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thefirstknife · 3 years

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SIGH

Myelin released a video today arguing that Osiris is already dead. I disagree with most of his arguments and also am not a fan of some of them in particular and I want to address this in case people watch and are confused. And I assume people will ask questions about it. I think Myelin himself is also confused about certain things he mentioned and isn't interpreting them properly.

Disclaimer: obviously I am biased when it comes to this. I want Osiris to not die. This isn't an attempt to entirely disprove the theory that he may be dead already. Ultimately I don't know if he's dead. I'll do my best to look at it objectively and also address Myelin's points objectively.

I'll try to summarise Myelin's points and address them but you can always watch his video yourself to make sure I didn't interpret him wrong.

Now, Myelin's main point is that Osiris was possessed by Savathun instead of Savathun making a meat puppet/clone in his image or simply shapeshifting into him. His first proof is the Wolftone Draw bow lore. We've all read the lore and Myelin also reads the lore.

First, he wonders how Osiris is seeing what Savathun is doing. Obviously, we have no answer for this yet. Myelin's position is that this is proof of him being possessed and him trying to break through the possession. He also says that some of it seems like "Osiris views his own body in a third perspective." Which I agree with!

What I disagree with is Myelin saying this could mean Osiris' "physical body was destroyed" and that he may be floating around in some form similar to Toland. I'm not sure why complicate the matter in this way when the most obvious answer to this is simply that Savathun has created a clone or shapeshifted into a form of Osiris and the real Osiris is trapped somewhere. The lore seems to indicate this pretty clearly to me:

I cannot speak, cannot breathe, I reach for Sagira but then I remember… I form a fist but feel nothing, I am bound, and as I thrash the images cut fissures through my mind—

And:

She has stolen my form, my voice, but someone will see my failure and cast her out… they MUST—

These seem to me like he is somewhere and he is seeing through his clone's eyes at certain points. It would fit Savathun's MO to torture him in this way. She assumed his form and the real him is bound elsewhere, somewhere safe. I've said so before, and it turned out to be true: Savathun is using Osiris as a bargaining chip so possessing him would be much riskier to her plan than simply keeping him imprisoned somewhere where we can't get to him and where he can't break free from possession. It would make no sense for her to kill him.

As for how he's seeing things if he's not possessed: Savathun is THE Witch Queen. She has exhibited a wide array of magical and paracausal abilities, including the ability to shapeshift and watch others through objects and living beings. Osiris specifically says that he is "bound" and that the images of what she's doing "cut fissures through his mind" and that he's "thrashing," as well as asserting that Savathun "has stolen his form." If he's bound somewhere in her throne world, she may very well be using some sort of Hive magic to inflict images she wants him to see upon him. Just enough to allow him to know that he is a prisoner.

I'm not sure why Myelin only makes two positions: either he's in third perspective without a body like Toland OR he's possessed. The third option is right there: Savathun assumed his likeness.

That brings both Myelin and me to his next point which he positions as the "real turning point" for him. It's from the Chrysura Melo autorifle:

Savathûn, physical form a twisting instar, emerges from the shadows and crawls over the shattered pieces of the Ghost. She reaches toward the ruined man.

Myelin focuses on the bold part, a specific word: "instar." This is a nice catch btw, something I haven't noticed before. He describes what an "instar" is. Tw bugs for that link, but an instar is "a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (ecdysis), until sexual maturity is reached." Savathun's physical form is described as a twisting instar at this point and Myelin says that she is in the stage of changing herself into a new form. He also says that in this form she "needs a new skin" and therefore steals the skin of Osiris aka possesses him.

But from all the googling and research I've done, I can't seem to find any examples of insect instars needing to acquire a new outside source to change their forms. They simply exist in one larval form (instar) and then change into another as they outgrow the previous one. They don't have to find another body or a host to inhabit.

Seeing as Myelin bases most of his theory on this specific word, I have to challenge that because this is simply not what that word means. Savathun, in the process of changing from one instar to another, doesn't have to possess Osiris. She simply has to change her form from one instar into another. It's still her and it's more likely that she looks to the real Osiris to use him as a model for what new form she will take.

This is why the Chrysura Melo lore page is describing "Osiris" as being uncertain on his legs and confused by human behaviours and slowly falling apart over months and months of existence: this is Savathun's instar in the shape of Osiris which is reaching the end of its lifespan and at the end of that lifespan, Savathun has to shed that instar and turn into another. Generally, moths have a few instar forms before turning into a cocoon and then later emerging out as moths. This is a nice page with pictures, but again, tw for bugs. She has clearly reached the end of her Osiris-instar and shed it away when Mara trapped her in a chrysalis cocoon where Savathun is continuing to grow, like a moth, to eventually assume the form we see in The Witch Queen. Some examples that, to me, allude to Savathun existing in a Osiris-instar and how that shape is unfamiliar to her:

Osiris takes a shaky step forward.

...

He passes the bottle, and Osiris, hands numb, puzzles at it. His mouth hangs in a half-smile before he takes a long drink, slaking a bone-deep thirst.

...

When Saint places a hand on his forearm, Osiris holds impossibly still just to see what the other man will do.

...

Osiris stumbles as he walks through the Last City.

Savathun is describing her life as Osiris and it's clear, from this and other huge amount of lore, that she was very unfamiliar with the human form and that, at the end, it started falling apart on its own. Which is what would happen to a instar of an insect, forcing it to switch into a new stage. In Ripe, she also specifically states "I am ready earlier than anticipated." In the same lore page, she also mentions a lot of really weird descriptions of how her "form" is dissolving essentially and "I clench the gangling black mass that threatens to unspool recklessly from within this shell of flesh. My new arms are too thin, too weak. My new shell still bound with thick mucus." She's barely holding it together. I'm not sure why Osiris' real human body would've been doing this.

There's another aspect from Ripe and that is that she mentions her worm inside of her:

I feel this form splitting beneath its wrappings, held together weakly by wet strands of sinew. And from deep inside, stirred by that latest scrap of deception, I hear the oily growl of the Worm.

This is how we know that her Osiris-form is her. Otherwise, Osiris' real body would've been possessed by Savathun who also holds her worm and that's more than convoluted. What we're looking at, presumably, is Savathun's instar which always has a worm at the center and evolves into other forms around the worm itself.

I'm sorry if this is rambly, but I just really can't see how possession would be possible, especially when based on insect morphology. As a last addition to the whole "instar" business which seems to be the center of Myelin's theory, I want to take a look at the word itself. It's a Latin word, and well... :

īnstar n sg (indeclinable, no genitive)

image, likeness, resemblance

counterpart

worth, value

an equal form (of)

of equal weight/size/form (to)

By the Traveler this can't be happening. Once again I am caught in the euphoria of analysing Latin words being used in Destiny. By all definitions, except maybe number 3, this alludes to a clone. An image of something. Resembling something. A likeness. Counterpart. An equal form of...

Savathun's insect-instar form fashioned in the likeness of Osiris. Not Savathun infecting Osiris: Savathun morphing herself into a counterpart of his form.

With that whole thing done, Myelin focuses on the infamous sidearm Spoiler Alert. It has a description which is just: "Someone is going to die." Myelin uses this as proof that, well, someone is going to die because the last time this gun was issued, Cayde died.

The problem here, even if we're taking this as a serious lore hint, is the timeline. Originally, Spoiler Alert was issued in Warmind. Cayde-6 died in the expansion after Warmind.

Spoiler Alert being issued in Season of the Lost would then be an equivalent of telling us someone is going to die in The Witch Queen expansion.

What does that have to do with Osiris? The position Myelin takes in this whole video is that Osiris is already dead. Not that he will die in The Witch Queen: that he has already died, perhaps at the start of this season when Savathun transformed off-screen OR even further back, at the end of Immolant, when she possessed him. This makes no sense with his other position, that Osiris is observing what Savathun is doing: how, if he's dead and why would we even get this lore if he's dead?

Most of all, Spoiler Alert, if it's alluding to a future death of a major character, cannot allude to Osiris having died before the gun was re-issued OR to him dying literally on the day the gun was re-issued. What kind of a warning is that? If they really wanted to allude to Osiris dying with this gun, the gun would've had to have been re-issued in Season of the Splicer as the final possible season to "warn us."

If Spoiler Alert is telling us some important character will really die, it's telling us this will happen in The Witch Queen. I can't imagine a situation where we save Osiris in this season and then he dies in the next expansion. Kinda pointless plotline. And it also does not fit with the rest of the video which is telling us that Osiris is already dead and Savathun is bluffing about having him as a bargaining chip. I am also not in favour of the theory that we will not find the real Osiris this season and that this plotline will stretch into The Witch Queen because that would be almost a year of grappling with the same plot of "we have to find Osiris." So whatever happens to Osiris, we will know this season. Which means the Spoiler Alert gun is of no relevance to the outcome of the Osiris plot.

The next point Myelin makes is the cutscene from week 1 of Savathun talking to us. He focuses on the image of Osiris looking kinda dead, with moths flying around him and one moth coming out of his mouth. This image is a better argument than any of the above because the imagery here is very clear. No room to misinterpret this really, we literally see Osiris being half-skeletal with a moth coming from his mouth.

However, if we take the position that Savathun made a clone, then the "dead" Osiris in this image is just that clone being dead after it fell apart and Savathun had to transform. The moth coming out of his mouth is probably what this is supposed to symbolise: Savathun outgrowing her Osiris-instar and assuming a new form, currently cocooned in Mara's chambers.

Not to mention that she literally says she "assumed his shape." Not "took his body." She "assumed his shape" to be "more pleasing to our eyes" so she could "guide our victory" against Xivu Arath. Obviously she couldn't guide us if she looked like the Hive. Instead, she morphed into a shape that looks like Osiris and kept him to herself, possibly for information as well as a bargaining chip.

The next part is something I heavily dislike as a point from Myelin.

He starts by saying how there's a trope in movies where you get attached to a character and you just have a feeling that something bad is going to happen to them because the narrative is making you form a bond with that character. And at first I thought he'll say that the narrative has been doing this with Osiris, which is WEIRD, due to how generally disliked he is in the fandom, mostly due to people misunderstanding him, but also due to other reasons which have resurfaced ever since he's been officially confirmed as a gay man in a relationship with Saint.

And of course, Myelin is not talking about Osiris at all. He's talking about Saint. He's saying that the narrative made us attached to Saint and that "they are setting up Saint-14 to lose Osiris." This is aggravating in several ways.

One, that trope about being attached to a character is generally about the character that is going to die. Bungie didn't make us get attached to Cayde so they can kill off Ikora. They made us attached to Cayde and then killed off Cayde. Making us attached to Saint-14 to kill off Osiris is completely disregarding Osiris as a character in his own right and Osiris is by far THE most powerful and important Guardian that has ever lived. To boil him down to an accessory of Saint's story is not just disrespectful to Osiris, it's just utterly wrong.

And second, essentially fridging Osiris for Saint's manpain is just homophobia. As far as I know, Myelin is not a gay man so him making this point is simply homophobic. We do not need Osiris to die to see Saint's pain and drive for vengeance against Savathun. Bungie has made that clear. It's actually never been clearer just how much Saint suffers right now, in how much pain he is and how angry he is.

It's been shown in the voice lines in the main quest, in the cutscene at the start of the season, in the week 2 radio transmission, in voice lines during various activities, in voice lines from other people talking about him (most notably Ikora saying he's "tearing up the system to find real Osiris") and in various lore tabs. We truly do NOT need more affirmation to how much Saint is suffering. We surely don't need to ramp up the angst by killing Osiris off in order to send Saint into a more of a frenzy. His frenzy is already known and already underway. The man has tried breaking into Savathun's chamber to kick her ass already. He is "tearing the system apart." He is broadcasting live. He went on a mission with Mithrax to find Sagira's remains and the most likely place where Osiris went missing. The man is already on a crusade.

I don't think he needs to learn that Osiris has died somewhere, alone, months ago in order for us to see his pain. Or to cause more pain to us, the players. It's simply a completely insensitive way of looking at a story of two gay men who have been through enough suffering already.

I know people dislike and misunderstand Osiris. I know people absolutely adore Saint. I know people would get a kick out of seeing Saint going feral instead of him behaving in a very trope-shattering way by plugging holes in the Wall and feeding pigeons and singing songs to the children of the City.

I think those people don't understand Saint nor do they appreciate him as he is. They certainly have no respect for the man he loves or for their relationship that transcends time, space and reality. And if Saint knew that, he would definitely go feral on their ass first and foremost.

I'd like to think that Season of the Lost is a direct mirror of Season of Dawn. Two very important turning points in Destiny's story that are led by an undying love between Osiris and Saint-14. Just as Osiris risked it all and we all supported him in getting Saint back, right now we are all supporting Saint and risking it all to get Osiris back.

And as an important note, the story so far has been very clear to explain to us that we're looking for "the real Osiris." This is what this whole season is based on. We want real Osiris back. This alone disproves the theory of possession, but it also highlights that this season is about saving someone we've lost. Ending the season that's based on trying to find Osiris by telling us "oh he's dead" seems to be very much narratively senseless.

Speaking of narratively senseless, Osiris' death would not make sense yet. His arc isn't over. His questions and plotlines aren't over (and he has raised many of them in Immolant, which hasn't been followed up on because he got kidnapped). And speaking of Immolant, there is the following, from Sagira:

"Shut up! Listen to my words!" Her iris is bright with Light. "There are great things still left for you; don't lose hope in the darkness." She is luminant.

Osiris breathes the word, as if he could hold it back: "No." He would understand in time. She had seen it.

This seems like a pretty strong implication that his story is far from over. It would be quite a bummer if this was completely ignored and we're delivered Osiris' dead body at some point during this season.

Of course, I'm not discouting the possibility that Osiris will never be the same after this. It's likely that there will be lasting consequences if he's alive.

I am also not discounting the possibility that Osiris may as well be dead. I want to make that clear. It's possible. But I did my best to make a somewhat coherent analysis of why that is probably not the case and why Myelin's position in particular is flawed. And as I said at the start, I definitely am biased in a way that makes me hope that Osiris is not dead. I fully understand that and would not be opposed to people pointing out flaws in my argument if there are any. I am, genuinely, trying to be as objective as possible with this though, but as always, I could end up being wrong in the end.

And that is my TED talk.

