#shame is blame turned inward | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kits-shrine · 6 months

Text

Wild Onions

Buckle up buttercup this is going to be a wild ride~

"You're my mate." she protested tearfully "I should have tried harder. Done everything. Done anything." Kit bowed her head in shame "And I didn't even think to try." After what happened to his mother, she'd assumed everything about him that made him, him was gone. But she should have tried "I'm so s-sorry that I left you alone when you needed me most."

“You never left me, Kit,” he chided softly, taking her hand into his to kiss them both before placing them over his heart, “you were with me the whole time, right here.”

She gave a little sob curling to lay her head against his chest overwhelmed by emotion. The beads brushing against his fingers from around her wrist gave a little shiver a hairline crack spreading on one of them. The crack grew and grew, just like the ones on her poor battered Soul. It was just too much and she was already too weak, she whisper little apologies over and over before she let out a pained gasp... as her Soul shattered and her body turned to stone in his arms.

The world seemed to tilt on its axis as the woman he loved lay cold and still in his arms, “Kit,” he tried to shake her, but stone does not yield, “this isn’t funny, Kit,” his breathing grew ragged as the reality that his love was gone slowly sank in. Her hands felt like white-hot branding irons over his erratic heart, “No, not like this,” he moaned quietly, “No. No. No. No. No. NO!” the elf’s soft refutes turning into wails of heartwrenching agony and rage.

He was home; they were together, so why? Why was she gone?

It was his fault, he thought brokenly, that goddess may have started it, but he, he was the weak-willed one. He hadn’t been strong enough to stop the possession. He abandoned his mate, leaving her to suffer, letting her broken heart slowly consume her Soul until it was too late.

He was to blame.

Wild magic as turbulent as his emotions rolled off him in waves, tearing at the earth, shredding the slip of paper that rested near them. Though if the silver kitsune siblings were there, Ingall was blind to them in his grief. Leaves trembled, falling from their perches, trunks bowed, and bark cracked, flowers wilted as grass brown; all nature grieved with the Elven King, all felt his loss, all mourned the dear lady who would have been Queen.

Thick brambles sprouted from the earth, winding around the King and his lost love, barring all from disturbing him in what would be a tomb.

He might not have been able to tell if the silver kitsunes were there, but he surely could feel the small hands desperately reaching to fight past the growing bramble "Mama?! P-Papa! PAPA!" Byakko called out, crying in pain as the thorns tore at her cruelly for her attempts that she paid no heed too.

His daughter's cry jolted the elf from his grief; the brambles receded, but he felt his Spirit wavering.

She shifted to her foxxy form to zip between the branches when they widened enough to do so, red streaking her white fur as she scrambled up on him 'D-don't- don't go too Papa.' Byakko pleaded with a little cry with a glance at Kit's stone face. "P-please."

The pain threatened to overwhelm him, taking what was left of his Spirit with it, but he would not let it. He refused to abandon their children. It may have been too late to save his mate, but the children were there and needed him now more than ever. Ingall reached his magic inward with what little strength he had left to brush against the Forest's Soul. The moment his magic touched that ancient power it attempted to consume him. He couldn't tell if he was screaming again or not, but this was a battle he couldn't lose.

Byakko gave little weepy crying noises, both with her voice and her foxxy form. "Hang on." Ginko gritted out wresting her way through the loosening brambles on one side to lay a hang on one of Ingall's shoulder pushing in healing energy. "You are not allowed to go too." Kuko bite out joining from the other side, trying to hold on like an anchor.

The elf once again felt himself changing once again, and strangely felt as if the change drew him closer to the Heart.

Kuko let out a curse as he felt the changes and assumed the worse, a little spark leaping from his fingers in anger. Ginko poured every bit of her energy into him while Bya just chanted a whisper pled for him to stay.

"Ouch!" the elf? cried out,"Dammit that hurts! How is setting me on fire helpful in the slightest!?"

That made all three freeze through Kuko's hand tightened on his shoulder "Well someone had to light a fire under your ass. I thought it might as well be me."

Carefully tucking Bya under his chin, the elf? gently released his hold on Kit’s body and pushed himself free of the bramble, “That’s usually a turn of phrase, not a literal statement,” he quipped, eyes still filled with unimaginable grief and the skin? of his shoulder still smoldering.

His actions unintentionally made a little nest for Kit's stone form to curl up into, almost like she was sleeping. The other two kitsunes stood, Kuko supporting his exhausted sister "It worked though." he snarked back eyeing the... well he wasn't sure he could call him an elf any more.

Ingall's hand came back a little wet from here the brambles had cut into Bya's little self as she tucked in close.

He scowled and immediately began to heal her, though instead of a green light that smelled of fresh herbs, little flowering vines sprouted from his fingertips, and now that he got a good look at his hand, he saw his skin or what had been his skin looked identical to the bark of the Heart, and covered the little fox’s wounds detaching from his fingertips and fall to the earth below when they’d done their duty.

Quite exhausted from her scare she just collapsed against him closing her eyes with a little thanks, not for the healing but for staying.

"Do we... have to be worried about that?" Ginko asked sluggishly gesturing towards him.

As he turned to look at her, the vines and leaves that made up his hair swayed with the movement, “I- No, I don't think there's cause for worry…I don't rightly know what I am at the moment, but I feel much more strongly connected to the Heart.”

"You look strongly connected." Kuko remarked dryly, if only just a little conflicted at that thought. Byakko fidgeted a little as one his leaves tickled her little black nose.

“Care to show me?” Ingall asked. After all, he could only see his hands and a bit of his hair? Well, he thought it was still his hair.

Kuko lifted a hand as he created a mirror from illusion reflecting Ingall's new form.

His jaw dropped. He looked like an elf made from a camphor or, rather, The Camphor.

"I don't think you should leave until we can be sure it's safe." Ginko slurred slightly as her eyes sagged and it was clear that Kuko was the only thing holding her up, the vixen had literally poured every drop of magic in her efforts to keep him with them.

'Papa?' Bya murmured tiredly 'Can I stay? Please?'

“Yes, Little Miss, sleep,” he whispered, stroking her fur, then looked to Kuko before reaching a hand out towards Ginko, “may I try something?”

Byakko murred softly against his throat. A finger pointed at him sternly (well as sternly as a wavering finger could be) "If you... undo all my hard work... I will... jerk a knot in your... heh... nonresistant tail." Ginko uttered the familiar threat clearly punch drunk.

“You can jerk knots into my hair,” he suggested as he rested a hand on her forehead and willed a bit of the Heart’s magic, which he could sense and feel keenly, to restore her strength.

Ginko inhaled sharply as the fur on her tails poofed at the surge of magic and energy. She looked at him with wide and far more alert eyes "Oh dear..."

Ingall jerked his hand back, “too much?” he asked, eyes, the only thing really the same about him, darting over her in concern.

"Not too much, per se, but a lot." Ginko murmured pulling from Kuko's hold on her as she looked between him and the Heart "I think you are much more connected to the Heart than you might have thought... that felt just as it does invoking it's power."

He pinched the bridge of his nose, “come again?”

The two silver haired kitsunes looked at each other in silent communication. Kuko nodded and headed away from them shifting into his larger true form. His eyes glowed as he growled lowly before he pulled magic from the heart to strengthen all the wards around the mountain at once, a feat that took tremendous energy which the former elf felt pull from his very center before Kuko finished folding to the ground tired from being used as a conduit. "Did you feel that?" Ginko asked looking at Ingall intently.

Ingall rubbed at his chest, “Yes, yes I did-” he cut himself off before cursing in elfish, as just exactly what he was now dawned on him, “I’m a Stars damned dryad!”

Byakko shifted against him with a little chitter of protest at his loud swearing.

"And you're connected to the Heart..." Ginko's fingers touched her fingers to her mouth at the implications as her brother succulently finished as he shifted back "He practically is the Heart." he rubbed at his temples.

After apologising for disturbing Bya, he ran a hand over his face, “why is nothing ever simple?” he asked, looking up at the sky.

"Because life isn't simple." Ginko lightly placed a hand on his shoulder in sympathy. She offered him a sad but kind smile "You should rest." her eyes drifted to Kit's curled form in the nest of brambled pressed against the Heart's truck. "Would you like me to stay here with you?"

The dryad’s grief seemed to make him wilt, “Yes,” he murmured softly.

She gently led him and Bya a little further on the other side of the trunk. Ginko looked to Kuko "You go make sure the others don't come here yet either."

He nodded looking uncertain before confessing "I do not know what to tell them."

“The truth,” Ingall choked, “neither them will take kindly to being coddled. The longer we wait, the more it will hurt. Take Tum to Tamashii, I won't-” he took a breath as tears pooled in his eyes, “I can’t answer the questions that will come, not yet.”

Kuko gave the el-dryad a nod before he turned and left the glen. Ginko gingerly wrapped her arm around him coaxing him to rest against her careful not to dislodge Byakko "I am sorry Cousin, for all our sakes." she murmured sadly feeling his heartache.

He did so, thankful for the kind touch and comfort as he grieved.

Time and tears passed. It was hard on them all, but they pulled together to support the other. Ingall and the children often visited Kit in her bed of eternal flowers, kept blooming year round by her loving mate.

Decades maybe even centuries passed peacefully and Ingall got to watch his children blossom and grow just as his flowers did. Over time a young sapling had started to grow near the Heart, growing and growing into a proper tree of it's own. But more importantly it seemed to flow magic like the Heart, slowly growing stronger and stronger.... as Ingall's and the Heart grew weaker.

It was dying and... so was he.

One day he closed his eyes for the last time. When he next opened them he felt better than ever floating in a realm of warm light, heart pounding as the voice he'd longed for most sang out from behind him-

"Charmer~"

~Final Fin~

True End

Rotten Stinkin' Onions

Sweet Onions

Wild Onions - You are here

#aizawasluckylady #halloween special #wild onions #onion series #ala monsters inc

5 notes · View notes

ceaselxss · 11 days

Note

[ conceal ]

kinky/rough smut prompts [ conceal ] — my muse makes your muse come in their pants

Tseng sits on the piano bench, hands upon the keys. Veld sat beside him. They've been spending their evenings like this on and off for a few weeks now as Tseng learnt a skill that was not violent beneath Veld's teaching.

It had been a few months since Kalm had been destroyed, and since Veld had lost his arm. It was strange to watch him get used to the prosthetic - his steadfast mentor seemed older in an instant. Not to mention the scars on his face that Tseng held the blame for.

But they didn't talk about those things - didn't talk about the family Veld had lost, or the wounds he had endured. He taught Tseng the piano; off duty, the dynamic shifting slightly. Still a teacher, still a mentor, but something else as well in the quiet nights.

Tonight was different. He could smell alcohol on the older man, and he didn't need as much instruction anymore so there was little speaking as he sat and played the notes on the sheet before him. It made Veld happy, he thought, and it was a useful skill to have.

A hand on his thigh was not enough to force a mistake, and so he kept playing. The hand lingered, not rushing as it slowly roamed over his leg. Tseng didn't vocalise a question but he felt his face growing hot... Felt his body react. Shame flared in him at the fear Veld would notice - shame at the fact that he was so quick to respond to his mentors touch.

Eyes on the sheet music, hands on the keys.

It was a difficult piece, and he was still new to this, but he could never bare to make mistakes when he'd been doing so well in the nights leading up to this one. It was only his second night attempting this piece and Veld had offered it with praise, that he'd done so well so far, so why not a challenge? Tseng had been studying the music on breaks at work.

The hand on his leg creeps inward and Tseng can't help the sharp intake of breath as Veld's large, warm hand turns to cup the growing bulge in his pants. It's still a slow, lazy touch. Tseng still doesn't question it, but he can feel Veld's eyes on him now. What reaction is the correct one here? Is this a test of his concentration? Is this a man who had lost so much looking for... Something?

Eyes on the sheet music, hands on the keys.

A few slipups now, clumsy fingers as his heartrate spikes and he can feel himself begin to sweat. The hand rubs against him and Tseng sets his jaw because now he's convinced himself just to play; just to finish the piece. To not react to what was happening, though his body betrayed him so completely. His cock strained against the fabric of his pants now, oh so desperate for that hand.

Eyes on the sheet music, hands on the keys.

How could he be expected to last? How could he be expected to endure this without succumbing? Oh how he wishes he could have played though, that the music could have been more than the jarring sound of too many keys pressed as he clutched at the piano as though it was his lifeline. Shoulders tense, he bites his lip and bleeds as he unravels; wet shame making a mess of his pants.

He's breathing hard, and he still can't look at Veld. He pries his fingers off and he realises his hands are shaking.

