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darthgloris · 7 months

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Our Padawan II

Pairing: Anakin Skywalker x fem!Jedi!reader

A/N: inspired by the last fic (and by my undying love of The Lion King), here comes the heartbreaking sequel! This actually started out as a scenario that I replay in my head when I'm bored and now I'm finally writing it down! Enjoy

Warnings: angst, family dynamic, platonic!Ahsoka x reader, heartbreak, sadness, death

Summary: The trio's next mission is on Anakin's home planet, Tatooine. In a moment of free time, Ahsoka is practicing her lightsaber skills on her own, while Y/N and Anakin spend some alone time together. The Padawan's training routine is interrupted by a Sith plot, and when her Masters run to rescue her again, something goes terribly wrong.

Song: Stampede - Hans Zimmer

Our Padawan // Our Padawan III

☆☆☆

"The mission is finally over," Y/N spoke, stretching her arms as she looked out at the sandy Tatooine landscape. "I'm way too tired to go back right now."

"Well, how about we take a break here?" Anakin suggested. "We could leave in a few hours."

"That sounds great," she grinned at her boyfriend, knowing exactly what he planned on doing. "Ahsoka, are you tired?"

"Nope." She quipped. Her energetic nature never seemed to falter.

Anakin chuckled, expecting the answer. "Then go practice. Maybe one day you'll actually beat me with a lightsaber."

"Show-off." Y/N muttered fondly, rolling her eyes with a small smile.

"All right." Ahsoka beamed, walking away.

"Don't wander too far away, Padawan." She called as the young girl turned around to leave.

"Okay. I'll see you guys later." She said and began to walk away.

"Hold on there, Snips. Aren't you forgetting something?" Anakin asked with a soft smile.

"Oh, yeah!" She exclaimed and ran back to hug him. He smiled down at her as she clutched onto his robes, chuckling softly.

Then she rushed over to Y/N, who was already sitting on a picnic towel. Ahsoka, who was now taller than her Master, rested her cheek on her head during the embrace.

"You run along now and go train." She smiled as the girl grabbed her lightsabers and walked away.

Anakin walked over to the towel and plopped down next to her. With a small grunt, he pulled Y/N onto his lap and laughed when she squeaked in surprise. She adjusted her position before pressing a few open-mouthed kisses to his lips. She looked into his big, blue eyes and smiled softly, her mind wandering as she lovingly traced his scar with her delicate fingertips.

"Hey," he said softly, diverting her attention back to his eyes. His sincere, sweet eyes. "She's going to be fine."

"I know. I just... can't seem to get it out of my head. I had never been so scared in my entire life." She replied sincerely.

"I get that. But she promised us she'd be careful. And I promised you a nice trip, so..." he said, pulling his hands off her waist to gesture at himself. "Here's the highlight of the day."

She laughed at his antics before giving him another kiss, this time sinking into him as they both slowly fell on the floor.

...

Ahsoka turned off her lightsabers with a huff, resting them on the ground before sitting down. She wiped the beads of sweat off her forehead and sighed, resting under a tree's shade.

The Padawan frowned when she heard a rumbling coming from the distance.

The ground began to shake and a few pebbles moved, as she looked up to the cliffs, and a gigantic herd of Banthas descended into the gorge at a speed she thought impossible.

She gasped, her body nearly frozen by fear.

Before they could trample her, she stumbled onto her feet and ran away as fast as her legs could carry her, and whimpered in fear whenever they seemed to be close enough to step on her.

She almost tripped over her feet as the sand filled her airways, delaying her fight-or-flight response.

...

Y/N laid in Anakin's arms, her head on his bare chest as she heard the commotion. She sat up and gazed at the gorge in confusion. Anakin soon followed and, with a small huff, tried to see what was going on.

"What's happening down there?" Rex wondered out loud, approaching the couple.

"I have no idea." Anakin said.

R2-D2 beeped repeatedly. There's a stampede in the gorge. Ahsoka's down there.

The Jedi Masters immediately looked at each other in horror.

"Ahsoka!"

...

The girl's heavy breath mixed with whines of worry and small sobs of fear.

Once in a while she looked back to see how close they were, and every time it looked like they were closer and closer to trampling her dead.

She caught sight of a dying tree and immediately leapt on it, clutching onto the thickest branch as if her life depended on it.

Because it did.

...

Y/N never remembered running this fast, ever. Her heart thrummed with adrenaline as Anakin dropped his robes to the ground while he ran.

Rex rushed ahead and took as much care as possible to run through the cliffs without falling, looking out that gorge for the Padawan.

"Rex, help me!"

His ears perked up as he saw the young girl struggling to hold onto the tree, her grip faltering by the second. She tried to wrap her legs around the branch but failed almost every time, only succeeding in slipping off further. "Your Masters are on the way! Hold on!"

"Hurry!" She cried.

The Jedi ran over to a ridge and fearfully inspected the area. Rex came back and pointed to a spot further away, while they craned their necks to try to find her. "There, on that tree!"

Y/N gasped as she saw her Padawan on the verge of falling off. "Hold on, Ahsoka!"

The scream she got in reply was enough. She jumped off the ridge and onto a smaller one. Anakin grasped her arm and gave her a pleading look. She got on her tiptoes and kissed his lips quickly, letting out a small "I love you" before jumping in between the Banthas.

Anakin gasped and leaned over the ridge as much as he could, supervising his girlfriend's moves. "Rex, go back to the ship! Comm Obi-Wan and report the situation!"

"Yes, General Skywalker!"

He looked back to the scene as Y/N ran past the tree, where Ahsoka was hanging desperately, using every bit of strength she had left to not let go. She then turned on her heels and, between the rumbling and the sandy clouds rapidly forming, went back in the direction of a tree.

She tripped on a small rock and dropped to the ground with a groan, then shook her head and looked up as a Bantha broke the tree, sending the girl into the air with a scream. She gasped and jumped to catch her in her arms, holding onto her tightly as she tried to beeline back to safety. She bumped into another Bantha and fell to the ground, dropping Ahsoka.

The Padawan opened her eyes and whimpered as she tried to avoid the running animals, moving and flinching whenever one ran past her. She looked back and caught sight of Y/N and felt something grab her as she closed her eyes, wishing it could all go away.

The Jedi Master avoided the Banthas and with a few hops, grabbed onto the ridge with one arm and set Ahsoka down next to Anakin with the other. She began to sigh with relief, when suddenly she was pulled back into the stampede.

"Y/N!"

"Master!"

Their fearful eyes combed through the herd, looking for their companion amidst the chaos. As after a few second passed and nothing happened, Anakin began to tremble at the thought of having lost her, while Ahsoka's eyes desperately scoured the zone.

A flash of off-white robes sprung out from the clouds of sand and grasped onto the rocky cliffs, now too tired to use the Force, and used whatever small ledge possible to climb up. Anakin felt himself relax almost entirely as he held his Padawan protectively in his arms, relieved that it was almost over.

"Come on, Snips, let's go help her up." He said and hopped on the bigger rocks, Ahsoka following suit.

With a tired grunt, Y/N clutched onto whatever rock she could, now grasping onto the edge of the precipice; her feet began to slip as she looked for any room to lean on and climb up. As a shadow approached, she looked up in relief, hoping to see Anakin.

"Dooku?" She panted, outraged. "This was- mphh - you..."

The Sith didn't answer, just stepped on her fingers, making her groan in pain. "Chancellor Palpatine sends his regards." He kicked her hands off the edge.

She screamed out as she fell through thin air.

"NO!"

#star wars #star wars x reader #anakin skywalker #anakin skywalker x reader #star wars anakin #ahsoka tano x reader #ahsoka tano #tcw ahsoka #tcw anakin #star wars the clone wars

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merakiui · 2 years

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[ii.] ᵐᵒʳⁿⁱⁿᵍ ᵈᵉʷ ᵇˡᵘᵉˢ

serial killer!jade leech x female!reader cw: brief mention of death/murder chapter i│chapter ii (you are here)│chapter iii

Today’s Horoscope: It is advised that you tread with care today, for the next twenty-four hours are scripted with new opportunities for personal improvement.

In the private confines of the blue-green aquarium you sit before the outline of a police officer, his image constructed from moon jellyfish that are so red they resemble blood cells, and he asks you a grocery list of questions ranging in specifics. Riddle’s witness statement came before yours, and you try to picture his face as a source of comfort while you power through the underwater interview. Instead, his crimson hair provides you with more unsatisfying imagery and you grimace as you relate your account to the officer. There’s a notepad and a pen in front of him, but he doesn’t pick it up. The answers you rattle off automatically write themselves in messy, slanted script. It’s in a language you can’t comprehend.

His final question—what frightens you?—comes and goes and it isn’t long before you’re out of the interrogation room, where a fidgeting Riddle waits in the lobby. You reach for his outstretched hand, fingertips just brushing, and the scene falls away when you blink, bursting like a bubble on the water’s surface. Unable to pursue the crooked memory any further, you find yourself standing in an opulently furnished room with a vaulted ceiling and arched windows, curtains parted to reveal swarms of jellyfish in the distant blue outside. A piano sits in the center, bathed in dappled shade and awaiting a skilled player.

There’s a hand on your shoulder and then a voice as smooth as alabaster invades your pounding eardrums.

“I’ll play something for you. Name a piece.”

“A piece?” You move to turn, but the man has covered your eyes with his gloved hands. “Um… How about my favorite song?”

He doesn’t respond and when you reach up to peel his hands away from your face they have morphed into a blindfold. Darkness closes in, snuffing every warm beam of light that attempts to pierce through, just as a familiar melody begins to play. It’s an enchanting sound, filled with a fantastical sort of whimsy that sings of youthful confessions and a bouquet of dandelions.

The intercom, hidden deep within the vast room, crackles and the tinkling tune abruptly ends. “Hello? Is this on? Can you hear me? I’m trying to reach you. Is my voice reaching? Hello?”

You whirl around in alarm when the door slams shut and yank the cloth down to search for the culprit.

“I need you to listen,” the woman, whose voice has become strained with urgency, says. “Something is wrong. An instability. No, more than that. It’s—protect you—something else... Can you—listening to me… Not safe. Something is—” Shrill static devours the rest of her warning, bringing with it a suffocating silence that fills the room like toxic gas. And then she speaks again, but her voice has retained its robotic quality. “Today’s color is blue. As vast and wide as the sky and sea, as deep and dark as water’s soul, blue is the color of trust and sincerity. It is the color of bruises and sadness. It is the color of you.”

You’re shaken awake before you can comprehend her words, tugged from the ethereal tendrils of the dream world by your phone’s cheerful ringtone. Groaning, you snatch it from the bedside table and stare at the caller ID.

“Riddle… What does he want?” Rubbing your bleary eyes, you place your phone against your ear and mumble a sleepy greeting.

“Took you long enough! Oh. It’s earlier than I thought. I must have woken you.”

“No, no. It’s…” You pull your phone away to gauge the time. “It’s fine. I have to get up anyway. I’ve got this run with a friend, so it’s probably good that you acted as my alarm clock.”

“Then I won’t keep you any longer. I just…wanted to call.”

“Uh?”

“T-To check in!” he insists with a cough. “Right. That’s all there is to it. And now that I know you’re well I’ll hang up.”

“Wait. We got caught up in a mess, right? It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

“Rather than admitting fault, I’d say it’s for the best that we stumbled upon it. Who knows how long that man would have remained there had we failed to notice him.” He exhales slowly. “At the very least, we prevented someone else from finding him. Had it been a curious child or a couple of reckless teenagers…”

“But it’s disturbing, isn’t it? He was…” You lower your voice, as if doing so will save you from a nonexistent threat. “Someone killed him and they could still be out there.”

“It’s not something we should dwell on. The authorities will handle it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound tense.”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Are you handling it fine? No nightmares? No fear?”

“I’m…handling it.”

“If you want to come over to my place, you’re more than welcome to. We can do some stuff to take our minds off of it. Oh! What if we made that strawberry tart you like so much? That’s still your favorite dessert, right? I’m not really good at cooking, but I think I can handle baking. There’s also this mug cake mix I bought recently and I’ve been wanting to make it.” The line goes quiet. You think he might’ve hung up because of how deafening the silence is, so you add, “Or I could come over and help you with your furniture…or something.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I have prior engagements tonight,” he finally says.

“Rain check?”

“About your application—”

“Hey, no fair! You can’t just change the subject!”

“Time waits for no one. You should submit it as soon as possible.”

“I know, I know. I’ll do it.”

Stop pestering me.

“Good. I’m wishing you all the best.”

“Thanks…” You turn on your side in bed, staring at the empty space beside you. “When are you free?”

“Aside from my shifts, I haven’t planned anything for the weekend.”

“Really? Then we should hang out! I’m free on Saturday.”

“All right. I’ll let you know what time works for me.”

“Cool! I can’t wait. There are so many fun things we can do! I’m a great tour guide, you know.”

“I’m sure you are.” There’s another prolonged pause before he adds, “Well, now that we’ve established that I’ll see you tomorrow at work. Enjoy your run.”

“You should come with!”

“Thank you, but I’d rather not subject myself to such an exhausting activity. And at such an early hour of the day, no less.”

“You can walk. Azul does that sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”

“One moment. Did you just say—”

“Oh, the time! I should get ready. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Sure… Yes, okay. Have a pleasant morning and don’t forget to—”

You end the call and cast your phone aside. For a moment you lay there, staring up at the dull ceiling as last night’s events play in blurry detail. You can recall the horror that engulfed Riddle’s expression, so raw and real that even the most skilled actor could never hope to imitate it. Your chest fills with a terrible ache when you think back on what led up to the discovery. If you hadn’t been so insistent on dragging Riddle along with you, this could have been avoided. Neither of you would have witnessed the brutality that befell an unfortunate man. If you were so deep in the emotional trenches, you could have called Azul or Cater or anyone with enough willpower to shoulder your baggage.