#destiny 2 #osiris #savathun #saint-14 #o14 #lore vibing #long post #i am burdened with writing essays when lore youtubers make a video

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theyarebothgunshot · 3 years

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jib 6 breakdown and analysis

standard disclaimer: i am not gonna be linking to every single thing i talk about, but i will try my best to link to the moments that stand out to me the most. i have read long posts about this panel before, so not everything in this post is gonna be original or said for the first time ever, simply because there is a good chance that information has stuck in my mind and has subconsciously formed my view of this panel. this is also in no way, shape or form gonna be coherent, unfortunately. i’m just gonna hope that the cockles hivemind will be able to make sense of this regardless. love and light. and lastly, this is all in good fun, so don’t come at me if you think this is too out there please and thank you.

if i would have to give this panel a signifier, i would say this is the panel of the inside jokes. it’s the panel that shows us how well they know each other, to the point that they finish each other’s sentences and start telling the same punchline to a joke at the same time.

but besides all of that, it was also the panel of the shoulder touches, husband behavior, and rescuer misha. let’s dive into it.

i adore the fact that they are laughing and joking with each other from the first second they get on stage. the way that they tell that story about how they planned to have misha nap and have jensen drink whisky and humm, really reminds me of something that i mentioned a lot during my jib 7 analysis: they are very much in sync.

jensen slinging his arm around misha of course had to be compensated with a manly face and manly grip. the rituals… i know they are intricate.

it’s kind of cute how misha tried to both encourage jensen to try that step, and wanted to make sure he wouldn’t hurt himself lmao. dare i say husband behavior? (i do dare and i will do it again, bam bam!)

something about the way they talk about j*red just makes me feel like they are such a team, if that makes sense? like, they both think the same things about j*red’s antics and talk in such a united way about it (“and jensen and i were like…” “i don’t even care. he [points at misha] doesn’t care.”) that it just sounds kind of coupley to me. *whispers* husband behavior.

i love that jensen’s first instinct after talking about missing j*red was to go over to misha, put his hand on his shoulder, and talk about his fucking flirting way of pranking misha versus j*red’s painful pranking of misha. “with you it’s like my friend and protector is....” i truly wish the audience wasn’t as loud as they were in that moment because i would love to fully hear that sentence.

the look on jensen’s face when misha says “save it for when we take off our pants” is just priceless. ‘oh god here we go again, when will he ever learn’ but the funny thing is, he will make the same face later on in the panel, after talking about riding a dragon. that’s the face he makes when one of them goes slightly too far. just thought that was interesting.

what stands out to me the most is his reaction when misha turns around just as he is ‘fake unbuttoning’ his pants like: ‘i’m just kidding i’m innocent’ literally no reason to respond like that if misha is just his buddy.

misha’s “what are you doing?” as jensen is tying his flannel around his waist also stands out to me. he clearly does not like the look and can’t keep his mouth shut (“that was bothering me too”). why would you find the need to comment on your buddy’s fashion choice. (....husband behavior.)

just wanna take a moment to say that it’s very fucking funny that jensen said “don’t take selfies” when you know that just a few years later he would take the chest to chest selfie with misha. oh, jensen.

we have all heard the “jensen pranks misha on set by flirting with him” story countless of times, but it’s still funny to me how flustered misha seems to get by the fact that jensen can get to him that easily. and jensen’s laugh here is so cute, he fully knows what he is doing.

misha jokes that he spends more time sunning on rocks now as a merman than he used to, and jensen immediately starts to walk to the apple juice, something i have noticed that he does whenever he wants to avoid something (be it a question or a situation that’s happening on stage). it almost feels like he is stopping himself from making a comment or something. it’s interesting, because he just turns right back around and starts telling the grasshopper joke without getting anything to drink.

which leads to one of my favorite moments between them: misha, beaming, says that he has heard it before but he wants to hear it again, and mouths the words to the punchline along with jensen. he looks at the audience as if to say ‘good one, right?’ and when jensen goes “is this thing on?” misha immediately tries to distract him from his failed joke by using an inside joke (the first inside joke of the panel) with him. aka good husband behavior.

something tells me that “i’ll see you again, grasshopper” is another inside joke, so we’re counting it: number two.

jensen. jensen pspsps come here. can you please explain to me why you are so horny for misha’s indianrussian accent? i cannot believe him (i can), trying to get him to use the accent to ‘help the girl in the audience’.

so uhm. i think i just heard something while i was rewatching this panel that i never caught before. when misha reads what is on the box that was put on stage, he says: ‘please take this box and open later in private - daniella.’ and jensen goes: ‘yeah that’s from me’ with a flirty Look on his face like. hello??? why have i never seen anybody talk about this??? i’m??? internally screaming??? rest assured i had to take 5 when i saw this shit.

can we take a second to appreciate the fact that jensen gave misha a once over when misha says the glitter is everywhere, and then jensen said “fairy herpes”. why did your mind go to a sexual reference jensen? why? (we know why).

“i hate when you get that look in your eyes. don’t! i’m sorry!” is one of the most coupley things to say, ever. just wanted to point that out.

i love the playful vibe they have during this portion of the panel: jensen asking misha what he will do for the audience (thinly veiled excuse for wanting misha to do something that jensen will also enjoy), throwing the rings at misha, both of them “panicking” and lapping up the spilled apple juice.

look, i couldn’t not include the shirt lift. i had to. especially because of the way he looks at misha afterwards lmao and misha, darling misha, tries to defuse the situation by making a joke and it works because of course jensen does his signature unicorn laugh. sidenote: how cute is jackles when he grabs the guitar, begging people to erase the picture jsfhs. gotta love that man.

“you done messed up” inside joke number 3.

you know what is funny to me? the fact that jensen and misha often pretend not to know certain things about each other when they are on stage together. one example of this is during the underbear debacle, when jensen asks misha to proof he wears orange underwear and pretends he is shocked, even though the whole world knows that misha wears orange underwear.

in this panel, it happens twice. the first time is here, when misha asks jensen ‘do you actually not smell?’ as if he isn’t one of the people in this world who would know that best. and then he, of course, immediately takes this opportunity to sniff jensen’s armpit. i mean. okay. which is extra funny because jackles doesn’t play along with the whole ‘i have no clue’ bit and just goes “yeah you’re not a stinker” without checking because, clearly, he already knows.

i love jensen’s little smirk when he hears misha’s dragon would be pink + misha’s reaction to it.

before i read this post i always thought jensen meant that his own dragon would be salmon colored. but now i think that it’s not far fetched to believe jensen was actually thinking about the fact that he has stated he was wearing a salmon shirt. which means that, in this moment right here, he was implying that instead of pink, misha’s dragon (aka jensen) would be salmon. which makes his reaction (looking down, laughing but shaking his head as if he can’t believe himself) very understandable. remember what i said about that being the face he makes when one of them takes it too far? yeah.

but then, something happens that is quite remarkable to me. instead of backing down from what he said, he fully commits to it. he turns to misha, and goes “if i could ride a dragon”. listen to the way he puts extra weight behind “ride” and “dragon”.

then he asks if he understands the question correctly and repeats “what would it look like?”, the girl in the audience says “yes, but also any special abilities…” but jensen just ignores that because obviously, in his head the dragon is misha and he is not gonna shake that thought process any time soon. so naturally, he goes “i think my dragon that i would want to…” but stops JUST before saying “ride”, the guy KNEW what he was sounding like. lmao jensen i gotta give it to you buddy, good effort. you did well. you came far. you even said “look, i’m just gonna go for it here” even though misha’s face speaks volumes. i love you for that. because everything that came out of your mouth right then sounded very not straight.

in fact, it’s only because of misha’s interference (a reoccurring thing during these panels) that he stops himself completely and goes to talk with misha. i really wonder what would have happened if misha didn’t stop him. i also REALLY wonder what misha and jensen discussed when they turned their backs to the audience. sigh.

now we get to the juicy stuff. jensen’s little slip up here is really really strange, when you think about it. he says “i have kids” before quickly covering that up with “i have a kid now.” i’m not saying the ackles and the collins are one big happy family or anything like that, but i do think that they are close enough for him to slip up like this. maybe the kids hang out together a lot. maybe they have given each other enough support during those early days of raising kids that it sometimes feels like he had multiple kids at that point in time. idk. but in any case, i don’t think that’s a slip up you’d make unless there was some sort of truth in it. he also kind of stumbles over his words right after that. [before anybody runs to my inbox to tell me that j/2 tinhatters think this is about him and j*red raising their kids together: trust me, i know, but we’re not talking about that.]

misha’s cheeky “i thought you were talking about danneel” followed by the both of them simultaneously saying that jensen does not tell her what to do, made me grin like a fool. that is all.

the way jensen says “misha, apparently you were looking pale and you need some sugar. there you go.” is so SOFT AND CUTE idek how to explain what i am feeling but it’s just. a lot. oh wait a minute, i do know what to call it: HUSBAND behavior.

“by the way we’re gonna pay so dearly when we get home” “yeah we are” lmao the jdmv vibes are strong in this one.

look. i know it’s possible that misha woke up alone after that dream, thought to himself ‘i miss her’, went for breakfast, saw jensen, and told this story to him verbatim. but misha is literally telling the story from the pov of waking up from a dream and saying that out loud. it would make sense that he would explain that dream to the person who he woke up with, and that he would follow the dream explanation up with “i miss her”. plus jensen is REPEATING IT as if he was right there when misha said that. add to that the way jackles stumbles over his words here and gets flustered and sits down? and misha’s face? yeah. you done messed up jackles, part 2.

jensen doesn’t know what to do with himself. just look at his face right after he sits down. and misha, once again, comes to the rescue, trying to continue the conversation about poop in order to distract both jensen and the audience. bless his soul.

it leads to the second instance of misha pretending that he doesn’t know something about jensen, namely that jensen can’t stand poop even from his own daughter. misha goes: “no? not for you?” as if he didn’t already know that.

round of applause for the jib team, for putting on ‘this thing called love’ to get jensen and misha to dance……. just saying.

jensen’s little nod to misha right here? husband telepathic communication at its finest. even their silly dad dances are in sync.

jackles you are NOT being slick we can SEE you tossing the mic to your other hand so you can pull misha in by the waist (or honestly maybe his hand landed lower idk idk it’s possible).

it really is something special, though, what happened right here: jensen, macho masculine grumpy performative jensen, is smiling and laughing and enjoying dancing on stage, doing some ballet moves, all because of misha (and by some extent felicia). not just with felicia or by himself, but with rob, osric, etc. honestly it’s heartwarming to watch. it makes me smile so much.

and that was jib 6. thanks for reading everybody <3

#cockles #jib 6 #i used a different method to add the timestamps and i really hope it works this time #as always please feel free to share your thoughts ! <3

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thewhumperinwhite · 3 years

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ATTD: The Monster in Will’s Pocket (2)

ATTD Masterlist

@whumpitywhumpwhump @favwhumpstuff

TW for: referenced animal death; very mild body horror elements; “it” used to refer to a sapient nonhuman creature; captivity/uneven power dynamics, though not... in the traditional sense.

Boy, I hope this is in any way coherent

----

“Wh—what in hells was that?” Jasper squawked, scrambling to his feet, squeezing his Runes very tightly, to keep one hand at least from shaking.

Will pointedly did not look at him. “I don’t think now is the right time to explain,” he said, with apparent relief.

Jasper gaped at the boy, open-mouthed, and then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and remembered that there were still at least six full-grown wolves, out there in the dust, simply standing in a rough point formation and watching them.

Jasper tried to look at them, shielding his eyes from the dust, and then he growled in annoyance and squatted down on his heels, smacking his free hand flat on the ground, and circled his thumb around the blank side of his Runes, and with a grunt of effort pulled an eight-foot wall of dirt up out of the ground at a slight angle, between himself and the howling wind, big enough to shelter him and the boy from the worst of the swirling dust.

The boy stumbled back from the suddenly-erupting dirt, wide-eyed. Jasper remembered that Crythians did not, in general, trust magic, even at its most benign and useful.

Jasper had rather expected the show of magical skill—or at least the sudden noise and movement—to frighten the wolves away, but when he looked they were still there, just out of the shelter Jasper had made, the harsh wind tugging at their scraggly fur.

“Alright,” Jasper called in their direction. “What do you want?”

There was a long, perhaps thoughtful, pause, while all six wolves stared at him, unblinkingly. Then, to Jasper’s surprise, the largest of the wolves padded slowly forward.

The animal crouched, and twisted torturously in on itself, its front paw rising to touch its forehead, and seemed to pull itself apart, tearing the fur free from its face and revealing tender pink skin below.

The wolf gathered its fur around its new narrow shoulders like a cloak, and rose awkwardly on two long spindly legs. It turned its new pinkish face—still narrow and rather wolfish, but definitely human—toward the boy and his sword with an expression of resentful misery, and opened its too-wide mouth and said something, in what Jasper realized a second late was perfect fluent Crythian.

Jasper didn’t really know how to do anything in Crythian but swear. “What,” he snapped when Will didn’t immediately offer a translation, “What did she say?”

Will blinked at him with very wide eyes. Jasper felt a flash of reluctant sympathy. If the Firebird in the square was the first demon the boy had ever seen, he had certainly never seen one change forms before. Even Jasper hadn’t seen that more than a few times, and it was never a pleasant process to watch, especially in this direction. The boy shook his head, like a cat after a fall, and cleared his throat.

“It—she,” he croaked, his voice very rough, between the dust and his ongoing fever. “She says—that we have killed their leader. She wants to know if we are sorry.”

Jasper frowned down at the bent, emaciated form of the wolf. Its ill-health was all to visible, now that it was shaped like a human; and it was barely taller than Will, who only reached Jasper’s shoulder.

“I haven’t killed anybody,” Jasper told the wolf, on the off chance she could understand him.

Will coughed awkwardly. “Oh. No, that was me.”

Jasper turned to look at him. “You?” he said, flicking his gaze pointedly to where the boy’s hand was wrapped tightly around the hilt of his sword, “or something else?”

Will flushed blotchily, and looked away, apparently even more embarrassed at that question, whatever that might mean. The wolf-woman said something again in Crythian, her tone sharp.

“You’re a Galdrean wolf,” Jasper told her, rather sourly. “Don’t you speak any Galdrean?”

The wolf narrowed her eyes at him, and bared her teeth, which were somewhere between a wolf’s and a woman’s in sharpness.

“She wants to know what her pack is to do without a leader,” Will said, fidgeting. “She wants to know why I have taken him, and by what magic. She says—” The wolf woman barked something else and Will smiled at Jasper, nervously. “She has little patience for translation.”

“I would like to know what magic, too,” Jasper pointed out, raising an eyebrow, and the boy shook his head.

“I killed your Alpha by no magic,” he said, once in Galdrean, evidently for Jasper’s benefit, and then presumably again, in Crythian. The wolf-woman growled and gestured at his sword. The boy winced.

“Unless that second one was your leader,” he muttered, in Galdrean. “Then I—suppose there was magic involved, yes.”

“I’m sorry,” Jasper snapped. “Now you say you have killed more than one wolf. I seem to recall you running from them, rather.”

Will nodded. “I did run. I had no wish to kill.”

Jasper squared his shoulders and faced the wolf-woman. “Tell them so, then. And ask them if they make it a habit to chase down humans. Ask them if they know what humans will do to demons who do not run and hide from them.” Jasper would not cheer if the people in Atychia town gathered their torches and pitchforks and came for these wolves, but he would certainly not be surprised either.

Will obligingly babbled at the wolf in Crythian, and she spoke for a long time in reply, growing visibly more agitated, drawing her wolf-fur cloak about her shoulders so that her teeth elongated and her hands bent into half-claws.

Will blinked a few times at whatever she said, but made no move to translate.

“Well?” said Jasper, testily.

“She says…” Will hesitated. “I think she says the world is ending.”

“…Huh?” said Jasper, cleverly.

“She says the rains have not come, and they are starving. She says…” He pressed his lips together in apparent distress. “She says the human men have pushed too far into their lands, and they cannot hunt safely. That it is so all over, for too long. And… she says they’ll be sorry, that somebody will make them sorry, but—” He shook his head at Jasper. “I don’t know. When she started growing fangs it was hard to understand.”

Jasper narrowed his eyes at the wolf, who raised her chin defiantly.

“You… be… sorry,” she said in halting Galdrean, and then she worked her too-wide mouth and spat in the boy’s direction. Then she pointed a narrow bony finger in his direction and said something in Crythian, raising her voice and tone like she was laying a curse.

Most of it was sing-song gibberish to Jasper, though he could vaguely recognize the phrase “Wolf Killer” among the foreign syllables, and when she said it the boy flinched physically backward, as though slapped.

Then the wolf turned on her heel, drawing her cloak of torn-off fur back over her head, and had four legs again by the time he turned. The rest of her pack snapped their teeth half-heartedly, and turned to follow her, hunching their shoulders against the swirling dust.

As soon as they had moved what felt like a safe distance away, Jasper dropped his palm to the ground again, and pulled up two more walls of earth, to make a proper shelter against the sand-sharpened wind.

Will watched the last wolf’s tail swirl out of sight, and then sat down hard against the earthen wall with a shaky sigh.

“Oh no you don’t,” Jasper said, when he saw the boy’s eyelids fluttering. He crouched to snap his finger’s in front of Will’s face and the boy’s eyes blinked slowly back into focus. “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve explained what the hell that was.”

Will blinked at him a few times and then said airily, “What what was?”

Jasper gaped at him for a moment, and then jabbed a finger at the handle of the boy’s sword, twisted awkwardly beside his hip. “That,” Jasper said. “That thing with the teeth!”

Will looked at him with innocent blankness for a second, and then sighed, shoulders slumping, and ran a hand through his messily-cropped hair. “It was worth a try,” he muttered. Then he wrapped a hand carefully around the sword handle. “Chorus,” he said clearly. “I order you not to hurt him, but—come out and introduce yourself.”

Jasper stared, but nothing happened.

After a second, a muffled, petulant voice said faintly, “No.”

Will gave a mild little sigh, evidently not surprised, and then shrugged. “She doesn’t want to come out.”

Jasper weighed his extreme, destabilizing confusion against the pleasant idea of not seeing those teeth again. There must be a compromise between the two somewhere.