#likewclves #nsft #uhhhhh for safety ill also tag this one #tw dubcon

3 notes · View notes

creepy-crowleys · 5 months

Note

For Bad: Is there anyone who had an undeniable negative impact on your OC’s life? How did your OC deal with that change? Have they been able to move on?

oc asks: relationships edition

Rose, Crowley's great-aunt through her father. So. His aunt actually, not Crowley's, she just usually drops the great because extra syllable, not actually a judgement.

She really wasn't great though.

Rose was never a particularly happy person. She'd had a lot of loss in her life, and she'd never been able to handle it well. And it only got worse as time went on. She was barely keeping afloat when Crowley's family died, with Crowley's dad being one the very few people she was still close to at that point.

She really meant to honor his memory by taking in his surviving daughter. But she never was able to handle it.

Rose struggles with grief and anxiety. She wants to hold on to things that remind her of her loved ones, but then has never been able handle actually facing the proof of their loss. With things, she can have them and keep them and lock them away where she never has to actually look at them and confront the weight they carry. And that was never going to work when the memento in question is a person.

And Crowley in particular occupied a kind of uncanny valley for Rose: She is so much like her father in so many ways, but she can never be fully mistaken for him. And it resulted in Rose often swinging wildly between wanting Crowley to be more like him but also not like him at all, and that... really shaped a lot of their relationship, especially once Marlene wasn't there to balance things out. There was never anything Crowley could do that was right because Rose could never decide what she wanted out of her.

And then it all hit a breaking point when Crowley attempted suicide and spiraled from there.

Rose is a kind of anxious that manifests in anger and blame, so once Crowley was mostly in the clear, it turned all turned into how ungrateful and selfish she was to abandon her aunt and throw away everything Rose had done for her, clearly Rose would have to keep her on a tighter leash to keep her safe from herself, she clearly wasn't capable of taking care of herself, etc.

And Crowley mostly shut down from that point. The guilt and shame of being that damaged a person led to cutting herself off from Marlene as even a long-distance confidant. It took years for her to decide that she wanted to try to prove herself useful (and maybe visit her family's grave, she wanted see them too).

It's taken a few years of being away for Crowley to really come to terms with Rose's treatment of her. It's still hard for her to say that it was abuse outright - there are too many people out there with worse stories than hers to feel comfortable with it - but she can at least acknowledge that it wasn't right, that little of it was her fault, and even what was, didn't warrant the response she got in many cases. She knows now that a lot of things Rose had her convinced of weren't true.

The whole experience has left Crowley hyper-conscious of where she might be prone to falling into the same kinds of patterns. She needs people to be able to walk away if she's asking too much, and she needs them to be sure they're sticking around because they want to and not out of some sense of obligation. She doesn't want to force the same kind of control Rose had on her onto anyone else.

And even if hers tends to turn inwards rather than out, she's very aware of how her fear can pipeline into anger and blame.

Crowley is still her aunt's child, she still carries pieces of her whether she wants them or not. But. When she started noticing those patterns emerging, she did something her aunt never could and sought help for it. She never wanted to inflict on her child what her aunt did to her, or on anyone else.

#It still ended poorly but the effort was being made and still is.#She refuses to let herself spiral and hurt and hate the way Rose did.#.FROM THE HANDLER #.RECEIVE #Anonymous #.meme #.abuse #.child abuse #.suicide

3 notes · View notes

sentfromwolves · 11 months

Note

Got any Wings???

I did Wings for spy prince so now I'll do wings for my Acheron POV character study!! Lucrezia belongs to @pinespittinink 💖 This scene is written in the old version, and I'll have to update it accordingly for the new version... but I love these two a lot

Wing: share a snippet that you daydreamed about before writing it (or a snippet that you were really looking forward to writing.)

“Stop,” Acheron said, desperate, anguished, the unsettling off-white of his eyes reflecting in the black galaxy of Lucrezia’s own like a feral creature, “Stop—stop apologizing to me. It’s not your fault, none of it was your fault. I don’t want your guilt, I don’t want your misplaced blame!”

He bared his teeth. He felt half-feral again, that locked box in his chest broken open, but sinking in a mire he couldn’t claw it out of. He couldn’t believe that there was anything here he could grasp onto, take hold of. And if this was one of their few meetings left between each other, he didn’t want it to be spent like this.

“I chose,” Acheron confessed, ragged, aching, “I chose to do it. I chose this sacrifice. I did it for you, but that doesn’t make it your fault. Don’t look at me as though I have to forgive you for something for you to be absolved of a crime you didn’t commit. Do you understand? Lucrezia. Lucrezia. It was mine.”

The embers burned out of him. Acheron’s tongue turned to sand and salt in his mouth again, stiff and unusable. He released Lucrezia and stepped back, his bad arm throbbing up against his chest, heart pounding against it like a ship in a storm.

Lucrezia stared wide-eyed at him, unmoving, unspeaking. A broiling sense of shame crept over Acheron’s ribcage, sludging inward to stick against his lungs. He felt rubbed raw, like flesh crushed against asphalt, and caught his lip roughly between his teeth, looking at the ground.

“It was my choice,” he said again. “And I made it for you. That doesn’t make it your fault. That doesn’t mean you’re the one to blame.”

#wip: cleavecross #my writing #ch: acheron #my baby boy #he's got so much trauma

3 notes · View notes

jonhoel · 1 year

Text

First Reformed and interpassivity

This last term, I spent a lot of time writing about Paul Schrader's haunting 2017 film First Reformed. In the wake of his new film Master Gardener's impending wide release, I have rewatched it again, in addition to his more recent film, The Card Counter. First Reformed has developed quite the following online in the six years since its initial release, and even some fairly trafficked memes, which really speaks to the breadth of what is so captivating about the film.

This post is thinking through ideas about agency and personal responsibility with regard to climate anxiety, namely an anxiety that attempts to satisfy guilt, through interpassivity, which satiates the individual, but does nothing to benefit any substantive material action to combat climate crisis.

One of the key theoretical throughlines between contemporary neoliberalism and conservative ideology is the prominence of possessive individuality. The environmental journalist Martin Lukacs lays out two principal objectives of neoliberalism as scaffolded by the likes of Reaganomics and Thatcherism: (1) to dismantle barriers to the exercise of unaccountable private power and (2) to erect those private powers to the exercise of any democratic public will. We see this through the nonchalance of a constant reshuffling of privatization laws throughout the last four decades, particularly with regard to the oil sector, but certainly applicable to other forms of energy commerce.

What’s more prescient though to this essay, is how neoliberalism has come to shape the modes and affects of its subjects and their everyday lives:

[Neoliberalism’s] trademark policies of privatization, deregulation, tax cuts and free trade deals, with atmosphere like a sewage dump, has hamstrung our ability, through the instrument of the state, to plan for our collective welfare. […] Studies show that people who have grown up under this era have indeed become more individualistic and consumerist. Steeped in a culture telling us to think of ourselves as consumers instead of citizens, as self-reliant instead of interdependent, is it any wonder we deal with a systemic issue by turning in droves to ineffectual, individual efforts? We are all Thatcher’s children. […] Neoliberalism has taken this internalized self-blame and turbocharged it. It tells you that you should not merely feel guilt and shame if you can’t secure a good job, are deep in debt, and are too stressed or overworked for time with friends. You are now also responsible for bearing the burden of potential ecological collapse.

Lukacs deems it eco-consumerism, but the term we have adopted more recently is green capitalism, a recapitulation of the tragedy of the commons, whereupon we (collectively and individually) overuse resources, but specifically resources that hurt the ecosystem. The important takeaway though, is that while these are unethical individual actions, they pale in comparison to the true threat to the planet, which is imperial militarism. Individual impacts are practically irrelevant; every person and factory on the continent could cease all emissions and the climate war would rage on, because the US military is the primary belligerent. The American military produces high enough greenhouse gases to render the entire globe in continual climate crisis. Individual environmental impact becomes more of a hyperbolic categorical imperative than an ontological urgency.

Schrader’s film First Reformed, contemplates environmental responsibility through its narrative about the life of an Upstate New York Protestant minister named Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), who struggles with staying devout amidst a cancer diagnoses, shrinking service attendance at his church, and a crisis of faith. At first, Toller looks inward, seemingly finding solace in the writing of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, but eventually seems to come to terms with his moral responsibility to engage with the outside world. One of his congregation members, a pregnant woman named Mary Mensana (Amanda Seyfried) approaches him about her husband, Michael Mensana (Phillip Ettinger) an anti-natalist growing more and more detached from his life. Michael is enamored with radical climate activism and would probably be deemed by most film viewers as an ecofascist. Mary finds a suicide vest in Michael’s workshop and at first, Toller condemns Michael. However, following Michael’s suicide later in the film, Toller becomes more and more empathetic to Michael’s philosophies as he pours over the research on Michael’s laptop and becomes familiar with the realities of the climate crisis.

First Reformed (2017 dir. Paul Schrader)

At a glance, it is not a film about climate war directly: its primary focus appears to be the specific story of a man who is pushed beyond his ethical limits and spurred into action. This is methodic narratively for Schrader, who often pens screenplays with protagonists driven to no longer function in their circumstances. His screenplays—Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, Bringing out the Dead, and recently, The Card Counter)—would never be accused of formulaic writing, but tend to depict protagonists in this same way. Toller fulfills the Travis Bickle archetype, although arguably considerably less unhinged at the start, by the end of the film he regularly consumes a cocktail of Pepto-Bismol and Whiskey, a telltale sign of mental instability. The film climaxes with a standoff between Toller and Edward Balq (Michael Gaston), a millionaire CEO who financially benefits the church, but also owns a large polluting factory nearby and invests in oil companies. While the church celebrates its 250th anniversary, with a full attendance for service, Toller plans to wear Michael’s suicide vest and kill everyone including Balq, who is attendance. At the last minute, Toller changes his mind. He sees Mary entering the church, which compels him to forgo the suicide bombing. Instead, he wraps himself in barbed wire and prepares to drink a glass of drain cleaner. First Reformed through its narrative is wholly consumed with the environment and the extrinsic anxiety of interpassivity, of contribution that does nothing to resolve actual conflict. How can we understand ecological interpassivity and its anxieties?

Interpassivity by Robert Pfaller. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

What is interpassivity? German critical theorist Robert Pfaller coined an aesthetic theory of delegated enjoyment which he called interpassivity. Using an Althusserian framework, Pfaller catalyzes the peculiar phenomena of detached passivity misconstrued as interactivity. Since the concept’s origin in 1994, interpassivity has accelerated into a vibrant scholarship taken up most notably by Slovenian philosopher and internet meme Slavoj Žižek, who credits Jacques Lacan’s Seminar VII as interpassivity’s conceptual heritage. In that seminar, Lacan muses on the virtue of The Chorus in Greek tragedy. Pfaller sets substitutional proclivities as the central nature of interpassivity. Nonautonomous inaction will satisfy; it is all that the individual needs. On the topic, Žižek wryly asserts that the interpassive individual’s psychological interior can think about whatever they want, no matter how obscene or incriminating: “To use an old Stalinist expression: whatever I am thinking, objectively I am praying." (p. 32).

The discourse of interpassivity first begins in the early 1990s, when much of culture studies and psychoanalytic theory was consumed with ideas surrounding interactivity, both in art and in technology. In more recent years interpassivity has seen much scholarship surrounding the phenomena of streaming content, whereupon the viewer is no longer purveying agency through ludonarrative in playing a game themselves, but passively, watches someone else do it, and thus, achieves the same pleasure principle. Pfaller’s second full-length book on interpassivity is titled On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without Owners. The framing of interpassive interactivity as the process of self-assurance through illusion is precise. It captures the illusory nature of the act of interpassivity, especially regarding environmental activism. We believe that we are conducting ourselves altruistically but in reality, we are not. One cannot help but recall Žižek’s famous proclamation that not only do we not really know how things are, but we also don’t even know how things appear to be.

