two also means waiting longer before having another therapy session. Maybe Jae Won really is just busy and trying to cut down on demands on his time, but this doesn’t seem too likely. It’s also possible that he’s seeking a greater quantity of his medication for some purpose, such as abusing it or using it for self-harm or to end his life. But he also could just be trying to put off his next therapy session to a later date because of his difficulty talking about vulnerable topics, something he demonstrates at multiple points in his therapy session. Similarly, when his therapist says she can extend his prescription to three weeks but not a month, because, as she puts it, “I need to do my job,” this could be in reference to the medication or her therapy work. Part of her job is keeping him from having access to too large an amount of medication at once, while another part is having therapy sessions with him (that are frequent enough to be useful). It’s hard to tell which of the two she was referring to, or whether it could be something else entirely. So I don’t think there’s one clearly correct interpretation here. But I do think we should be attentive to the possibility that he might be medication-seeking, possibly with the aim of using the medication for self-harm.

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Even if you have experienced trauma or have been close to someone who has, unless you’ve spent time with a sizable sample of trauma survivors, it’s hard to understand just how readily people blame themselves for traumatic experiences. I had had personal experience with this as a survivor of intimate partner violence before I ever did any training in trauma therapy, but I was still totally floored when I observed firsthand just how often this happens and how unjustifiable every single instance of self-blame I encountered in clients turned out to be.

This is actually a big area for me as a researcher so I’m going to try not to go off on a massive tangent, but I think this is important. When we experience trauma, one of the most frequent responses people have is to blame themselves. I used to describe this to clients as a “deal with the devil.” Blaming ourselves allows us to feel like we have control over whether such things will happen to us (and/or those we care about) in the future. If we tell ourselves, “the trauma only happened to me because I did something bad, or something wrong,” then we can also tell ourselves, “but I’ll never do the bad or wrong thing again so from now on I’ll be safe.”

It’s very tempting to make this bargain, but it is an extremely bad deal. Self-blame is one of the biggest reasons some people get stuck in their acute trauma response instead of completing the healing process, resulting in PTSD. That feeling of control isn’t worth that. But human beings are so tempted to make this trade. When I was doing trauma therapy as a trainee, I saw example after example of folks who did seriously remarkable amounts of mental gymnastics in order to justify blaming themselves for their trauma. I’m going to talk briefly now about a client I had many years ago, without giving any details that could be remotely identifying. This person had witnessed the death of a close friend when they were in combat together. I did prolonged exposure therapy with this person, meaning he had to tell me the story of his friend’s death again and again and again. When we do this type of work, it usually seems at first like the client is telling the exact same story again and again without any real change. But little changes crop up gradually and accumulate and after a while, you find the story has made big shifts. And occasionally, a big change happens.

This client started out telling his story in a way that looked for every possible reason his friend’s death could have been his fault. And wow, was he ever grasping at straws. It was almost as if he had said something as nonsensical as “I had oatmeal for breakfast that day and maybe that’s why my friend died.” Every miniscule decision he had made that day could, in his eyes, potentially have caused his friend’s death in some mysterious and imperceptible way. It would have been absurd had it not been so sad. But thankfully, as we continued the exposure work, his story gradually changed and these justifications for self-blame started to fall away a little at a time.

Then, one day, a crucial detail was added to the story that blew me away. After weeks of telling the story in the usual way, my client mentioned for the first time that just before his friend was hit, he had called out a warning to him, which the friend had ignored. He’d mentioned countless ways he might be to blame--none of them remotely justified--but had never told me about the one very clear way in which he had tried to prevent his friend’s death. When I pointed this out, my client was shocked that he had never mentioned that detail before. We spent a lot of time unpacking what all of this meant. It was the single biggest turning point in his therapy. So, yeah. People have an amazing capacity for figuring out even the slimmest of pretexts for self-blame, and it’s abundantly clear that Jae Won is exercising that capacity big time. I’m pretty certain we’ll find out that he has been blaming himself a lot for what happened while having no real justification for doing so.

(Side note: I have tons more thoughts about trauma, self-blame, victim-blaming more generally, and other related psychological constructs--these are all longstanding research interests of mine--but I’m going to stop here because this thing is already ridiculously long. But if anyone reading this ever wants to discuss any of this further, please feel free to hit me up! I love talking about these things.)

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Let’s review where we find Jae Won toward the beginning of the show. I’ve talked about how Jae Won had a lot of psychological difficulties before the story started. His family of origin situation was damaging even before he lost his brother, and then he had to contend with trauma and complicated grief. After that, he went through a breakup (possibly due to his partner cheating on him), completed his military service, and then had to make the transition back to civilian life, which isn’t easy under the best of circumstances.

And then he meets Ji Hyun, and his feelings for him unsettle the precarious set of strategies that he’s been using to get by. Ji Hyun makes Jae Won feel tempted to let his guard down and be himself. He places a degree of trust in Jae Won that challenges his cynicism and makes him feel tempted to trust Ji Hyun in return--to trust him to an extent that would normally be out of the question for him. Ji Hyun shakes things up, and while this is mostly a very positive thing--there are a lot of things in Jae Won’s life that urgently need to change--it’s also rather destabilizing in the short term.

Then the shit starts to hit the fan when Jae Won wakes up after staying out late drinking to hear his father pounding on his door. And the makers of the show start to play around with cinematography, editing, sound design, and other aspects of the show’s production to evoke Jae Won’s inner experience. After his dad pounds on his door, the way the show is shot and edited changes.