“That’s—that’s fine,” Jasper said, getting to his knees to be nearer the boy’s eye level. “How about you just—tell, instead of show.”

Will gave him a long, considering look—as if it wasn’t far too late to keep whatever monstrosity he happened to be carrying a secret. Then he reached down and pulled off his sword belt, laying the sheathed sword across his lap.

“This is—Chorus,” he said finally. The glass ball at the end of the sword’s handle glinted faintly red, even with the sun obscured by the storm.

“The sword. Is named Chorus,” Jasper said slowly.

“Yes. Well—no.” Will drew the sword from its sheath in one practiced motion, handling the weight of it easily, even in his weakened state. He held it up in front of his face, clearly comfortable with the balance. Despite the ridiculous silver curliques around the handle, the blade did in fact look very sharp.

“The sword is—a vessel, I suppose,” Will said. “And Chorus is what lives inside of it. You’ve met her, now. I imagine she’ll come out later, when it’s the most inconvenient.” He sighed, as if the idea of that monster suddenly appearing was nothing but a mild annoyance. “She’s very stubborn.”

Jasper stared at him again, trying to put any of that in order in his head.

“Who are you?” he finally said.

Will met his eyes, face very calm. “I’m no one. A farmer’s son.” He blinked once, then broke eye contact, sliding the sword easily back into its sheath. “I’ve been—tasked with finding Chorus a new home, somewhere where no one will trouble her. It’s very important—” He looked up again, catching Jasper’s eye with a very serious expression. “Listen. It’s very important that no one wields this sword but me.”

“Why?” Jasper said slowly, surprised by the clear urgency in the boy’s blue eyes.

“It just is,” Will said firmly. Then he took a deep breath and got to his feet. Jasper might have believed that he did so without too much effort, except that what little color had accumulated in his pale face immediately left it, and his hand was shaky against the rock wall from supporting too much of his weight.

“That’s why,” he said, blinking hard, probably to dispel the dizziness he was clearly feeling, “That’s why—"

Suddenly there was a flash of light and an eruption of silver from the area of his hip and he fell flat backwards with an undignified cry, very nearly banging his head against the earthen wall. A woman was now sitting on his chest.

“Ha,” the woman said in a high and taunting voice. “Got you.”

Will wheezed faintly.

Jasper, ears ringing, stared hard. The woman’s hair settled down her back in its large silver curls, and her eyes, when she turned back to give Jasper a half-hostile, half-curious stare, were a red so bright as to nearly glow against her milk-white skin. Her feet, and the good length of leg visible under her torn skirt, particularly with her knees planted on either side of the boy’s ribs, were bare.

“I’ve come out,” she said, “to tell you that you’re nosy.”

“Get off,” Will coughed, reaching up to push at the woman’s shoulder; she made no move to change locations.

“How much can you hear from inside that thing?” Jasper asked uneasily. He didn’t think he’d said anything out loud lately that he wanted left unheard, but the idea of this thing hearing his every word long before he knew it was there was making the back of his neck prickle.

“I have ears, Magician,” the woman-thing said, still looking at him over her shoulder from her position straddling the boy’s chest. Then she leaned over to look Will in the face, her nose bare inches above his. “And what was that about not giving me orders, Doorkeeper?” she snarled at him.

Will glared up at her. His arms were free at his sides, but he made no move to dislodge her. He didn’t seem to be flinching back from her touch, either. “I’d as soon you shed no more blood today, thanks,” he snapped.

The woman—Chorus—rolled her eyes and rolled off him to the side, not seeming to take much care about the insubstantiality of her skirts. “You were happy enough for me to shed blood a minute ago,” she said, rather snidely.

Will sat up, with some visible effort. “That was for—oh, never mind. Magician,” he huffed, gesturing at the woman now crouched beside him like a large scarlet-eyed cat, “this is Chorus. This is how she is, generally, so you must see why I cannot travel with you any longer.”

Jasper looked at Chorus. Chorus, curling her red lip into a sneer, looked at Jasper. Seated beside him, she looked about the same height as Will, though she was built more solidly, rounded where he was sharp and thin. Her face, though devilish in color, was almost cherubic in shape, with round cheeks, a neat button nose, and wide eyes lined with long, bluish lashes. There were strands of pale blue in her silver-white hair, too, and some that seemed fully translucent. Jasper had finished his schooling in the Wizard’s City more than a decade ago now, and spent five years with Mulciber’s Company after that, and never seen anything so entirely unnatural as this girl-creature, her lifted lip exposing a double row of packed-tight needle teeth.

Jasper sighed heavily, feeling certain, but also sort of stupid.

“No, boy,” he said firmly, “I do not see that.”

Will blinked at him. Chorus stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed them demurely at the ankles, with an expression of amused curiousity.

“What do you mean?” said Will.

“I mean, no, I don’t intend to send you traipsing back into the desert with nothing but a bleeding wound and a monster in your pocket.”

Will stared. He turned his head to look at Chorus, as though she might understand better. Chorus shrugged lazily.

Will looked back at Jasper, looking baffled. “Well—why not?”

“Come, boy, what do you take me for?” Jasper huffed. “You’ll not walk three miles in the state you’re in now, and I’ve no wish to spend the next few days wondering how long you took to die out there. No, I’m going to Limani, and you’re coming with me.”

“What?” said Will, alarmed. “No. Absolutely not. Weren’t you listening? The whole point was to get Chorus away from people. Why would we go back to the port city? That’s where we’ve come from.”

It’s where I’ve come from, too, Jasper thought, but didn’t say, since doubtless it would sound like he was going out of his way. Which he supposed he was, now, not that that mattered.

“Because otherwise,” Jasper said, as clearly as possible, “you will die, boy.”

Will blinked, a slightly odd look on his face, and then looked away. The creature Chorus’s red mouth turned down a little at the corners, too, which was interesting, though Jasper didn’t even bother guessing what it meant.

“You don’t know that,” Will said, rather hoarsely. “You said yourself that you aren’t a Healer.”

Jasper sighed, and looked from the boy to the monster. “Listen. Will,” he said, and then he nodded at Chorus, curtly. “This thing is under your control, is it?”

The creature leapt immediately to her feet, white hands balled into fists. Jasper held his breath, ready to get immediately savaged if he had read the situation wrong.

Chorus did not lunge at Jasper’s face, though she was practically vibrating with the desire to do so. Which would seem to imply that the boy’s earlier order—don’t hurt him—was one she could not choose to ignore.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, and did not fall over with relief, which felt like a victory. He looked back down at the boy, who was still seated on the ground, presumably because he could not properly stand up. “But that control only lasts as long as you are the one holding the sword, doesn’t it?”

Will looked at him with open alarm, dropping his hand protectively to the hilt of the sword. Chorus, still standing, narrowed her red eyes.

“Boy,” Jasper said, “I could knock you over with a feather. Anyone who wanted to take that sword from you wouldn’t have to do anything more than push you down. Would they?”

Will’s shoulders tightened visibly, and his face hardened; it was easy for Jasper to imagine he knew how to use that sword quite well—when he wasn’t dying of fever, anyway.

“Relax,” Jasper said, holding up empty hands (his Runes stored safely in his sleeve). “I have absolutely no interest in stealing your pet monster.”

At the sound of the word “pet,” Will frowned deeply, and might have protested. He was saved the trouble by Chorus, who gaped at Jasper in outrage, and then made a sound in her throat—more than a growl, though not quite a roar, that made Jasper stumble physically back from her, despite all efforts to the contrary, so quickly that he hit his head on his own magic-built shelter, hard enough to briefly see stars.

#all those that dance #fantasy whump #worldbuilding #animal attack #illness #feverish whumpee #on the run #surprise jasper. you thought you signed up to help One disaster teenager. THERE ARE TWO #monster girl #you know????#hnng i will edit this later. this one really fought me and i am Very tired of looking at it now lmao #original whump

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pixelatedrose · 4 years

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Hey can you write prompt 38 "Who do you think i am?! A god?!!" "Yes." For prinxiety please but if you dont want to thats fine.

Prompt 38 Prinxiety

"Who do you think i am?! A god?!!" "Yes."

Word count: 5,763

Warnings: uncensored swearing, really bad decisions being made that heavily effect other people, forced change

To Be With You

What happens when an immortal falls in love with a mortal?

Well nothing good.

"Roman, you're staring at him again." Patton, god of the sky, weather and truth, said.

Roman, god of the sun, day and passion, sighed dreamily. "But have you ever seen him, Pat?" He sighed again from where he lay on a fluffy cloud, looking down at the world below. "He's got the most beautiful face, and his hair! And his eyes are just perfect!" He rolled over and kicked his legs in the air like a four year old child. "He's BEAUTIFUL!!!"

Logan, god of moon, night and knowledge, looked up from his ancient Celtic scroll. "You are really quite insufferable, Roman. I actually can't recall the last time you fell so sickeningly in love with a mortal. I'd forgotten how awful it was." He said in a monotone voice from where he sat in a chair.

Patton pouted. "Oh, Logan! Be nice!!" He walked over and ruffled a very distracted Roman's hair. "Roman's in love! Remember when you were in love?" Logan looked back at his scroll and coughed, a light shade of pink dusting his face.

Patton smirked, walking over to the taller god and leaning down to bring his face close to the other's. "I believe I remember something along the lines of 'The stars aligning themselves so that we could be together for the rest of time and eternity.' Does that ring any bells, hm, Lo-Lo?"

Logan put his scroll down on a nearby table. "The only thing I recall," he pulled Patton into his lap and smiled. "Is you crying uncontrollably, love."

Roman decided to move away from the couple that was now making out and to his room. He pulled out his gazing ball, an object all gods had, and gazed lovingly at the form of his mortal love gardening and pruning rose bushes. The view wasn’t quite as lovely as it was from atop the clouds, but it would have to do for now.

His mortal was truly gorgeous. His dark raven hair was tousled by the wind and looked fluffier than anything Roman had ever seen. His pale skin reminded him of the moon’s shining surface and he wished he could touch it with his own dark hands. His eyes were the most beautiful though. His Alexandria’s genesis turning his eyes the most extraordinary shade of purple ever. They were amazing. And Roman swore if he ever saw them up close, he would fall into them.

Roman let his head rest in his arms as he looked into the ball. “My love, if only you knew what you’d done to the heart of this god…”

~~•~~

“Roman! Are you in there?” Patton’s voice came from the other side of Roman’s door, waking the God up. He had apparently drifted off while his mortal had started working his job as a seamster. His spy glass had long gone dark with lack of attention and his room had gone dark without the light of the sun.

“Yeah, I’m here!” Roman called, putting his glass ball away. He opened the door to his room. “What’s up, Sky?”

Patton smiled. “Nothing much! It’s meal time though!”

Every day, around the same time, the gods would gather up the offerings the mortals made to them.

Roman nodded and went off to gather his portion of the offerings. While they ate, Roman talked about his mortal. More like ranted, but he could hardly tell the difference.

“My heavens, Roman!” Logan rubbed the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. “I honestly cannot wait until you inevitably outlive that puny human.”

Patton gave a little gasp. “Logan!! How could you say that?!”

“It is going to happen either way. I’m simply stating my opinion on it.” Logan sniffed. “And if it will shut Roman up, all the better, I say.”

Roman was suddenly thrust into the spiraling reality that he wouldn’t ever get to be with his mortal love.

He hardly noticed the ongoing argument between the God of the Sky and the God of the Moon as he got up from the table and left. He locked himself in his room and cried. He felt more like a child than a god. But it really did break his heart. He would never get to hold his love. He’d never get to run his fingers through that thick raven hair. He’d never get to touch his pale, fair skin. He’d never get to look into his beautiful, exquisite purple eyes.

And so Roman cried until an idea struck his mind.

~~•~~

Roman snuck around Patton’s room, and passed quietly by Logan’s study. He ran up the steps to the biggest part of the heavens and took a deep breath, swallowing his apprehension.

And Roman knocked on Life’s door.

Maybe this was a bad idea...Definitely a bad idea. I mean Life probably won’t even come to the door! He’s always so busy so-

The door swung open and Roman was face to face with the god of Life, love, and joy.

He smiled down at him. “Oh, hello Roman!”

Roman bowed down, very quickly regretting his decision to come to Life. “Greetings, Life. I’m very sorry I-”

“You can just call me Emile, Roman!” Life smiled, pulling Roman up out of his bow. “And don’t you tell me you’re sorry for bothering me! Whatever it is that’s bothering you, I’m here to help!”

Roman was once again reminded of how kind Emile was. “Right. Emile, I have...I have a request…”

Emile smiled, leading Roman inside. “A request? Oh I haven’t gotten a request since Patton begged me to make butterflies about...Oh it’s been at least 2,000 years now I guess.” He sat down on a white cushioned chair and gestured for Roman to sit too. “So tell me, dear Sun, what is your request?”

Roman shuffled his feet and sat down, his hands in his lap. “It’s sort of a big request, and I’m sure you’ll say no, but….” Roman looked down at his feet and considered lying. Patton would know if he did and then Logan would chastise him for bothering Emile with something so trivial. Roman met Emile’s shimmering eyes, solidifying his resolve. “I want you to make a new god.”

Emile looked a little shocked, his smile falling away for a moment. It returned, a hint of mischief glittering in his swirling eyes as he leaned forward on his knees. “A new god, Roman? Do you have a subject in mind, or are you just getting bored of your friends?”

Roman smiled suddenly, his chest flaring up with passion. “I do have someone in mind! He’s the most perfect person for the job, I’m sure of it! He’s kind and hardworking, and he has the most magnificent mind!”

Emile smiled and leaned back. “You’re in love with a mortal, aren’t you?”

Roman’s smile didn’t falter. “I am. And what a shame it is that the others will never know what it’s like to fall in love with imperfection!” He stood up. “I beg of you that you make my love immortal that he might live with me in the heavens!”

Emile started to laugh. It was a heavy and delighted one as he nearly fell off his chair shaking from it. “You, dear Sun,” He said, calming his voice, eyes alight with humor and color. “Are still so young!” Roman’s smile started to fade before Emile continued. “I will grant your request. I don’t usually do this, and Remy’s going to try and kill me over this, but for your love, I’ll do it. Though it will take a few days at least. Because it is your request, I will make you my assistant in creating this new god.” He leaned forward again, his ever changing and shining eyes glowing with splendor. “Now, what is the name of this mortal that has stolen your heart?”

“Virgil Aegir.”

~~•~~

Roman and Emile worked hard for four whole days, Roman insisting that he had to be perfect. In time, Virgil was ready to become a god. Emile kicked him out so that the actual name and life giving process could be done without risk of messing it up.

When Roman asked about what Emile meant by giving Virgil a name, Emile smiled. “It’s what he will rule over. Your names are Sun, Day and Passion. Patton’s names are Sky, Weather and Truth. Logan’s names are Moon, Night and Knowledge. Remy’s names are Death, Balance and Justice. My names are Life, Love and Joy. As such, Virgil will receive three names, three powers, three purposes. Now go, before you get yourself hurt.”

Roman sat outside the mansion’s steps, listening to the silence of the heavens as the sun began to sink out of sight, washing the Earth in oranges and reds.. There was a sudden explosion behind him and Roman shot upright and spun around.

Emile burst out of the large doors coughing, smoke spilling out into the open air. Roman ran up the steps to help the god of Life.

Logan and Patton ran up to the smoking mansion.

“Roman!! What did you do?!” Logan demanded, racing up the steps.

Emile coughed again and waved his hand at Logan, smiling. “Oh don’t worry, Logan! It wasn’t his fault! This just happens every time I finish creating something as big as a god!”

Logan’s eyes grew wide. “A god?!”

Patton ran up the stairs, his eyes shining. “We’re going to have a new god?!” He bubbled. “Oh this is wonderful, Lo-Lo!!”

“Not when it’s obviously Roman’s fault!!” Logan argued.

Emile smiled. “Oh, dear Moon, you’re as stubborn as ever! Yes, it was my Sun that came to me with the request, but it was my choice to create him.”

“The point is that Roman bothered you! He should have never made you do something so strenuous!!”

Patton pouted. “You did this last time I asked Emile to make something, and it turned out just fine, Logan! Stop pestering Roman!”

Emile laughed, drawing the attention of the other gods. “Oh you all are still so very young!!” Colors danced in the old god’s eyes like dandelion fluff dances in the wind. “You all have much to learn about the light of your world!!”