Let us anticipate that the neoliberal environmental nonprofit industrial complex for interpassivity, is much the same as Louis Althusser casts the sports industry for ideological apparatus. They are both reliant on socialized principles of self-abandon; the central desire is to forget. Environmental neoliberalism is ideological because it reproduces the conditions of production of labor forces and the social relationships of that production. Under its present media surveillance, the nonprofit sector ensures that people will work in the same way next year as they do this year, and that they will integrate expectantly into society. What is astounding about this reproduction through ideological practices is that everyone starts participating by themselves without having to have their own secret government entity forcibly harassing them the whole way. The readiness to act spontaneously cannot be achieved through violent means; violence and repression serve at best, to make people passive. According to Althusser, the fact that people are active without being coerced is an outcome of ruling ideology (pp. 232-273). Contemporary neoliberal life is often an exercise in puritanism: the guilt that surrounds the personal responsibility of eco-consumerism is the centralizing affect for the drive to recycle, to consume ethically, and be on the right side of every controversy. In this way, interpassivity is the ultimate failsafe. For the neoliberal bicameral mind, donations to the environmental nonprofit excuse away subsequent anti-environmental acts that could be incurred and gives a sense of fulfilling one’s societal expectation, thus relieving two anxieties at once. Consider the patron who, when ordering a drink at Starbucks, puts two dollars into the collection tin for an environmental nonprofit. The patron experiences slight discomfort or anxiety and attempts to assuage the affect by what they believe is action, against passivity, through altruism. In reality, this is interpassivity at work. The subject allows the nonprofit complex to act as proxy and they feel temporary elation, like smoking a cigarette to ease the anxiety of nicotine cravings, which ironically strengthens the addiction.

Pfaller offers a defense of interpassivity in the 2017 introduction to his book on the subject:

“…If we take seriously Althusser’s idea that becoming a subject is one of the key mechanisms of ideological subjugation (see Althusser, 1971), then becoming an active subject cannot be turned into any universal political solution. […] The ‘theoretical anti-humanism’ of the concept of interpassivity has from the very beginning united all who have been interested in this perspective. As a result of this, though not exclusively so, the theory of interpassivity was enthusiastically received. And so, just as Althusser was a theoretical anti-humanist, we were theoretical interpassivists. However, the question of whether one should also feel sympathy with the practices of interpassivity or not was a wholly different and open matter at that time. (p 4-5).

Here we see the return of a familiar structural Marxist claim, rejecting notions of human essence and transcendentalism and further cementing the notion of hegemonic systems of socio-economic ideology. Within the theoretical lineage of Lacan->Althusser->Žižek, Pfaller can readily problematize the idea that inaction is amoral, if action itself is not inscrutable (a rudimentary concept in the realm of antihumanism).

Whether or not interpassivity as it was originally envisioned in relation to interactivity by Pfaller in 1996, can be qualified as a moral or sympathetic act, remains to be seen. One could potentially have more sympathy for this concept of interpassivity in other avenues than how this essay recalibrates the term toward the neoliberal act of interpassive activism. Interpassive action is so applicable to our contemporary lives, even in progressive circles. An oft-hastily muttered epigram we hear frequently: there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, as the justification for all kinds of questionable purchases. This phrase has no clear etymology, although internet historians have traced it back to several meme accounts on Twitter and Tumblr. We can imagine it however that it is a likely descendent from readings of Adorno and Horkheimer, among others. This ends/means justification is precisely the kind of nihilism that the interpassive act thinks it is counteracting, when in reality, it is an extension of that nihilism:

In interpassive behaviour, people take up selective contact with a thing in order, in exchange, to entirely escape that very thing – and indeed, not only as we have established to begin with, with regard to an identification with an illusion. Interpassivity is thus a strategy of escaping identification and consequently subjectivation. Precisely there, where it is suggested that they become self-conscious subjects (through interpellation in the sense of Althusser [1971]), people seize interpassive means to flee into self-forgetfulness. (p 7-8).

Sokoban, Hiroyuki Imabayashi, 1982.

At first, this definition flummoxes, because we think of the altruistic act of activism, particularly in the spectra of nonprofits and social media as a supremely self-conscious endeavor, one that is all about being witnessed by others: ‘look how benevolent I am!’ In reality it is as Pfaller describes: an act of anxious desire to escape the thing, to no longer conceive of, or participate in, the anxieties of climate change. Althusser reflects on the “teeth-gritting harmony” of the ideological state apparatus (p. 248), how it manifests, an existence that should repulse any Marxist, one that causes its subject to live anxiously. The act of interpassivity then, is an illusory break from that anxiety, one that suggests ideological freedom, but only the suggestion.

Pfaller (and Žižek) muse on interpassivity as an anti-ideological phenomenon, or at least, an act that pertains to some new form of ideology that does not rely on becoming subject (in the Althusserian consideration), which would suggest a potential morality of the interpassive person, a person sidestepping the conditions of ruling hegemonies. This is an idealistic reading of interpassivity, one that does not consider all of its problems, the most immediate of which seems to be its compulsory sense of completion. It is not the compulsion itself that is concerning but that this compulsion somehow actively underestimates the ruling ideology, a grave error. It should be the purpose of postmillennial theory to de-hegemonize our unconscious to try and see how socio-cultural phenomena like interpassivity might operate in service to the state, rather than for the holistic ethics of the individual citizen-environmentalist.

First Reformed is a film that presses this point, on the pathos of the individual and their ethical responsibilities for living in the world. Interpassivity surrounds the idea of participation as the locus for environmental action: will you step up, will you act? The film is all about absolutions, about imperatives. It’s also a deeply personal film for its director Schrader, who was raised by strict Dutch Calvinists in Grand Rapids and had intended to become a minister after studying theology at university. But a chance encounter with film critic Pauline Kael steered him toward film criticism instead. He published a book on ‘slow cinema,’ which highlighted three directors, most notably his primary inspiration, Robert Bresson. Schrader began penning screenplays in the early 1970s, his first major being Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza, followed by his seminal work with Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver. Over the course of his career, he has penned nearly 30 screenplays and has directed 24 films, most of which, saw him as the screenwriter.

First Reformed (dir. Paul Schrader, 2017).

However, beneath the surface of the film’s appearance of a more standard arthouse drama character story, the film is bursting with environmental commentary. After Michael’s suicide, Mary gives Toller his laptop, where he finds endless streams of articles, videos, and digital ephemera surrounding the climate crisis. The film contemplates the delusion of optimism in the wake of climate war, while also folding its arms at the nihilism of giving up too. It’s a comforting spiritual characterization of our ethical circumstances. In an interview with Cinéaste, Schrader muses on the ecological anxiety at the heart of the film’s spiritual narrative: eschatology:

Christianity and Judaism have been talking about it from the very beginning. What is our purpose on earth? What is the goal? We have now entered a moment in time where we can actually see, if we stand on our tippy-toes, the end of our duration as a species. What was for thousands of years a hypothetical discussion—what happens when mankind no longer exists?—has now become an actual discussion. It gives shading to the search for meaning or purpose. […] We have a threat that we can’t do anything about, or at least that we have decided we don’t want to do anything about. It’s probably too late to reverse that. In fact, I do think that it is too late—too late to save human life on this planet. (pp. 28-33).

End times takes on a very different connotation when you are living in it, even if it is a centuries-long procession. The severity of these ramifications does not necessarily change much in terms of narratology, but it does alter how we come to a film’s narrative and relay it back to our own climate crisis.

Schrader credits Deleuze’s film theory and Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinematography as the most crucial influences in his own precise use of duration in First Reformed. In his film theory book Cinema 2, Deleuze catalyzes Henri Bergson’s condensation of time as a bridge to reconstitute together movement-image and time-image in film. He is interested in how characters in film move through space and time, in the splitting of time that occurs when film moves from past-to-present, through what is projected on to the screen, “the uniting of an actual image and virtual image to the point where they can no longer be distinguished.” (p. 335). Deleuze names this unification crystal-image. Schrader puts crystal-image this to use affectively, in a way where the viewer is forced to sit with anxiety in an extended shot, or pan, feeling the weight of dread grow, as time becomes uncertain and notions of the speculative begin to take root.

First Reformed (dir. Paul Schrader, 2017).

First Reformed’s most experimental sequence embodies this idea, and it occurs while Toller and Mary are doing an intimate breathing exercise together. The cinematography shifts and starts panning over various scenes of industrialization and environmental devastation from a Gods-eye view, in the mode of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. First we see the ocean, filled with oil; a seemingly unending mountain of rubber tires; rows and rows of industrial smokestacks and lit up factories; a logging bulldozer in the process of deforestation; shots of what first appears to be a village’s rock-wash, but then reveals that it is not a rock-wash, but an enormous amount of garbage; a large and spreading brushfire, and finally, a shot of an oil tanker, partially submerged in a stagnant ocean, black with oil. In general, Schrader is very reserved in focused frame shots, with very sparse movements; only one dolly was used in the filming of First Reformed. What results is a film that often at first feels like a stage production, until these moments of experimental environmental critique, where suddenly the cinematography feel more like the collage films of Adam Curtis than Taxi Driver.

In First Reformed we see Toller, Mary, and others struggle to come to terms with the challenge left by Michael, of what it really means to care about the world and the people living in it. This feels more evident when Toller first meets Balq, the antagonist. At Michael’s wake, Abundant Life, the evangelical megachurch that owns First Reformed, has their children’s choir perform an acapella rendition of “Who’s Gonna Stand Up” a protest song by Neil Young, from his 2014 album Storytone. Balq is annoyed because a local news website reported on Michael’s wake, calling it a political protest, and mentioning both First Reformed and Abundant Life by name. The service was held at a toxic waste site, one that he insists was cleaned up by EPA superfunds (it clearly was not cleaned up). This infuriates Toller who recognizes how materially meaningless the choice of song really is, when set against the profound damage being done by Balq’s companies. He asks Balq if God will forgive us. In a way, Toller is recognizing the danger of interpassivity for the neoliberal imagination. While the Abundant Life pastor Joel Jeffers (Cedric Kyles) tries to hastily apologize to Balq, Toller becomes apathetic, seemingly aware how even the thing Balq is qualifying as an attack against him, is largely ineffectual.

Life during climate war is suffocated with the fumes of anxiety, it is omnipresent. We see Michael in FirstReformed devastated by the realities of the damage done; he cannot bring himself to watch his child be brought into the world he no longer wishes to be a part of. Michael’s devastation leads him to construct a suicide vest. Mary finds the vest, and Toller takes it. It is unclear to the audience if Michael’s decision to end his own life is because he realized Mary had discovered it, or if he truly could not bear it anymore. Regardless, the anxieties both Michael and Toller emanate feel enormously reflective of the kinds of liberal anxieties that interact with environmental inactions, that render zero impact. The difference is in their determination. These are two people preparing to give their lives for the hope of meaningful material benefit. That’s a radical act of altruism, not interpassivity. In the end, Michael dies, and Toller decides against the suicide bombing, but the contemplation feels endlessly relevant to a moment where collectively, we are beginning to reevaluate what it means to live in climate war.

Althusser, Louis. On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Trans. G.M. Goshgarin. (New York: Verso Books, 2014). 232-273.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1986). pp. 335.

Haynes, Todd. Safe Sony Pictures, 1995. 1h 59m.

—. “Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore on Safe.” Sneak Peaks. The Criterion Collection. Dec. 15, 2014. 36m.

Lukacs, Martin. “Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals” (London, UK: The Guardian, July 17, 2017).

Nam, Sean. “Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness: An Interview with Paul Schrader.” Cinéaste Vol. 43, No. 3 (Summer 2018), pp. 18-23.

Pfaller, Robert. Interpassivity. (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

—. Pleasure Principle: Emotions Without Owners. Trans. Lisa Rosenblatt. (New York, Verso Books, 2014).

Sanders, Barry. The Green Zone: The Environmental Cost of Militarism. (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2009).

Schrader, Paul. First Reformed. A24 Films, 2017. 1hr 53m.

Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. (New York: Verso Books, 1989). p. 32.

—. Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates. (New York: Verso Books, 2002).

#first reformed #paul schrader #film #essay #ecoanxiety #interpassivity #zizek #pfaller #film critique #a24 films #ethan hawke #climate action #climate war #climate crisis #calvinism #christianity #althusser

10 notes · View notes

tewwor · 7 months

Note

“What the hell? Was that real?” / from roman to gerry! (he has a tma verse 👀)

These doors are known to do that. Confuse, trap. Turn one's own mind inwards, warp what's conceived as real and misplace blame.

"Real as it gets, 'suppose." No use in assuming since the evidence is all there. In front, behind, around them. Off white walls, stark black doors, no windows, no vision of escape. Elongated fingers tipped with hooked nails just outside of the periphery — clawing beneath a cracked entryway. All while a voice echoes in the distance; one so strange, yet so familiar.

Something hollow twists in the ashen cave of his chest. Just from the voice alone, he's reminded of how twisted and desperate the Institute can be — consequences be damned. Still a shame he knows the name of what, rather who, torments their trek down this never-ending corridor. It’s more than what he can say about his current company.

“Real enough that what happens here reflects back outside.”