“My dream!” you exclaim, shunning all thoughts of Riddle and the murdered man as the realization hits you. Scrambling for your phone, you input the password and open your dream diary to a blank entry. “What was it about? Shit. No, no… There was something red and—or was it blue? No, red. Red and…Riddle. Or am I remembering him because we just talked?”

Defeated, you sigh into your pillow. Only a few words litter the draft: blue, red, Riddle, murder, interrogation. You’re certain there’s more meaning to those keywords, but the dream is fragmented beyond repair, lost within the folds of your brain. It’s impossible to compare the significance of your dream and the intercom lady’s colorful prophecies to your horoscope when you can’t remember it in its entirety. And when you can’t use one to interpret the other, how can you possibly rely on what’s truthful?

Maybe I should make today a lazy day. I’ll call Azul and tell him I’m not feeling well. He’ll understand.

After minutes of quietly sulking, you pick your phone up and swipe to your contacts. Your messages remain soulless, a facet of life you’ve grown accustomed to. As you scroll to find Azul’s number amidst the few you rarely contact, a notification pops up from the dating app you’ve yet to uninstall. You tap it on instinct and are instantly pulled from your messages to the app, where a dozen texts await you. From strangers to past hook-ups to new matches, there are almost too many for you to handle. Among them, one profile stands out. You tap on the chat. According to the timeframe, the two of you were conversing just after midnight. Before you can kick yourself for bothering her at such an ungodly hour, you skim the conversation.

And that only prompts you to grimace. If only you had a shovel so that you could bury yourself and evade the encroaching shame.

[(Name)] Quick question.

[sea♡sluggi] :D quick answer!!

[(Name)] Is my voice reaching?

[sea♡sluggi] ??? this isn’t a voice call sorry. do u wanna talk???

[(Name)] Can you hear me? I’m trying to reach you.

[sea♡sluggi] i’m not sure i understand :( ´◦ω◦｀): ur messages are sending just fine if that’s what ur worried about

[(Name)] Something is wrong idk what does that mean? i d k. You used it before in the diary. Sometimes it’s blue. Tonight was red. Red red red red red red red blue must protect you.

[sea♡sluggi] lol;;; umm

[(Name)] Have to go. Waking up now. Try again later.

You stare at the screen, eyebrows knitting together, while attempting to make sense of the exchange. You comb through your head in search of the memory of your fingers flying across the keypad at one in the morning, but all that bubbles up are hazy images of the boardwalk and the corpse tied to the post, the waves crawling onto the shore as a police officer separated you from Riddle, and the anxiety splayed across his face as he stood with his hands folded primly in front of him, as if he intended to pray the macabre away.

And then, just as you attempt to recall the brief interview with the officer, you draw a blank. The rest of that night fades into obscurity, leaving you with an eerie sense of emptiness.

Flustered, you find yourself typing out a simple excuse: Just read last night’s convo and wtf was I on about??? I think I had too much to drink sorry if I scared you!

Sluggi’s response is immediate: np!! ^^ i was a little worried. ur okay, right?

You swing your legs over the edge of the bed and assure her that, other than the hangover that’s currently crushing your soul, you’ll be okay. Her next text is brimming with understanding and you heave a breath that mirrors her relief, even if it’s mainly due to the fact that she fell for such a subpar lie.

Chewing your bottom lip, you debate sending another text. Sluggi seems nice enough from the tone of her messages—so long as you’re interpreting them correctly—and you’d like to have another female friend to talk to when midnight calls with Cater fail. Instead your fingers slide over the letters and you write something else. You click send before you can drown in doubt and jump up, determined to start the day with a fresh bout of confidence despite last night’s grisly madness.

“No lazy days!” you announce to your room. “I’m going to get up, see Azul, and make today a good day. No matter what.”

Framed in the golden glow of the rising sun, its rays extending to form an arching crown, Azul stands beside the entrance to a beachside trail. Dressed in slim-fitting activewear, he raises his arms above his head in a long stretch of popping joints and clicking bones. Another man lingers next to him, a silent shadow, and he brushes a dark strand of hair behind his ear with lithe fingers. You stuff your car keys into the pocket of your nylon leggings and jog over to him, a broad smile stretching your lips. Every inconvenience that has burdened you since last night vanishes when he catches your eager stare and returns your glee with a genuine grin.

“Azul! Hey!” You stop before him, heart exploding into an elated frenzy. He’s so normal compared to the gore that haunts your headspace like a persistent phantom. “Sorry I’m late. There was lots of traffic and I got a little distracted listening to the radio, and as a result I got off on the wrong exit. I hope you weren’t waiting too long.”

It wasn’t a bad horoscope, you remind yourself. The radio said so, so I’ll do everything I can to follow it even if I can’t remember my dream.

“You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

“Safe and sound,” Jade adds, and you’re suddenly made aware of his presence as he waits patiently near Azul.

“Good morning, Jade.” You adjust your crop top so that it hugs the upper half of your torso more comfortably. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

His eyes flick briefly to the jagged scar that runs up the length of your stomach before settling on your face. “I couldn’t possibly miss an opportunity to exercise on such a pleasant day,” he says, smiling. “The view here is truly a joy to behold.”

Nodding in agreement, you glance at your surroundings. The beach runs parallel with the trail, a pathway that’s the length of a mile and a half. On the other side, dense forestry crawls towards the weathered concrete, cracks spider-webbing through it like the shattered surface of a mirror. You’ve run the distance plenty of times in the past and it’s been just over a year since Azul started accompanying you. You’d wanted him to stay in shape after he complained about the models on Magicam and how they always looked so flawless.

No one’s perfect. But if there’s something you’re unsatisfied with, you can work hard to improve upon yourself, you’d explained while he pouted at his phone. After some negotiation, he begrudgingly joined you the following day, claiming he was only doing it for the experience. Definitely not because it was you who convinced him.

“Floyd’s not here?”

“Thankfully,” Azul says, but he falters at your critical look. “Thankfully…because he’s back at the club cleaning, I meant! Of course it’s a shame he can’t join us. I guess.” That last part is muttered and you pretend to have not heard it. You know Azul prefers it when it’s just you and him and, if you’re being completely honest, you like it that way, too.

“He’s missing out. The forecast said it’d be sunny all day.” You fall into step between Jade and Azul as the three of you walk past the rugged cedar sign. From the earthy scents clinging to the treeline to the salty air rolling in from the white-capped waves, you immerse yourself in the miracles of Mother Nature. Inhaling a breath of land and sea, you ask, “Did either of you dream last night?”

Never missing a beat, Azul replies, “I’m afraid not. Dreams are rare for those who work.”

“Really?”

“A hard worker dreams less frequently because they’re always exhausted, so when they fall asleep they don’t have enough mental energy to produce dreams. It’s like trying to get a robot to carry out tasks when it’s low on fuel.”

What are you, a dream doctor?

“But I always dream when school starts and that’s usually stressful. Actually, now that I think about it I can’t really remember my spring semester. All of the partying and drinking felt like one crazy dream. Despite that my grades were good. I think. And it wasn’t too tiresome. I…think.”

“It’s because you take those things too lightly that you’re able to dream. I envy you,” he says with a mournful sigh. “The youth are so carefree these days. It must be refreshing.”

You roll your eyes. “Or maybe you’re dreaming every night but aren’t remembering. That’s why I keep track of my dreams. You should, too.”

“I’m certain I’d be able to remember whether or not I dream. My memory isn’t Swiss cheese, (Name).”

“Well, regardless of that it’s quite the blessing that you’re so imaginative. Dreaming is therapeutic for our minds and bodies.”

“Ooh, like an overnight therapy session for the brain! You totally understand it, Jade.”

“Indeed. Although it’s very unlucky that our dear Azul can’t dream. A life without dreams is meat without seasoning.”

“A flower field without flowers,” you add.

“An ocean without salt or a feast without a main course.”

“I get it. I’m dreamless,” Azul snaps, glaring. “To think that both of you would pair up against me… I’m heartbroken.”

“Aw, don’t be so sad, Zuzu. You’re a dream to me.” To complete the cheesy line, you form a heart with your fingers and send him the cutest wink you can muster.

He bristles and a deep cerulean coats his cheeks. “(Name), you are a wonderful creature. Talented, gracious, and occasionally amusing. But for the sake of your pride and my cringe tolerance, never say that again.”

“Yeah… I promise it sounded better in my head.”

I am never using that line again. Why did I say that?

“On second thought, I’m getting a head start.” Abandoning you and Jade, he jogs a generous distance ahead, soles pounding out a steady rhythm on the concrete.

“The two of you have known each other for a while. One would assume he wouldn’t be so flustered at this point in your relationship,” Jade remarks as he strides beside you, arms folded behind his back.

“No, I think he’s just cringing. I’d run away from myself if I could.” Smiling at the hilarity of the situation, you mutter, “I don’t mind it, though. I like it when Azul’s honest. It makes the time I spend with him even sweeter.”

“I suppose.” He chuckles, tilting his head at you like a curious bird eyeing fingers through the bars of its cage. “They say true love often feels like a dream. Perhaps you aren’t so inaccurate when you make such claims.”

You blank at those words and then an uneasy laugh trickles out of you. “I wouldn’t call it love, per se. We’re just…together. He helps me with money problems and I help him with whatever he needs help with. That’s all there is to it.”

“What wonderful mutualism.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Would that make you the anemone and Azul the clownfish?” Jade hums as he ponders the answer to his hypothetical. “Or perhaps it’s the other way around? Clownfish are known to be territorial of their anemones, but as an upcoming marine biologist I’m sure you’re aware of this. Perhaps there will come a day when another fish wishes to indulge in the anemone that is Azul.”

“I hope he won’t toss me aside when that day comes.” You roll your shoulders while viewing the scenery that stretches ahead, a portrait of natural serenity. And at the very center of such a picturesque scene, Azul stands, his gait having slowed into a strut. He turns to wave you onwards, a broad grin playing at his lips. Your heart, rejuvenated and reanimated, floats like a cloud. “If that happens, I think I’ll stay on the sidelines and let him do his thing. Like watching jellyfish in an aquarium. They’re prettier when separated by glass, but when you’re within touching distance it can be dangerous.”

“Are you saying Azul’s dangerous?”

“Not at all. In fact, he’s too soft. You ought to see him every morning. It’s cute.”

“And yet you claim your heart is not bound by love. How peculiar.”

Heat claws up your neck and you cup your hands around your mouth to enunciate your intonation. “A-Azul, wait up! Jade’s being weird!”

Jade’s gentle laughter grows increasingly faint when you take off down the path. Once you’re beside Azul, you heave an embarrassed sigh.

“Define ‘weird,’” he insists. “I can assure you Jade can be weirder.”

“It’s nothing. He’s just…annoying.”

“Those words have vastly different meanings.”

“Not in my dictionary!” Your inquisitive stare bores into his side profile while he admires the road ahead, a twinkle in his powdery hues. “Hey. Um… If you were in love, what would you do?”

“If the object of my admiration reciprocated, I’d confess. If they didn’t, I’d simply keep it to myself.”

“What if you didn’t know you were in love?”

“I’d figure it out eventually. There are signs and symptoms.” He flicks his hands about as if discarding something filthy. “Butterflies and whatnot.”

“You say that as if it’s an underlying illness.”

“It most certainly is! Haven’t you heard of lovesickness?”

“That’s just an exaggeration. Like saying you’re so hungry you could eat another person.”

“Depending on someone’s opinion and their experiences with love, it can be viewed as such,” Jade interjects, and you whirl around to find him standing behind you and Azul. “Lovesickness itself isn’t considered a mental ailment by most doctors. It’s more of a biological response. Sometimes you can’t help longing for a certain person or a love that will never come to fruition.”

“Hah!” You smirk at Azul. “See? It’s completely normal. Not a disease.”

Azul scowls in return. Despite the ferocity smoldering in his countenance, you know from experience that he isn’t truly cross with you. Aside from the occasional bickering, which usually ends in good-natured surrender from either of you, you’ve never engaged in an actual argument with him. There’s no shrieking until vocal chords are frayed and spent, no onslaught of tears that come pouring after venomous words have been spewed, and no shattered hearts after short-term separation. In fact, now that you’re dwelling on it, Azul almost always tries to avoid falling into any conflicts with you.

“And have you ever felt lovesick?” His playful question dissolves your bravado like sugar in water and a sardonic smile twists onto his face. As always, even when he’s slyly prodding at the truth, his energy is invigorating. It lures you in, dangling itself before you like a worm on a hook and you’re the foolish fish who has taken the bait. “I’d love to hear how you felt about your lovesickness. Why not explain it now? We’ll gladly lend you our ears.”

“Okay, that’s not fair! I was a kid and love was so sparkly and there was this really cute boy…” As soon as you catch sight of their knowing grins, you shake your head and step away from them. “Forget it! It wasn’t even a bad feeling. It was just… Can you believe I gave him a bouquet of dandelions? I mean, of all the plants to give the love of your life…”

“You poor soul. I wouldn’t do such a brainless thing.”

“It’s the thought that counts, no?”

“I tried to give him a basket of tomatoes after that. I don’t think little (Name) had much going for her back then.”

“Tomatoes! That’s rich! Could you imagine receiving a vegetable bouquet as a gift?”

“It would certainly make for a delicious feast,” Jade says, which earns him a snicker from Azul and a groan from you.

“Looking back, there was no way he’d ever fall for me. Not with the things I was giving him. And yet I continued to like him.” Shaking your head in dismay, you turn your gaze skyward. “Love is so odd.”

“But you admit it’s a sickness, right?”

“I guess. Sometimes it’s irritating and—hey! No way!” You swipe at Azul, who narrowly dodges your attack. “Start running, Ashengrotto! I’ll give you a workout for real this time and by the end of it you’ll admit love is nice and great and definitely not a disease!”

“I’d like to see you try!”

Relishing in the competition, you set off after Azul, leaving Jade to follow dutifully behind as he always does whenever he accompanies the two of you on your morning run.

And as you chase him, abandoning recollections of those summer days spent standing outside of that special someone’s window, you realize you wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun as you are now if you’d listened to your concerns and stayed home.

Stop worrying so much, you remind yourself as you race towards Azul. You’re okay.