“H-hello…?” A timid voice sounded from the doorway.

All heads turned to the small figure.

Roman could have melted under the beauty he saw before him.

His pale skin was perfect and looked softer than silk, faint, white star shaped freckles dotted his arms and cheeks and his hair looked even fluffier, the tips fading into a deep purple that reminded Roman of secrets that had yet to be uncovered. He wore a long cloak that was purple on the outside and contained galaxies swirling on the inside. His deep purple shirt wrapped around him, sewn with silver thread. A silver belt hung around his waist and tight black pant disappeared into knee high purple and silver boots. His shirt’s long, loose purple sleeves were sheer from the shoulder down and long, flowing streams of sheer purple fabric tied themselves to his wrists and vanished behind his back, presumably held and hidden under his belt. And his eyes...His eyes lay unchanged, a beautiful, striking amethyst, so clear and deep they seemed nearly otherworldly.

He was the most magnificent person Roman had ever laid eyes on.

Roman walked up to him and held his perfect face in his hands. “My darling love, you’re here!” As Roman bent down with every intention to kiss the smaller figure, he pulled away, placing his hands firmly on Roman’s chest.

“Who the hell even are you?” He said, his perfect eyes flitting around anxiously. “Or where am I?!” The boy started to stumble backwards, panic clearly settling in. “What the fuck is going on here?!”

Emile gently moved Roman aside and grabbed the boy’s hands, pulling them up and smiling warmly. “My dear Star, you’ve been plucked up from the earth and been created more! Someone here loved you enough to set me upon the task of creating a new god out of you, that they might be with you!” Emile quietly took him down the steps and, with a flick of his hand, a new room popped up, this one covered in tiny stars and a glass roof. He took him over to it, the others following behind like a lost herd of sheep.

“You are the god of the Stars.” Emile said, gesturing up at the stars in the sky above them, just starting to blink into existence in the sun’s absence. He turned back to the boy and moved his pale hands to cover his perfect lips. “You are the god of Secrets.” Emile let the pale hands fall away from the star-freckled face. “And…” He threw his arms wide, his smile never faltering. “You are the god of Time!”

The boy’s eyes went wide in fear. He started to shake his head. “No, no, no no no!” He started slowly. “No, I’m not a god! I’m a seamster that lives in a small town!”

Emile lightly shook his head. “I’m sorry, dear Star, but your life before is over now.”

He ripped his hands from Emile’s light and kind grasp. “No!! Stop calling me that!! My name is Virgil Aegir and I am not a god!!” Virgil locked his hands in his hair.

Emile’s kind smile turned sad. “Your name is still Virgil, my dear. But what is done cannot be undone. You are a god. And in time, you’ll do wonderfully at your job.”

Virgil crouched down to the ground, trying to get away from everything. “No I don’t want to do this!! I never wanted to be a god!!”

Emile’s smile finally fell away. “If you must search for someone to blame, look toward the Sun. He requested that I bring you into the heavens so he might never know the pain of losing you.” Emile started walking back to his mansion, pausing and placing a hand on Roman’s shoulder. “I should have seen this coming. I’m sorry.”

As soon as Emile disappeared through his doors, Logan turned on Roman. “You absolute fool!!” He yelled. “You brainless excuse for a god!! Look at the mess you’ve made!!” He threw a hand in the direction of the paralyzed god silently panicking as tears dripped down his face.

“Logan, stop!!” Patton said, trying to pull the arm off of Roman’s shoulder. “He didn’t mean any harm!!”

Logan turned on the sky god. “Well he caused it!!” He shouted.

Roman’s anger was starting to flare. “You wouldn’t understand!! And you will never understand!!” He pointed angrily and Patton who had started backing away. “You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid that the one person you love more than yourself,” He jabbed a finger at Logan’s chest hard. “Will die knowing that you never will!!”

“It wasn’t your choice to make!!” Logan yelled.

“You would have done the same if Patton was mortal!!”

“But Patton isn’t mortal and will never be mortal!”

“But that’s not the point! I did it because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him!!’

“The point is, Roman, that you made a mistake! And now someone is hurting because of it!!!”

“HEY!!!” The voice drew their attention to the puffy-eyed god of stars. “Was anyone going to show me how the hell to do this?!!” He shouted.

The two arguing gods stopped and looked over to Virgil. “I don’t care why I’m here anymore! All that matters is I’m here! And I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing or where I am even!”

Logan turned and walked away. “I have a task that requires my attention.” He said stiffly, Patton running after him.

“I guess it’s up to you to show me around then, Princey.” Virgil said, crossing his arms.

Roman nearly sputtered. “Princey?”

Virgil flushed slightly, hardening his eyes and looking away. “Your outfit reminds me of a prince’s, that’s all. Don’t read into it.”

Roman chuckled slightly. “I make no promises, my love.”

“Don’t call me that.” Virgil said. “I’m not your ‘love’, got it?”

“As you wish, my Star. Shall I show you the ropes of the heavens, so to speak?" Roman asked.

Virgil blew a piece of his hair up out of his face with his breath and rubbed at one of his eyes. "Sure." He finally said, uncrossing his arms and trying to force a smile. "I'm here now, aren't I? Might as well try and enjoy it."

~~•~~

“Emile!!” Emile heard his name booming from inside the place he called home.

Emile sighed, knowing who it would be. “That’s my name, Rem! Don’t wear it out!”

Remy materialized in Emile’s living room pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t got time for your cute nonsense, babe.” Emile turned away from the god of Death and focused his attention on making tea. “You made another god without talking to me about it first, didn’t you hun?” Despite the pet names, Remy’s voice was anything but sweet and sympathetic.

Emile smiled, focusing on the tea kettle. Sure, he could just make some tea materialize out of the air, but he liked the traditional ways. “I did make a god. It was about time we got a god to rule over time anyway!” Emile held up two different plants. “Mint or vanilla, sweets?”

Remy waved his hand. “Vanilla, love. And that’s totally not the point!! You took a human to make this god!” Emile turned around, expecting to see Remy pacing again. Though he hardly caught himself as the god of Death was hardly six inches away from his face, ever blind eyes brimming with fury. “Remember what happened last time you did that, Life?”

Emile recalled the memory very clearly. His smile was sad, just a ghost of what it had been before. “I do…”

The kettle behind Emile started whistling.

Remy reached past the god of Life and picked up the kettle. “So you know the mess you’ve made, huh?” He moved over to the counter and poured the boiling water into each of the ancient Chinese pottery cups that Logan had gifted Life one year.

Emile sighed. “Listen, I think it could be different this time!!” He crossed over to where Death had sat down with his cup of vanilla tea. He accepted the cup of peach lemon tea that Remy held out in his free hand and sat down across from Death. “Thanks, honey.” He took a sip before continuing. “Listen, I know I’ve messed up in the past, but I have a really good feeling about Virgil! And you know…” Emile crossed over to where Remy was and slid himself into his lap. “Everything worked out just fine last time, too.”

Remy sighed. “I guess it was okay in the end... but that doesn’t mean you should be doing it all the time, babe.”

Life planted a small kiss on Death’s cheek. “I know.”

~~•~~

Roman had been showing Virgil around the heavens.

“This is where the Sky sleeps!”

“Wait isn’t that just night?”

“No, the Night sleeps over there.”

“But isn’t it day when the night sleeps?”

“No, I’m the day and I sleep over there.”

“So when you sleep it’s night?”

“Sometimes. I tend to take little naps throughout the entirety of a day rather than sleep in one sitting like humans do.”

“But when you sleep it becomes night?”

“What does this have anything to do with where the sky sleeps?”

It was filled with questions upon questions upon questions. Some of them Roman didn’t know how to answer.

“What happens if you fall off the clouds?”

“I’m not...sure. No one’s ever fallen off the clouds before…”

“Does time flow differently up here?”

“I don’t believe so...But I could be wrong. I’ve never been a mortal after all.”

“How many gods are there?”

“I’m not actually sure. I know of at least six now, including you and me, but now that I think about it, there could be tens more…”

Roman showed him his favorite spots, watching the new god look around curiously. In fact, Virgil was so consumed by what was going on around him, he had forgotten what had even happened to him.

Roman looked up at the sky and smiled. “It’s time now, Virgil!”

Virgil looked over at the taller god. “What? Is something cool about to happen?”

Roman smiled. “I guess! It’s nearly dawn, which means you need to put the stars to rest, Vee!”

Virgil started to panic. “I can’t do that!! Who do you think I am?! A god??!”

Roman stared blankly at his love. “Yes.”

Virgil laughed demonically. “Oh shit!! Haha!! I am a god, aren’t I?!”

Roman stared at Virgil. “It’s alright, my darling! This is what you have been remade to do!”

Virgil looked at him with panic stricken eyes. “But I don’t know how to do it!!” Virgil had grown comfortable around Roman. There had been points during the night cycle where Virgil had to put his trust in the sun god. He was also coming to realize he quite liked the taller god, though he’d never admit such a thing. Virgil grabbed Roman by the shoulders and quietly lay his forehead against his chest. "I don't know what I'm doing…" He said, trying to calm down.

Roman considered bringing the smaller god in closer, but decided he'd made enough bad choices for one day. He held Virgil at arms length and bent down to meet his panicked purple gaze. "Listen, Virgil," He started, smiling a very soft and comforting smile. "I can try and help you as much as possible, but you can do it. I believe in you! There's a reason Emile agreed to make you into a god, little starling! You'll do wonderful!"

Virgil seemed to consider Roman's words for a moment before nodding. "Alright…" he said, a minor tremor in his voice. "Tell me what I should do." He turned away and faced the sky. "I'll put the stars away, or whatever."

Roman smiled, his eyes sparkling. It was something small that, in hindsight, might have made Virgil slip just slightly deeper in love with the god of the sun. "That's my starry knight!"

~~•~~

Virgil had managed to put the stars to rest with a bit of effort that night. He had decided to retire to his room after that and slept.

Months had passed now, and Logan was starting to ease up on both Roman and Virgil. He had been completely cold toward Virgil, nearly ignoring his presence entirely. Whenever Logan and Roman had to interact, it always turned into a shouting match, each much too prideful to fess up that they were wrong.

It had been taking a toll on Patton and after a few weeks forced the two opposite gods to sit down and work things out.

It was an entire day and night that they were gone trying to make amends and the mortals thought the world was ending when the moon fell over the sun, casting a shadow across the Earth.

Logan and Roman emerged from Patton’s house and smiled. Roman walking over to Patton to apologise for his behavior and Logan crossing over to Virgil.

"I'm very truly apologetic for my abhorrent behavior towards you. You, like Roman and Patton, are a god. And should be treated as such. There is little excuse for my actions and I beg your forgiveness."

Virgil backed up slightly, waving his hands and an awkward smile alighting upon his face. "Ah, no! It's all fine! I forgive you, Logan!"

Logan let himself out of his apologetic bow. “This is a very pleasant outcome, I believe!” Logan respectfully held out his hand to the smaller god and smiled. “I look forward to spending more time with you, Virgil!”

Virgil would have missed the way Roman smiled fondly at the small god of stars.

Roman had only fallen deeper in love with Virgil since he’d arrived. And he’d had a good amount of time to reflect on the mistakes he had made. He knew he had been wrong. He wished he could take it all back. Seeing how what he’d done effected Virgil, it made his chest burn with guilt. He never wanted anything like this to happen. All he had ever really wanted was to be with his love. Logan had argued that Roman would just move on and fall in love with another mortal again after Virgil had died, but Roman didn’t think so.

Sure it had happened in the past, but this time felt different. Roman hardly had known anything about Virgil before he went to Emile. Every other time Roman would have become obsessed with wanting to know more about him from afar.

But he didn’t want that. He hadn’t wanted that. He had wanted to know him up close. He wanted to talk to him. He wanted to see him. He wanted to hear him. He wanted to laugh with him. He wanted to know all the edges and corners of his mind for himself. He wanted to know him.

And he knew he didn’t want to have Virgil all for himself. He had experienced ‘love’ like that before, and this was not that. He wanted to watch Virgil grow and be free. And in a few more months time, Roman would come to realize that he loved Virgil so much, that he would be willing to let go of the pretty god and never see him again if that was what he had wished.

~~•~~

It was a sunny and warm day as Virgil and Roman sat on the fluffy clouds, drinking in the sunlight. They had grown very used to each other- Roman having fallen deeper in love with the god of the stars, and Virgil finding himself on a deep and irreversible spiral of adoration for the god of the sun.

Virgil had also become very close with the other two gods, and had found himself lacking the desire to return home. There wasn’t any way for him to return home anyway, so why bother wanting to? He liked it here. Quite a lot too.

It was this fateful day that Virgil met the god of Death, Balance and Justice.

Roman opened his eyes at the sound of someone approaching, turning to find the god of Death making his way over to the pair of smaller gods.

He instantly stood up in respect. “Death! What brings you this way? Is there anything we may assist you with?”

Death waved his hand at Roman. “Honey, please. You know you can call me Remy! And besides, I’m not here for you.”Remy turned to Virgil, who was still sitting comfortably on the cloud. “Get up, babe, I got something big to tell you about.” Remy’s blind eyes stared eerily at Virgil.

Virgil stood up and followed Remy as he started to walk away. It was strange. He felt like he should have been unsettled by the god of Death, but he wasn’t. There was a strange warmth about the tall god that made Virgil feel comfortable.

Roman walked with them as Remy began to talk, heading in the direction of Logan’s study. “Now I know that what happened to you was, like, totally unfair and shit, and I’ve been looking into a way to totally make it completely fair! Well, I had Emmy help too of course, I mean I kinda hate reading so why would I waste time doing that?” Remy entered the study where they found Emile sitting in a large chair reading an old book. “Anyway, hun, you can go ahead and take a seat wherever I guess and I can tell you the fab news!”

Virgil sat down, giving Roman a confused side glance. Roman shrugged his shoulders in response and sat down next to him.

Remy clapped his hands together, the bright smile on his face a contrast to his drab outfit. Roman was once again reminded of what a cheery fellow Death actually was. “Alright! So We-” Remy cut off, his dead gaze turning to Roman. “I’m not so sure you should be here, sunshine. Seeing as you were-”

Virgil placed a hand on Roman’s. “No. He stays.” His crystal eyes were solid and bright. Roman didn’t know exactly where his passion had come from, but it was clear that Virgil wasn’t going to bend on the subject.

Roman’s face lit up slightly when Virgil didn’t let go of his hand, instead opting to link their fingers together.

Remy shrugged and continued his animated talking. “As I was saying so fabulously!! With a bit of research and persistence, we found you a way home, mr. dark and stormy!!”

The world froze.

The air around them all felt so fragile, like it would shatter to pieces if any of them breathed.

Somewhere, a child was laughing at daisys spinning in the air.

Somewhere, someone was celebrating their wedding.

Somewhere, a grandmother and her best friend shared an old crinkling joke, whispy and light.

Somewhere, a father was singing their child to sleep.

And Virgil could hear it all as if he had been the people themselves.

Everything was so very very wide and quiet and frozen.

Virgil had a way home.

“W-what…?” Virgil finally managed to let the words escape his mouth.

Remy smiled, bouncing a little. “You get to go home, honey cakes!!”

Emile stood up and smiled softly. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but essentially yes. Me and Remy found you a way home.”

Roman’s heart was beating out of his chest. Or was it stuck stone still? He couldn’t tell…

Virgil hardly heard Remy and Emile listing off how it would work, how he would be able to go home.

“Can I…” Virgil cut in harshly. “Can I just get some space to think about this?”

Remy stopped his rambling as Emile smiled. “Yes of course, Star. We will leave you to your decision.”

Life and Death left the study hand in hand, and as Roman started to get up, Virgil’s grip on his hand tightened.

“Wait..” He said softly. “I want you to stay…”

Roman sat sat back down and tried to meet Virgil’s gaze, his own golden eyes laced with concern and worry.

Virgil had the chance to go home. He had ruined his life once already, Roman wasn’t about to let himself ruin it again.

“So how soon will you be leaving?” Roman asked softly.

Panic struck Virgil’s amethyst eyes like lightning. “What?!” He stood up fast, almost knocking the chair over, letting Roman’s hand fall away from his. “What makes you think that I’m leaving?!”