@ohsunshine

#roman roy — interaction .#* & gerard keay ━━ ❮ dialogue ❯#* & that’ll be one (1) nugget please — answered .#// i scrambled to think of an entity and the first one that came to mind was the spiral so

0 notes

godkilller · 2 years

Note

“Captain. I know we aren’t supposed to revel in battles, that we should be frightened and repelled by the horrors and despair it inflicts upon people. But...” Izuru pauses. There’s a hint of guilt in his voice as if he feels shame simply for asking. “...Do you ever think somebody deserves it?”

THAT QUESTION HAS GIN'S SMILE FADE QUICKLY, and he stops in his steps. A sigh. This hit relatively close to home. Too close, nearly, and it was a thought he had aimed outwards -- and now a thought which aimed itself inwards; you deserved it. Bleeding out on that slab of concrete. Thus the hypocrisy of Gin's following words wasn't lost on him, he was the lesson in this very topic, after all.

❝ ... I do, yeah. It'd be weird if ya never did. But the corruption starts when y'begin thinkin' you got the right to dish out not only the judgment but the punishment too. Battles ain't determinin' who's right and who's wrong at the end'a the day, they're simply provin' who was stronger, that mode’a thinkin’ can turn ya self-righteous real quick. It's a slippery slope, headin' down that road. Human, but slippery. That's why it's better to not revel in'em at all. ❞

Then Gin chanced a look towards Izuru, cast over his shoulder, a curious glance.

❝ Who’re you thinkin’ about? ❞ Not yourself, Gin hoped, in yet another instance of internal hypocrisy. Izuru, however, was freed from blame -- absolved, led astray distinctly by Gin’s hand and Gin’s alone. Manipulated. The last twenty-four hours leading up to Rukia’s execution had been constructed specifically with a board of chess in mind, and Izuru had been one of Gin’s pieces. Keep Rangiku away from Central 46 at all costs, Hinamori won’t be harmed. A lie, a lie and Gin knew it when he had spoken it -- and he selfishly reckoned it was unavoidable, that Hinamori was dead the moment she began idolizing Aizen Sousuke. A reassurance that was hollow, false, made to merely steer Izuru away. So...

If it’s me, it’s okay.

❝ I won’t blame ya -- for thinkin’ that, ‘bout whoever it is yer thinkin’ of. It ain’t your fault. I jus’ don’t wanna watch ya fall into ----- ... to make -- ah, y’know, my mistakes. Alright? ❞

#[ roleplay ] predator; murder on his mind & hymns on his tongue #[ verse: redemption ] i am healing by mistake; rome is also built on ruins

7 notes · View notes

theseasasleep · 2 years

Text

When sis tripped and dropped that tray of drinks...!!!!! I audibly gasped and had to pause the video! I felt that in my stomach; kudos to that tension-building, show. I knew it would happen, we all knew it would happen, but the constricting aura of an accident waiting to happen still gripped me like a vise. I swear I felt her flood of emotions: shock, horror, embarrassment, shame, the need to hide.

Yes, I expected her to drop that tray but it was the confluence of that event and of Serit's mischief that I did not expect, which added to the horror of the moment as I realized how his action would be interpreted by everyone in that room, most importantly, the sisters. Serit didn't switch brides because of clumsiness but that's how it will read and anticipating Seryan's horror, her sister's horror and their horror of a father's rage ramped all my emotions up further. All this feeling in a very few minutes. Good job, show.

See that ferocity? That's my girl! And yet it is balanced by the reality of how she was raised, to ultimately capitulate, to defy only in quiet ways, ways that conform to the strictures of her household. As painful as this will be for Seyran, I am really looking forward to her discovering personal freedom and eventually exercising it against her awful father.

Having Seyran be the bearer of the awful news to Suna, to have her not only be that destruction but also to have her speak that destruction to her sister, whose only dream is marriage... The height of cruelty! I gasped again. Fucking cowards. Also, the mom could have bit this bullet for Seyran but she didn't and I... Don't expect her to be helpful. Pitiful, yes; helpful, no.

So here's a welcome improvement from ep 1 to ep 2: I like the Great Aunt much more now. She's far more sympathetic now - to the women of the house, as a character.

Great. Now we're locking our disagreeing daughter in a rough basement room to starve and dehydrate until she submits. Excellent. Dream father. Family goals.

Unfortunately Suna is developing all the earmarks of a truly dangerous future antagonist for our heroine. Dangerous not because I think she'll physically harm her sister but because Suna is Seyran's most trusted and she knows her inside and out. As Suna visibly struggles with her resentment of Seyran, even knowing how vehemently opposed she is to all of it, I see the petty hints of meanness. The saving grace being her love for her sister, her reason and her mother. When it hits her that she is to blame (she isn't), most of the meanness and rage turns inward and my heart just breaks for her. Who she will become as the series shakes out is interesting.

#post #tv show: yali capkini #teevee #turkish #seyran #afra saraçoğlu

3 notes · View notes

hairbrush9 · 2 years

Text

“The combination of the lethality of the virus and the seemingly total abandonment of collaboration from the management I was under produced anxiety and fear in me I had never felt, never,” said Willmeng, who had worked in emergency rooms and a trauma intensive care unit in Colorado and Chicago. “I was watching nurses sign their advance directives right there at the nursing station, preparing to be intubated and die. It was terrifying.”

The term “moral injury” was coined by former U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs psychiatrist Jonathan Shay based on his work with Vietnam veterans, as explained in a December 2020 white paper by the National Nurses United (NNU) union. Moral injury involves the “deleterious long-term, emotional, psychological, behavioral, spiritual, and/or social effects” of “perpetrating or failing to prevent acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations in a high-stakes environment,” the paper notes

The nursing shortage makes conditions more stressful and dangerous for those who stay in the profession, creating an intense negative feedback loop rife with the potential for continued moral injury.

This cycle is also exacerbated when nurses leave unionized staff jobs to become traveling nurses with much higher pay but no job security, collective organizing rights or sense of permanency with their patients and community. In keeping with the cycle of blame and guilt typical of moral injury, traveling nurses have been criticized for taking high pay and abandoning their staff posts, when the underlying problem is hospitals’ failure to create physically and morally sustainable staff jobs.

Organizers stress that they want to identify and explain the concept of moral injury so that healthcare workers channel their trauma into organizing rather than turning inward or dropping out. The NNU white paper cites trauma experts saying that:

Those who experience moral injury as a perpetrator of an immoral act or from failing to prevent an immoral act typically respond with internalizing emotions such as guilt and shame, whereas those who experience moral injury as a witness who was unable to prevent an immoral act typically respond with externalizing emotions such as anger and resentment. It is crucial that those involved ascribe the blame to the responsible actor(s) and not inappropriately take responsibility for failing to prevent a transgression, if that was not in their power. Anger and resentment are more likely to lead to the collective action necessary to redress transgressions by authoritative leaders or institutions while emotions such as shame and guilt may lead to withdrawal.

#articles #healthcare #covid-19 #moral injury

4 notes · View notes

alltheotherfairies · 2 years

Text

bylergiftexchange2022 - plain text version

Hiiii @hiddenbarinapocketdimension sorry this is a day late, my dinky little chromebook's motherboard literally broke in the middle of making it + I could only get to the library and use the computers there today but, hey, at least the date's pretty perfect, happy vol. 2 release day! I slightly altered the 'Mike and Will rebuild Castle Byers together' prompt, adding some of my own headcanons. I hope you enjoy! (also, I listened to the glee soundtrack while writing some parts of it, so that's officially my excuse if it's bad lmao)

This has been super fun & a great challenge, and I'm really glad I chose to participate in this exchange. Thanks @robins-schmuck for being such a great coordinator, please let me know if you ever do another one!

tw/ very long, crying, loneliness, childhood, laboratory mentions, gore, organs, panic & panic attacks, blood, brief mentions of crime scenes, a heart stopping (no one dies, it's just a very elaborate metaphor), death mentions, shame, swearing, f slur, the word stupid, poison mentions (again, metaphorical), bullet/gun mentions (metaphorical), lying mentions, mentions of ugliness, mentions of killers/murder (metaphorical, I'm beginning to think I have too many metaphors), destruction (I mean, it's heavily centric around the "It's not my fault you don't like girls!"/Castle Byers destruction scenes, so if you couldn't handle those, for which I do not blame you, you might want to sit this one out), rain, baseball bats, not being able to breathe (see: panic attacks), homophobia, internalized homophobia

Will Byers constantly feels alone. Will has days where he feels as if he's lost his entire childhood. Like it just passed him by. He realizes this isn't true, at least not entirely—three years isn't a full childhood, and yet. He, forever weeping in a monstrous place, be it an alternate dimension, blindingly white laboratory, or even what he had previously considered to be the ultimate safe space crafted by his and his brother’s shaking hands; had no adventures, no privilege of seeing it all from afar, no new friends or bonding experiences, no typical conversations at family dinners, no shot at normalcy, no dependability, no shoulders, within the monstrosities, to weep on besides his own.

He knows his childhood was not absorbed by his anguish, but, if that were to be the case, he would have no explanation for why he would cry sometimes. How he would try, in vain, to cling to old hobbies, old habits, old feelings, try to cling to, go back to, his childhood. How he would, as if gasping for air after having one’s head pressed below the sea, come to the realization that he could not go back, that it was gone. How he would cry then, violently, whimpers soon turning into wails. He had no answer. It was easier to blame it on all that had happened, rather than looking inward. Sometimes scents will take him back to his youth. There will be certain friends he cannot bring himself to talk to anymore, for so long that phone calls will have to become reunions. His mom's runny mashed potatoes, the nostalgia of them, will retroactively become the best food he's ever tasted. How he would cry then, violently, whimpers soon turning into wails. He had no answer. It was easier to blame it on all that had happened, rather than looking inward.

Will's heart nearly bursts out of his body in panic, blood spraying all over the walls like a crime scene, the vital organ sputtering to pulsating nothingness on his bedroom floor, when Jonathan, his brother and the single person he trusts more than anyone in the universe not to hurt him, emerges behind him to mess up his hair or give him a reassuring pat him on the shoulder, comforting actions that result in burst and bloody chests. He wants to turn back the clock, he wants to go down to Mike's (sort of musty, he wasn’t going to lie) basement and spend fourteen straight hours playing D&D. He wishes to revert to his childhood self. To be safe. Or, at the very least, to not be aware of possible unsafety. Now, he interacts with the world not as himself, but as an echo of who he once was, what he could be before he learned what it was like to die.

The minutes rolled away. The days had been so much interchangeable, he stopped noticing the months pass. And, all throughout that time, he has remained largely alone. He feels socially unacceptable among even his friends, among especially his friends. He does not tell them this. He always has felt shameful while being seen in the gesture of wanting anything and everything he could not have.

And, he realizes, maybe he was wrong. He can go back to the past, can go whenever he wants. But there is no one there anymore.

He longs for his friends.

Most significantly, he longs for, misses the days when Mike wasn’t being such a complete douche.

“It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”

Will feels as if he's been hit over the head. It easily could have been something Troy said to Will when they were kids, when he taunted him about his faggotry. Said faggotry was a truth he had confided in Jonathan, one that only alone knew. Sure, others had suspicions, but Jonathan was the only one who knew for sure.

“I’m not trying to be a jerk, okay?” Mike, for what it's worth, appears to be genuinely apologetic. “But we’re not kids anymore.”

And Will wishes he could tell him that he would like to be. How he never got to have truly been. That he lost it all and he needs to go back, and oh god, please, let him go back.

“I mean, what did you think, really? That we were never gonna get girlfriends? That we were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?”

Will has so many things to say. After all that had gone wrong, he figured Mike would understand why he couldn't bear solitude. That he trusted his friends to be around for him. That D&D, that Mike, is really the only way he is going to get out of the foolish inferno he's landed himself in. But his eye sockets are starting to boil up with blood-hot tears, but if there's anything Mike no longer gets to have, it's to indulge his savior complex, to see him cry.

“Yeah,” he spits out, intended venom only coming out as whimpers. He got his wish after all, at least vocally - he sounds like a helpless, heartbroken, little kid. “I guess I did. I really did.”

Will seems unconcerned that the storm is brewing more intensely than before. He runs to his bicycle, between the raindrops - he can be insensible, too - and races out of the driveway, barely being able to see the luxury car on the path in front of him. It makes no difference. All he needs to do now is go home. Distance from his shitty friends. Distance from fucking Mike, stupid Mike, who is trying to speak from behind him.

“Will. Will! Will, come on!”

Fuck you. He thinks, the very thought dripping with poison, and he is revolted by it, terrified of himself for thinking it. So he thinks it again. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck Mike. Fuck you, Mike Wheeler.

He thought it would help. That he would feel better.

It does not help.

He does not feel better.