Once you catch up to him, you throw your arms around him with a triumphant shout. “Got you!”

“Get off of me! You’re sweaty!”

“So are you.” You stick your tongue out at him. “Thanks for putting up with me on these runs. I know it’s not the most exciting thing in the world.”

“It’s not so bad. It is part of our arrangement, after all.”

“You’re literally the worst. I was genuinely thanking you and you brought up that stuffy contract!”

“Yes, yes. Crucify me for souring the moment.” His eyes soften when you pull away and he grabs your hands, squeezing them reassuringly. “It doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing. As long as I’m with you, it’ll always be enjoyable.”

Don’t say stuff like that.

“Oh. Um. Y-Yeah, I agree.”

If you say that with such a sincere face…

“What’s this? A group hug?” Jade asks, standing before the both of you with his arms spread.

Vexation darkens Azul’s visage and you roll your eyes, both of you exclaiming in unison, “Go away, Jade!”

His hand shields his mouth as he chuckles, eyes crinkling with mirth. “How precious.”

I won’t know how to truthfully respond.

#yandere twisted wonderland #yandere twisted wonderland x reader #yandere twst #yandere twst x reader #yandere jade leech #yandere jade leech x reader #serial killer jade #death row undertow #death row undertow chapter two

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wanderingpages · 1 year

Text

.・。.・゜Dark AU ゜・。.

V E R S I O N 2

“It’s you that I’ve been thinking about and I shouldn’t be. You’re cattle waiting for slaughter, baby.”

TFOTA // All Human // AU : Cardan tries not to lust after the girl he's supposed to kill.

Trigger Warnings: Crude language, Drugs, Sex, Murder/Talks of murder, Sexual/Physical Assault.

Cardan's POV

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I lean back to check it, only to see Madoc's text of the day. He's starting early, I note idly, glancing at the time. It’s near four in the morning. I clear the notification and slide the phone back into my pocket. I’m sure if I ignore him long enough, he’ll show his ugly mug soon, so that I can gladly stick a fork in his hand.

“Lollipop?” I glance up to Jude, her head is lolled against the chair, asking about the notification. When she yawns, she doesn’t try to hide it like she’d done before in the past few hours. She even lets out a groan and sigh, twitching her nose from side to side, like a witch from a 60’s sitcom I’ve seen before. The nostalgia makes my chest hurt. I lean my head against the wall, watching her watch me, both of us a sad mirror of each other; droopy eyes, hair askew, scratches and marks and someone else’ blood dried on us. Probably still high from whatever Ghost laced in his weed. She smiles weakly and I wonder what she’s thinking. I wonder if she knows what I'm thinking. Despite her not only recalling Lolli’s name, but mentioning my ex sometime before, I still find myself thinking about my head between her thighs.

“Yeah,” I lie. “Want to see? She’s got bright blue hair and these pretty piercings I think you’d do well to reference on your next trip here,” if I’m sardonic, I’m too tired to care as I gesture lazily to the parlor. “I’m an exceptional piercer,” I grin. Jude keeps her eye contact with me, but flexes her jaw and shivers all the same.

“Liar,” she whispers, “you’re a very bad liar.” I think it’s rich coming from her, but she’s right. I don’t usually lie, I’m just usually good at skirting around the truth. Still, I find myself at a loss of words to come up with when she’s around. “It wasn’t her.”

I shrug, “they all blur together sometimes,” and that is quite the truth, but I can only give Jude half of it. “And yet…” I glance upward, behind her, where the wall splinters around the bullet embedded there. I rub at my thumb, partially inked and wounded, liking the ache that keeps me aware that I’m still alive. “There’s just something about Lolli,” my smile feels as sleazy as I sound. “She’s most definitely earned her name.” When I look back to Jude, I try to ignore the wounded look she gives me. Tied to a chair with a bullet wound in her arm, but it’s what I say about an earlier hookup that reminds her she should be very wary of me. “Tasted just as sweet.”

“Fuck you,” she tells me, straightening her head against the chair. She looks up at the light. “You’re so full of shit,” she mumbles boldly. “Wrong shade of brown,” she recalls, tone mocking brave for the position she’s in. “Why do you tell me these things?”

Instead of reminding her that she’s the one who’s brought it up, I tell her, “I should have taken you to Dain yesterday. I think that would have been the best choice to have you around people. I don’t think I’m supposed to torture you, if I’m honest. But I’ve been kind of itching to.”

She might have caught the grin I’m sporting, the most genuine one of the night, because she says, “You’re fucking crazy.”

“You’re the crazy one,” I remind her as I walk past the chair, so annoyed at the bullet hole, that I take a framed painting and switch it over to cover up the impurity.

“And trust me,” I turn to the chair, lean on it while my hand finds the lever underneath. She looks up at me startled, and lets out a yelp when the chair goes back. She’s laying down beneath me, not unsimilar to the night we met. “You’d know when I’m fucking you.” Her cheeks get warm, but her mind is elsewhere. I wonder if she’s thinking she should have kept her distance the night of the party. She should be aware by now, though, being tied up beneath me is just where she’d end up anyways. There are no stars in here to steal her attention this time, just me. She’s still pretty to me, but has her perception of me changed yet? “You should probably go to sleep,” I whisper. “You have an Econ test, don’t you?”

She blinks and I lift up, heading for the lights. “You… you messed up the aesthetic,” she points out, twisting her head slightly, noting the lack of symmetry in the array of photos on the wall now. “You’re letting me go to classes tomorrow?” she questions as an afterthought. “By myself?”

“Do you want to join a cult instead?” I’m mostly serious. She blinks, confused, right before I flick the lights off. Her Bambi eyes are starting to unnerve me again. Still, I feel her gaze in the darkness and it unnerves me just how fast her eyes not only have adjusted, but how intensely she’s staring at me. It’s all these subtle things that grow into something bigger. Her instincts are trained to adapt and maybe even kill if she can really help it.

“I thought I jumped through conversations half in my head,” she mumbles, quietly. Its like the darkness has blanketed us in secrecy. “Are you in a cult? Is this why you’re called King? What are you? The Priest?”

“Father this, Father that? I think I much prefer ‘Daddy’ then, no?” she lets out a noise, something like a gasp and a squeak. “Maybe that would make you my virgin sacrifice, right?” I’m teasing because I don’t really want to get into why Mayor Eldred was actually funding Church of Mab, a front for a cult pushing heroin, nor do I want to then explain why I have any rights to that signet on any document. In truth, Ghost could type some shit up that would exempt her from classes, and would cover some bases in regards to her suddenly not showing up. Its far more common, especially in Elfhame’s College Town, than anyone really suspects, but professors and school boards keep tight lips over it. Mayor Eldred also funds the university – or his estate does, at least. The elite, tenured professors are more than aware, possibly even part of the cult in question. No one would bat an eye at a young college student suddenly dropping out to find God and start an MLM scheme on heroin disguised as the body and blood of The Great Mab herself.

“How would that work,” Jude pulls me from thoughts, “If I’m not a virgin?”

I grin, despite myself, and we go back to square one, staring at each other.

Neither of us get sleep, and maybe that’s a good thing, seeing as not an hour later, Valerian is coming through the door, turning on the lights. We blink to adjust to the brightness, but Valerian’s ensemble of white on white on white doesn’t help. He looks like the Cult Leader’s Doctor. Even Jude winces when he sets a bag on the counter and pulls out medical tools. He’s quiet, as per usual, reeking of coffee so strong it makes my stomach churn. I’m absolutely starving and all I have is diet coke in the minifridge and melted ice cream that’s been out since yesterday, marinating in Ghost and Jude’s hotboxing.

He cuts Jude from her restraints then cleans and wraps the fresh wounds on her wrists before checking the stitches he’d given her yesterday. I check my messages, finding one from Dain that lets me know Jude’s mansion is all pristine.

Yesterday, when I had left, I ended up in Dain’s bar. Not something he’s built from the ground up, but something he just happens to own 51% of, much to the actual owner’s chagrin. He brings in customers, shady as they are, but she gets revenue and Dain has yet another place to hide from his wife. He’s not too happy with my using his tattoo shop as a pseudo torture dungeon again, but he’s a little amused at the run down I’d given him – in which my boss has me babysitting someone on the top of a hitlist he failed to mention. Not just babysitting, but befriending as well.

“This kind of sounds like Gen’s play at matchmaking. I mean, it’s a bit poetic if I think about it hard enough.” Dain pointed this out when I explained the bit about getting to know her as organically as possible. “That being said, I’m against Stockholm Syndrome.” His words either coincide or completely deviates from the text I had gotten from Madoc then. “please make sure she trusts you.” I had left him on read but duly noted Madoc’s use of the word ‘please.’ “Anyways,” Dain said just as Lollipop came to introduce herself. “It sounds like a bodyguard job, not a dungeon master one.” Looking at Madoc’s text now, I’m starting to wonder what game he's playing at.

“What’s in that,” Jude asks and when I look up from my phone, Valerian is gently rubbing a cream on to her skin.

“Bunch of good stuff, mixed with more good stuff,” he answers her, voice sounding hoarser than usual. I’m guessing it’s a low dosage of fentanyl and some powdered ibuprofen he stole from his night job as the resident mortician or something at that hospital.

“Right,” Jude tells him. “Of course. How could I have not known?” her wit is dry this morning. He ignores her and helps her up.

Valerian then reaches into his big bag of everything and pulls out another bag, clothes and a pair of sneakers that I hope to Mab he didn’t steal from one of his bodies being refrigerated. “It’s clean,” he tells her and I grimace, wondering why the hell I’m thinking about Mab so much today.

Jude looks to me and I shrug, telling her, “He is the cleanest person I know.”

“Ghost got it from your house,” he further explains and lets go of her hands. She sways a little, most definitely resembling Bambi now. When she loses her center of balance, trying to test out the kinks in her arms, my hands are on her waists instinctively. I like that her breath catches and she doesn’t scramble away from me like I’m betting her instincts are telling her to.

“5 seconds,” she whispers as I set her straight. I give her a questioning look and she explains, dazed, “I was somewhere else.” I start to wonder if Valerian actually had more then fentanyl in his concoction and if its already made its way through her blood stream.

“Where were you, then?”

I don’t expect her to answer, “On the bed in my room.” Her skin ignites; I'm guessing she hadn’t really expected to respond.

“Is that where you want me, princess?” She purses her lips and turns brusquely, following Valerian who had been waiting by the door that leads into the house.

He opens the door for us and if she’s asking why there’s a giant portrait of the late mayor on the wall, I gently guide her to the half bathroom and disregard the question.

I turn to find Valerian a few feet behind me, sanitizing his hand and spraying some disinfectant on his bag. “How’s Balekin doing?”

“Better,” he says solemnly. “I will pray for his speedy demise.” He’s absolutely serious about that too. “Do you want me to switch his IV bag?” I shake my head, but he knows the thought has crossed my mind. We’re just in sync like that. He hands me a small bag of travel sized toiletries and a small phone I'm guessing Ghost had fixed up for her. Valerian leaves through the back door and I pass the bag over to Jude when the bathroom door opens. She looks at me panicked, glances at the bag confused, grabs it and shuts the door before opening it again five minutes later.

“What?” I ask her.

“I can’t remember anything,” her furrowed brows and trembling lips make me uncomfortable. “I don’t remember what the midterm is going to be about!”

I don’t know why I did it – why I decided it would be a good idea to not only escort her to class, but sit right beside her in the crowded lecture hall. I must be a glutton for punishment. I angrily fill out the sheet that had been handed to me, cosplaying as someone who knows Econ so well, I didn’t even have to study. When I glance over to her, she winces as she moves her arm. Go figure, it’s her dominant hand that was wounded. I make a note to tell Valerian to mix some stronger concoction, maybe with morphine instead. When she rubs at her wrist, I gather it’s a habit she’s just initialized, an anxiety induced action when she doesn’t know the answer to her exam questions.

I look over at the students around me and I want to bang my head against the fucking wall. There’s a reason I dropped out of school. Asha couldn’t be bothered to care if I even had a pencil to my name, and then I couldn’t be bothered to worry about school work and trying to survive that drug den at the same time. Asha was good for keeping up a façade, because it made no sense that she’d ever have credentials for fostering if she wasn’t smart enough to play the system. From shitty foster home to shitty foster home, Asha’s was by far the worst of it. I hadn’t been the only kid in the house, but I never saw anyone more than a few months. For some reason, Asha kept me much longer than the rest. I didn’t know who’s punishment was worse, at the time.

When Asha was cracked out, she was often kind to me, in a desperate sort of way. It was when she was sober that I’d suffer the brunt of her emotions, whether it was a slap to the face, a cigarette to my skin or a minute alone in the room with her husband, I thought, it would get better if I held out, if she had her needle filled with special liquid, she’d love me and save me. I used to pray every night she’d get another delivery of heroine until the cost of it started to become…me. One day, when I realized nothing in the weathered bible I kept under my bed would ever save me, I left all the gas burners running and got the fuck out. To my dismay, only my foster dad and his fuck buddy of the day had died. Asha managed to get away from the fire, and it turned out that foster Daddy had one hell of a life insurance plan.

Before Asha could even be investigated properly about the suspicious death, she fucked her lawyer right past a get out of jail free card and straight into unholy matrimony. Maybe a blessing, had they found something that she could have spun to blame on me and get me sent to Juvie. Still, that left me homeless at 14 and with a complex so severe, it was no wonder when Madoc showed up in my life, I clung to him.

I hadn’t spent half my life learning Geometry and Hamlet, but I picked up a few tips on chemical compounds and set Asha’s fancy new house on fire years later when I’d reunite with Mommy dearest. I made sure she knew who was slitting her throat that night. I wanted her looking into my eyes, begging me for mercy. “I am the monster you created.” I couldn’t find God, so I became one, and I took her life like it was my right.