“You finally have the chance to go home! I can’t keep you from that again. I won’t let myself. Besides, you had an entire life down there!” Roman stood up from his chair.

“So what?! I have an entire life up here too! There’s Patton and Logan and- and you!! I don’t want to leave you…” Virgil stepped closer to the taller god, and hesitantly moved his hand toward Roman’s.

Roman, as oblivious as ever, continued. “Patton and Logan would be fine! They’ll probably be ecstatic for you when they find out that you’ll be able to go home!! They care about you too and want to see you happy!” Roman stepped away and started pacing.

“That’s not exactly what I meant, Roman. I could leave them and be fine eventually.” Virgil stepped closer again, catching Roman’s arms. He sighed and rested his head against the god of the Sun’s chest. He let his hands travel down his arms and quietly hold Roman’s dark hands. Virgil thought of his mundane life before. He thought of the way he would never get to be who he wanted to be as a human, how as a human he would be told that he should marry a girl and have children to help with the family business. He thought of how he had longed to be something more, do something more. He thought of how ever since he came to be a god, he’d been happier. How Roman had always been there to help him when he didn’t understand what to do. How Roman was always there. How he would laugh with him, and how his smile made his heart thunder in his chest, how he longed to never part from him. Virgil thought about how he loved to be a god with Roman by his side.

Virgil breathed out, his eyes watering slightly at the thought of having to leave him. “I don’t want to leave you, Roman…” He wrapped his arms around his waist and leaned in more. “I think I’m more scared of losing you than I am of going back…I know I told you time and time again that I didn’t want to be with you, but…”

Virgil looked up to meet Roman’s eyes, and found himself unable to speak. He could no longer find the words to express what he was feeling.

So instead he brought his hands to cradle Roman’s face, and silently he kissed him.

It was sweet and Virgil thought that Roman tasted like sunshine and sweet lemons and honey. It was wonderful and felt so very right and pure.

Roman’s hands wrapped around Virgil’s small waist and, as surprised as he had been at first, he kissed Virgil back. He nearly whined out loud when they finally parted, but he let it happen.

Virgil’s face was flushed as he quickly realized what he’d done. “I-I’m sorry, I really don’t know what I was thinking- Actually I don’t really think I was at all but-”

Roman quietly brushed his hand across Virgil’s cheek, bringing the smaller god’s rambling to rest. “Does this mean you’re staying…?” Roman smiled softly.

Virgil returned the smile, holding Roman’s hand against his cheek and melting into the warmth of his skin. “Yeah...I think it does, Princey…!”

Their lips met again and they melted into one another, paying no mind to the world around them, the only thing between them being their own beating hearts, alive with passion abound and secrets untold.

So what happens when an immortal falls in love with a mortal?

Well…

Ask the stars and he’ll tell you.

Holy heck so uh...I got really carried away with this one. So sorry it took so long to get out! And I know I added probably a lot more details than needed and it’s probably not as shippy as you’d like, but I really hope you enjoy it!!

#stripestar128128 #writing prompt ask #sanders sides #ts sides #prinxiety #gods au #virgil sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #remy sanders #emile sanders #ts virgil #ts roman #ts logan #ts patton #ts remy #ts emile

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littlelarkfables · 4 years

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Tam Lin and the Selkie

Long ago, there lived a fearsome knight named Janet. In the name of her father, the King of Seas, she defended the borders with a warrior’s heart and passionate spirit.

Her father, a King of the Sea, rewarded her bravery and gave her the mantle of her mother, a seal skin that would allow her to become a selkie like her mother before. “Keep it close, and keep it safe,” her father warned, “for to lose it would risk the dominion of another over you.” Janet took the seal skin, promising her father she would keep it safe. Tying it around her waist, she cut an impressive figure on every battle field. Janet garnered many names. The Mad Sea Dog. The Maritime Butcher. Sometimes even just the Devil.

Even so, with all the glory and accolades, Janet found her mind occupied with the question of love. For so long, her follow warriors claimed to fight for love, that it made them stronger. She knew love was not hers, that her heart was not crafted to hold that ideal, and the thought of not having access to that strength upset her.

Despondent, she traveled to the borders she defended for her entire life. Her father warned her often enough about the kind of people beyond them. They would demand much from her, a toll. If she could not pay, they would take it from her body.

“Be wary, most all, of Carterhall, where the Queen of Fairies has decreed no soul may rest without payment to it’s keeper. Many maidens have gone, but returned a maiden nevermore.”

Janet thought about this. She did not care if she lost her maidenhood. In fact, she rather relished the thought. Just because she did not feel a romantic inkling for anyone did not mean she did not desire a more physical companionship.

Janet unwound her seal skin and slipped into her other form. If she were to go about unimpeded, she would need all the help she could get.

Now a simple seal, Janet swam across the border. She swam, harder and faster than she ever had before, until she came upon a beach. Janet pulled herself upon it to bask in the sun. She stripped herself of her seal skin and lay there, bare to the world.

What a strange world it is, Janet thought. Strange, but beautiful all the same.

What she did not know was that this was Carterhal, the same one her father warned her against. The home of Tam Lin, a deft elf woman who recrafted her body to suit her true self. She was the confidant of the Fairy Queen, who bound her to the beach as it’s guardian. “How dare you partake in my sunshine, sunshine?” Tam Lin called out. Her dark eyes traced the naked form on the log. Janet barely processed the words before leaping into a defensive position. Tam Lin barely had time to process that before Janet had her pinned to the ground. What transpired between them then is better left unsaid, though it ended with the promise they would see one another again. “Sunshine, you are always welcome,” Tam Lin purred. “And I will always take it,” Janet said. Tam Lin wrapped her in her seal skin and sent her away.

Janet swam fast and hard, all the way home to her waiting father. For almost ten months, she went and fought her kingdom’s battles, It wasn’t until an enemy refused to fight her that she allowed herself to admit something may have happened that day on the beach with Tam Lin.

Her father called her to him, eyeing the swell of her belly. He sighed. Someone had claimed his daughter’s maidenhood, and given her a child. She was never the type to take the easy path. He did not care if she did not want the babe, but if she did- “My dear daughter, I fear you are with child. Who in my court shall give up their name alongside yours at their birth?” he asked, worrying his beard.

“None of the court, dear father, and none of the sea. This child’s parent is none other than Tam Lin, guardian of Carterhall. We lay together near ten months ago now, and I fear the child was only out of our desire to be close, and no wedding bells shall ring for us.”

The king tasked her to find the mother of her child. Tam Lin would come to court and officially give her name at the birth. Then they could decide what to do.

Once again, Tam Lin donned her seal skin and swam, faster and harder than she ever thought possible. Along the way, she considered her situation. She did not love Tam Lin, not in the way she would need in order to marry her. She didn’t mind the thought of being a mother, but she did quite mind the fact it was unintended.

She was a warrior! The Mad Sea Dog, the Maritime Butcher, the Devil itself! No one bested her, except for her own choices apparently.

Coming to Tam Lin’s beach, Janet smiled at the sight of the sun dappled sands. Once more, she pulled herself onto one and stripped. She reclined, bare to the world. Tam Lin would come, she knew. It was simply a matter of waiting.

Within an hour, Tam Lin creeped over to the log, eyes fixed on Janet. She gasped at the sight of Janet’s belly, horrified. Janet turned to her with a smile, but she could only stammer.

“I… I am so sorry, I didn’t think I could still-’”

“There is no need to apologize. It was my choice to lay with you, and it is my choice to bear the child. If I did not want to, I would not be here to ensure you give up your name upon the birth,” Janet interrupted. She tied her seal skin around herself, hiding her belly. “Now, come with me. This babe will come any day, and we both need to be there to give them our names.”

“I cannot leave this beach, sunshine. I would go with you, but I am bound here by the Queen of Fairies, after she saved me from a sinking ship,” Tam Lin said. “And tomorrow, upon the moon’s rise, she plans to pull me to her side for eternity. She is indebted to the Devil, and every so often she will give one of her own to it, one who is fair of flesh and name. I know this fate awaits for me.” Janet scowled at. She was not a warrior for nothing, and she would take Tam Lin away from such a fate. When she demanded the knowledge of how to unbind Tam Lin, Tam Lin warned her what would happen if Janet dragged her from the beach. The Fairy Queen wanted to be certain Tam Lin would never leave her post, not until the time came for the Devil to take her.

First, she would transform into a snake, hissing and spitting. It would plunge her fangs into Janet, but so long as she remembered that it was Tam Lin, they could make it.

She would then change into a raging lion, clawing it’s way back to the surface. It would scar Janet, but so long as she remembered that it was Tam Lin, they could make it.

Then Tam Lin would become a rock, heavy and sinking. It would drown Janet, but so long as she remembered that it was Tam Lin, they would make it.

Finally, Tam Lin would become a burning coal. If the coal went out, she would die, and all would be for not. So long as she remembered that it was Tam Lin, they would make it.

Janet took Tam Lin in her arms, and slid into her seal skin. Tam Lin smiled at the sight Janet’s rotund form, but quickly lost her mirth as she considered the sea before her. “This is a lot of effort to save a person you don’t love, you know. I don’t mind it, but I have to wonder.”

Janet could not answer, not quite then. They pressed themselves together, one last time, and Janet dragged Tam Lin into the sea.

It was just as Tam Lin warned. The instant her feet left the sand, her body twisted into that of a snake. It bit at Janet, desperately trying to escape.

Janet remembered it was Tam Lin, and easily recaptured it in her mouth, careful not to bite down too hard.

When Janet did not let the snake go, it twisted again into a mighty lion. It tore at Janet’s back, but Janet remembered it was Tam Lin, and bit down hard on the lion’s tail to drag it through the water.

When the lion could not escape, Janet felt her jaw wrench open as it changed into a large stone, dragging her down into the water. Her lungs clenched as she desperately tried to swim back to the surface, but she remembered it was Tam Lin. Janet ignored the pain.

At last, the rock changed it’s shape one last time, into a burning coal. Janet nearly screeched from the burns in her mouth, but she remembered it was Tam Lin, and shot for the surface as quickly as her fins could take her.

Bleeding from bites and claws, choking on water, and mouth blistering and burnt, Janet leaped from the water to release Tam Lin. The coal changed one last time, returning to Tam Lin, who wrapped her arms around Janet. “Sunshine, oh sunshine,” she cried, hands ghosting over the wounds. “Thank you.” Janet huffed a laugh. She’d faced worse injuries on the battlefield, but she would not say anything if it meant keeping Tam Lin’s hands on her. They floated like this, wrapped up in one another.

Far off, back on the shores of Carterhall, the Fairy Queen screamed at the loss of his favored Tam Lin. He cursed the selkie who took her away. She cursed Tam Lin for following. He cursed them, magic twisting around her. Any love between them should turn to hate, burning out their hearts and eyes. Satisfied his revenge would take place, the Fairy Queen left Caterhall to assure the Devil Tam Lin would one day be claimed.

He thought it was love that allowed Tam Lin to escape, like many others would. He thought they would fall into one another, in light of the child. He thought that Janet’s care and passion would turn to romance, and Tam Lin’s wandering heart would seal itself into her lover’s chest.

He was wrong.

Tam Lin was not Janet’s true love, or even a love. She was, however, someone Janet cared for. She would care for Tam Lin until the day she died. Her father warned her never to allow someone her skin, for risk of coming under their dominion, but he said nothing about letting someone under her skin.

The Devil did indeed claim Tam Lin, on that day, for Tam Lin was fair of flesh and name. If you go to the sea, you may hear the scarred Devil calling out to Tam Lin, telling her to get her child under control before they go falling off a cliff.

#tam lin #selkie #original fiction #little lark fables

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melodious-madrigals · 4 years

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wondertrev secret santa gift!

This is for @wondertrevnet‘s WondertrevSecretSanta2019 exchange. My recipient is @mousedetective: I hope you enjoy this, and I hope you have wonderfully happy holidays!

Title: oh, your love is sunlight

Summary: Diana is paid a visit from a goddess, learns a couple of secrets, and incidentally, gets something of a midwinter gift.

Notes: Modern fic; includes a slight retcon related to the Wonder Woman (2017) origin story but otherwise canon adjacent; ignores WW84 trailer for now (sorry!); a little bit of angst at the beginning but mostly fluff! (also available on ao3.)

Without further ado, here it is:

***

On the darkest day of the year, Diana startles awake, her heart pounding, muscles tensed. She thinks she catches the remnants of a dream, but they fade away before she can clasp onto them, so thorough in their retreat that they might never have come at all. It is far earlier than she would normally wake, but she finds herself completely unable to relax back into a state that might allow her to fall back to sleep. Sighing, she gets up to start coffee, but promptly decides she doesn't need any, and climbs to the roof instead, thinking that if she's up, she may as well get a sunrise out of it.

The very first rays are only just peeking over the horizon, throwing the light dusting of new snow into a fresh, golden relief, when she hears footsteps approaching and whirls to face the newcomer, senses prickling at an even higher frequency than they have been all morning.

In front of Diana is a woman she has never seen before, with bright eyes and dark skin, a soft, calming kind of beauty.

“Hello, dear one,” the woman says. Her voice is rich, thick and sweet like honey.

The woman may be unknown, but there is something about her that sets Diana vibrating, a gentle current of electricity deep in her bones that extends from the depths of her body to the tips of her fingers.

It registers without thought that this is a goddess, even if they are all supposed to be dead.

“Hestia?” Diana guesses, because this goddess is soft, warm, strong, and perhaps it is her connection to the lasso that is setting Diana’s nerve endings alight.

The woman laughs, gently, and it is a sound that Diana instinctively wants to hear again.

“No, dear child, I am not Hestia. Do you not recognize your mother?”

At this, Diana balks. “My mother is Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and she remains on Themyscira.” Liar is unspoken, but hangs in the air all the same next to her defiantly tilted chin.

“So she is,” says the goddess, with surprisingly good humor, if any of the stories are to be believed. “But I am Aphrodite, and I am your godly mother.”

“I have an Amazon mother and a godly father. Zeus. I know how I came to be,” Diana insists, wary.

Aphrodite tuts. “You are a demigoddess, dear one, but not because Zeus impregnated your mother. She shaped you, but I gave you your life force.”

Diana is at a loss for words, trying to process what she is being told. “I am a daughter of Zeus. My lightning—”

“I am not powerless, and love can be electric, dear one,” quips Aphrodite, “just as it can be soft, or iron-willed, or all-consuming. Your godly powers are something all your own, but you are my daughter plain and simple as you are Hippolyta’s.”

“Ares told me—”

“Ares lied. Does this truly surprise you?”

No, it doesn't, but Diana is still trying to recover from the whiplash that she was shaped from clay, as her mother once told her. There are too many tangled lies, even a century on.

“Even when my mother lied to me about the circumstances of my birth, the tale always included Zeus,” she settles on.

“Zeus liked intervening, and he liked getting credit,” Aphrodite huffs. “What your mother told you was only a partial lie. I alone heard her prayers, her suffering, and I begged Zeus to let me help. He allowed it. It was by his will, but by my hand. And then you were created, my beautiful daughter. The tale went how it went, but now needs to be set straight.”

Diana’s brow furrows. “But why are you here now? After all this time?”

“Because I can be,” Aphrodite replies simply, seemingly pleased that Diana has accepted her version of events, or at least not dismissed it entirely. “Make no mistake, my powers were sapped millennia ago, and then once more last century in an attempt to hold Ares at bay. I was incapable of making appearances in my corporeal form until very recently. You were my first housecall, dear one.”

Diana bends her head slightly in deference. She is not afraid of the goddess, per se, but sees no reason to make an enemy out of what is most likely a fickle being. “It is an honor.”

Aphrodite sighs. “No need for that, dear one. I came because you did what we could not, and defeated Ares. This is your thank you, even if it is a bit tardy.”

Diana tries again, unsure of exactly how to proceed. “There is no need to thank me. I did as I was born to do.”

“Yes, and no,” says Aphrodite with an air of ambivalence and mystery. “They call you the Godkiller, Diana, but your job was not to kill Ares. It was to protect humanity, to love them. Even in their imperfections. Which you have done, even when it was hard and messy.”

(Diana finds that she desperately wants this to be true, that there is something fundamentally absolving about this paradigm shift.)