“Et tu, Brute?” He remembered that one from history class, set in golden amber to remain in his memory courtesy of the paper Mike had written on the tale. "There would have to be trust before there could be treachery."

And now the person that he would always take a literal bullet for was the one behind the metaphorical gun.

Mike's heart was beating with the feeling that he’d done something completely and utterly wrong. It felt like when he got in trouble with his parents for lying to them or breaking one of his mom's good dishes, and he wished that he could take it back so he wouldn't have to feel bad about it anymore (and so he wouldn't be grounded). But the feeling of wrongdoing he had now was a thousand times worse, because the most important friendship of his life was at stake. If only he hadn't opened his stupid mouth, and said all those stupid things.

Stupid. So stupid.

What possessed him to say such a thing? Will had never consulted him that he liked... well, not girls, but he had started to notice things that made him wonder over the years. The Karate Kid, which he'd recently become preoccupied with, immediately comes to mind. When the party was trying to decide on a movie to watch, Max would always offer it, and Will would always agree, claiming that it was just a really good movie, despite the fact that it didn't fit the party's favored genre. Mike realized it wasn't proof in and of itself, but he'd also never had a girlfriend or displayed any interest in women. And the truth of the matter that Will had reacted to the statement with silence pretty much fortified any speculations in Mike's head.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Will's journey home is ugly. His tires' tread is wearing thin, and every so often he gets into a swerve that almost takes him down. He's drenched to the bone, his hair is adhered to his cheeks, and everything in his rucksack has been most likely decimated. He avoids his house in favor of Castle Byers because his blood flows sour around Mirkwood, as it usually does.

Will parks his bike in front of the house, turns on the lamp, and comes crashing down on the mattress. It's frigid and leaking, and his heart is still burdened with deceit and anguish. He looks at the myriad comic books in the space that is getting smaller as he grows. He analyzes the sketches on the wall, which show Will the Wise and all of their campaign's characters. He even has photographs of them all together, from trick-or-treating and years beforehand and just then Will feels fucking stupid. He couldn't hold back the tears he'd been holding back at Mike's house. He understands that they won't be children forever. But he had hoped, if only for a day, that they could play along. They might just act as though everything were the same as they were before. He could pretend to be happy and fearless, to be loved and to matter in the same way that he used to.

Things have changed since then, and there's no going back. It’s time to grow up.

Mike is right.

They’re not kids anymore.

“It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”

Will makes a concerted effort to concentrate on the pages of the comic book, but Mike's voice continues repeating the same lines in his head. He turns the page, but the story still doesn't pique his interest, so he hurls it onto the ground of Castle Byers, annoyed.

“Stupid….stupid…” muttering to himself, Will shreds the picture in his hands, the one he hadn't even realized he picked up, before moving to everything on the walls, ripping drawings and photographs down with fervor. As he rips off the other pictures and drawings stapled to the wobbly walls, he repeats it again and again, crying. “So stupid. Stupid.”

He gets to his knees and crawls out of the fort, seizing the bat hanging against one of the walls. He pauses for a while, taking in the sight of the spot in which he's felt most secure for so long. He swings.

And Castle Byers collapses piece by piece, exactly as it was constructed. He never knew his killer would come from within.

Although the stronghold isn't completely waterproof, the majority of the items inside have remained unscathed throughout time. Will, on the other hand, feels suffocated when he considers all of the memories. He picks up a photo of the group from Halloween last year, and seeing the happiness and innocence, the pure youthful joy, causes him to crumble. He wants to be himself again. He wants to be ten. He does not want to know all that he knows now.

As he pounds the bat time after time, his head hurts from how hard he's crying, his shouts drowned out by the rain. He doesn't allow himself to feel bad about it, but the ache of realizing that things are now irreversibly messed up weighs heavily on his shoulders. As he smashes the bat to the earth, snagging the planks that form the entryway and ripping it completely off the structure, it feeds his rage. He feels a sickly delight in causing himself so much decay.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

This was something he needed to fix. He needed to make sure Will was alright because the guilty ache in his heart would never want to go away if he didn't. Mike dashed back inside to collect Lucas, and the pair of them leapt on their bikes, unconcerned about the downpour as they rode towards the Byers' house.

As he pedaled away, Mike thought to himself, "Please let him be okay."

When they finally got to Will’s, it was pouring more than ever before, rain saturating their coats and weighing them down like they had lead in their pockets. They beat their fists upon the front door and called out to him with desperation, but there was no answer.

Over the sound of rain pounding the metal roof like gunfire, Lucas yelled, “He's not here!”

Mike's first reaction was that he hadn't made it, that Will had been injured in some kind of bizarre accident. The prospect of life without his best friend made his stomach plummet. But then it occurred to him that he knew exactly where he was.

“I'm going to go look for him! Stay here in case he comes back!” Mike yelled over to Lucas, already taking off.

“Okay!” And that was the end of it. He should have realized this was where the will was from the start. He would have six months ago. He was still a good friend at the time. He wished he had never allowed himself to drift so far away from him, from what they used to be. But it was so simple to spend all of his time with El, and it was so intoxicating to feel like a regular teenager again, rather than the dorky frogface child who was constantly pushed around. Whatever it was, he just prayed it wasn't too late to make things right with Will, because if it wasn't, he wasn't sure what he'd do.

When Mike arrived at Castle Byers, he was jolted out of his reverie. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Mike recognized how severely he had screwed up when he saw Will with a bat in his shaky hands demolishing his safe haven. The weight in his chest grew heavier than he had anticipated.

"Will, please stop!" He screamed, his face flushed with the sound of thin tree branches cracking. Will didn't recognize his presence at all. "Please, Will!" Stop! You have no idea what you're doing!"

“Will! Will, what are you doing?"

Before he can identify Mike's words, arms squeeze him from behind and drag him away from the fractured shards of his boyhood.

"Leave me alone!" Will screams, attempting to break free from the grip around him but failing; the arms around his chest keep him immobile.

"What's the matter, Will?" Mike's voice, which is practically next to his ear, asks. Will acknowledges absently that he seems afraid.

"Mike, get out of here!" Will cried weakly in between sobs, his gaze remaining fixed on the other boy. It sounded like something someone said when they couldn't think of anything else to say. Mike's eyes welled up with tears as he realized how much his friend was suffering.

"Let me go!" Will screamed as he struggled to free himself from Mike's grip, dropping his bat in the attempt.

Mike apologized, "I'm sorry." "Is this some kind of episode?"

“No! Please, just let me go!" Will grunts as he finally breaks free from their grip and staggers away.

"Let go," Will pleaded softly this time as he sank to his knees, all his remaining fight draining from him. Mike clung to him as he fell to the ground, never letting go. Will continued to cry in his arms, and he felt his friend's agony as if it were his own, as if Will's happiness and well-being were somehow inextricably related to his own. That was how it had always been, and it still was, even though they'd just drifted away. Mike couldn't fathom a time when it wouldn't be the case. Mike put his head on Will's shoulder and wrapped his arms around him, attempting to reassure him that he wasn't alone. That he was and would always be here.

Mike murmured, trying to justify, "I didn't mean what I said." He quickly identified this was the wrong course of action because it infuriated Will all the more.

“Like hell you didn’t! We both know you meant every damn word, Mike, so don't try to pretend you didn't," Will cried as he twisted away from the larger boy. "You can't go back!"

Mike couldn't react since he didn't know how. Will spoke again before he could think of anything to add.

When Mike looks down and sees Will's hands trembling, he is instantly reminded of another time when they were sitting side by side, Mike trying to do precisely what he was trying to do now, what he had always tried to do: comfort his closest, best friend. He suddenly reached across and clasped his hand over Will's.

“Will?” Mike inquires, his voice practically drowned out by the rain. "How did this happen?"

“What does it look like?” Will spits, allowing his rage to conceal the sadness and pain that he wants to express.

"It looks like you were attacked and this place was messed up!" Mike adds, "I can't believe it," as he points to the rubbish heap that's all that's left of Castle Byers. "Are you okay, Will?" His eyes are big and anxious as he asks. Another wave of rage washes over Will.

"I'm fine. I just didn't need it anymore. Will says, childishly kicking a log and grunting as agony runs up his leg.

“What?” Mike asks, shakily and perplexed, "You did this?" Will ignores his troubled expression.

“Yeah. "I mean, it was about time," Will adds, trying as hard as he can to persuade himself as much as Mike. "I did it when I was a scared little kid. But we’re not kids anymore, huh?”

As he delivers that final part, he doesn't notice Mike's flinch. Mike extends his hand out in front of him.

"Will, I didn't mean that."

“Uh yeah, it was! You can't go back now! It's fine, I know what you meant. I think I deserved a wake-up call," Will says, stepping over a log and moving further away from his friend.

"Will, no, I said something stupid. We're just fourteen, and you're totally right about us spending too much time with our girlfriends. And we shouldn't quit doing something just because we're doing something else now. Like, we have the entire summer to do whatever we want."

Will stands there watching Mike waffle, seeming annoyed as if he's having trouble getting his point over.

"You don't have to say all this to make me feel better," Will grumbles, glancing down at the shambles around his feet. He's working hard to avoid losing it in front of Mike once more.

Mike knew they still had a lot to speak about, but he also understood that holding hands on the muddy ground in the rain wasn't the place to do it.

“Will? Let me get you home, okay?" Mike pleaded as the other boy looked across at him. Will returned his gaze to Castle Byers and then nodded slowly, taking a deep breath.

Mike placed a cautious arm across Will's shoulders as they went back slowly, unsure how receptive he was of the contact at this time. Will, on the other hand, didn't push him away; instead, he let out a trembling breath. Mike remembered all the times he'd done the same thing. The casual touches and talks where one of them, typically Mike, would ramble on and on about some new thread for about as long as the other one would give them their whole attention used to be so much simpler. But that was no longer the case. Every encounter they had these days was difficult, and Mike understood it was his fault.

He had to do something about it.

Lucas was full of questions as soon as the two boys came onto the Byers' porch.

"Are you alright? Where were you?" he asked, referring to Will, though Mike answered for him before he could respond.

"I think you should go home. I've got him." he asserted.

"But shouldn't we talk about—" Lucas began, but Mike interrupted him.

“I said I got him. Look, it's all right. We'll talk again tomorrow." Lucas appeared unsure of himself and glanced at Will for confirmation.

"I'm fine," Will assured him, "but it's late, so you both should go home. It's been a long day."

Mike didn't think of leaving even for a second. Will should not have to be alone in this situation. After all, he still needed to make amends with them. He didn't feel like he could do anything else till he knew he felt better.

Mike and Will sat side by side on the couch fifteen minutes later, finally in dry clothes for what seemed like the first time in hours, even though it hadn't been that long since Will stormed out of the Wheeler household, and even less time when Mike discovered him trashing Castle Byers.

The lamplights appear to be overly dim. Except for Will's living room area television, which goes on and off, everything is quiet. Lucas snores as he flops onto his back on the couch. Mike sits down next to Will on the floor and takes a long look at him. Will was given a heavier, fleece blanket by him earlier, and it now drapes over his naked, pale shoulders. Will's top, as well as his coral-colored cargo shorts, were saturated.

He pulls the blanket up over Will's shoulders and adjusts it. Will's lack of acknowledgement seems disturbing. He should glare. Flinch. Scream at him for being such a jackass.

"Are you all right?" Mike says, his fingers cupped over Will's brow and his sweat-damp bangs pushed up. He half-expects Will to yank his arm away, but he could have caught a cold in the downpour. "You're still a little warm..."

Will hums, his hazel-green eyes narrowing, "Mm." A deep, pleasant tone.

Mike's cheeks are red and swollen. "Please accept my apology, Will.”

He mumbles, reflexively pulling away from Mike's contact, "Forget it."

"What were you thinking when you wrecked it?" He inquired, despite the fact that he was very certain he already knew. Will was the one he wanted to hear it from.

"You were right." After a brief pause, Will stated, "We're not kids. I don't need a stupid castle.”

“It’s really not stupid.”

"I'm stupid, then," Will murmured, as if he actually meant it, and Mike's chest ached all over again. He was desperate for the other boy to realize it wasn't true.

"Will, please stop. You're not stupid." Mike continued, "I'm stupid," because he was. He'd made such a mistake by allowing his best friend to drift so far away.

"Okay, we were both stupid," Will remarked, the side of his lips twisting up into what Mike thought was his first smile in a long time.

"Stupid together," Mike said after a brief pause, recalling a previous encounter. Will sighed, and he knew he was thinking about the same thing.

