Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.
G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.
An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........
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it's the way that emma's demeanor changes so clearly between
"and what was that?"
and
"you traded your ship for me?"
they've been flirting back and forth ("i know how you kiss" is my personal favorite) and emma's playfully teasing him. oh yeah? and what was that. what does the great captain hook who has sailed the 7 seas for centuries consider valuable to trade? he had just told her he's a heLL of a captain. HE ANSWERS PLAYFULLY BACK (to mask his feelings but we can get back to that)
but emma is like- record scratch. go back. you traded your WHAT for me? she goes from flirtatious, yearning, giggly emma to bewildered, smitten, and CONfirmed she is down bad for this man.
anyways, killian says it all in his wedding vows.
"they say that a captain’s heart belongs to his ship, but with this ring, it now belongs to you"
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The primordial sea is going to have NOTHING on the flood that's gonna hit fontaine from Neuvi's crying once Furina dies now that she's mortal tbh
And he won't be the only one crying but honestly? This poor girl has been putting on a constant act for almost 500 years, saw generation after generation come and go, and outlived everyone she could have grown close to except for him - and he was born a long-lived species, she's ever only been human. He loves her greatly and he'll feel her absence every moment once she's gone, but as much as I'd like to say he'll find some way to make her immortal (it's not like he has to play by Celestia's rules, or anyone's) I don't think he'd want to deprive her of her well-earned rest.
So I imagine once that day comes, the rains will be heavy and the sky won't clear for a long time indeed.
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I'm tired so y'all get angsty Nimona headcanons
So apparently since I’m a masochist I was thinking about how Nimona would react to the boys dying
Specifically the order cause I feel like that would contribute to how they would react
If Bal died first he would be crushed and kind of just shut down and close himself off
After a while he would start taking longer trips and meeting new people and the hurt would lessen year after year
After a while they kind of notice that they left Ambrosius alone
They didn’t mean to it was never their intention to recede into themself
But that’s what happened and when they rejoined his life he didn’t miss a beat
He just acted like they never left and that hurt ten times worse
Especially when she realized that Ambrosius never fully dealt with his death
At least not in a proper way
Ambrosius passing soon after they reconnected was just another gut punch
It was like she finally started to recover just to be thrown back down
And a small part of her just a teeny tiny part of her was bitter about it
And she fucking hated it
If Ambrosius died first I think she would still be angry
She wouldn’t shut down like Bal she would lash out
She would act like his passing away was just another betrayal by someone she trusted
And again it would take a very long time for her to stop viewing it as that
They would never lash out at Bal though
They saw the effects and noticed how deep the sadness ran so they would always hold their tongue around him
One day Nimona made an offhanded joke about how Bal’s eyes should be studied cause they should be able to get even bigger with age
And Bal just starts laughing
And he doesn’t stop
Even as he’s bent over sobbing there are still laughs sprinkled in
He asks Bal what was wrong and he says “oh nothing starlight” he keeps pestering him until he finally says
“You know I don’t think I ever had a chance to miss him because I see him every day when I look at you”
And they just sit on the couch and seemingly go through every stage of grief 24-hour period
When Bal dies a couple of years later it’s still like a gut punch
And he wants more than anything to dig himself into a hole and never come back out
But he doesn’t
It takes a long time for him to start letting people in again
So I don’t know if the boys were living together or if they were still living in the dorms before the knighting ceremony
But there in either situation there is something so utterly heartbreaking about the idea of Ambrosius having to rummage through the destruction of people barely knighted
Desperately trying to pick out the undamaged bits of Bal and clinging to them
I can also just imagine him searching through his phone frantically looking for old photos videos and voicemails
Trying to figure out if he was genuine or if he was talking with a mask for a decade
He goes back and forth between knowing those are his genuine smiles and laughs and that’s really love in his eyes
But then he also has moments when he remembers that he might not know what his real smile looks like or what his real laugh sounds like
And how can he know what love looks like when he might have been faking it this whole time
He stops looking through his phone for a while
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