“It is not about what they deserve, but what I believe,” says Diana, by way of explanation. She thinks of all it took to convince her of this, and the image of Steve rises unbidden, as it often does when she contemplates why she stays. (Her heart clenches and her throat closes, yet again, even a hundred years later. It has gotten easier, with time, but is still an open wound in her heart.)

“Yes, exactly, dear one. Which is why I am here. I have watched you struggle through a century of the worst that humanity has to offer, and I see how your heart hurts, and yet you believe. You love. So wholly and unreservedly, and the humans are all the better for it. And so I have a gift for you, for your enduring pain.”

It is tempting, intriguing, but Diana knows that gifts—particularly gifts from the gods—do not come without a price.

“Aphrodite, I cannot accept whatever it is you have to offer.”

“Nonsense, child. I know what you are thinking. But this comes from me, as your mother, and from me, as the Goddess of Love, not on high from Olympus. Not from Zeus." The meaning is clear, even if she doesn't say it aloud: I am no god. This gift is freely given, not bound by the strings of men. "I am only sorry I could not deliver it to you sooner; acquiring it took my last bit of power, and I assumed you would rather have it a bit late than never at all.”

“You are too generous,” Diana says warily, still mildly worried that there is a catch.

“And you are too kind. Chin up, dear; it's just about time for breakfast.”

With these perplexing words, Aphrodite begins to manifest, and a blinding light explodes across the rooftop, leaving Diana seeing spots for a few moments in the early Parisian light.

There's a cough from the ground, and Diana realizes that Aphrodite has left something in her wake. Blinking, Diana kneels down, trying to clear her vision, and almost chokes when the figure says, “Angel?”

Two more rapid blinks, and her eyes confirm what the voice she heard indicated: Steve Trevor—winded, confused, and still in a sooty German uniform, looking for all the world as though no time has passed—is on the ground before her.

Her first reaction is, anticlimactically, one of complete shock and immobilization, but then he takes a shuddering breath, and her instincts kick into overdrive, because he's here in front of her alive and breathing. (She's had this dream too many times to count, but she'll be damned if she doesn't make it worthwhile, even if it is just another gift from Hypnos.)

“Steve,” she breathes out, and then launches herself at him, wrapping him in a tight embrace, even in their awkward position on the ground.

It takes only half a beat for Steve’s arms to wrap around hers, and it's this action that finally convinces her that he's real and here, because her memory, sharp as it is, has never been able to accurately replicate the exact pressure of his arms around hers, has never faithfully recreated his exact scent or the warm roughness of his lips against her skin as his head tucks into her neck.

She hears someone sobbing, and realizes with a jolt that it's her, but can't seem to stop the flow of tears, even once it's registered.

And then Steve’s voice is in her ear again, soothing her, whispering soft words with little meaning, and telling her that he's there.

It's the fact that he sounds a bit befuddled, even as he does it, that finally forces her to pull herself together, because she's not the only one affected by Aphrodite’s actions.

Slowly, she pulls away just enough to lean her forehead against his, look into his eyes. (She still needs the tactile affirmation that he's here.)

“Diana?” he says slowly, “What happened? Ares?”

“Gone,” she says, and she can't help the upturn in her voice, the smile threatening to break out on her features, despite the seriousness of the situation. “What do you remember?”

His brow furrows. “I—I pulled the trigger, and then—nothing, save for a blinding light. How did you get to me in time? I should be dead—not that I'm not thankful that I'm not,” he adds.

Diana exhales slowly. “I did not save you,” she admits. “I could not. I was embroiled in battle with Ares. I—I watched your plane explode. I watched you die.” Her voice breaks, because the thought is still unbearable. It takes her a moment to recollect herself. “It was not me,” she repeats, “but Aphrodite. Apparently some of the gods are still alive. And she saved you, plucked you out in the moment before the explosion.”

“Well...that's neat,” says Steve, and she's missed him so much, missed his sincere comments that would sound sarcastic coming from anyone else so acutely, that hearing him now makes her erupt in a joyful laugh.

“Yes, it is very neat. And she brought you here to me, safe and sound and most certainly not exploded.”

“So Ares is defeated and the war is won?” Steve asks hopefully. “You did it?”

“We did,” she emphasizes. “But Steve, there was a bit of a problem.”

“There always seems to be,” he says. “Is there another megalomaniac god we have to stop?” His tone is joking; she can tell he's trying to lighten her mood. (It might work if she didn't have to tell him that he's a century removed from his time.)

“Aphrodite did not have the power to return you to me directly. She was only just able now, and...it has been more than one hundred years, Steve.”

“One hundred—please tell me you're pulling my leg, Diana.”

“I wish I could, Steve. But it has been a century,” she says softly.

“Well, that's slightly inconvenient,” Steve says, still aiming for a light tone, but Diana can tell he's rattled.

“I am so sorry, Steve. In typical godly fashion, Aphrodite did not consider how you might feel on the matter, and acted with her own agenda. She did not consider that death might be preferable to living outside one's time.”

“That—Diana, no. You may not have heard me, but I meant what I said on the runway: I wished we had more time, and now we do. Even if it's not in the ideal way. If you'll have me, that is,” he adds sheepishly, “since a century has passed.”

“Steve Trevor,” Diana says firmly, cupping his face in her hand. “I would like nothing more than more time with you. Did you—did you mean the last thing you said to me at the airfield?”

Steve exhales sharply. “I—Diana, of course I do.”

(His use of present tense doesn't escape her notice.)

“There is not a single day that goes by that I do not regret our parting,” says Diana, tears welling up in her eyes once more. “Because you went forward without knowing that you were loved. So I do not care if this is a hundred years overdue, or a few too early, but I love you too.”

(She knows it's foolish, has had a hundred years to wonder if she really did love him, if they even knew each other well enough for love, if she still loves him only because she's built his memory up. But he's here, and they have another chance, and she'll be damned if she doesn't say what she's feeling. On Themyscira, Diana wore her heart on her sleeve, but that isn't a good thing in Man’s World, and she's sick of hiding it. No, this is the time to turn a new leaf.)

Steve is clearly not unaffected by her words; emotion swirls across his face, and his eyes are glossy too, with his own unshed tears.

"Diana, I would very much like to kiss you, if that's alright."

It absolutely is, and she closes the distance slowly, reverently. Their lips meet, and it feels like coming home, a softness and sureness that feels indescribably right.

When they eventually pull apart, he looks at her in awe, like she is his salvation.

Normally, she would not like a man—anyone, really—to look at her this way, when she is just a person and not a benediction, but she finds that this time, with Steve, she doesn't mind. She just might be looking at Steve the same way.

***

Despite the fact that a hundred years have passed, for Steve, it has been only a few hours since the battle. Diana can see the exhaustion written across his face, and tells him to get some sleep.

“Diana—” he begins to protest, but she gives him a stern look, tells him that she'll wake him up for lunch, if he really wants. He nods, but allows himself to be led to her bed, which is still crumpled and unmade from earlier.

At his hesitation, she realizes that he probably feels too grimy from the battle, and leads him instead to the bathroom, where she quickly teaches him how to use her shower (and, as it happens, showers in general). She leaves him, collects her largest sleep-shirt and most-oversized sweatpants (which will still likely be a bit tight, but it's better than the remnants of the German uniform), and leaves those for him.

He falls asleep almost immediately, and she spends nearly half an hour just watching him: the expression on his face is peaceful, and he looks years younger than she’s ever seen him. It takes her almost as long to keep convincing herself that he's here, really here, and the rise and fall of his chest calms her.

Finally, she rouses herself, and calls into work, for which she isn't quite late yet, but will be shortly, and lets her secretary know that she won't be in for the day. (She hesitates, almost wants to say that she won't be in for the rest of the week, but decides against that. It would raise too many questions. Already, people will be shocked, because she rarely misses a day of work.)

She taps out a couple of emails, one to the interns, one to her secretary, and then, upon reflection, one to Bruce, because it's been a while since she's heard from him, and with Bruce, no news does not necessarily translate to being good news. For good measure, she even sends an email to Vic, because she enjoys his correspondence.

In the next two hours, Diana’s apartment becomes neater than it has in a while: her kitchen is spotless, her clutter in the sitting area straightened, her office organized and shelves dusted. Eventually, she moves on to actually preparing food (which speaks to her true inability to sit still, because she hates cooking with a passion, avoids it wherever possible).

She is flipping pancakes (because her pantry does not have adequate ingredients for any meal that is not breakfast), about to go wake up Steve, when she hears footsteps, and suddenly a pair of arms slips around her waist from behind, and a very sleepy Steve nuzzles the side of her neck, kisses it.

It makes her inhale sharply (it is, after all, exactly the kind of silly domestic thing she used to have dreams about, right after he died), and that pulls Steve out of his sleepy fog. He immediately jumps back.

“I'm so sorry, Diana,” he gasps.

“Steve, it's alright,” she reassures softly, putting the final pancake on the stack, and turning off the gas.

“No, Diana, I'm so sorry! I woke up and it felt like a wonderful dream and that's not an excuse b—”

“Steve,” she tried to cut him off, facing him properly now.

“—and I keep forgetting that it's been a hundred years for you—” he goes on frantically, before she finally manages to quiet him.

“Steve!” she snaps, and places her hands on his shoulders, so that she can make eye contact. “It does not bother me. Did our conversation this morning mean so little to you? I love you, and you need not feel strange about physical affection.”

His eyes darken at her words, and suddenly she is across the room, and their lips meet.

It is a good thing that she turned the gas off when she did, because they do not make it back to the kitchen for a while, the pancakes sitting in their stack, forgotten.

***

There is something warming, gratifying, soul-cleansing about being known so intimately. Sure, there are things Steve missed in the in-between, but it's easier to catch him up on those things than it would be to have to try to explain where she comes from, how she got to this world. Steve has seen her at her most idealistic, and also at her most disillusioned, and he loves her anyways. He's also easy to talk to in a way that most people aren't, and willing to listen in a way that most people won't.

As they lay in bed that evening, curled up together, she relishes it.

“The last time we were together, I thought I was made of clay, brought to life by Zeus’s hand," she tells him, still trying to make sense of it all. (It's possible that she's been using Steve's arrival to postpone a slight identity crisis, but then she realizes that she can share this with Steve.) "Then Ares told me Zeus had a hand in my birth the normal way. Now Aphrodite tells me the story about the clay was true, except it was by her hand. I am not entirely sure what to think anymore, Steve.”

“Well, isn't that just a Topsy-turvy sort of lineup,” Steve says by way of reply, apparently mulling it over. Before she can say anything else, however, he has something more to add. “I gotta say though, Diana. It seems to me that for all the flashy powers you have, it's your capacity to love that makes you strongest.”

It's such a Steve response. To casually distill something down to its essence, and make it seem like an accident. As if he hasn't just seen right through her.

"And I mean, the things you can do are truly spectacular! I don't mean to say they aren't. It's just that it's how you use them that really matters, and you use them because you're so full of love. Compassion. Kindness. Anyhow," he trails of, scrubs his hand against the back of neck awkwardly.

"No; thank you, I think you are right," she says, catching his hand. Then, "I want it to be her," she admits. "I want Aphrodite to be my godly parent. Is that bad?"

Steve considers for a moment. "My mythology is a little rusty, but I know better than to choose a Greek god out loud."

At this, Diana laughs. He's not wrong.

"But no," Steve says. "I don't think it's wrong. I can't think of a single myth where being Zeus's kid really worked out for someone."

"Steve!" she exclaims, but she's still laughing.

The conversation dies out soon after, and sleep follows not far behind.

***

On this day, the solstice, the darkest day of the year, Diana wakes alone, but falls asleep next to her love. Like the light of a bonfire in the darkness, like the merry twinkle of Christmas lights or the soft, resolute glow of Chanukah candles, like the promise of five extra minutes of sun, like the clean expanse of new beginnings, there is a little extra hope in the world, bright with possibility. The days will lengthen and with them their love, and they will finally have the time to find out what people do when there aren't wars to be fought.

#wondertrevsecretsanta #wondertrev #wondertrev fic #steve trevor x diana prince #diana prince x steve trevor #steve is alive #fic exchange #gift #wondertrevnet #mousedetective #my fic #my writing #diana prince #wonder woman #steve trevor #wtss2019 #i'm so extra but i'm done tagging now

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thebookkeeperslibrary · 4 years

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Lost Time: Ch. 3

Fandom: Time Warp Trio Author: The_Bookkeeper_96 Rating: T Summary: Another summer at Horae Manor begins, but before Joe and Tessa get the chance to train, they are sent out on a mission to explore the magic capital of the universe, Mancika. Rumors of illegal magic conversion spread throughout the city, and Joe and Tessa need to locate those responsible. But after the events of last summer, Joe isn't eager to work with his Aether partner, and the two are struggling more with each other than with their enemies. Read on AO3

Preview:

"It is important that every magic wielder identify their weakness. And then learn how to guard it at all costs." Principles of Magic, Chapter 6 by Flynn Alvaro

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Dinner had been long and silent. Seriously, I'd been in libraries that were louder. Fred had tried to lighten the mood with several bad puns and jokes, but it just made everyone even more uncomfortable. Sam, Arwen, and Juniper prodded Tessa and me for information, but neither of us was in a talking mood after everything we had just learned. We needed more time to process it all.

I had hardly touched my dinner, and I'm regretting it now. My stomach rumbles so loudly, I'm sure everyone in the room can hear me. Which included Cas, who's sitting next to me, and Tessa and Ro, who were on the ground about twenty feet below us in what looked like a large high-school gym. Apparently, this was the training room. Designed for all of our magical learning needs. It was hidden behind a door underneath the grand staircase in the entrance hall.

Tessa and I had been forced to come here after dinner. Ro and Cas didn't want to waste any time in preparing us for what was to come. Given that the fate of the entire space-time continuum rested in our hands, I don't blame them.

Fred, Sam, Arwen, and Juniper, on the other hand, had been told they could do whatever they wanted to do. Fred had followed Arwen off to a different training area, designed for those who didn't have any magical abilities. Sam and Juniper had wandered off to the expansive library. The girls didn't seem too happy to have company, but they couldn't exactly say no. So they were stuck with them.

"I really am sorry to drop all this on you and Tessa. But you deserve to know the gravity of the situation." Cas drums his fingers on the balcony railing as he speaks. "I'm also sorry that we have to force you into training so quickly, but Ro and I have an emergency council meeting tomorrow evening, and those things can last for days. So if we don't do this now, who knows when we'll be able to work with you."

"Right, the council…" I bite my lip and hope he doesn't ask how much I actually read of his books.

"Just how much of those books did you read?"

Damn. "Uh, well, you see, the thing is my normal school classes were really tough this year, and I didn't really get a lot of free time to do any magic stuff."

He tilts his head back and sighs. "Can you at least tell me what the nine magics are?"

"Um…" I scratch my head thinking back on the small amount that I did read. "Well, there's time and space magic, obviously. And the other seven are the magics of life, death, nature, mind, body, creation, and the elements." I sit up a little straighter, proud of myself for at least getting that much.

"Correct. But what are their proper names?"

"Proper names?"

He sighs again. I'm beginning to worry that he'll push all the air out of his lungs soon. "The common way to refer to the different magics would be to call them the magic of time or the magic of the elements, but in more professional settings the correct way to refer to them would be using their proper names. For instance, the magic of time is temporamancy. Space is aethermancy. Life and death are animacy and necromancy respectively. Elemancy is the magic of the elements. Mundumancy is the magic of nature-"

"Oh, yeah!" I cut him off, excited to remember something else. "And cephamancy is magic of the mind. While corpomancy is the magic of the body. Then the magic of creation is fabricomancy."

A soft smile plays along his lips. "Exactly. I'm glad to see you read the first chapter at least. Now can you tell me the origin of them?"

I press my lips together, mind racing to see what I know, but nothing comes to me.

Cassius leans forward, looking down at Tessa and Rowena who are talking on the ground below. I glance down at them as well. From Tessa's grumpy expression, I can tell she's not happy to be here. She looks up at us, at me. Her scowl lessens, but only slightly.

"This should be interesting," Cas muses.

"What are they doing?"

"A little magic practice. Rowena seems to think Tessa will learn better with an audience. We'll see how this goes." He nods at Tessa, still looking up at us. She gives him a terse nod in return and says something to Rowena before walking off to the far side of the gym. Rowena walks to the other side.