"Y’know, you were right, too. I am wrecking the party," Mike remarked. Will merely stared up at him, saying nothing. Mike could see he'd had enough of comforting him that the truth wasn't what it seemed, because nothing seemed to be okay.

"I know you're upset," Will replied, looking down but afterwards offering a sorrowful grin to his friend, "but it's not entirely your fault. When it's me who's so... different, I can't really blame you for all of it."

"Will, it's not your fault; it was me who-"

"No, Mike, don't you get it?" Mike had tears welling up in the creases of his eyes. "If I were like you, if I could have a girlfriend, or even wanted one," he waved between them, "this wouldn't be so hard," he said.

"But I'm not there yet. To date... somebody or to quit D&D, since playing games all day in your basement is a lot easier than facing, well, all of it. I don't want to worry about all that comes with just being me."

Mike saw immediately that Will was terrified. Except there were no creatures, spies, gateways, or darkness hiding in the recesses of his imagination this time. This was a tragically true situation. Mike couldn't blame him for wanting to stay as far away from it as possible. You can't just shout at something like that to go away when you're confronted with it. It's a part of who you are, and while it's not always a bad thing, you still have to deal with it. The gears in Mike's head started whirling as he thought about it more. He remembered Dungeons and Dragons, and how he didn't mind playing it out again and over again. He imagined how he would play it a million times simply to see Will's face light up. He, on the other hand, pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind. He wasn't ready to talk about any of that just now. This wasn't about him right now.

Mike wrapped his arms across Will's waist and put his chin on his shoulder.

"I'm not sure what to say. We both know I'm horrible with words at this point," Will sighed, but Mike remained solemn as he continued, "but I swear everything will be fine."

"You can't make that promise."

"Of course I can, because I'll make sure it is. I'm sorry if I've been a dick recently, but I'm going to try harder to... not be. I can't live without you," Mike says, moving his head to look Will in the eyes, his arms tightening as he said the last sentence.

Mike smiled back at Will, and Will smiled back. At that time, it felt like they could finally, at last get back to business as usual. As he sat there hugging a happy Will Byers for maybe the first time in years, Mike realized what he said was true.

They'd make certain it was. Both of them, together. How it should be.

Mike is all alone. And he despises being by himself. Nobody can fill the abyss that exists next to him. Nobody nearby to enjoy his lame remarks. There was nobody to stop the vacancy in his heart. Being alone has that effect on people. at least in Mike's case. His innards appear to have constricted and become as compact as reasonably practicable, making his body appear to have shriveled in size. He feels like he's smothering, like if his windpipe is stuffed with feathers and he can't swallow it regardless of how hard he keeps trying. It appears as though the world is about to become inundated by a dam breaking beneath his eyes. It hurts tremendously.

He has always experienced these feelings at various points in his life. But he could always count on that special someone to step in and lend a hand. Could aid in filling the crater in his heart and patching the dams' concrete walls. Will. Will was always there.

Will, with his delicate gestures and comments. Will with his soft, reassuring touches. Will's capacity to see Mike. To look at him in such a condition and not feel pity for him. To see him and understand how to help. Will was now, however, miles and miles away. And although Mike could call him, he won't. Mike last spoke with Will at the end of August. December has come. Will's favorite season of the year is here, but Mike won't call. Because he is aware that if he does, all of his emotions would surface and he won't be able to control them.

El, for one, has been receiving letters from him. It's a way to communicate with her without needing to make a phone call. Without her asserting "I love you," and him saying "goodbye!" instead. Without her enquiring as to whether he would like to speak with Will or informing him that "Will wants to say hello," This makes the letters simpler. He discusses his family and his school. In regards to how much he misses her and how eagerly he awaits their upcoming spring break reunion. But the truth is that he's terrified of it. He feels his stomach lurch and his heart race at the notion of seeing Will. That, he believes, is unfair to El. That he misses Will more than she realizes, but won't tell her.

Or perhaps it's even worse for Will. It's unjust since all he needs to do is hold Will and try to convince him how much he loves him. to be with him throughout the whole of spring break. Perhaps the most unjust thing is that he has so many undelivered letters addressed to Will stashed under his mattress. These letters have more depth. Much more emotionally charged and informative. Those are authentic and accurate communications. Without addressing it, they openly confess millions of things. And Mike genuinely wants to send these to Will, and yet no matter how much he tries, something, everything, always gets in the way.

Mike takes out his notebook and pen.

Dear Will,

I miss you. It's true, even if I've said it in each and every one of these letters. It hurts that I miss you so much. You have no concept how painful it is to be apart from you. I am aware that neither you nor your mother are to blame, yet it still enrages me. Why can't we be happy after everything we've been through and accomplished? Bullshit, that's what it is. We should be happy. We deserve an award. All of it is so unfair.

I even go to your house more often than not. despite the fact that it is empty. I enter your bedroom and sit quietly, attempting to picture you still there. You're drawing at your desk, every time. You simply appear. It smells like you even though no one has been in there for months. But it's fading. I also occasionally visit Castle Byers. I restored this torn picture that I found for you. That was the least I could do, I reasoned. I'm hoping to see you again soon. You'll have something to look forward to since I have a surprise for you. If you want to return.

I've recently been going through your artwork. I'm not sure if you were aware of this, but I still have a collection of your work. They date back a while, but they're still incredible. In any case, better than I ever could manage. Your talent has always been there. I seriously wish I had a few of your new stuff. I'm sure you've improved throughout our absence.

I miss you. I miss your smiles, laughter, and sometimes even those corny jokes you would make. Hope you still think about me.

I'm sorry for what I said that day.

Love, M.

The taped-up photo of Mike grinning foolishly at Will is tucked in with the folded-up piece of paper as Mike places it in an envelope. He even goes so far as to write Will's contact details on it. He buries it beneath his mattress. He’s still alone.

After Will moves, Mike constantly returns to the now broken Castle Byers, as to indulge his intense feelings of guilt. It’s new for him, this guilt. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch, he knows, who can't admit when he's sorry. He thought he couldn’t live with himself if he managed to hurt Will. But if there’s anything these last few years have taught him, it’s that he would always manage to be surprised by what he could live with.

He comes up with grand plans to rebuild it, but, when he attempts to put said plans into fruition, eventually has to ask for Lucas' help - Mike can't build for shit, he's too weak to pick up the literal and metaphorical broken walls. It's fun, and they laugh sometimes, but mostly they are silent, consumed by their remorse and shared atrocity. Mike likes Lucas, but can't help but think it would be different if he knew. Perhaps his shirt wouldn't be off. Perhaps he would hide himself from Mike's sick, uncontrollable attraction that he presumes must apply to him but never discuss it. He would take off his bandana. They would never watch Karate Kid again.

They manage to finish it in the end.

But it’s not enough to cure his ache. Not with some of Will's best work, of which he was proud of enough to display in the finest gallery he knew, disintegrated into a runny mess of notebook paper clumps, the red and blue ink of the lines rudely interfering with the inks Will chose himself, for embellishment.

Amongst the heaps of barely-paper that only twisted the knife of his guilt, he saw a flag with colorful stripes across it, all the colors of the rainbow.

Mike being Mike, he has no fucking idea what it means (it’s hardly like his parents are willing to replace their beloved American flag in lieu of a pride flag rippling in the wind in their front yard), so he’s just completely oblivious. He’s used to being this way, even if he doesn’t know it. Sometimes, when he was with Will, he could not see himself, only the brunette in front of him.

Oblivion almost serves as a soothing drug, to be honest, at least in this case. Instead of going into a panic, thinking ‘Maybe I have a chance…’ and berating himself for it for god knows how long, all that is on his mind is ‘Oh shit, I need to replace this!!!’.

The second he returns to his house that feels less like a home than the Byers’ empty one, he mercilessly steals Holly’s obscene amount of markers and books it down to the basement before she and her fingernails of knives get their revenge. Putting a poster board that was supposed to be for a school project he found he had no motivation for to use - he figures a normal piece of paper would work, but, instead, he decides to make it as obnoxiously big as he possibly can, because this is Will he's making it for, so, naturally, it's has to be good enough for the Louvre - and starts making a new one in his basement.

The new flag takes its place right in the center wall of Castle Byers, and he honestly cannot remember being this proud of himself for making anything before. To make up for the lost masterpieces, he tapes up some of Will’s drawings from his collection on the walls there too, along with some doodles and chicken scratch of his own that couldn’t hold a candle to their comparatives, but he knew Will would appreciate them all the same.

But he’s not yet done, because phase two of the plan is to apologize. He’s never been good at humility, and yet he knows there’s no way around it: he was an asshole and this might be the only espace for constantly feeling like shit for treating Will like shit and he can’t think of anything that would be more awkward than if Will came to visit and he hasn’t apologized yet.

It's more difficult than he would like to admit. He and Will are opposite ends of a spectrum, in that way. Will’s life is made up of ‘I’m sorry’, whereas his is made up of excuses. Will feels like he has to apologize to people, to things, to life itself, whereas Mike wants to burn all of those things down in his warpath. He spends no less than two hours - it’s undoubtedly more, but his weariness grew as he kept checking the clock, so he eventually gave up on that and chucked it out his window, knowing full well there would be hell to pay for that later - writing up his script for what he'll say, because his nervous heart is eating up his body and he wants it to be nothing short of perfect.

It takes a full week to gather up the courage to dial the Byers' new phone number. After five rings, just as he’s about to bail, none other than William Byers picks up the phone and Mike’s nerves shrivel up, and his brain feels like it’s consumed by nerves, so he just hangs up.

And every time he tries to call, which is many, many, times, he keeps on chickening out, his veins keep filling with poison.

It takes forty-five tries and enough of a phone bill that Mike was grounded for three weeks before he ultimately speaks, and Will, who, by the fifteenth call, finally grew suspicious as to why the fuck were random people just called and hung up, dons a shaky, slow, smile that builds as the surprise sinks in and asks if he's the one doing the aforementioned calling and hanging up.

“Yeah.” He choked out, cringing as his voice cracked, a cold wave of dread washing over him. The embarrassment was something he could feel in his flesh, like a handful of sun-warmed mud clapping on his head, because oh shit, he didn't realize just how weird, just how creepy that is.

In a final act of desperation, he sucks it up and professes his apologeticness to Will, but, even speaking to the person who could calm him with a simple phrase, he was never, never, clam, never for an instant, panicking and rambling so much that ninety percent of what he's saying is just 'um' and 'uh'. Will eventually cuts him off, laughter bordering on giggles, telling him that it's fine, that he forgives him, but if he keeps on going on and on like this, he's going to hang up on him. The feelings they feel upon this confession of understanding, of pardoning, are as if intertwined. And perhaps they were. The feeling of being forgiven by a loved one and forgiving a loved one oneself are perhaps so much alike there's no reason to try to keep them as separate entities.

And as Mike smiles the quintessential Mike Wheeler Smile, predominantly reserved for Will:

complete with a brightened face, as if glowing, eyes lit up, sparkling and twinkling, and cheeks dimpled, Will swears he could hear it over the landline.

Months pass. The Byers’ return to Hawkins briefly to ensure Will’s fifteenth birthday was not one tainted by loneliness. Mike and Will walk together, languidly, through the garden’s overgrown offerings, with lazy Sunday pacing. The towering March dahlias were caught off guard as they shrugged and exposed their crimson skins towards the spring breeze. Stumbling through the springtime forest their bare feet warmed to the bone, shorts torn by thorns and snagged to rags. Mike was planning to show him the remodeled Castle Byers as his gift to him, but, as usual, he got in the way of his own goals, so excited he just accidentally blurted it out while they were flipping through the illustrated Batman saga, and Will insisted he see it right that instant.

And see it he did. In fact, seeing it was all he seemed able to do. Sitting before a fortress plastered in rainbows, lingering hues of the faintest gray periods of the past. His heart tired, busy worrying that this was a taunt, busy worring how Mike found out that he was gay. Eyes glued. His mother always said not to stare.

And then all he can say, not ‘I love you’, not ‘wow’, not ‘thank you’, is “How did you know?”

Mike's never been so utterly confused. But he doesn’t want to make a wrong choice again, he knows that he really needs Will in his life. The stakes are so high, he doesn’t think he can handle replying at all. “Know what?”

Will looks at him quizzically, wondering if he was really about to make him say it out loud. “...Know that I’m gay?”

To Will’s bemusement and abject horror, Mike's just standing there with the world’s stupidest look on his face. The silence seems to last too long, but Will wishes it lasted longer when Mike blurts out “You’re what?!” Will can’t really blame him, it’s an incredibly well-known fact that Mike never thinks before he talks. But that doesn’t ease the fact that Will feels like his mind is a bee hive that has broken open, and the entire hive of raging bees are swarming and buzzing around his head. Because it turns out that Mike didn't know? He really was a rollercoaster, that Wheeler.