My jaw clenches so tight that my teeth ache. The pencil in my hand snaps and Jude looks over at me like I'm being a nuisance. and I stare back, daring her to say something in the way too quiet room filled with seventy more students cheating on this stupid test. She breaks first and I go over the sheet I was handed. I let out a sigh when I realize I now all the answers to these bullshit theoreticals. I fill out the Scantron with a heavy hand, annoyed that I retained information from the few times Eldred actually spoke to me. Or, spoke near me.

When her professor calls time, I switch our papers, dropping Jude’s exam into her open bag and passing mine forward instead. Her eyes are wide but before she can comment, I grab her bag and her hand, pulling her to the exit, shoving past people already complaining about questions.

“What the fuck?” She asks and I tug her closer to my side, bringing my arm around her shoulder. To keep her from running off. “You can’t just do that, Cardan!”

I look down at her, “Why not?”

“It’s cheating!” I almost laugh at her. It’s cheating. She’s got a hit out on her and her babysitter is the fucking Grim Reaper on a good day. But, yeah, she’s worried about cheating.

“You were the only one pulling answers out of your ass, baby girl.” She blinks up at me and I roll my eyes, “Everyone had their phones out.”

Her cheeks tint and her nose scrunches like the little witch she is, and like the unbelievably weak person that I am, I’m entranced. She wants to argue but finally she settles on, “How do you even know about economic growth and the business cycle?”

I find that I don’t want to tell her, don’t want her to know how wacked my entire history is, but I want to give her something she can ponder on, something she’d no doubt use to figure out me out soon enough. “Do you know why they call me King?”

“Not at all – it’s not like I’ve been asking since you kidnapped me yesterday and held me hostage until the ass crack of dawn,” she mutters. I squeeze her shoulder in warning. She’s mouthy, but too ballsy for her own good.

“It’s because of who my dad is.”

“If that’s how it works,” she snorts, “I’d be a queen with who my dad is.”

“Or a saint,” I throw out, guessing at missing puzzles pieces. She won’t say it, maybe she thinks I already know, but it’s all I’ve been thinking about since yesterday. I’m nearly certain I know who her dad is now. A cross references with only a handful of people with the last name Duarte, and the only two people funding a certain summer camp, I’m starting to realize just how much shit Madoc has gotten me into. If my dad had been funding The Church, her dad was the head of it.

She changes the subject, doesn’t want to acknowledge the jab, and says, “Wouldn’t that make you a prince then?”

I grin, grimly, leading her just off campus to the coffee shop her friends had texted her about earlier. Through the immense amounts of notification in their group chat, I gathered they’re excited her phone’s back on and were super worried about her health but apparently had no idea where she even lived. “Dad’s dead. Or at least on paper he is.”

“What does that even mean?” I shrug and let her marinate in that for herself. She yawns deeply for the umpteenth time, and I probably should have spent more time persuading her to sleep instead of having a staring contest with her all night. If I wasn’t thinking about ways I could possibly kill her when Madoc tells me to, I was definitely starting to think about her with less and less clothes on. Thoughts of my tryst with Tootsie Roll started to resemble Jude taking up her space.

“You ever think about dying your hair blue?”

“No. Too discernible, King.” She says this like it’s obvious, and no shit it is. Under the surface at least, but her comment lets me know she’s aware of a lot more going on than I do. But, I figure, she’s already under a lot of people’s radars anyways, what’s stopping her now? “You picturing me as Candy, again?” I can’t help the grin that escapes me as I hold the door open for her.

“That depends. Are you offering a taste?”

She elbows me as I walk behind her, then winces at the sudden shift in her arm and I smirk, placing my palm against the wound. She sucks in a breath but doesn’t shove me off. I know the pressure is helping some and she doesn’t want to accept that, so she ignores me, spotting her friends. As Jude had said, they’ve got their own issues stemming from absentee dads or whatever so they haven’t really noticed the strangeness of Jude’s sudden no-contact.

They wave her over and their smiles turn Cheshire when they spot me behind her, not at all releasing my hold. “Jude!” Liliver exclaims, “Why didn’t you tell us you were bringing a friend?”

“He just followed me here,” Jude deadpans, earning a soft giggle from her. Nicasia, on the other hand, eyes me up and down, eyebrows furrowing as she tries to place me. Recognition slowly dawns on her, but she’s still confused. I smile at Nicasia, daring her to say something, to tell Jude what I already told her anyway. How could she possibly know who I am without explaining herself?

“I’m Cardan,” I tell them, wondering too late, if I should have lied about that.

Liliver gasps, eyes going wide, “You were at the frat party! I didn’t know you two hit it off like that,” she looks at Jude, accusingly.

“He took me home. He’s been lurking ever since.” She reaches and gently pats my chest, looking up at me like she’s infatuated.

“Finally kidnapped her yesterday and kept her up the whole night,” I add in, playing along. Liliver looks scandalized but Nicasia raises a brow and lets out a whistle.

“That’s why you haven’t been answering my calls,” Liliver gives Jude a knowing look and Jude’s jaw ticks just the slightest that they haven’t caught on to her lie. Sorry baby, they cant save you.

She goes to say something, but the barista calls out Nicasia’s name and three cups are slid her way. She hands them each off and looks at me apologetically, having none for me. But Jude waves her off and hands me her cup while taking her bag from my hand. I definitely don’t need more stimulants in my blood, but I grab it and sip from it anyways.

“So what Frat are you in?” Liliver leans against a pillar, eyes narrowed as if trying to visualize where I fit in.

Jude leans against me and tilts her head back to look up at me, “Go on babe, tell them.”

I roll my eyes and tap her nose with the tip of the coffee cup. “Theta Delta Sigma,” I rattle off a bunch of Greek letters and they either don’t care enough to call me out on my bullshit or they have no idea that I’m lying.

“How long have you been in?” Liliver taps a finger on her lips, still trying to place me.

I shrug, “A few years.”

“Ooh,” Nicasia’s eyes sparkle, “What was your initiation like?”

Jude frowns, shifting against me. “I don’t think he can talk about that.”

Her friend rolls her eyes, “What am I gonna do? Tell the campus police? Should I also tell them about the bag of weed I’m carrying or the fake ID you have?” I should throw in the guns in the car and the coke in my pocket, just for kicks.

Jude sighs and rests her head back against me, eyes closing, as if looking for patience. I look down at her, gauging her reaction, but her breathing shallows out far quicker than I’d like. “I had to tie someone up and get them to confess something heinous they did on camera.” This happened of course, but when I was seventeen and Madoc had just about enough of me trailing him. He had sighed and told me, “prove it, then. Show me you want this hell.” He gave me a lowdown and I did as he asked, put the fear of God in the creepy youth pastor who liked to groom little girls and boys. I didn’t want Madoc’s hell. I wanted my own power. There is footage out there of said tortured pedophile, but it won’t ever be released. Because his body won’t ever be found.

“Whoa,” Liliver breathes, “That’s hard core.”

Nicasia’s eyes are wide too but if she does go back on her word and snitches on me to campus patrol, who can’t actually do shit on a crime that doesn’t technically exist towards a made up fraternity, I have the knowledge of her fake ID and bag of weed she’s carrying. I’m not above ratting her out in pure spite. “What did he do?”

“I’d rather not let you lose sleep on that.” I smile and gesture with my chin to Jude who still has yet to open her eyes. Her breathing is far too even for her to be cognate, but she can’t be well into a REM cycle just yet. “Speaking of sleep, I should probably get her home.”

Liliver giggles, “You kept her busy last night, poor Jude.” I hadn’t kept her busy at all. Just paranoid. I shrug bashfully and jostle Jude slightly.

Her eyes flutter open and she glances around with a frown on her face. “Did I just fall asleep?”

“No, you just blinked for a very long time,” Nicasia mutters. She waves her hand in dismissal, “Go cuddle with your little vigilante, I’ll see you later.”

“Vigilante?”

“Say bye to your girls, babe.” I turn and lead her out, she frowns but still twists her body to wave back at her friends.

“You’re not taking me home, are you?”

“Of course not.”

She pouts, “Well, can I least get a sofa this time, I still have kinks in weird places from that chair I spent the day in. Also, can I have alcohol? I think I really need a drink, because I’ve been trying to block everything out, and it was working well because of that test, but things are slowing down and I just keep thinking about that guy with an arrow in his throat. And to think I just grabbed that crossbow from its mount on the wall. I didn’t even think it’d actually shoot.”

Ignoring her mostly, I say, “I’ll do you one better. An actual bed.” She sighs almost contently, continuing her rambles.

“You know if I didn’t have this bullet wound, which – I'm coming to terms with by the way that Ghost shot me –

“He didn’t shoot you,” I tell her and she rolls her eyes like she thinks I’m lying.

“ – I would have escaped my confines,” she continues and I open the door to my truck for her then help her up.

“Oh yeah?” I ask and she nods, leaning down close to my face.

Her blood shot eyes are wide with mirth as she whispers like she’s telling me a secret. “Daddy taught me. In a game,” she lets me know and I don’t like the feeling I get when she confides in me. “I got candy when I won. Red Jolly Ranchers are my favorite.” She grins at me sleepily.

I glance down at her lips then back to her eyes, quite lively today, stunning when the sun hits it right. “You’ll have to show me then.” I pull the seatbelt strap around her, clicking it into place.

She grins, “Anything just to tie me up again, huh?” she snorts and leans back against the seat and I shut the door, heading to the driver side. Her head lolls to look at me, the humored smile tapering slightly. “You don’t have to,” she sighs, “Tie me up, I mean. Daddy’s not coming for me. I learned long ago he doesn’t care about us. He’d let you kill me. Hell, he’ll take the gun from you and shoot me himself just to get it over with.” Despite going into this blind, and still unsure if Ren and Stimpy are related to what Madoc is doing, I’m beginning to grasp most of Jude’s short comings have been catered to her dad’s liking. So, the truth is, I believe her. And with the look of guilt on her face, it’s not hard to guess how torn she is about this tidbit of information.

I think she realizes she’s said too much because she frowns, and when she reaches forward to touch the dials on the radio, her fingers tremble. She fiddles with the stations until she finally settles on something pop.

She falls asleep before the first song even finishes, yet I don’t turn off the blaring music. When I finally park the truck, I turn to face her, taking in the twitch of her fingers and the irises fluttering beneath her lids. Her lips are parted, and I can’t help the smirk at the trail of drool down the side of her mouth. When I reach out to wipe her chin I know I’m fucked. I think I’ve known since the party.

I shake my head and exit the car, jogging to her side to shuffle her into my arms. I sigh and ring the doorbell when I reach the entrance, unable to get my keys at the proper angle, unusually flustered by Jude’s hot breath against my neck. Dain pulls the door open, eyes going wide at the girl in my arms. “This her?”

“No, it’s the fucking pizza you ordered. Move, so I can get in.”

He grins, “I wouldn’t mind eating her.” He’s looking for a reaction and I almost give it to him. My grip on Jude tightens and she stirs, murmuring something before nuzzling deeper into my neck. Dain looks very much amused. He takes a step and I’m disconcerted. I’ve hardly ever used this entrance, but for the past few weeks alone, I’ve seen it more than I’d like. Yeah, I gave myself a complex about this house and being the estranged son of the mayor. When I begged my social worker to find me anyone who would pity me enough to let me couch surf until I hit 18, I never expected her to find Eldred of all people. He had been unconcerned with the new baggage he’d acquired, but Dain, who had only been 17 then, made sure I had a room to sleep in at least. He took care of me, but it wasn’t enough most of the time. Off to repent for his own sins, no time for mine as well. And so when Madoc came along, I stuck by him. Probably having Dain and Madoc as pseudo parents was as dysfunctional as all my foster homes, but I'd take them tag teaming on a half assed parental guidance than reliving any part of my first 14 years of life.

“East,” Dain tells me, when I guess I’ve been standing a minute longer than necessary. I glance and he gives me a knowing look before glancing up the main staircases. Its much easier finding an exit in the place than it is finding the room I spent the last 8 years of my life in.

“Elvira,” I say her name like a question as I make my way up the stairs.

“That primadonna bitch,” Dain mutters, “is napping in the sun room. Your precious princess is fine.” He whines, but Elvira is practically family.

I find my room and set Jude on the bed before I ruffle through my drawers. I hear her yawn just a moment later and when I turn, I see that she’s sat up halfway, resting on her elbows, blinking herself awake. I toss a shirt at her and it lands square in her face. She looks down when it falls into her lap then looks up at me. “Who’s Elvira?” little sneak had been eaves dropping.

I raise a brow and tug my shirt off. She looks at me with wide eyes, trailing over my skin. I reach for the buttons on my jeans, curiously looking over her observation of me. Her skin is flushed, breathing going just a bit shallow, focused on my fingers as I slide down my zipper. She lets out a soft squeak that almost makes me laugh. When my hands no longer obscure my pelvis, Jude places a hand to her cheek, almost resembling the likes of pearl-clutching old ladies.

Scandalized but still watching. “Is that… ?”

“Is that what?”

She holds the shirt I’d given her close to her chest like a lifeline. “Nothing,” she stutters, getting up abruptly.

I glance down wondering if Dain tattooed some gang signs on me without my consent, but I’m sure I’d have already recognized something like that. Then I understand and I smirk. “Oh,” and I’m absolutely charmed by her being so flustered over a piercing.

"Turn around so I can change."

“I’ve seen it all, Jude.” Her teeth grits at the reminder that I’ve been watching her, even when she had been at her most comfortable. I settle on an accent chair I position close to the door, leaning my head back and parting my legs. “I’ve even seen better,” I muse just to piss her off. I hear her mutter something, and I laugh closing my eyes anyway. After a moment, she huffs and shuffles about. She tells me she done only a minute or two later. I see her jeans and shirt folded neatly at the foot of the bed and further up, I see that the covers are drawn all the way to her chest. She turns to her side, watching me.

“No handcuffs?”

I lean over and dig into the bedside table drawer and pull out a wad of neon zip ties. “Pick a color.”

“Pink,” she holds her hands out, palms down. I twist her hands until her palms face each other and loop the plastic around her wrist. “What about my arm?”

It’s bleeding when I glance at it, but it doesn’t seem dire. “You’ll be fine.” She scowls at me but shifts until she feels comfortable. I get up to draw the curtains close, then return to the chair.