My gaze settles on Tessa as she settles into her spot. With a flash, her hands spark to life, bolts of purple electricity sparking between her fingers. A purple glow radiates out from her body like a second skin.

"Wow," I mutter, unable to help myself. She makes it look so easy.

Cas chuckles. "And that's not even the most impressive thing she can do. Now let's see how well you learn with a live demonstration."

My head turns sharply to look at Cas. He doesn't actually expect me to listen to him drone on about magic history while there's a cool magic show going on in front of me, right?

I'm proven wrong again as he takes a deep breath and begins, "There are currently nine known magics in the universe. All of these magics came from raw magic, the All Father's power. Raw magic still exists today, and occasionally someone will be born with the ability to wield it, but it is a deadly, all-consuming power."

"Can people choose their power?" I ask, already more interested than I expected to be.

"What? Not happy with your time magic?" He frowns at me.

"No! That's not what I meant. I just-"

"Relax." His frown lifts into a smile. "It's okay. No, there is no natural way for someone to change their power. The magic you have is the magic you're born with."

"Are there any unnatural ways?"

His face darkens. "No." The quickness of his response easily betrays his lie.

"But you said-"

"Joe." All traces of Cassius' usual warmth is gone. "I admire your curiosity and eagerness to learn about all this, but some stones are better left unturned." He ends the discussion with that. Before I can think too much about it, he returns the conversation to its original topic. "The first magics created were Time and Space. From Time, the All Father created Animancy, Necromancy, Cephamancy, and Fabricomancy. From Space, he created the other three magics."

"Can people with the magic of time or space use those other magics?" My thoughts trace back to last summer, when Cassius healed my wounds after we returned from Cealus. He'd said we both had healing magic, just not as much as actual Animantists.

"To a degree, yes." Cass nods his head. "Because of this Space and Time magic is considered to be a higher tier of magic. It's more complicated than the others, but this in no way makes us superior to them." He gives me a pointed look at that. "Despite what some people may believe. All magics are equal to each other. They are all important in maintaining the balance of the universe.

"You're job as the Warp Wizard, the job for any of the Greats, is to protect the balance of the universe. This task is especially important for the Warp and Aether Wizards because their domains are so vast and affect everyone." Cassius' hands light up with magic. He creates an orb of green light. The orb shifts and transforms into a yin yang symbol. "There is a balance in everything. And if the balance is disrupted, everything falls apart." The yin yang symbol dissipates into the air. Just as quickly as it disappears, a new shape takes its place. The forms continue to change shape as Cas speaks, synching up with the words he's saying. "Balance comes in many forms. Good and evil. Love and hate. Life and death. Even as the Warp Wizards, we cannot change the past or alter the future to our benefit. If someone we love makes a bad decision or loses their life, we must honor the path of time, accept what has happened, and move on as best we can. It is also our duty to ensure that everyone in the space-time continuum does the same."

I try my best to smile and keep my eyes open. Magic is just like sports. You have to learn the rules of the game before you can play, but the rules of magic are kind of boring. Surely as the Warp Wizard I would be able to have some fun with it. Maybe just go back and make sure I pick the right lottery numbers once or twice.

The death clock and its ominous tick flash before my eyes. Oh, right. The fate of the universe is in my hands. Maybe I should be thinking about all this a bit more seriously.

I look back down at Tessa, surprised that Cas has been able to hold my attention for so long. She hasn't moved, but neither has Rowena. The girls simply stare at each other across the vast floor.

After a long, tense silence, Ro shakes her head. With a sweep of her hand, she sends a wave of violet energy racing towards Tessa. She raises her arms in an X in front of her face. Just before the wave crashes into her, she slices her arms down, parting the wave with a small gap just big enough for her to fit through. She tumbles through the hole and rolls to her feet, ever the acrobat. Her sabre flicks out beside her. Cutting it through the air, Tessa is gone in the blink of an eye.

Rowena apparently anticipates this reaction. She moves her hands through the air, fingers forming strange shapes, almost like she's speaking sign language.

The room rearranges itself before my eyes. I try my best to keep up with the transformation, but I'm lost and confused almost as soon as it begins.

The gym is half the size it was a second ago. The ceiling is almost touching my head now. Cas has to bend over to avoid hitting it. "I hate when she does that," he grumbles.

When Tessa reappears, she is only five feet away from Ro. By the shocked look on her face, I can tell this is not where she wanted to be.

Rowena immediately attacks her, lashing out with her fists and magic. Despite her lithe build, she's able to put a lot of strength into her movements. I have no doubt that she could knock me out in one hit.

Tessa does her best to dodge the quick punches, sliding back and forth, arms blocking her face.

This only makes Rowena attack harder, adding magic to her punches. A purple glow surrounds her fists.

Tessa jumps back out of the way. She uses her magic to propel herself through the air and jumps farther than any normal person should be able to. She spreads her hands out, palms facing the ground, the purple glow returning to her hands. Moments pass, but nothing happens.

Rowena presses forward, the light in her hands growing more and more intense. She throws them out in front of her, sending a laser of space magic flying straight towards Tessa.

Just before it reaches her, Tessa flings her arms up, and a shield of magical energy shoots up from the ground. Rowena's magic bounces off of it, flying back at her. She has no time to turn it off or redirect it before it hits her square in the chest and sends her soaring back. Purple flames dance along the floor at the place of impact.

Rowena manages to get to her feet, and with a wave of her hands, the flames die down, leaving only scorch marks on the ground in their place.

Tessa lowers her shield, breathing heavily as she stares down her mentor, who frowns at her in return.

"That was not what you were supposed to do." Ro's frown deepens. The smaller space allows me to hear their conversation better than I could before.

"Hey, I won, didn't I? Don't be such a sore loser." Tessa crosses her arms and looks away. The confidence in her voice is contradicted by the guilt on her face. She knows she messed up, but she's too stubborn to admit there's a problem.

I wonder what was supposed to happen. It all seemed like an impressive display of magic to me. Tessa did technically win the fight. So what was the big deal? Was there a specific spell or trick she was supposed to do?

"This sounds like something you two should discuss in private. If you wouldn't mind?" Cas says to his sister as he points to the ceiling, which is squishing his hair flat against his head.

"Of course. Sorry about that." Rowena pushes her arms away and up and the room returns to its normal size so fast, it makes me dizzy.

"Now, where were we?" Cas straightens his spine and fixes hair. "Oh, yes, balance. One of the many forms of balance is the partnership between the Warp and Aether Wizard. Which is why it is so important for the two to cooperate and be in perfect sync. For centuries, two people from almost every generation have been chosen as the protectors of the universal balance."

"Almost every generation? Were some of them skipped?"

Cassius goes on, ignoring my question. An annoying habit of his I really hope stops soon. "The Warp and Aether pair are complements to each other. One will excel where their partner falls short and vice versa. For example, what did you notice when watching Tessa practice?"

I think for a moment. Tessa's movements were graceful, and she was confident in every step. "She acted like she was on stage. Like she never left the circus."

"Well, yes," Cas chuckles. "But what did you notice about her attack style? Or lack thereof."

I look back down at the scorch marks on the floor. Was I supposed to know stuff about attack styles? I think back to our run-in with the drake at Cealus. Tessa had run and let Arwen do the fighting. She had managed to make a maze to confuse the drake and get us safely away from the city, but she hadn't fought anything in the process. "She didn't fight back… or attack at all really. She just defended herself and waited for opponents to take themselves out."

Cassius grins, and I can't help but feel proud again at another correct answer. I didn't exactly excel in any of my normal school classes, so doing well in magic school felt pretty good.

"Precisely. Tessa's strength is defense. Which as you saw, is still a pretty good battle strategy."

"Why doesn't she attack? Can she do any offensive moves?" Battle strategy is a new subject for me. It's not like it's part of a standard school curriculum. But I understand football, and the two don't seem that different.

"Oh, she definitely can, but for whatever reason, she chooses not to. It's been a long-going argument between her and Rowena. Tessa refuses to let her full magic potential out. Ro and I haven't been able to figure out why." Cas pauses, tapping his finger against his knee.

I clear my throat, bringing him back to the present with a start.

"Right, so we know that Tessa is strong in defense but weak in offense. Even if we hadn't seen your impressive displays of power in the past, we could assume you would be very strong in offense."

"But I'm probably weak in defense then, right?"

He smiles at me. "Weaker than Tessa, but we can still ensure you know how to defend yourself. Something you're going to be practicing soon."

"How soon?" I jump up in my seat. Finally, practicing magic, the whole reason I came here.

Cas snaps his fingers, and the next thing I know, we're standing in the gym, right next to Tessa and Rowena, neither of which seems surprised by our sudden appearance. From this new perspective, the room seems a lot more like an arena than a gym.

I turn to Cas, eyes wide. Does this mean…?

"Now."

#time warp trio #time warp trio fanfiction #fanfiction #joe #sam #fred #oc #kellie writes #kellie fanfic #kellie twt #my post #writing #writeblr

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spaceybot · 5 years

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A Cephalon’s Heart (Warframe Ficlet)

So on Warframe's website for Heart of the Ordis there's this gem:

“Operator, as is the custom, allow me to join in the celebration of the heart! Appreciating the cardiovascular system which facilitates your continued existence is a very worthwhile celebration. Happy Heart of the Lotus Ordis! Oh? What’s that? Hmmm…..how strange. Cephalon Suda just communicated to me that the holiday is more sentimental than biological. That seems misplaced. Ordis will never understand your strange celebrations, Operator.”

It then mentions that Ordis messed up the decorations so OF COURSE I HAD TO RUN WITH THIS. This is a DIFFERENT take on how Ordis found out about the true nature of the Heart of the Lotus.

Before the Eros Heart Ornament there was another. Ordis is still sulking about it.

“Ordis...why.”

The Operator holds the holo sculpture in their arms. Ordis had been eager to show it off the second the foundry had finished putting it together, calling his Operator over to inspect the festive decor. He had hoped that it would please them, but, judging from their tone their reception seems...mixed.

“It’s for the celebration, of course. What do you think of it?” He beams. “Ordis made sure to include every little detail, and it is quite accurate to human biology.”

“I can see that.”

“I thought, perhaps you’d like something to spruce up your personal quarters, what with it being a holiday and all. And I know how much you adore Tennobaum decorations.”

“Ordis, this is an anatomically accurate heart. You’ve replicated an actual organ.” They reply. There’a a beat of silence, and then a faint burst of static.

“－ just say you don’t like it, Operator －”

“No, it’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just, you’ve made a heart .”

“I am not understanding you. Is that not the point?”

Are they not celebrating the cardiovascular system?

The Operator only sets the sculpture back down with a barely suppressed laugh, the heart hologram flickering upon impact with the foundry table. Both of them feel a rush of alarm, for different reasons, when an unflattering choking noise rushes out of the Operator’s throat, giving away their failure to keep their laughter in check. Are they dying, Ordis wonders?

“The Heart of the Lotus celebration was－” They stop to correct themselves. Looks like the Tenno will need a new name for the holiday. “－ is , more symbolic and less…”

They gesture to the floating, red organ hovering above its polished pedestal.

“...literal. It’s about expressing love for one another. Your heart is a bit...realistic looking..”

The Operator can practically feel the Cephalon’s confusion radiate throughout the ship, his perplexity rendering him speechless. They're glad that their warframe conceals their wide grin. It'd only make it worse. The quiet stretches on and on.

In fact, Ordis remains so silent that the Operator almost fears they’ve broken the Cephalon’s poor, symbolic heart, and that he would never again speak to them. When he pipes up again it’s a sheepish whisper, as if he were saying something taboo and forbidden.

“I’m sorry, Operator. I’m sure the Lotus would have known this better than I.”

They don’t miss a beat. A photo-realistic heart sculpture and an innocent misunderstanding is not going to put a damper on their Cephalon’s mood. Not if they had anything to do with it.

“Well she’s not here.” A gentle smile lights up their hidden face. He can hear it in their voice. “But you are. Despite everything.”

“...Always.” They don’t know if it’s some form of affectionate annoyance or plain indignation that makes him say it that way, like it’s a simple fact, an obvious and steadfast truth that could never be changed. The Operator’s casual nod says it all: I know, I know. Before he can say anything else, the sculpture is back in his Operator’s hands and they’re making their way to their quarters, but not without giving the resting wyrm sentinel a few knocks.

“And since you are here, you’re going to come help me string up the lights.”

Assuming control of the wyrm, Ordis brings it out of its bay and sullenly trails behind them as they enter the artificial comfort of their own “room”. Even with their true self being shut up in the transference pod their more traditional quarters are growing on them They scan their surroundings until they find what they’re looking for. And there it is.

There’s garlands of red and pink lights coiled inside a box: leftovers from previous celebrations, back when the Lotus was around and Ordis less prominent as a result. The Operator wonders if he still feels that same neglect from them whenever they were away on a mission.

They’re trying their best to make up for it.

The time passes by in relative silence, with Ordis lifting up the garlands of light to whatever height the Operator finds most pleasing, and the two of them working together to create a warm and lovely space for the Operator to simply look at. Ordis almost doesn’t see where they’ve put his failed sculpture, until the Operator turns to look at it, admiring it with no small amount of amusement. On the table with the somachord, the heart rests, glowing in tandem with all the reds and pinks from the string lights. The room is bathed in too many different shades of the same color but neither seem to mind.

They crash into the seating that surrounds the somachord, reclining back into the cushions, satisfied.

“Oh, Operator, you don’t have to place it there to make me feel better.” Ordis chides after a while, the wyrm aimlessly hovering above the offending decor. A random song, no doubt playing from the somachord starts playing, and perhaps that was the missing element. The room seems complete now, the atmosphere gaudy and pink but perfect all at once. “Operator did you hear me?”

They increase the song’s volume ever so slightly, but not enough to drown out any significant noise. It’s only a quiet drone, a white noise meant to lull someone to sleep.

“No.” The Operator replies. “Music’s too loud.”

“You’re hilarious.”

They snort in amusement before scooting over and patting the seat next to them. The wyrm plops down into the cushion, sinking ever so slightly, like a petulant child forced to obey a command. Its tail awkwardly wraps around itself, in an attempt to settle in, but every movement threatens to topple the sentinel over. The Operator reaches over, and for a moment he thinks they’re trying to help him balance and stay in place.

Instead, Ordis watches, seeing as he cannot feel, them wrap their arms around the wyrm in the midst of its struggles. He stills in their embrace. Is this customary for the holiday as well? He wonders. He wouldn’t mind getting used to it. Ordis is almost taken aback by how cute his Operator could be when the stress wasn’t eating away at them. Almost enough to let go of his heart sculpture mishap.

“The heart’s staying in here.”

Complete silence, save for the gentle and light music, resounds through the room as Ordis considers this.

“So...you do like it?”

“Yes. I think it’s funny.”

“Hm, I suppose that’s acceptable then. I will not fail you next time, Operator.” He vows.

The Operator sighs in exasperation, releasing the wyrm.

“Ordis, it’s okay! It’s not a big deal. And it’s not all about the decor.”

“I am aware of that now, but…out of curiosity.” He pauses. “What is it supposed to look like?”

The Operator sighs again, deeper still, but obliges, making a heart shape with their warframe’s hands. “It’s supposed to look like this.”

“What is that.”

“A heart.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Look , it’s complicated. But that’s what it looks like.” Bringing their hands to either side of the wyrm's "face", they rest their head against the sentinel, in a way that’s so aggressively affectionate it borders on humorous. And yes, maybe that’s just what he needs knock it out of his processor. A tiny amount of blunt force applied to his mechanical proxy, a force that he couldn’t even feel.

“Happy Heart of the Lotus, Ordis. Let it go.”

“Happy Heart of the Lotus.” He replies, defeated. “I would tell you that I love you, but I have the feeling that you already know.”

They laugh at that.

But he isn’t done with the questions just yet, no, Ordis spends a long time pondering it all, and the longer he spends the more questions arise. He supposes that he could eventually come to accept it, somewhat. Possibly . But what’s the use, the Tenno have such strange celebrations, and he’s sure that there are even stranger ones. As soon as he could process this one, another would be sure to pop out of no where and throw him back into the depths of confusion. He had much research cut out for him. The glow of his heart catches his attention once more.