They gape at each other in complete, stifling, quiet, for infinity. It’s the kind of quiet that doesn’t have a face. When, at last, Will can’t stand it anymore, he throws up his hands. “Then why the fuck did you put up a pride flag? It’s a gay symbol."

Mike's face was carefully blank as the realization about how fucking dumb he is washes over him. He felt his neck hairs stand on end. His mind flashed back to all the previous times he had questioned things about both himself and Will, how each time he never listened to himself. He had always denied it...until now. And now he had to come to terms with how badly he had misunderstood the Cool Rainbow Poster. “Oh! That’s cool! I, uh, I like…I like rainbows, too.”

Will gave him a generous smile, one of exasperation, affection, and quite a healthy heaping of amusement. "Mike…"

"On the swings, you were by yourself. The day we met," he goes on to tell him, hoping he’s not setting his newfound asshole-ness in stone in doing so. "I remember you obviously looking at everybody else having fun, but you wouldn’t leave the swings. You didn't go play flag football." Mike can still hear the reverberation of Will's swing's steel rings humming between his molars. "That's because Andy Jones started calling you a queer and the other guys started laughing."

Will smiles with sentimentality tattooed all over his features. "But you didn't," he breathes, his gaze fixed on Mike.

"What?" Mike remarks with a gruff chuckle and gleaming brown irises. "Did you really think you would be the only one at school?" Will's shock serves as confirmation to him. Mike cries out in a trembling, enraged manner while throwing his fingers over his lips. "I like guys, too... how fucked up is that?"

Will firmly asserts, his brows furrowing, "It's just not, is the thing. You don't have anything wrong with you, Mike."

Mike hangs his head and rubs his nose. "I avoided you all summer..."

Will nudges him with his hand, and their fingers entwine. He murmurs drowsily, resting his head on Mike's scalp as they move, Mike's second arm wrapping around Will's neck. It was the kind of intimacy that Mike always thought would leave him in a state of decay - he did not particularly like to touch or be touched, but it was a sort of paradoxical dislike. He abhorred physical touch because he simply craved it too much - like Will in the summer of ‘85. He wanted to be held very tight, and this would prove to be his glue, holding him together so he would not shatter to pieces. It was none of those things. It was comforting. Right. "When this is over... we could go to the playground... like it was before," Will adds.

It will be just like before. Before the horrors and the Upside Down.

#bylergiftexchange2022 #my writing #byler #byeler #will byers #mike wheeler #el hopper #angst #fluff #they're gay :|#long post #plain text

6 notes · View notes

kits-shrine · 6 months

Text

Sweet Onions

The semi bittersweet ending!

“You never left me, Kit,” he chided softly, taking her hand into his to kiss them both before placing them over his heart, “you were with me the whole time, right here.”

He was home; they were together, so why? Why was she gone?

He was to blame.

Thick brambles sprouted from the earth, winding around the King and his lost love, barring all from disturbing him in what would be a tomb. It was only when the wickedly thorned vines threatened to choke the Heart did the elf had a moment of clarity, “No,” he growled, he refused to let this be the end. He reached inward even as he felt his Spirit beginning to fade, brushing the Forest’s Soul he drew ancient magic into his Spirit.

It burned, scorching him from the inside out, but he would not yield. After what seemed like an eternity of pure power, not unlike the Heart threatening to burn the elf away. He found himself at the center of it, or rather the Elven King was the center of it. Ever part of him glittered with the ancient magic. The king had died away to let a god rein in his stead, “I will bring her back,” the air around him crackled as his with his will as he rose Kit’s stoney form gently cradled in his arms and stepped into the Nethers.

Unlike when he walked through it before, the Nethers were not dark and filled with hissing wraiths but was a glow of soft white and floating orbs of color and light dancing around it. They bounced around him curiously.

The newly born god was no fool, despite what he and others may jest about, he would need help that much he was certain of, "where is she?" he asked the lights, "if none here know then please, guide me to others who will."

There was little wave from the bouncing lights around them. One floated down to touch Kit briefly before pulsing with light before floating off.

He followed after it quickly.

It led past many lights, space had no meaning in this place. It could have been a couple steps or it could have been hundreds.

All he knew was eventually it lead him to a cluster of lights that he could see forming before his eyes into translucent figured. One he knew very well and the other two he recognized from the old portrait Kit kept. Speaking of his vixen, her hair was it's normal long glory and her face was the picture of happiness as she hugged her parents.

Tenko was nuzzling her daughter just as happily. It was her father Reynard that caught sight of the elf turned god first. He looked mightily surprised when he saw the new comer a little sadness grew in his eyes at what Ingall carried in his arms. His movement caught the other two's attention. "Charmer~" Kit sang breaking from her parents to rush over to him with a smile on her face, seeming unable to see his cargo that was her body. "You're here. I missed you."

"But not as much as I missed my little kit!" Reynard declared lifting her into a spinning hug making her laugh as her form momentarily changed to that of herself as a small child.

The former lead Guardian quietly murmured "There is an... effect when Spirits first arrive. Takes away the sorrow to allow them time to process."

Ingall nodded slowly before meeting the golden kitsune's gaze, "I must clarify something, Lady Mother. I mean not to take her from you, and while it is my goal to see her home and warm in my arms once again, I come with an offer for all. I will bring any who desire a second chance at life with us, but this offer will only happen once. I will be unable to return here again until it is my time to call this place home."

Tenko looked surprised before smiling at him warmly "I am so pleased my daughter has found such a loving mate." she murmured patting his much as Kit was wont to do. "But great though your powers may be, I do not know if they can help all. Spirits of monsters should form their body once their Soul was intact, and my daughter and I would take the same path as Ginko-" she lightly touched Kit's stone face in his arms before looking back at her human mate that had no such ability "-but not all would be so lucky."

She gave him a peace filled smile "I love my little kit, but I cannot leave my mate nor could I keep her from hers. All I ask is that you love her and her children well."

"If he doesn't mind lugging a plant around with him at all times," the god smiled playfully, "my offer still stands. And my love for my family and their love for me is all I'll ever need."

She blinked in surprise a little look of hope on her face "I will ask him." Tenko nodded to Kit "And you will need to talk to her." she whispered to a little orb of light to spread the word of the new god's offer.

The god took her word to heart and approached the father and daughter pair, “May I steal her away for a moment, Sir?”

Kit giggled at her love and Reynard looked at her with a soft expression on his face. "I don't know... I suppose I'll allow i-IT!" Kit laughed louder as her mother tugged him away.

Turning from her parents Kit smiled at Ingall still unable to see what he carried, thoughts of the other's left behind far from her mind, something about him seemed to throw her a little as she reached up to touch his hair "You seem a little... different somehow Charmer."

He leaned into her touch, “I am different, My Dear Lady.”

"No... you're Ingall." Kit teased with a carefree giggle before looking up at him giddily "I can't believe you're here meeting my parents! I-" she paused brow furrowing "I... can't believe you're here. You-" confusion fell over her face as she tried to puzzle out something just out of her grasp. Like trying to catch running water with her bare hands. Try as she might... she just couldn't grab what was in front of her.

“Will you come home with me, Kit? Come home to us?” he asked slowly, softly, cupping her face as she had his.

"But we are home?" She countered leaning in to him. Everything about the warmly lit area felt like home... didn't it? "A-aren't we?" Kit's eyes drifted down from his to the thing in his arms feeling a little twinge of... something.

“This will be home, but hopefully not for many years to come, especially for our children,” he continued softly.

"Children..." Kit mumured before frowning looking around for them suddenly greatly aware of their presence or rather their lack of presence. Wonderful as this place was the thought of them being there distressed her deep down "No... no they can't..." she looked up at him with a frown "Ingall you shouldn't be here should you?" she breathed "Why are you here? You're not-" her words broke off as she finally was able to the statue of her in his arms.

"Oh.... oh no.... Ingall... I-I'm so sorry." tears welled up in her eyes as she changed before his eyes again, form changing to match the one in his arms.

He gently brushed her tears away, “None of that, my love. I’m here to take you home if that is your desire.”

"B-but how?" Kit leaned her face into his hand "You saw what happened when Trahan and Kuko made their wish to bring her back. It nearly destroyed them both. I couldn't do that to you." she glanced towards her parents who were passionately having their own discussion.

Ingall paused. How to explain this without her ripping him a new one, “Promise to wait on knocking sense into me until we’re home?”

Her eyes narrowed at him slightly before reluctantly agreeing.

“I may have absorbed the Forest’s Soul and inadvertently become a new god,” he explained in a rush. It was likely highly amusing for any spirit watching to see this god thoroughly cowed by the petite vixen.

He was greeted by silence as Kit tried to absorb this news. She swallowed looking him over even closer before hoarsely whispering "Will you stay you?" she didn't think she could go through living with a shell of him again.

“I am still very much me,” he promised, “and after this little stunt, I imagine I won't have much, if any, divine power. You’ll be stuck with plain boring old me.”

"Wonderful, perfect you." Kit corrected with a little sniff, her form changing back again to her longer haired self "Do you really think you can?"

"And what exactly does my lugging around a plant have to do with it?" Reynard interjected as her parents rejoined them.

“Yes,” he smiled happily at Kit before addressing her father, “Have you heard of dryads, Sir?”

A grin grew on his face, much like one Kit wore when she got excited "I've heard tale of all many fantastic beasties." he looked towards his mate fondly "Only had luck finding one though." Reynard looked back a Ingall eagerly "I'd be a dryad then?"

“Precisely,” the god beamed, “and seeing the bonsai trees some monsters had in their shops gave the idea of making your tree portable. That way, you wouldn't be tied to a certain spot on the mountain.”

"We can still go exploring?" Reynard asked with stars in his eyes looking to Tenko "I'll be able to keep my promise after all love."

Ingall smiled warmly, “Has any one else decided to join us?”

"A couple of others thought about it, but have decided against it with their heartfelt thanks for the offer." Tenko replied with a smile. Many of the passed had long since made peace and did not wish to disrupt their remaining loved ones lives, though one young man had been mightily, mightily tempted... he just could not do that to his wife and son when they were just starting to truly heal.

Kit looked a little nervous as she gazed up at Ingall "I guess we're ready?"

Ingall nodded in understanding, then smiled brightly. With a wave of his hand, a portal wreathed in growing things appeared.

Tenko reached out to touch her daughter "We'll go ahead and be waiting for you." She kissed both Kit's and Ingall's cheek before taking Reynard's hand as he widely grinned before dragging her through with a laugh to their next great adventure.

Kit fidgeted with her fingers before taking hold of his sleeve so as not to disrupt his hold on her body "Let's go then."

The portal felt just like stepping into the Forest's Soul, if only for the briefest of moments.

Kit's spirit next to him vanished as they exited back into the Heart's glen. For one heart shaking moment he thought it hadn't worked before stone crumbled off of her body like sand making her sag against him before taking a deep inhale. Catching her breath against his chest she looked up at him "Hi Charmer."

Far away from the heart at the Kitsune's home the children were screeching in shock as the stone statue in the garden that was their grandmother crumbled to reveal the golden kitsune herself. A small bonsai tree rapidly grew beside her and with it a man appeared, that on closer inspection looked a bit tree like. Laughing he leapt up, scooping his startled mate into a spinning hug.

With the last bit of his fading godly power, Ingall fixed his little balance problem as his ears perked at the sound of his mate’s voice, “Welcome home, My Dear Lady,” he replied reverently before pressing a kiss to her lips.

A little buzz of his fading power flowed from his lips to hers similarly restoring her long locks to their former glory.

Everything was back as it should be... maybe even better~

Sad, happy end?~

True End

Rotten Stinkin' Onions

Sweet Onions - You are here

Wild Onions

#aizawasluckylady #halloween special #onion series #sweet onions #face your fears #free the tears

4 notes · View notes

chuckling-chemist · 5 days

Text

anyway happy 4/13 here's my once a year oc fic

A long time ago, there was a princess.

Her blood was tyrian pink, as all princesses were. Her hair was long and black, tied back in a simple tyrian pink ribbon that matched her blood and her eyes. Her horns stood above her head and curled inward, giving off the impression of a drawn butterfly’s antennae. Nothing to make her look especially tall, like the horns that belonged to the other members born into the aristocracy and upper crust of Alternia, but she didn’t need it.

Nor did she need an especially fancy dress the way the others here needed it. She wore a simple pink gown that went down to her ankles that matched her ribbon and her blood and her eyes, a simple pink butterfly mask for the occasion and a simple pin of her symbol – an inward spiral – pinned inside her wrist corsage made of pink carnations and pink roses.