“Did it hurt?”

I look at the way the glow from the lamp reflects in her irises. Her tawny eyes look golden. “When I fell from heaven?”

She glares at me, “I know you crawled out of hell. I meant, you know, your piercing.��

I chuckle and lean back, “Yeah, when I got it, sure.”

“Why would you get something like that?”

“Nobody’s really complaining, Jude.” I grin, “Want a feel?” she rolls her eyes but there’s a part of me that knows I could never let that shit happen if she were to even spite me and say yes. The thought of her grinding her hips against mine just to find that perfect angle, to get my piercing to rub her swollen clit, has my hands clenching. Jude might actually kill me before I can even point a bullet in her direction. “Fuck,” I groan out, slumping back. If she notices my sudden turmoil, then she doesn’t comment on it.

“So, is Elvira part of your roster of girls?” I give her a look, trying to assess if she’s going for small talk or if Lolli had really bothered her. Indignant, and maybe even vindictive, she tilts her chin almost proudly and adds, “Just want to know where I fall on the list. Is it Elvira, Sophie, Lolli then me? Sophie, Lolli, me then Elvira?” The mention of Sophie’s name has me tensed and sobered. What bothers me the most is that, somehow Jude had made it to the top of the list, albeit, different from what she’s getting at, but still, I couldn’t let her know that.

Before I can say something to piss her off, the door slams open, and we both turn to see a very erratic looking Ghost enter. He glances at me, eyeing my lack of attire, then Jude, who’s arm had started bleeding through my shirt. “Shit,” Ghost mutters, handing me the laptop he had been carrying and the coffee he probably should lay off of. “I’ll let Valerian know,” he tells us, shrugging off his sweater and bunching it up to place on Jude’s arm. She winces and lets out a curse, but Ghost only turns to me to explain, “No malware… but. Shit man, what the hell is Gen getting you into?”

I open the laptop, walking it over to Jude. There’s a video already on screen, paused. Its dim and grainy and despite half the screen being partially obscured, I make out the features of the sleeping girl on screen. It’s Jude, I realize. Except it’s not. Identical until the mirror image starts to look off. I cant explain it, but I know that’s not Jude in the video. Jude reaches and hits the play button, but she’s so stiff that it seems like every move hurts her to make. Ghost watches me as I alternate between watching Jude and the video. I don’t understand until Jude gasps. Her eyes widen in horror and I think it’s saying something that she’s this petrified given the past few weeks that she’s had. Her eye’s well up and when I turn to the screen, it’s like a buzzing noise starts in my ears. I can’t hear anything but static when I recognize the knife being held to the jugular of the sleeping girl.

I feel a bit sick, recalling images that had been sent to me, nearly identical, but instead of Jude’s look-alike, it had been my fiancée, and back then, I had been far too late. I look to Ghost, wondering how this had escalated from ransom for Jude to emotional torture for me. It’s like my presence had escalated the danger. “They know,” I say. But its more than that, something clicks in my mind but I don’t want to think about it at all, I don’t want it to be real.

Suddenly, Jude lets out a gasp, and jolts against Ghost. Her arm jerks a little then the rest of her body starts to shake uncontrollably. I grab on to her, but her eyes roll back and her body slumps. Ghost pries my hands from Jude – I hadn’t realized I had been squeezing so hard – and he grabs the laptop after guiding her down. Then he tells me what I’ve already figured, “That’s her sister. That’s Taryn.”

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empirearchives · 1 year

Text

When Napoleon died in 1821, Alexander Pushkin memorialized him in a poem titled “Napoleon”:

The wondrous destiny is ended,

The mighty light is quench’d and dead;

In storm and darkness hath descended

Napoleon’s sun, so bright and dread.

The captive King hath burst his prison—

The petted child of Victory;

And for the Exile hath arisen

The dawning of Posterity.

O thon, of whose immortal story

Earth aye the memory shall keep,

Now, ‘neath the shadow of thy glory

Best, rest, amid the lonely deep!

A grave sublime …. nor nobler ever

Couldst thou have found …. for o’er thine urn

The Nations’ hate is quench’d for ever,

And Glory’s beacon-ray shall burn.

There was a time thine eagles tower’d

Resistless o’er the humbled world;

There was a time the empires cower’d

Before the bolt thy hand had hurl’d:

The standards, thy prond will obeying,

Flapp’d wrath and woe on every wind

A few short years, and thou wert laying

Thine iron yoke on human kind.

And France, on glories vain and hollow,

Had fixed her frenzy-glance of flame—

Forgot sublimer hopes, to follow

Thee, Conqueror, thee—her dazzling shame

Thy legions’ swords with blood were drunken—

All sank before thine echoing tread;

And Europe fell—for sleep was sunken,

The sleep of death—upon her head.

Thou mightst have judged us, but thou wouldst not!

What dimm’d thy reason’s piercing light,

That Russian hearts thou understoodst not,

From thine heroic spirit’s height?

Moscow’s immortal conflagration

Foreseeing not, thou deem’dst that we

Would kneel for peace, a conquer’d nation—

Thou knew’st the Russ …. too late for thee!

Up, Russia! Queen of hundred battles,

Remember now thine ancient right!

Blaze, Moscow!—Far shall shine thy light!

Lo! other times are dawning o’er us:

Be blotted out, our short disgrace!

Swell, Russia, swell the battle chorus!

War! is the watchword of our race

Lo! how the baffled leader seizeth,

With fetter’d hands, his Iron Crown—

A dread abyss his spirit freezeth!

Down, down he goes, to ruin down!

And Europe’s armaments are driven,

Like mist, along the blood-stain’d snow—

That snow shall melt ‘neath summer’s heaven.

With the last footstep of the foe.

Twas a wild storm of fear and wonder,

When Europe woke and burst her chain;

The accursed race, like scatter’d thunder,

After the tyrant fled amain.

And Nemesis a doom hath spoken,

The Mighty hears that doom with dread:

The wrongs thou’st done shall now be wroken,

Tyrant, upon thy guilty head!

Thou shalt redeem thy usurpation,

Thy long career of war and crime,

In exile’s eating desolation,

Beneath a far and stranger clime.

And oft the midnight sail shall wander

By that lone isle, thy prison-place,

And oft a stranger there shall ponder,

And o’er that stone a pardon trace,

Where mused the Exile, oft recalling

The well-known clang of sword and lance.

The yells, Night’s icy car appalling;

His own blue sky—the sky of France;

Where, in his loneliness forgetting

His broken sword, his ruin’d throne,

With bitter grief, with vain regretting.

On his fair Boy he mused alone.

But shame, and curses without number,

Upon that reptile head be laid,

Whose insults now shall vex the slumber

Of him—that sad discrowned shade!

No! for his trump the signal sounded,

Her glorious race when Russia ran;

His hand, ‘mid strife and battle, founded

Eternal liberty for man!

Edinburgh Magazine, 1845, July issue

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exhuastedpigeon · 7 months

Note

im so sorry about your partner!! hope they're okay 🥺 to distract you, what are your too five favorite songs for buddie?? 💗

Thanks bud ♥️♥️

I have so many favourite buddie songs, it’s kind of a problem. I’ve got a whole playlist called “you can have my back any day” that I throw on shuffle when I need inspiration.

I think my top five this week are probably:

True Blue by boygenius

I saw them play this song live and couldn’t help but cry at the buddie of it all.

“You’ve never done me wrong except for that one time that we don’t talk about because it doesn’t matter anymore. Who won’t the fight? I don’t know, we’re not keeping score”

“It feels good to be know so well. I can hide from you like I hide from myself”

Think of Me by Madi Diaz

This is my favourite angsty Buddie song. The chorus goes -

I hope you fuck her with your eyes closed, and think of me. I hope you love her with the lights low, oh and think of me. I hope you fuck her with your eyes closed, put the shade off with some benzos, swallow the the feeling while you walk home. And think of me always. Think of me think of me always.

It RUINS me thinking about Buck feeling that way when Eddie was with Ana or Eddie when Bucks with Taylor or Natalia 😭

The Heart is a Muscle by Gang of Youths

This whole song, but especially these lyrics

“I wanna be loved, I wanna be whole again so tuck my hair behind my ears and touch my soul again, The window is wide, the post unfulfilled And I just ask you to be patient if you'll have me still”

Heavy by Birdtalker

This song has so many moments that kick me in the feelings but the line “I want to see your sadness, I want to share your sin. I want to be in your blood and and I want to let you in”

Tomorrow by Shakey Graves

Truly this entire song, but one of my all time favourite lyrics is “the closest I’ve come to perfection is when you turn around to steal a kiss”

#asks #thank you for the distraction!#buddie #buddie songs

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bigdvmnhero · 1 year

Text

Double Lives

summary: Casey is not supposed to be here. The universe attempts to rectify this error. (post-rottmnt movie) notes: cw for some slight horror themes

read on ao3

Casey can't show off too much, or it'll give him away. He hangs back instead. All the other hopefuls are peacocking for the coaches by the stands—weaving between cones and back, shooting fast, then faster; blades biting severe lines across the ice.

Soon a scrimmage picks up. Easy now, Space Case. He prowls his own corner, rolls his shoulders back. Waiting. A few parents cheer for their children. Casey tongues the bitter sore in his mouth, like no one's son. Pain flares, incandescent and necessary, but Casey keeps his ground because if nothing else he is a good student.

Tides, he knows, can turn just like that; a slight lift in the wind, the minute darkening in the cloud cover heralding a storm.

A whistle blows. A dozen hockey sticks crash like thunderclap for the puck at center ice. It slingshots right through frantic legs—right toward Casey.

There.

Casey bares his teeth behind the mask and whacks his stick against the ground, twice; old habits.

Little rink rage you got there, Raph once said, when he caught Casey pitching stray pucks into the net with single-minded ferocity. It had been on one of his janitorial shifts at the center, and Casey had nearly broken the damn mop with each swing. But Raph only grinned; so unlike the austere gash of man in all of Master Michelangelo's yellowing photos, smiling sweet and wrong all over. Everything in this world feels wrong. Someone keeps rearranging the street signs each time Casey bends down to tie his shoe. The sunsets are all the wrong shade.

Then there's hockey.

And hockey, Raph promises, is in his blood.

The puck slows by Casey’s feet. The moment sinks in amber.

For one honeyed moment, the horde of sweating, pink-cheeked teenagers only stare from the outer edge. Then, the moment unlocks: they swarm towards him from all sides. Casey's pulse hammers the equivalent of a high score in a pulverizer machine, but it's not yet time.

A little closer.

Casey doesn't know how it happens, but the boys' faces start to shift too; up close, their skin drips like the aftermath of a landslide, muscle hanging loose like debris caught in the mire. His hockey stick thrums in his hands; he can almost hear the phantom whirr of it; clumps of hair and dirt and Kraang gore in its blades. A coming-of-age gift, from his eccentric Donatello-sensei. He needs a weapon, Dee. One way or another kid's gonna find a way to dish out some damage, see?

The boys are close. Close enough Casey can smell the vile Kraang on their breath.

His body tunnels with instinct.

By the end of it, when they throw him out of the rink—two concussions bestowed, four loose bloody teeth, and twenty-seven traumatized kids later—Casey asks: so, uh, did I make the team or what?

He doesn’t understand the boggled expression Leo makes, or the aborted laugh that comes a half-second later. Not the sad flutter of Mikey's eyes. Raph's see-through smile. What's wrong with you? The question imposing itself between every shared moment.

Casey's glad they never ask it aloud, because he's trying to figure that one out too.

He only knows that tonight, on that ice, he'd felt, for once, like any regular boy, with one thing that was all his.

Leo cares for him as much as he can. Tracks him down when the bad feeling in Casey's chest feathers into a restless bird that keeps taking off for bar brawls and gang skirmishes and alleys that glint with secret knives.

Another black eye. Another frantic police call.

Leo never once faults him. Leo tries to teach him everything he knows. But Master Leonardo?

Leonardo taught him to hunt.

It's sensei's hand that slides the mask back on Casey's face. The guiding force that compels him onwards, away from his soft hammock at the lair, towards the silvered-blue edge of this city where the hunt still lives, and Casey goes teeth bared and swinging; old habits.

It follows.

In dusty windows, in every gray puddle, in the screech of city trains, in the stretch of time before dreaming and waking, in the tinnitus of near silence, in the seconds before he hits the tail end of a car with his bike, in the terrible hitch in Mikey’s voice, in the grim set of Leo's jaw while he bandages another set of splintered knuckles, in carnival rides, in the shrieks of people not dying, in the pit of his stomach never acid-empty, in the skyline never bloodshot-red, in this New York but not his New York, in all his kaleidoscope dreams, in every blasphemous stutter of his still-beating heart, the voice finds him.

You are not supposed to be here, it says, panicked. The voice shuddering with the weight of holding him together. You don’t belong here. Get out get out get out GET OUT

Something is wrong, Casey mumbles, losing it on some moonlit alley, his fingers and chainsaw hockey stick slicked with green ooze and something he has no name for. The stick slips from his shaky grip. It clatters to the floor, dry—a simple broom now. His hands, too: horrifyingly clean. Casey stares at them, not understanding. Sensei—Leo. Something is wrong. With me—

Easy, easy now, Case.

We got you, Casey.

Shit—he's going into shock. How is that possible? Nothing's—

Alright, Dee, why don't you just help me keep the big guy upright?

Casey's legs have gone offline. Faces around him, parsing in and out. What he recognizes as Master Michelangelo's face, softened by age and forbidden runes, hovers with anxiety over him. When Casey blinks, Mikey is young again, his eyes shiny with tears.

Can you walk? Donnie asks by Casey's left. He's sixteen, all 100% organic limbs—the left arm he offers as a crutch. But when a cloud passes overhead his friend is transfigured, a half-machine horror.

Donnie looks stunned when Casey only stumbles back, stuttering.

C'mon, buddy, Raph tries; the full moon behind his head glitches into the Technodrome and back. What's wrong? It's just us.