This disjointed editing and other distortions of typical filmmaking at this point in episode 5 have reminded some folks on here of a dissociative state, and I can see why. I would agree that it has a dissociative flavor. There are two prominent types of dissociation (which can happen simultaneously):

derealization, a feeling that the world around us isn’t real--it may feel empty, strange, or just plain wrong; and

depersonalization, in which we feel like we’re seeing ourselves from the outside, as if the person we’re observing isn’t us.

It’s tricky to talk about either of these in the context of tv/film because as viewers watching a fictional story unfold in a TV show, we are by definition:

perceiving that the world the characters inhabit doesn’t seem real, because it isn’t

looking at the characters from the outside, because they aren’t us (and they aren’t real)

But there are conventions of film and tv production that give us a sense of realism and of seeing things from characters’ points of view, and when Jae Won is dissociating we see those conventions get suspended or distorted. For example:

Conventional editing creates a flow of time that feels realistic (partly because we learn the “language” of film from a young age and interpret it that way). At important moments in The Eighth Sense, the editing breaks the rules of conventional editing, often messing with the viewers’ sense of time. Contexts change abruptly, as when Jae Won suddenly goes from being at home to being in his car. At other points, dialogue also goes out of sync.

Shot-reverse shot techniques help to approximate seeing things from the characters’ perspectives, situating us in the story so that we don’t feel like we’re observing from a distance. The most notable moment when this rule is broken happens when Jae Won is upset about his camera being damaged. We see him telling someone between sobs that the camera was a gift from his younger brother, but that person (assumably his dad) isn’t shown at all--not even a shoulder or the back of a head.

There’s also a lot of use of shallow depth of field (something the show uses in other ways as well), putting Jae Won in focus while his surroundings become a blur, making the world around him look hazy and unreal.

The sequence where Ji Hyun and Jae Won kiss in the ocean puts their dialogue way out of sync. On my first viewing, this just seemed like an interesting choice, one that gave the scene a sort of dreamlike quality. I’ve seen this strategy used before, as well, without any reference to mental illness, usually in art films. The first example that came to mind for me was from a Godard movie. It would be a valid option regardless of mental health-related content in a show. But after what immediately follows, I think that scene is portraying a trauma memory. Sometimes benign events that happened just before something traumatic become encoded with trauma memories rather than our usual type. (To put it briefly, trauma memories are encoded and stored in a different part of the brain from our everyday memories, and this is why they “behave” differently and have a different sensory quality from typical memories. Trauma recovery often involves some degree of re-encoding these memories in a more normal manner.)

Basically, the show sometimes puts the viewer into an approximation of a derealized and depersonalized state, particularly relative to what we’re used to as TV watchers. At other points, it shows characters’ experiences as if they were traumatic memories.

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

All this being said, I think that Jae Won’s dissociative moments, while very concerning and doubtless extremely distressing for him, do not point toward any sort of severe dissociative disorder like Dissociative Identity Disorder, nor do they make me concerned that his reality-testing (his ability to effectively distinguish what is and isn’t real) is impaired. I also don’t see any signs of cognitive impairment that would create a similar degree of confusion about reality. As a result, I don’t think the show’s use of signs of dissociation suggests that entire sections of the story will later be shown not to have happened.

Here’s the thing about dissociation. On paper, it sounds like an extreme symptom that approaches the kind of severe mental illness that includes symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. But the vast majority of the time, it’s very different from psychosis. And it’s also, in my opinion, more of a spectrum than we care to acknowledge most of the time. When we look at it that way, we can see that in a sense, Jae Won is at least a tiny bit dissociated a whole lot of the time. But frankly, so am I. It’s not uncommon for trauma survivors. It’s very different from something that would result in impaired reality-testing.

It’s possible that the show will end up revealing that Jae Won’s mental illness has resulted in him imagining entire segments of the show. These types of symptoms are often portrayed in media, for a couple of reasons: 1) people just find psychosis fascinating, and 2) these types of symptoms are very handy for creating plot twists and other interesting narrative devices. It’s not hard to think of examples of this. Fight Club, Black Swan, Shutter Island...the list goes on and on. But these portrayals are almost always inaccurate and exploitative. So far, the folks who make The Eighth Sense have shown a great deal of nuanced awareness of and sensitivity toward mental health matters, so I don’t think they would use this kind of cheap plot device. But they might. If so, I’ll find that pretty disappointing.

There is one thing the showrunners are doing that is somewhat sneaky in a way that’s could look analogous to that. Others have pointed out that Jae Won and his therapist are wearing the same clothes in every therapy scene, suggesting that we’re seeing the same therapy session interspersed with the other events of the series. In other words, the therapy session operates on a very different timeline from the rest of the story. We don’t know where to situate it relative to the rest of the plot. But I don’t see that as tied to the show’s portrayal of Jae Won’s mental health, nor does it seem exploitative or out of left field.

To sum up:

So far, The Eighth Sense has been remarkably accurate regarding psychological matters and has portrayed therapy and the use of psychotropic medication in a mostly positive and realistic light. I get the feeling the writers/directors/etc. have had some experience receiving mental health treatment. I really hope they maintain this level of quality throughout the remainder of the series.

I don’t think Jae Won’s PTSD (or his depression/anxiety) are sufficient for him to experience psychosis. I don’t expect entire segments of the show will be revealed to be an elaborate lie or hallucination, and if they are, I would consider that to be an example of poor writing and an unrealistic and potentially harmful representation of mental illness.

#The Eighth Sense #psychology of BL #trauma #self-blame #dissociation #media portrayals of mental illness #media portrayals of psychotherapy #media portrayals of trauma #jae won x ji hyun

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