The roses and carnations were once white. She didn’t know much about flowers, but knew enough to know they didn’t come in the shade of pink her blood did.

Nothing much did. Not other trolls, or other flowers, or anything outside of herself and the relatively recently crowned Empress, Carica Elsker.

This gala wasn’t in Carica’s honor. No more than any other gala and party drawing every royal out of their posh hives and ivory towers was or wasn’t in Carica’s honor. This one was in celebration of some major victory their military had off-planet that turned their tide for them, and with Carica currently shuttling herself over to the site, it meant the only Heiress had to go in her stead.

The only Heiress who was a part of a completely different lineage from the Elsker line of trolls. Yoscan.

They used to rule, likely generations of highbloods ago. She’s not sure how long the Elsker’s have dominated each other instead of another fuchsia. Reports differ on if it was Carica’s ancestor who overtook the Yoscan’s or someone earlier, and Carica’s ancestor culled another Elsker for the throne instead.

The Elskers, she learned early on in her history lessons, had a penchant for rewriting in their favor. Even if her tutors never called it such.

She shouldn’t be too mad. Because of Carica’s ancestor (or her ancestor’s ancestor?), the first Beguiler, she didn’t hold the emissary of the Horrorterrors as her lusus. And, because of Carica’s concern of being overtaken, her caste weren’t required to charge for the throne immediately upon adulthood. If she wanted to, she could pursue anything she wanted. Run a restaurant. Command an army. Stay on planet and resume being a rich socialite, as she currently technically was.

A shame all those options sounded so terribly boring for someone like her. A Yoscan.

Whatever that meant.

So she stood here, nearby the punch bowl, staring at rich trolls born into their affluence and rich trolls who worked for their affluence, both of whom stepped on more than a few heads to get where they were. This were not the events she frequented of her own volition. Perhaps the patrons of the gala sensed her nervousness, her naivete, and as such avoided her. She wouldn’t blame them. She probably would do the same.

Though, she didn’t have many events she did frequent. Her tutors kept her on a rigorous schedule, leaving her only time for hunting to keep Carica’s lusus sated and silent.

She should have expected someone to come toward the punch bowl. Should have, and yet when a finger brushed against her shoulder, a gentle tap to inform her of a guest’s presence, she jumped, immediately turning toward the source of the individual: a violetblood with ornate fins and tall horns that curved into what appeared to be an S stared back at her. His mask was dark, an inky black except for a thin white line that took on the shape of a pair of glasses, and his suit equally dark. What she assumed was his symbol – a circle with a line down the center – was pinned against his suit with a small amethyst behind it.

He felt familiar. A face she was once told had a name. She wondered why she couldn’t place it.

“Ah, my apologies,” he said, lips forming a worried line. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She relaxed, smoothing down her dress and giving him a stilted smile. “It’s no concern. Ah…”

He took a step back and bowed, letting his gaze drop to the floor. “Simply Inaeis is fine,” he said.

She fought back the urge to frown, though her drooping fins failed to hide her disappointment. The name didn’t feel nearly as familiar as his face. “You must be the most recent Heiress,” he added, “The Yoscan?”

There was no point in hiding it. Mask or not, unless she were a freak of nature she would have come from one of two lines. The mask was little more than the thinnest veneer of anonymity for her.

She nodded, motioning for him to stand up. “Kisoku, yes. I take it you’ve heard of me?”

His fins twitched. “In passing, yes. For those of us with our fins to the sea floor, it’s hard for someone in my field of work not to hear of the first fuchsia not wearing Her Imperious Beguiler’s sign in sweeps.”

This time she did frown. “What’s your field of work?”

He allowed his expression to relax into a smile. “Nothing terribly important. Investigative work of a kind,” he said.

“Like a private investigator?” She furrowed her brow, eyeing him quizzically. “Isn’t that below the stature of a violetblood?”

His smile widened, eyes glinting underneath his mask. “Only if you think of it as such.” Inaeis stepped closer to her, leaning against the same table she did. “I hardly feel there is any such law stating I must join the fleet as a high ranking admiral, when my skills are better used elsewhere. And as a violet, I am effectively free to do as I please.”

She remembered her lessons, remembered seeing the various charts and diagrams explaining the setup of troll society. Each caste and each role for each caste. Rules and structure most are forced to learn the second they step outside, but her role as heiress and fuchsia was the maximum enforcer from the top. If she (or the Empress) didn’t put the pressure on the violetbloods, they wouldn’t put adequate pressure on the purplebloods, and so on and so forth.

(“Like a diamond,” her tutor said. “Their true beauty comes from the force of its surrounding area.”)

“Only social pressure,” she said.

He looked at her, eyebrow quirked, and let out a short huff she assumed was a laugh. “We’re at the top of the proverbial food chain,” he said. “Despite whatever your lessons taught you, there is no social pressure. You could run away and change your identity and no one would care.”

“I’m sure someone would care,” she said. “I am an heiress.”

He turned away from her, looking over at the other side of the ballroom. It was a small ensemble made of an assortment of midbloods, but currently only the jade pianist plucked away at the keys, playing a soft tune she didn’t recognize.

Much like herself, the other patrons chose not to acknowledge them, instead mingling around with each other. Something she felt confident in saying had to be a common event, leaving them to become little more than paid window dressing.

“Suite number 28, by Debusy,” Inaeis said. “In case you were interested.”

“I’m not sure I am,” she paused to glance between the musicians and Inaeis, “but it looked like you were.”

Another huff, this one undoubtedly sounding amused. “I consider myself a fan of the arts. Unlike many of them,” he gestured forward with a white gloved hand at the crowd in front of them, “who could not tell Suite 10 from Debusy between Shopan’s Null Opus. They merely pretend. Collect what isn’t there’s, if the item is physical. I’ve seen more than my share of forgeries hanging in a cobalt’s hive” He let out a laugh, the sound ringing hollow in her ears. “They’re told supporting the Empress and lavishing in their wealth is what’s most important in life.”

“So what is, then?”

Inaeis was silent. She watched as he glanced around the room again, clearly searching for something, before he stretched out his gloved hand.

“A dance.”

She looked up at him, suspicion crossing her face.

He was avoiding the question.

Why was he avoiding the question?

With a nod, she gingerly took his hand, letting his looming frame lead her toward the center stage of the dance floor. The song, apparently Suite 28 by Debusy if he was to be believed, continued on, the pianos fingers dancing on the keys as the music swelled.

And Inaeis, to his credit, was an excellent dancer. He seemed to register her inexperience, choosing to guide her through each spin and twirl with deft movements on the center of the dance floor. With each turn, each run of piano keys going up and down, he pulled the two of them tighter and tighter together until she could feel his breath on her fins, the pleasant heat against her own cold skin making them twitch.

In that brief moment, they felt more like one unit than two individual trolls, with blessedly not a single soul in the room looking at them.

“You need to run away.”

Her aquatic blood pusher turned frigid. Had he not continued to guide her, she would have stopped. As it was, she merely tripped over own feet, saved from the harsh clacking of stumbling shoes by a sudden dip that aided in slipping her back into position.

She pulled away, putting distance between the two of them without stopping the dance. “What?”

“The Empress. Her Imperious Beguiler. She doesn’t take kindly to other fuchsias outside her lineage who pursue her own political theater,” he said.

“Yes, but-”

“She’s the Empress,” he said. His words were cold, somehow colder than the ice in her chest. “She doesn’t need to cull you with her own trident for you to wind up face down in the ocean.”

“Even if I have no interest in becoming Empress?”

“Do you have another pursuit?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. This is what I’ve been raised to do.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” His fins drooped. “I’m serious though. After tonight, run away. Change your name, hide your blood caste, anything. But you are a Yoscan, and in Her Imperious Beguiler’s eyes, a threat to her position.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

He didn’t need to answer. The hollowness and pained expression on his face told enough horror stories she determined she didn’t want to know.

Fine, she thought. A different question then.

“If I’m not to pursue this life, what do you suggest I do?”

The song ended. The two of them parted. He nodded politely to the pianist, flashing the briefest smile of encouragement to the jadeblood. The jadeblood locked eyes with him for just long enough to see it, before turning away, face flush.

How interesting to see one from outside the brooding caverns. I didn’t think that was allowed, she thought.

“Live. Be free,” he said. “Live a life so full no highblood here could dream of it.”

***

Not that long ago, there was a princess.

Her blood was tyrian pink, though she didn’t think about that too much these days. Her hair was long and black, its waves and curls held back only by a teal ribbon tied up to keep it out of her face. Her horns stood above her head and curled, looking like the swirl of her symbol in its infancy. She stood tall against her company, a female brownblood with horns not dissimilar of a deer, but only thanks to the heels she insisted upon wearing as they entered the abandoned chateau. A supposed storagehouse of Informer Duskfire for his confiscated art collection, according to the brownblood’s research. Lost to time alongside his dubiously legal library, the very same library the brownblood’s moirail resided in for years.

Both of them were only illuminated by the lantern sitting on the floor between them, and the twin flashlights pointing at the distressingly familiar portrait on the wall.

“It’s not real,” she sneered, staring at a prim and proper looking version of herself. “It’s a fraud. They fucking told me I was the only one of my line!”

The brownblood pursed her lips in irritation. “And who’s they, exactly?” Because this looks like you.”

“It’s not.”

She gestured up to the horns that made the fuchsia bare her fangs in annoyance. “Those are your horns.”

“Shorty’s said horn patterns can repeat.”

She pointed at the familiar swirl in the fuchsia blood’s jewelry. “That’s your symbol.”

“Coincidence.”

“On a fuchsia? The single rarest caste to exist?” The brownblood sighed, adjusting the hold of the flashlight to hold like a knife, the light now illuminating the deep scar going down her face. “Can you choose not to be obtuse for once in your life, Mayola? I wouldn’t have bothered showing you this if I didn’t think this was you.”

“I’m not being obtuse,” she said. She pointed her light directly at the painting, desperately hoping to burn the face off of the stupid fuchsia standing in front of her. “My stupid tutors fucking told me when I was barely out of pupation I was a freak of nature who shouldn’t exist. And believe me, Careen loved throwing that one in my face too when she could.”

“And it didn’t once occur to you that they were lying?” This time, she didn’t wait for Mayola to answer. “Because they do. You know they do. You were the one to stumble upon my ancestor’s tomb with Ektome. I don’t know how this is so different.”

Mayola sighed in irritation.

“Because-”

Because it means my life has been a useless lie.

Because everyone around me treated my existence as if I was another lowblood cog in the machine until I ran away.

Because it means now I’m living in the shadow of an ancestor and destined to finish what she started.

Because I’ll never be free.

She snarled, throwing the flashlight at the wall. It landed with a soft thud, the portrait seemingly undamaged while the light pointed toward something an abstract painting of a calvalreaper. The brownblood didn’t even flinch, her stare continuing to bore holes into Mayola’s soul.

“Because it just fucking does, okay Valeba?” she exclaimed. “Are you fucking happy now?”

She spun around on her heel, ready to be march out, only for Valeba to catch her arm and pull her back with her free arm, forcing Mayola to stare at Valeba in the face.

A part of her brain was dimly aware Mayola was far stronger than Valeba. Her kismesis was a brownblood, and no matter how skilled Valeba was at combat, most seadwellers could outmatch her blow to blow in physical strength. If she wanted to, she could yank her arm free and take off, leaving her in the dust.

But yet, here she was, letting this brownblood, second bottom out of the castes, seamlessly manhandle her and keep her in place with little more than a knowing stare.

“You told me once you weren’t leadership material. It wasn’t in your blood,” she said.

“’Cause it’s not. Plain and simple.”

Valeba sighed. Her flashlight dropped to the floor. Hot breath tickled Mayola’s face.

“Funny. It looks like I’m staring at the evidence right now.” Her tone shifted, into something quieter, less sure, as she added, “The second Heiress Apparent.”

A light breeze, no doubt a draft in this decrepit mansion, blew between them. It danced along the edges of Mayola’s hair, making her suddenly long to chop it off again.

She sucked in a breath.

She wasn’t so blind to not see what she was staring at.

“Now take it.”

Mayola had never closed the distance and kissed her so fast in her life.

#my writing #happy 4/13 #homestuck #homestuck oc #this is unbetaed and unedited this year like i really dragged myself kicking and screaming into finishing #and had a few different ideas kicking around in my head i couldn't commit too #and im not wholly confident anyone's gonna read it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#if nothing else finishing it did force me to clean my bathroom so you know small victories #anyway back to stardew

1 note · View note