Casey shivers as another electric impulse passes through him. His body someone's bristling conduit, white-hot and straining with the force of two power sources—twin deathless stars of the past and future. But where else can he go? Static tosses in answer inside him, almost oceanic.

Hey, hey, hey, it's gonna be alright, okay? I'm so glad we found you this time, you scared me so much, you dingus, Leo's telling him. He picks up where Donnie left off, shouldering him upright to deposit him gently on a plastic crate by a brick wall. Cradles his face, with a borrowed tenderness Casey remembers from a future that will never be, bleeding through the seams. The universe is tearing itself apart. He can almost slip right through.

Leo interprets the mute horror in Casey's eyes for something else, says something about a med kit, and promises a tender, hey, Leon's here now, okay?

As Casey stares, Leo's image splits into two—

I'll be right back, Leo says, turning to go.

I'll never leave you, Leonardo says, and reaches right for him.

#rottmnt #tmnt fic #bigdamnher0 #rottmnt fanfiction #rottmnt movie #rise casey #rise leo #auuugh it's rough out there for our future boy

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justsaysomethingjayj · 10 months

Text

WIP First Lines

I truly do love a good opening, so getting to share some first lines is a real fun one for me to be tagged in. Thanks @cypanache for tagging me.

For this I opted to limit myself only to my two most recent writing docs or this list would have been ridiculously long instead of just, you know, long.

Some of these may not end up being the actual first lines, but they are what I currently got there to start with. So with that said, and without further ado… SW, Obidala:

A harmless invitation goes a bit sideways.

He mapped out the constellations of far away worlds against her skin, no touch of his lips on her body seemed to be without purpose. Everything held a sense of meaning.

It began, almost fittingly, with a double take.

“We’re allowed our lapses, Obi-Wan,” she said, as if she could sense the conflict stirring inside of him. Her hair a mess of loose curls she tried to swipe away from her eyes. “They remind us that we’re human. And there is nothing wrong with that.”

He dreamed in the deepest shades of blue; of the places brushed by grief, and the shimmering hue of her long billowy dress. She was his sadness made flesh. Not real, but tangible. To be felt. Always just that. For that was all that was left of her.

She pushed herself against the wall, as he pushed himself into her. Urgency and a frenzied kind of madness had overtaken him at the mere sight of her. The seductive simplicity of her in nothing more than a barely there nightgown of sapphire washed silk and an unruly tide of tousled brown curls spilling down her bare shoulders.

The proposal had been completely innocent. Well-meaning in its initial intent. The idea had come to her then and she had simply thought to ask. Really, she had thought nothing of it.

OUAT, Golden Swan

“It’s quite the thing,” it mused, wearing an old forgotten face, a strange but perhaps purposeful choice for the Darkness to make, “to seek out and covet death. Not the ending one would imagine for a love story.”

Her eyes are full of timeless tales. Some as old as time. Fluttering back into the present. Fragmented speckles of a lifetime of broken promises and stubborn hope, shaded in a spiraling landscape of glittering greens. The subtle dark jade of envy; vibrant emerald of a rebirth; an endless evergreen of love; and just the softest hint and budding pine of corruptibility.

He kills the boy and rewrites the story. Starts by making them all forgot that particularly dark deed. His sickly act of cowardice and self-preservation. Then moves on to the next chapter of the tale by claiming a powerful queen from the proverbial game board to have and to hold by his side.

“There’s a deal here.” “Still so sure of yourself, Miss Swan. No matter how many times you’ve failed to play a meaningful hand against me.” He looked amused. Maybe a tad too pleased with how the cards have fallen in his favour, yet again. “There’s no version of this where you come out unscathed.”

“Your hand is trembling.” The sound of his voice seemed to jerk Emma from whatever trance she had fallen into. She turned sharply to look up at him, but there's a slight glaze to her eyes that told Rumplestiltskin that she hadn't come back fully just yet.

The Evil Queen doesn't mince her words. Takes—maybe a bit too much—pride in saying them to his face with a smirk smeared across her apple red lips. "A love like that will ruin you."

He’s a fickle and jealous man, and so he makes the pirate stay dead.

Bonus OUAT, Golden Swan Queen:

They are conflicted. He, by true love. She, a possible soulmate. What they wanted, what’s been saturated into their blood and bones and temperamental hearts, was now a liability to their happy endings.

------------------------------ I'm still new and very much lacking in mutuals to tag, and it seems like most of the Obidala crew I know have already been tagged by others. So what the hell, I'm just gonna tag some fav writers of mine: @thestorieswesay @lazybakerart @lemonlovely @harringroveheart @justadram @lainelannister

#my writing #obidala #golden swan #ouat #tagged I'm it #words from the abyss of my writing notes doc

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the-enzyme · 1 year

Photo

I decided to fully-repaint my GT 1:6 scale action figure Sephiroth. I had planned on just cleaning up the lower lids a bit more. I thought that the default paint was strong enough that 90+ percentage isopropyl alcohol wouldn’t remove it, but I was wrong. I had an extremely hard time removing the paint on the lips, so I thought I would be able to only partially remove my heavy pastel shading with alcohol without damaging the factory paint, but that turned out to be a miscalculation on my part. It was just the gloss they used on the lips. They did give this head a few top layers that were easy to remove and damage with alcohol alone, the sad part is that it got into my gloss damaging my repainted irises.

That was the whole reason why I didn’t want to fully repaint this head, because I was okay with the eyes, just the lower eye-lids looking heavily make-up-looking, was what bothered me to no tomorrow. Just as I dreaded, I wasn’t able to get the irises as bright and cyan/blue as I got them last time. I also wasn’t able to get them as detailed, but I also f-ed up the right one with the doming/glossing bit. Which I also dread to do, because I know how it’s supposed to be done, I just can’t seem to get it done right. DX

Regardless, I am happy with him for now! He doesn’t look like he’s wearing a thousand pounds of eye makeup, so that’s all that really matters to me. The fact that I have no fear now, of damaging the irises anymore (because they turned out like crap!), is kind of freeing in a way. I can always try again as many times as I feel like it, because I know I painted the whole thing myself. I don’t have to fear I’ll ruin something. I was okay with the factory paint minus the lips and eyes, which are the most important to me, as far as character accuracy goes. So now, I just have to keep trying and try to improve along the way! This is only the second head sculpt I paint in the 1:6 action figure customizing style, with acrylics alone, so I think I can hope to improve some. (:

My aim was never to mimic the prototype, because there’s no way in h3ll I’ll ever have that level of precision at that scale, my hands are just not steady enough to paint such clean sharp lines. As can be seen from my crap-lashes. However, I didn’t like the factory done mass-produced final product, it wasn’t close nor “pretty looking” to me. So, that’s why I wanted to attempt repainting mine some, to look more accurate to Sephiroth and less like a mass-produced figure, that failed to reach the perfection that was the prototype’s painting style. I included the last comparison photo just to show what he was supposed to look like, what he looked like out of package, and my partial and full repainting attempts so far. As well as a progress photo. I sealed this only twice, which is why I love not using pastels. BX

#GameToys #GameToysSephiroth #Sephiroth #Remake #FinalFantasyVIIR #FFVIIR #VideoGame #Toy #ActionFigure #1:6ActionFigure #OnesixthScale #Photography #ToyRepaint #DollRepaint #Repaint #Customization #ToyCustomization #toyphotography

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jxncywarrior · 9 months

Text

Stranger Things characters and ships as Taylor Swift Albums

Part Eight: folklore

*Disclaimer: I’m tagging all the ships and characters featured. I’m gonna try not to be biased. MOST of these are strictly based on canon. No hate to ANY ships or shippers.*

the 1: Stancy (Steve’s POV)

“And if my wishes came true, it would've been you”

cardigan: Byler (Will’s POV)

“'Cause I knew everything when I was young. I knew I'd curse you for the longest time. Chasin' shadows in the grocery line. I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired. And you'd be standin' in my front porch light. I knew you'd come back to me”

the last great american dynasty: El

“Who knows if I never showed up what could've been. There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen. I had a marvelous time ruinin' everything”

exile: Lumax (Both POVs)

“I think I've seen this film before and I didn't like the ending. I'm not your problem anymore. So who am I offending now? You were my crown now I'm in exile, seein' you out”

my tears ricochet: Mileven (El’s POV)

“I didn't have it in myself to go with grace and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves. You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same. Cursing my name, wishing I stayed. You turned into your worst fears”

mirrorball: Will

“I want you to know I'm a mirrorball. I can change everything about me to fit in. You are not like the regulars”

seven: Byler (Mike’s POV)

“Your dad is always mad and that must be why and I think you should come live with me and we can be pirates then you won't have to cry or hide in the closet”

august: Mileven (El’s POV)

“Will you call when you're back at school? I remember thinkin' I had you”

this is me trying: Jonathan

“They told me all of my cages were mental. So I got wasted like all my potential”

illicit affairs: Byler (Will’s POV)

“And you wanna scream. Don't call me "kid.” Don't call me "baby.” Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me. You showed me colors. You know I can't see with anyone else”

invisible string: Jancy (Nancy’s POV)

“A string that pulled me uut of all the wrong arms right into that dive bar. Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire. Chains around my demons, wool to brave the seasons. One single thread of gold tied me to you”

mad woman: Nancy

“And there's nothin' like a mad woman. What a shame she went mad. No one likes a mad woman. You made her like that”

epiphany: The Entire Crew

“And some things you just can't speak about…But you dream of some epiphany. Just one single glimpse of relief to make some sense of what you've seen”

betty: Byler (Mike’s POV)

“One time I was riding on my skateboard. When I passed your house, it's like I couldn't breathe”

peace: Ronance (Robin’s POV)

“Your integrity makes me seem small. You paint dreamscapes on the wall”

hoax: Byler (Will’s POV)

“Don't want no other shade of blue but you. No other sadness in the world would do”

the lakes: Byler (Mike’s POV)

“Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry. I'm setting off, but not without my muse”

Links to other parts of this series: Debut, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, reputation, Lover, evermore

#stancy #byler #eleven #el hopper #lumax #mileven #will byers #jonathan byers #jancy #nancy wheeler #stranger things #ronance

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lilliths-httyd-blog · 3 months

Note

📸 🦉 🧡

What’s set as you phone Lock Screen?

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

See if I had my way, I'd be waking up in the afternoon and staying up until some point around midmorning. I'm naturally designed to stay up all night, and I fucking love the early morning, esp just prior to sunrise or if it's overcast/rainy/misty outside. That blue the sky goes when the sun is slowly approaching but not yet in the sky... I love it. But there's no way in hell I'm going to bed early and waking up early to see it, I need my night to thrive. So... technically, I'm both.

A color you can’t stand?

See, I'm an artist so I can find a way to make any colour work for something. That said, dark green is my nemesis, specifically because of the discrimination I felt as a child due to being a Green lover. When I say I want a green-coloured item, I want it vibrant. I want it lime. #39ff14 is my favourite colour. I don't want some depressing, shitty nonsense like this.

If child me was at a birthday party and everyone got their favourite colour plastic cup, and everyone else's cups were bright and vibrant and shiny, I didn't wanna be stuck with the depression cup. But guess what, I liked green so I got the depression cup.

Of course, I don't hate the colour itself. Because it's really pretty and I associate the cooler hues of dark green with one of my favourite aesthetics. But, ohhhhhhh there is something wrong with these scenes

That shitty shade of green makes everything look so depressing, I swear. These aren't "brightly coloured". Rainbows aren't supposed to be sad. I swear the use of that specific shade of green in rainbows is the reason why everyone hates green. Because it kills the rainbow.

Seriously, go look up "rainbow stripes" or "rainbow wallpaper" or rainbow anything and notice how the nicest rainbows always use lime green, but the shittiest only use dark green.

#ask game #madoka magica #green #colour discourse #fuck dark green all my homies hate dark green

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latibvles · 1 year

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SAD, BEAUTIFUL, TRAGIC.

beautiful, tragic. // daisy and the fountain pen.

the crazy nurse, who goes out and fixes the things she's done wrong.

TAGLIST: @softguarnere , @liebgotts-lovergirl , @monalisastwin , @brassknucklespeirs

WARNINGS: nothing

SUMMARY: A confession coming to light two years later is enough to spur Daisy to action — but there are some things that she just can't do all alone.

When did she start crying?

Daisy doesn’t realize it until she hears her own shuddering breaths. She can’t pry her eyes away. I don’t even know if you’ll actually read this, or if you’ve read any letter I’ve sent in the past few months. Daisy read every single one. Despite it being better if she didn’t reply, she wanted to at several points. They still exist, in a box tucked under her bed on their quiet little street. I don’t know what I did. It wasn’t Ronnie’s fault. It was never his fault.

She couldn’t even blame anyone but herself — she’d been the one to take to everything with a hammer and butane. She’d destroyed it, not thinking it mattered to him, because why would it? But it did. Internally, she’s repeating it like a mantra. It did. It did. ItdidItdidItdidItdidItdi—

“Clarke?”

She pries her eyes away from the dirt, gazing up into the steely-blue eyes of one Captain Winters. His gaze is filled with blatant concern — his lips tugged into a soft frown, his brows furrowed. Daisy wipes her eyes and nose, abruptly pulling herself to her feet.

“Sorry sir I uh… didn’t see you there.” She apologizes, her voice trembling so blatantly she wishes she’d never spoken at all. He looks down at the letter, then back into her eyes.

“Bad letter from home?” He guesses. Too weak to deny, and already caught red-handed, Daisy lets out a wry laugh, giving him a half shrug.

“Yeah. Just some ongoing issues at home with my folks.” She sniffles once again, wiping her nose with her sleeve. It isn’t a lie. “Frustrating when you can’t be there. Can’t uh… make it better, I guess. If you’re looking for Captain Brant she isn’t—”

“No, no I’m not looking for Ginny— I mean… Brant,” she watches for a moment as Winters’ hue changes to a soft shade of pink. Daisy’s lips tug into a small, weak smile. “I just saw you earlier and you just… you looked upset. Didn’t know if you needed help.” There’s something about Captain Winters that is so earnest that it makes her melt a little bit. It’s why his men put so much faith in him. It’s also, likely, why he made battalion.

“You called her Ginny.” Is her response. She glances down at his hands, and he’s messing with them in a meticulous way, then back up at his face. He reaches up to rub the back of his neck for a moment.

“I might’ve.” A pause between them, not necessarily uncomfortable, but prominent nonetheless.

“…I don’t need help sir it’s not — it’s not something you can fix,” She states simply. The frown doesn’t leave his lips as he stares at her. She, admittedly, hasn’t spoken much to Winters, but she knows his capability for hard edges and booming voices. His expression is soft and vaguely familiar in some respect, like he’s left discontent with the answer. “I’m sorry for keeping you. You’re probably busy and I—”

“You weren’t keeping me,” he says it immediately. It’s so definitive that it snuffs out any doubt she might’ve had. Now it’s her turn to flush in embarrassment, mimicking his neck rub. He cracks a smile. “Where’re you meant to be, Lieutenant?”

“Philosophical questions already? I don’t even know your birthday,” she refutes, trying to pick up a few of the leftover pieces of her composure. Just because Dick Winters caught her red-nosed and sniffling doesn’t mean that the rest of either Company needs to see her in such disarray, too. He blinks for a moment, caught off by the quick remark, before lapsing back into himself. “I was headed to see Vest up at the post office. Just had to take a look at this first.” She waves the letter flippantly, before tucking it away. Dick nods at that.

“Let me walk you, then.” The way he speaks is gentle, to the point where Daisy almost feels like a wounded animal. In a way, she kind of is.

“Yes sir.”

His birthday is on January 21st.

His best friend also comes from wealth. And that dark-haired man’s name, apparently, is Lewis Nixon. He laughs a bit when she asks “Harvard or Yale?” before responding with “Yale” and Daisy feigns a shudder at the very thought. He’s from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has that kind of reserved politeness about him that makes it easy to talk about minor things, looking at her every now and again as though he’s reassuring her he’s listening. Still, she doesn’t miss the way his lips sort of quirk into a small grin when they exchange stories about meeting “Nix” and Ginny respectively, but she doesn’t comment on it.

They reach the post office, he and Vest exchange salutes and the kid’s entire face lights up, like he’s been waiting for this moment all day.

“Captain Winters! Lieutenant Clarke! Got mail for both of you this time around,” Metal-wire cages that she thinks might’ve been for chickens at some point serve as storage for postage. He moves from one to the next, grabbing four different envelopes. “Another from Miss Almon it seems.” he prattles, handing two to Winters, and then two to her. Daisy looks down, recognizing James’ familiar penmanship on the first one with a fond smile. He tended to send multiple, since they’d take so long to get across the way. She then looks at the second.

It takes everything in her not to outwardly scowl.

“Thank you, Private,” she opts for, warmly. Vest smiles and salutes, then she shifts her attention to Winters as they exit. “I have to go see Captain Brant, so if you want to stop by and say hi, by all means,” His cheeks flush and she bites back a snicker. He mimics the way she flippantly waved the letter from before.

“Unfortunately, I have these and more, uh, riveting reports to tend to.”

“Oh yeah, court-martialing. You show those looters what for,” he rolls his eyes at that with a small chuckle, and they go their separate ways with a warm goodbye.

When Virginia Brant isn’t running herself ragged between Company lines, ensuring all of her girls are taken care of (because Lord knows the men won’t do it) she can, more often than not, be found at Battalion, writing lengthy correspondence, reports, or talking to officers. Sometimes, Daisy feels like simply being in her presence is like watching a very ornate game of chess for the highest stakes. She’s thankful it isn’t her job.

“Colonel Peake again?” Daisy asks as she steps into the makeshift office in the townhouse they’ve been using for higher ranking officers. Ginny is setting down a phone they’ve provided her with as she walks in, sitting down to tap-tap-tap away on the typewriter. She looks up, greets her with a brief smile, then returns her gaze back to the paper.

“The phone call? No. That was Sink. This is for Peake, though.” Daisy’s brows shoot up at the mention of Colonel Sink.

“What’d Sink want?”

The smile on Ginny’s face almost immediately turns into a smirk, Daisy recognizes the expression all too well. The one when she successfully outsmarts someone, or proves that she’s correct in any capacity.

“Got a verbal thank you for keeping his men alive on the highway, if you can believe it. The jackass wouldn’t even speak to me before. Apparently when you have actual medical professionals doing first aid, your men’s survival rate goes up. Go figure.” she declares with a small huff, smirk only growing. Daisy nods, grabbing a stray chair and sitting in it, watching as she works.

“And the report? Is it about the bayonet charge again?”

Ginny’s smile immediately fades and she stops typing, leaning back in her own chair. She reaches up to rub her face, letting out a small sigh. Daisy’s stomach churns as the blonde’s gaze meets hers, and they sit in a heavy sort of silence for a moment.

“So, turns out Captain Owens did squeal after all. Which is… expected. I mean, apparently you’re in the papers back in the States so it’s not like it’s much of a secret,” Daisy feels a sort of intense heat creeping up her neck. She’s in the papers? Her stomach churning only seems to intensify. “Thing is, he went to Peake, and well,” she gestures to her Captain’s bars. “Peake likes me well enough. Wants to hear my side of it. Well, technically your side, but mine. It’s fine, really, just… tedious. If it goes our way though, which it will, good things might come out of it.” Ginny pauses, looking over Daisy’s face, and then her lips tug into a frown.

“You look like you’re gonna puke.”

“Just might,” Daisy squeaks out. She didn’t even know she was in the paper. The last time she was in anything was during a spelling bee in fifth grade. Did the local paper count for that? She didn’t know. What she does know is that she can anticipate a likely lengthy letter from her mother about the perils of charging into burning cities. “It’s just uh… my dad wrote to me so I guess that’s what this is about,” she pulls it out, gestures to it, then tucks the letter back into her pocket. However, no matter how swift she is — Ginny’s face still contorts into a scowl at the statement.

“He wrote to you? Are you gonna write back?” Daisy shakes her head instantaneously.

“Christ, no. Don’t want to or need to,” Ginny was the only one who knew about everything that transpired before Officer’s Training. It’d been one of those moments of unraveling (and now that she thinks about it, not too dissimilar from the sniveling state Winters had caught her in) — and so the contempt Ginny held for Donald Clarke was a shared feeling. The blonde nods at that, not pressing the subject further. “...But there is something I wanted to see if you could help me with?”

Ginny raises a brow, waiting for her to continue. Daisy takes a shaky breath, looking down for a moment.

“So… Ron— er, Lieutenant Speirs was shot back on October 10th. I figured… I figured it’s been long enough that I- that you or uh… that we could find out if he was sent home or what hospital he’s staying at. Maybe.” She’s known, for a while now, that she could ask Ginny to get in contact with Roosevelt and she would find a way with no complaints, but she can’t stop fumbling over her own words. Ginny’s gaze softens, and Daisy’s breath hitches in her throat.

“Yeah, of course. Can I ask a question?”

Daisy nods.

“Why’re you so wound up about it?” She rises, and crosses over to take one of Daisy’s hands in hers, giving it a squeeze. And Daisy’s back in the Aid Station, and she’s holding Ron’s hand, and he’s in pain and she’d do anything to take it away.

Her lip wobbles and she goes to bite it, looking up at Ginny with a sort of helpless expression on her face. Ginny looks back down at her, soft and inviting, no longer her Captain, just a friend worried about a friend.

It pours out with little resistance, after that.

Where it started. A train station in Boston, a kiss on the cheek, a helpless feeling — at least, that’s where she thinks it started. When it ended. January, after New Years. He kept writing. She didn’t. His last letter had been sent in July, just before she shipped out. He stopped writing. Why it ended. Ginny draws her own conclusions as Daisy rambles. A million things. One thing. She isn’t sure anymore. At some point his final words to her come out and are in Ginny’s free hand. Her grip on Daisy’s tightens as she reads. Eventually, she sets it to the side, reaches up, and wipes a few tears from Daisy’s face. God, she hates crying.

“I messed up, Gin. I keep—” she pauses, and takes a shuddering breath. “I keep messing up. And I just need to make this one thing right,” because she can’t write Peake’s report, and she can’t bring Private Miller back from the grave. She can’t write to her father or stop worrying her mother. She’s even managed to cause trouble for Ginny and has to watch while she cleans it all up. She can’t do much of anything, but she can clean up the mess she made with him, at the very least.

“Okay,” Ginny murmurs. “I’ll find out. I’ll try and talk to Strayer, maybe. Or uh… get Dick to talk to Strayer, if Strayer doesn’t talk to me. See if I can get into contact with any nearby hospitals,” she mutters her plans softly, as though to reassure her. “Christ, you know I hate seeing you cry like this. C’mere you,” Ginny yanks Daisy up and out of the chair, pulling her into a tight embrace. It’s familiar territory, and Daisy finds herself burying her face in her friend’s shoulder, lapsing into her warmth. “It’s gonna work itself out. Quit being so hard on yourself.”

They untangle and Ginny cups her cheeks affectionately for a moment, going to smooth out some of the flyaway strands in a doting way.

“I also um… need a pen.”

“You need me to proofread too? Make sure you spell all your words right?” She asks with a grin. Daisy rolls her eyes.

“I can still read.”

“Yeah well, you never know. All those men might’ve dumbed you down a bit,” Daisy scoffs and rolls her eyes again as Ginny grabs a pen off her desk and passes it to her with a smile. “Now go, I have a report to write and an elusive Lieutenant to track down.” She turns Daisy by the shoulders, lightly pushing her out the door.

“Yes ma’am,” Daisy responds with a nod, and a smile, as she carries herself out the door.

#band of brothers fic #hbo war x oc #hbo war fic #ronald speirs x ofc #ronald speirs fic #fic // sad beautiful tragic #band of brothers #hbo war #ronald speirs #ron speirs

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canonicallyobserving911 · 1 year

Text

Let me love you!

Fanonwriter2023 on AO3

New Buddie Fanfic

Let me love you!

3.3K Words Rated: General Audiences

_________________

Here’s part of the conversation Eddie and Buck had while they were sitting on Eddie’s couch.

_________________

He immediately stops spiraling when he hears Buck say, "Eddie, I love you and I'm in love with you!"

He's smiling and blushing and then he meets Eddie's eyes while he patiently waits for Eddie to return the sentiment.

Eddie bites his lip, looks away and goes completely still. His mind starts spiraling again as his mother's words of, "Don't drag him down with you Eddie" start playing on repeat in his mind like a broken record. Sure, she was talking about Christopher when she said it but Eddie relates the things she said to Buck too because he doesn't want the light he's always seen in Buck's eyes to go dim the way it did while they were arguing in the grocery store, or the way it did the day he was shot or like it did after Buck broke down his bedroom door to get to Eddie after he had a mental breakdown. Buck is so full of love and light that it takes Eddie's breath away and if Eddie's honest, Buck's ability to love so freely was one of the many things that made him fall in love with him in the first place. Eddie wishes he could love like that and he's so tired of denying his heart of not only what it wants but who it wants too. He wants it and he feels it but he doesn't believe he deserves it.

Buck is staring at him with wide hopeful eyes just waiting on him to respond.

Eddie takes a sip of his beer, glances over at Buck without making full eye contact and whispers, "Maybe...you shouldn't...love me. I-I mean...you could do much better". He followed it with a low self-deprecating laugh and he knew instantly that his comment was all wrong but now that he's said it, he knows that he can't take it back.

The look Buck gives him in return is full of hurt and pain. Eddie sees it when it happens in real time, the light in Buck's beautiful ocean blue eyes dim and he watches Buck's face instantly turn from him being happy to him being sad. It's different this time because the light in Buck's eyes didn't dim because Eddie yelled at him in the grocery store, or because he almost drowned in a well, or because he was shot in front of him or because he destroyed his bedroom with a baseball bat; Eddie's words are the cause of it and now he feels guilty. Eddie loves to look into Buck's eyes because he sees nothing but love in them when they're staring back at him. He sees the reflection of the love they have for each other and he also sees his forever. Eddie noticed it during their grocery store argument that Buck's eyes turn a steely shade of gray when he gets sad and since then, Eddie's tried his best to prevent Buck's eyes from turning into that shade again. Right now though, Eddie knows he's the reason why Buck feels wounded, so he turns his head to the side because it hurts him to see Buck look like that.

"What? Did you...I-I...Eddie!"

_________________

Continue reading on AO3

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 fox #911 on fox #911onfox #911 #Fanonwriter2023 on AO3 #buddie fanfic #ao3 fanfic #911 fanfic

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aiyexayen · 2 years

Note

The shiny link said to ask you things so here I am. What's ur fav outfits for each of WKX and ZZS?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING although this is a very difficult question, given how many thoughts and feelings i have about their outfits. i've never tried to boil it down to favourites, but i'm going to go on a small journey and see if i can do it.

(1/5)

zishu first. devastating intro.

this outfit makes me nostalgic for my first watchthrough. it's sexy, and i really like the way we see wenzhou both in red before anything else. but it lacks a kind of depth in the same way the unknown character does to us; it's a first impression. certainly a good one but just can't be my top favourite outfit.

his second tianchuang outfit is even better. it puts him in blue--his colour, siji shanzhuang's colour, even though it's draped in black and part of tianchuang right now. we get a lot of soul shattering emotions in this outfit as we start to learn who zhou zishu actually is, what he cares about, what he's built, who he's lost, what he is capable of doing. episode one kills me.

and then we also get a reprise of this outfit later, which is what really spikes its ranking up for me. the way he wears it subtly differently, coming full circle to finish this fight now that he's changed so much after the year he's lived. the way that blue he'd always carried with him, even into the heart of tianchuang, really stands out in stark contrast to jin-wang's red and gold.

beautiful. it's up there but doesn't quite get favourite.

and honourable mention of course are his other two we catch glimpses of in episode 1--brilliant shixiong blue accented in fUCKING green in his flashback as if he's remembering a time when he was still human, and his "i'm riding off to die now" cloak. these get NOTHING from me because i'm so sad.

moving on.

zhou zishu tries to become unobtrusive and unnoticeable and ordinary but instead he looks Like This:

and we all hate and despair and love that perfect hair shoulder blades jawline in equal measure. especially wen kexing.

comfy, rugged, unapologetically blue. this outfit introduces the flask, introduces him to wen kexing and zhang chengling, and we have some good times with it. but it's simple, and dark, and so is his view of his remaining life right now, and that hurts a bit too much.

so, next is the outfit wen kexing gives him and he's briefly suspicious but he does wear it, deciding to trust wen kexing a bit and caving in a little to the concept of being something more than he'd planned. we're expanding to two shades of blue, too, very nice.

this outfit sees us through the epic fight with the beggar gang, the heartrending siji shanzhuang flashback, the LIPS ON SHOULDER and that's not even the only reason this outfit is a top contender to the title.

because more layers means the chance to take them off. and it must be discussed how much work the under layers do in this outfit.

look at this man revealing that there is indeed more to himself, letting himself be less guarded around wen kexing. look at his smile, his playfulness, and that fucking fairytale princess that has been hiding under so many masks, perfectly offset by that pretty pale blue and that soft hairstyle.

but i'm not sure i can commit to favourite.

pin in that one, i will keep going. so, this first yueyang outfit is just So Much.

the HAT, the DRAPE, the ZHIJI-ACKNOWLEDGING, the way that gray creeps in. zhou zishu has revealed his face and in doing so has decided not to hide, in more ways than one, as he says to han ying. he's decided to deal with his shit a bit and maybe live a bit better with the time he has left. he's becoming himself and it's so much.

and as if that wasn't enough, after their big fight when it all goes wrong, zhou zishu GOES BACK to wearing THIS outfit. "let's try this again." backing up, making up, re-centering in the last place that felt more himself and then setting back out again on the right foot.

and then he sits in the miDDLE of the STREET, outer robe HALFWAY OFF HIS SHOULDER in stark contrast to the structure of the breakup-outfit, and SAYS LAO WEN'S NAME. what am i supposed to do with that. what. WHAT.

i think this one comes extremely close to being my favourite, pin in this one, too.

speaking of the breakup-outfit.

it's so shimmery, suddenly full of so much structure and colour. zhou zishu, trying to reconcile who he's been with who he wishes he could be with who he doesn't want to see lao wen become, abruptly wrapping himself up in all these layers and trappings of a man that's a different kind of shield against the pain and it doesn't really make him any less lost in the end. but damn is it pretty. i can't really put my finger on it but something about his hair and that collar. and, of course, the blood. the declaration that nobody can stop him from killing who he wants and getting what he wants. hot damn.

however, comparing it to the two top contenders for the title right now, i don't think it beats either one.

part 2

#wenzhou #have some nonsense #my meta

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caterpillarinacave · 8 months

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Hey! For the Top Five ask game: candle scents, shades of blue, and colors to paint your bedroom. :)

hey! Thanks for the ask! None of these are in any particular order :)

Top five candle scents:

Hmmm, I’m not big in candles, but I am big on hand sanitizer and scents in general, so I’m gonna assume bath and body works has a candle version of all these.

Frosted coconut snowball. Not a big coconut fan, but I really like this one. It’s so nice and sweet.

Sunshine And Lemons. Love me some lemon scents. Yes girl overwhelm my senses.

Blueberry bourbon. It’s a nice light scent.

Fresh Balsam: smells exactly like a Christmas tree. Super strong, overpowers all the smells I don’t like, always goes on sale, is super recognizable, ect ect. The old faithful of scents.

Toasted Vanilla Chai. What can I say, who doesn’t like vanilla scents?

Top five shades of blue:

Baby blue has a special place for me.

You know in a nature documentary based on the Arctic where the camera goes underwater and the sun is shining through the ice bergs? Yeah, the dark blue of that water.

Following the same idea as above, the spot where the sun is coming through the water? That blue.

A nice aquamarine. I’m talking the stone, all nice and polished, it’s a great solid blue.

Navy/midnight blue. That really dark vibrant blue, the sky in the night, is so nice to me.

Top five colors to paint your bedroom:

Mmmm you know I’m always down for pink. I think all of my bedrooms have had some sort of pink in them.

Yellow. Underrated. I had one room that was pink and yellow, like pink lemonade. I loved it. Yellow is an amazing color and is so pretty on walls.

Blue. An oldie but a goodie, you can’t go wrong with baby blue.

Orange. I just really like the color orange.

I think a nice light purple/lavender is always good. The color reminds me of my grandmother and looks great in the sun.

Also, not to be a sad beige child in a sad beige room, but I like tan/brown. Pair it with any of these, and it’s a whole vibe.

#Thanks for the ask!#Ask game #:)

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zukuist · 3 years

Text

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞

200 followers special

includes: multiple characters (would add more tags but.. i reached 30 ;;)

your name is shortened to y/n, they/them pronouns

notes: thank you for 200 followers! this isn’t really going to be that long, but im just doing the characters i really like so ;; ALSO I MIGHT’VE GOTTEN KIRI’S ENTRY A LITTLE WRONG so ugh sorry ;;

—

shouto todoroki

— THE OBSERVANT SIMP

from the start, he’s quite oblivious to certain things, (social ques, signs of romantic interest, etc.)

but when he’s observant with someone, then that totally means you’re special to him. does he realize how much he pays attention to you? hmm.. maybe?

he’s going to be the first one that notices you’re hungry, even if you don’t realize it yourself. he’s quick to grab a snack and break it open to you

same thing with being thirsty— if he notices that your water bottle is empty, he’ll quickly find the nearest vending machine and buy a bottle.

temperature is also no problem. he can immediately tell whenever someone’s cold; but he usually helps you first

too hot? he’s slowly putting down the room’s temperature

too cold? his left palm starts emitting some sort of heat in your direction, hoping it creates some sort of aid

if your shoelaces are undone, and/or he notices that there’s a button undone on your shirt— he’ll fix it for you

will ask to take your pictures on dates, and he’ll also help you pick out the best photo (not that any photo of you is short of any beauty)

in short— people will notice that he’s actually a big simp for you; because of how observant he is with you specifically.

katsuki bakugou

— THE TSUNDERE SIMP

just because he’s simping for you doesn’t mean he’ll treat you any differently. bakugou will be bakugou, and you eventually learn how to adapt to that.

but even so, his simp habits slip out sometimes.

when he’s cooking, he’ll accidentally make too much to eat, and he’ll coincidentally put the extras in another box and hand it to you

he’s a good student, even with studies. but would he say he’s a good teacher? hm. probably not

but if he notices you need help, he’ll sigh, feining annoyance as he decides to tutor y’all, because those ‘idiots’ are hopeless

rolls his eyes when he sees food on your cheek, but he’ll grab a tissue and wipe it off for you— claiming how you’re so messy.

he’ll act like he hates hearing your ‘annoying ass singing’ but he’ll lean against the doorway and listen to you rock out to whatever song you’re singing to.

denki will call him a simp for looking after you, and bakugou will just yell at him to “SHUT UP” >:T

he secretly likes taking care of you. his words aren’t the softest thing in the world, but his actions make up to it.

izuku midoriya

— THE DETAILED SIMP

as katsuki bakugou would call him; he is a nerd

he definitely meant that as an insult, but his input on detail makes it very useful in things like relationships

he remembers every detail of your quirk, your limits, potential secret moves.

it would’ve been stalker-ish, if it weren’t for the fact that deku does this out of admiration for his s/o

so if you so happen to collapse due to overusing your quirk— deku has a detailed plan on what to do. it’s almost scary.

he puts detail in a lot of things, anniversary gifts, birthday gifts, and so on.

deku’s also the type to plan things weeks before it actually happens. like.. planning out the perfect birthday gift

and with this, his memory is really good. so it’s very unlikely that he’ll just suddenly forget anniversaries and birthdays.

i hc deku as a bad cook, so he eats takeout food more than his homemade food

but he’s takes note of your allergies, your dislikes with food— and he finds himself mumbling small details to recall what you like

when you walk out in pretty/good outfits for dates

his face will break out into shades of red— suddenly rambling all the good details of your outfit, complimenting you while he’s at it

“y/n’s looks fantastic as always. i might die from their beauty”

if anyone calls him a simp, he’ll be really embarrassed about it. “me? a s-simp? is that a bad thing?”

just tell him it’s fine.

denki kaminari

— THE HYPEMAN SIMP

a big simp

like.. really big

he worships the ground you step on, and hypes up everything you do

y’all know when irene from red velvet literally breathed in north korea, and the crowd just

*claps*

yeah, that’s denki to you

it’s so blantly obvious that he’s simping over someone, and everyone’s just kinda used to it at this point

he’s just a big fanboy sometimes

whenever you’re sparring with someone, he’s always in the background like

“go s/o!!” 🤩

and he has tendencies to go a little easy on you like.. what’s he gonna do when you get electricuted??

but that doesn’t mean he’s never serious— nah.

there are times where he’s just a little bashful just being in your presence

sneaking glances your way, as he silently fanboys about you in general.

“s/o looks really good today. they always look good but !!”

when y’all weren’t together, the bakusquad was just tired of the constant romantic pining

it was really obvious that he was simping back then, and they’re not so sure as to how you didn’t say anything about it

mina always called him a simp

so yeah!! it was a big relief when you got together with him. he never makes you feel terrible, because he’s always your #1 hypeman.

eijirou kirishima

— THE HELPING SIMP (rip idk what to call this)

i didn’t really know what kinda name i went for this one but let me carry on

kiri upfront is very confident, and friendly. he never shows a mean side to anyone,

and there are rare cases of him being bashful

he’s kinda almost like a golden retriever? since he’s always nice and friendly to everyone

but then when you enter the room; he suddenly goes quiet, and he’s left alone with his rather loud thoughts about you

he didn’t really know how to properly approach you at first

but him being kiri, he’s still rather friendly to you (for now)

when he’s messing around, practically sharing one braincell with kami and sero

and then you suddenly walk in— he snaps out of his foolishness, and greet you with his very warm smile

“hey y/n!” he waves at you, and he hopes you don’t mention the teasing look on both kami and sero’s face

sometimes when he’s doing his close combat training, and he notices that he’s getting too close to you

he’ll be like “woah man, maybe we should move locations.” bc he doesn’t wanna hit you by accident ;;

kirishima prefers to not stand near you when his hair is all spiky. like he’s never conscious about it, until he’s around you

man poked sero with his hair before, and he doesn’t want to do that to you

kiri always looks at your hand, just to see if it’s occupied with something. his thoughts linger to what your hand might feel like

“their hand looks really.. soft. argh! i shouldn’t be thinking about these kind of things in public! im sorry y/n”

bakugou really only notices kirishima’s simping ways

bakugou always mentions the fact that kirishima goes really silent whenever you’re around—

and he’s secretly contemplating on having you around more so he can just shut up 。・°°・(＞_＜)・°°・。

moving aside all of that, kiri always carries your things.

you’ll beg him to give you at least one thing, and he’ll say no because it’s “not manly to let someone carry all of this.”

if you’re sad, he’s the first one to cheer you up— reassuring you that everything will be okay.

kiri’s just wants to be at your service at all times! it’s manly to help people, right?

hitoshi shinsou

— THE DISCREET SIMP

no one would be able to tell that he’s simping for someone

because unlike kaminari; he’s not like IM HITOSHI SHINSO AND IM ACTUALLY A SIMP

he’s a lot more discreet, and no one has really caught on, besides you and kaminari of course

he’s a lot less sarcastic with you, asking you about anything that’s happened instead of just being there

he prefers it to hear you talk. the way each word and syllable rolls off your tongue smoothly, and the way you use your hands to emphasize things

he’s amused.

oh and the way he looks at you? almost any normal person can sense the simp in him pop out (he’s so contained though)

he’s definitely the person that’ll get rid of any bug that’s terrifying you— even though he’d normally just leave it to them

he’ll do it, regardless if it’s the biggest fucking spider he’s ever seen, or the smallest spider

he’ll do it to make you feel safe.

he has these random spurs of compliments during the day

the source mainly comes from his staring habit

and they’re just so unexpected and out of the blue. hitoshi’s amused whenever he sees your reaction to his compliments

like.. you could be really frustrated about something, and he’ll just go “your eyes are pretty.” that’s his discreet method tO MAKE YOU TEMPORARILY DISTRACTED FROM THE ISSUE—

call him a simp, whatever. it’s true anyway so he doesn’t why should he be ashamed of it?

he’s discreet about it, since it’s your business and his business. but you can definitely feel his feelings loud and clear

neito monoma

— THE 180 SIMP

“i’m not a simp!”

[you enter the room]

*nervous laughter*

he had his last laugh, and he never thought he’d be this soft around someone.

especially if you’re from class 1-A like.. i became the thing i hated, ugh.

relentless teasing is amped but this is his way of making sure you remember him loud and clear

but he’ll never tease you in a condescending way— like how he torments the rest of class 1-A

that’s reserved for them 💅

always compliments you, that’s the first thing he does when he sees you—

and they’re never generic compliments either

“it’s nice to see you here, y/n! you make the world better day by day!”

“i’m still wondering what you’re doing in class 1-A, you’re much better than them!”

everyone secretly wonders how you got monoma to like you

monoma canonically likes pastels. spread the word

so sometimes, you’ll walk over to your desk— and you’ll just see this random pastel ornament sitting on your desk

you know who it’s from

whenever monoma starts becoming annoying, kendo will definitely use you as a weapon to make him shut up

he’ll be laughing at the expression on his face, thinking he’s absolutely winning at this

but the smile is wiped off his face when he hears “ok go on, i’ll tell y/n about your antics.”

“no, no! i’ll behave now, please don’t tell y/n.”

class 1-b literally use you as blackmail whenever monoma acts up, and it’s because of how different he is around you

like.. his personality takes a 180, (besides the obvious teasing) it’s alarming

—

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