The faithful recreation hovers in front of them both, translucent and bright. It is a much more reasonable model in his eyes. He had spent a good deal of time and effort to form the aorta, map out the textures, and to even have it beat in silent synchronization with the real deal, only to lose out to whatever strange symbol the Operator had made with their hands. And, oh, that reminds him:

“I included a button that allows you to see a cross section of the organ.”

They only stare at him.

“Would you like to see it?”

The Operator sucks in a breath, in deep contemplation, before releasing it in a deep exhale.

“I would, actually.” They admit, unable to contain their curiosity from possessing their senses. They suppose it’s their turn to be defeated. Besides, they don’t need to be scolding him any further.

Reaching forward to grab the holo sculpture, they nestle back into their seat with it in hand, allowing Ordis to give them a presentation on the structure of the human heart, until even that devolves into casual conversation, half affectionate and half teasing words, and a good-natured promise to try creating another heart soon, together this time.

The Operator stares out the observation window, watching the vast expanse of empty colors fill their vision as Ordis goes on. Finally, a moment’s rest with the their eternally faithful companion. It’s been too long.

They smile to themselves. The day tapers off to a quiet end, with Ordis’ heart still resting in their hands.

#Warframe #cephalon ordis #ordis #warframe fanfic #heart of the lotus #warframe operator #warframe spoilers #Ordis is a giant loser nerd but I still love him

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amrita-gsk · 5 years

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Okay, okay, so I watched Fade to Black the other day and I kept thinking "Wow, that one IchiRuki blog I followed recently was righter than rain. They're gott damn fools in love." And then I watched Hell Verse and I'm like, "He went back into Hell for her (and Renji n Uryuu, but the focus was on Rukia so like, whatever, right?). He's a gott damn fool in love." It's so obvious that's is nearly painful, lmao

Sorry for the super late reply but I hadn’t checked my asks, I’M REALLY SORRY!!! But never late than never, right?

You are most certainly right, it’s physically painful to watch just how obvious their relationship is and even though the movies aren’t considered canon (although FtB is half canon due to how much Kubo invested himself on it) it does leave you thinking just why Pierrot always made so much emphasis on them. People like to argue and say it was because Rukia is the co-protagonist and that’s why she is shown to have so much importance to Ichigo, but in my opinion they could have highlighted Rukia‘s general relevance to the series without it holding such a sentimental value for him… however I can’t say they came up with it out of nowhere because they only took what already existed in the manga, deepened it and centered around it to make a whole movie out of it. Also, what was said by Kubo, Masakazu Morita and Fumiko Orikasa during the promotion campaign for the movie raised a lot the expectations regarding the nature of their relationship, I’ll quote some:

INCLUDED IN THE FADE TO BLACK MOVIE GUIDE

(Morita and Orikasa were interviewed regarding their experience while working in the movie. I shall refer to the interviewer as Q… for question, yes, I’m that simple. There were also some titles for some questions, which I will keep along the questions. )

Q: What were your thoughts when you first heard the third movie will be a story centering around Ichigo and Rukia?

Moritan: Compared to the first two movies, when I read the scenario I felt that it was a very strong story. I thought that it was a story that would revolutionize the “origin” of Bleach, with the meeting of Ichigo and Rukia as its main focus.

Oririn: I was surprised by the catchphrase “sayonara Rukia”. Director Abe told me that “something is going to happen to Rukia” so I felt insecure (laugh). But then I saw that the scene from the first episode was going to be in the movie and understood that because the TV animation of Bleach exists, this movie was able to exist as well. It is because of this that I think this movie may reach deep into the hearts of the people that has supported us up until now.

Q: To convey things that can’t be seen… Parting from this theme, what does this movie strongly aims to express?

Oririn: The movie tries to show something that can’t simply be seen with your eyes. I think that if I were to put it in words, I’d call it “bond”, but even then something deep inside our hearts might disagree. I feel the movie theme is so delicate that it cannot be explained just by words.Moritan: Because we’re practically done with recording this third movie, I feel very strongly about the “bond” there is with Rukia and beyond that, the connection between their souls. We reenacted Ichigo and Rukia’s meeting in the first episode from four years ago. Since then, through all of our journey and until now, as Ichigo and as myself as well, there were a lot of times when we came to become used to our mutual relationship. Then, a shocking meeting was drawn again and Ichigo as well as myself, were reminded of how important Rukia’s existence is. We were able to question it again. I think this series is becoming like that.

Oririn: I know that Ichigo cared about Rukia but I never thought it was something this deep, so it was a bit unexpected. Right now it seems appropriate to call it “history” because thanks to the things of the past we are able to have today, which is connecting to the future. I feel very strongly that Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship isn’t something that was built in the blink of an eye but rather it’s something that’s still being built up.

Q: It’s quite complicated, isn’t it?

Moritan: For me, I feel that the theme this time, “bond”, shows that the connection between souls is thicker than blood, but if I were to say that’s everything there’s to it then it would feel wrong and that won’t do. The first movie theme was “protect”, the second was “believe” and I took those words inside and buried them deep within me while performing. But this time it wasn’t enough to just use the word “bond”. Even if you were to say “I really love you” to your loved one, you still wouldn’t be able to tell them how much you really love them. My feelings are exactly like that right now. But even if “bond” couldn’t describe it, saying “super bond” sounds weird (laugh).

Q: Let’s pick up on what Orikasa-san said.

Moritan: There are a lot of things packed inside that emotion. And inside of it, choosing just one won’t show you the way. I wish to leave it to everyone’s own impression to see and feel just how deep that feeling is.

Oririn: That’s right, we’ll leave it to every fan that watches the movie, to decide with their own thoughts and feelings if the story is really that deep or not.

Q: Is Ichigo and Rukia’s confrontation an important point?

Oririn: It’s their first confrontation, but this time Rukia isn’t herself and doesn’t have any memories so I just went along with it without giving it much thought.

Moritan: It was difficult for me. Ichigo could never attack Rukia, you know. So it was really hard to fight her. It was very hard for Ichigo to see Rukia’s altered form.

The Recording Process

Q: How was the recording?

Moritan: Back when we did the first movie it was also our first time so we got really worked up about it, but because this is the third time, the recording became stylish and refined without any meaningless acts. The whole recording was made so it could be observed from behind, so we could concentrate only in performing and it was very fun. I was able to perform Ichigo’s core essence without any distracting thoughts. However it was my first time having to shout “Rukia!” so much.

Oririn: I’m usually the one that keeps calling “Ichigo!”, right? (laugh)

Moritan: I actually discovered a new way to perform and wistfully cry out “Rukia”.

Q: Speaking of performance, we heard that Ichigo’s voice is being renewed?

Moritan: That’s right. I changed my voice this time. It’s the fifth year and the third movie after all (laugh).

Oririn: Is that so? (laugh)

Moritan: Actually, Ichigo’s voice has changed numerous times up until now. I think you’ll notice that his current voice is really different if you watch the first episode again. I’m leaving behind my turning point and letting Ichigo grow. The Ichigo of this moment is like going back to the first Ichigo as I performed raising my voice a bit. What’s more, I usually talk monotonously and as if I was uninterested but this time I attempted to more or less give more intonation to it so the words themselves would express on their own. Actually, and I’m not trying to show off, but when I was practicing at home this voice for Ichigo was naturally born. When I stopped to wonder why, I realized just how much Rukia’s existence is able to move your heart. So this voice came out naturally from myself and I felt that if I performed with it as it was, my own heart would also be easily touched. So then I was able to act with this voice during the recording.

Q: As a result, did the Sound Supervisor give you an OK?

Moritan: I did it secretly without asking permission. I got scolded and were given an NG (no good) so I was worried. However, because the voice intonation was congruent, Ichigo’s change in emotions was tangible in the story.

Q: Then, did Orikasa-san make any changes as well?

Oririn: Even though the movie was special, I didn’t make any changes. I’ve been entrusted to perform Rukia in the TV anime version until now, so I’m always striving to express Rukia’s feelings one by one. It wasn’t any different for the movie. Only during her time in Inuzuri, the young Rukia who lived together with the twins had a different personality than the Rukia after her meeting with Ichigo. I think that she became cooler. During the flashback scenes, I performed while keeping in mind that she would express her emotions differently during those times.

Q: Did you make any good memories during the recording?

Oririn: During the scene when Rukia’s memories about Ichigo are returning I was asked to insert an improvisation of a warm word that symbolizes her, but because Rukia only used to say insults, I couldn’t come up with anything (laugh).

Moritan: Everyone tried very hard to think of something, but at the end all we could come up with was “tawake” (idiot). It was troublesome. I said, “I don’t remember ever being told warm words!” then everyone burst into laughter.

Oririn: The whole cast and staff were laughing hard, and come to think about it, even Kubo-sensei who had come by was laughing as well. Looking at his smiling face I could really feel his trust in us. It left a very good feeling.

Moritan: Even though he was busy, he kept looking after us for the whole two days of recording. His presence gave us strength and assured our hearts.

Message

Q: To finish, do you have a message for the fans?

Oririn: This time around the movie is about “a feeling that can’t be described by words” (laugh). What the characters hold inside their hearts couldn’t be expressed by a single word, it doesn’t have a shape and it can’t be seen but they’re connected at their very core… I strongly think that rather than watching, I wish everyone will be able to feel it.

Moritan: I hope for the fans to think about the importance of calling out someone’s name. This time, Ichigo is calling out Rukia, Renji, Byakuya and other people’s names but no one calls out his name. Even though he calls out no one answers him, so now I know how sad it is having no one to call your name. A name isn’t only something for you to call other people, but for other people to call you as well, that’s what I’m trying to say. I wish for everyone to watch the movie and understand how important it is. And after finishing watching the movie, I wish everyone will call out the name of the person they love.

…Those were Morita and Fumiko’s opinions on it (there’s more, but this is already long as it is) now, here’s what Kubo had to say about it:

INSIDE THE PAMPHLET GIVEN OUT DURING FTB’S PREMIERE

Kubo: The third movie is a special work for BLEACH. It’s different from the usual element of the other movies and it’s a story in which BLEACH’s origin is closely drawn. I’m hoping for this story to remain, even if just a little, inside the heart of a lot of people.

INSIDE THE MOVIE GUIDE

Q: Like in the previous work, we heard you were involved in this year’s movie since the early stage.

K: I think it all started around March when Director Abe and the movie staff came to me. Back then, Director Abe wanted a “back to the beginning” theme and wished for the main characters, Ichigo and Rukia, to be the focus of the story. On top of that, he wanted to portray something that linked back to the first chapter of Bleach, it’s original appearance… I was very happy to know that the movie was heading in that direction and said “that’s good, let’s go with that!” And from then on I joined in the production and put together the story and the setting after discussing it with everyone.

Q: We heard the scenario was completed after a lot of hardships?

K: The theme of the story was something I could agree with, but there were still some parts that made me worry up until the end. The speech in the last scene especially, I discussed it and decided it with the director at the recording studio (laugh).

To tell you the truth there are still bits I wanted to develop but if I did that who knows how long the film would be (laughs).

(I’ll make a pause here because in case anyone is wondering, he’s referring to Ichigo’s speech at the end, the one that goes:

“If death isn’t really the end, then that time we met might not have been the first. We might have been connected from long before that. I’m not really sure, but I think maybe once a bond is formed, it never disappears. If that’s the case, even if we forget everything, we’ll be connected again somewhere in the future.”

Soooo… yep, he personally worked on it.)

Q: Even the subtitle was given from you?

K: Ever since the second movie the subtitle was brought up by me. Since the moment I heard Rukia would lose her memory the image that her memories of Ichigo and the Gotei 13 would disappear came into my mind. After that, the meaning of “disappearing into black” became the subtitle “fade to black”.

Q: You even came up with the japanese subtitle “Calling Out Your Name”.

K: After coming up with the english subtitle “fade to black” they asked me to come up with a japanese one (laugh). So after carefully digesting the scenario I searched for some scenes that could hold the key words that I could use and found in the plot that someone calling someone else’s name was a strong expression that “even though no one else remembers you I do” and I found out it had an important meaning behind it, especially regarding this story where Ichigo keeps calling Rukia’s name. So that’s how I came up with the subtitle “calling out your name”.

Q: Please tell us, in your opinion, what’s the highlight of this movie?

K: Regarding the fights it’s not Ichigo vs. the Gotei 13, but Ichigo vs. Rukia. In the first scenario there wasn’t a “last boss” yet and someone raised the question about it. And we thought that since Ichigo forgot about Rukia, “we want to see Ichigo and Rukia!” We started planning after that. In this fight there’s actually a scene that links back to the first chapter of the manga and in my opinion I feel it’s the most important scene in the movie. It links with what the director said about going “back to the beginning”.

Q: As you were involved in this movie, were there any bits you drew thinking about going “back to the beginning”?

K: I didn’t come up with the idea of using the scene where Rukia gives her power to Ichigo like in the very first chapter, so going back to that scene in the movie made a strong impression in me and I felt that it was very interesting. On top of that, because of this story I was able to recognize once again that Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship is something special.

Q: What do you think about the bond those two have with each other?

K: It’s not friendship but it’s not an amorous feeling either. Regarding these two, I don’t think there is other relationship like theirs in other works where despite standing in a very close position with each other it is not romance (laughs). But in this year’s movie there is a scene where Ichigo says Rukia is his “precious nakama” and I think that explains their relationship well.

Q: You watched the movie at a private screening, but what sort of feelings did you have about it?

K: I had fun (laughs), because it’s my own work it feels completed but on the hand it means that you can’t create anything stronger than that. In some parts while I was drawing I would think “would this sort of situation really happen?”, but even so I was the one who thought and came up with the plot so even it amazes me it doesn’t feel “new”. Even if I as the original author was involved, the drawings are done by other people and the voices are done by the voice actors, so when the movie is completed I always savor the feeling of surprise. “They should move like this”, “their voices are like that”, I always give feedback with a lot of emotion and excitement, and I’m always looking forward to that.

Q: What bits do you want everyone to focus on?

K: The relationship between Ichigo and Rukia. The change in their feelings.

And there you have it. I won’t add anything about Hellverse because they centered more around the action aspect of it during the promotion so that’s it. I did find curious the fact that Kokuto decided to use Rukia to bait Ichigo to attack him… although I could always just go with “she’s the only female of the group, Ichigo has a savior complex, yadda yadda yadda…” but they could have also just kept Yuzu longer in hell to motivate him. There’s also the fact that once he defeats him he basically forgets about Uryuu and Renji as he’s too occupied talking to Rukia… I WONDER WHY *shrugs*. The thing with Fade to Black is that Kubo was deeply involved in its production and as I quoted above from what he said back when it first got released he actually said that he came up with the plot himself and that it was his work, and I think it speaks tons about what actually is the nature of their relationship when you watch this movie and you get that speech at the end (besides everything that happens in between, including Ichigo’s built-in Rukia radar), and then the author of the original work comes and tells you he worked on it himself.

IchiRuki is painful in the sense that it’s so right, so harmonious, so obvious, so perfectly written and executed, but it got served wrong at the end. But yes, their relationship is the maximum expression of love there is on earth and I think I don’t speak only for myself when I say they’re the goal.

#IchiRuki #Fate to Black Call Out Your Name #Bleach Movie #intense shipping #when the non canon material is actually canon #I avoided going deeper into the more than friends less than lovers topic because HOW MUCH FUCKING LONG WOULD THIS BE #I'm just going to watch this freaking movie again because I need it #that one answer that became a full blown post #sorry for not being sorry

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moonlitwing · 6 years

Text

Throwing Vases

Looking for a fun 'couples activity', Barbara and Nomura take a pottery class.

Post-canon, except the Heartstone either wasn't destroyed or was restored, so the trolls never left Arcadia Oaks. After the Battle of Eclipse, the humans of Arcadia Oaks knows about trolls and Changelings, so Strickler and Nomura and Not Enrique (and Jim!) are able to live openly on the surface. (Changelings are immune to sunlight even in troll form and Jim is using the sunlight-immunity stone in his amulet.) Barbara and Strickler tried dating again for a while but broke up amicably. Barbara and Nomura have been casually dating for a while and recently became exclusive.

–Italicised text between hyphens– indicates text messages. (Emojis) are described in parentheses.

Story cross-posted on [AO3] and [FFnet]

–I know you're more interested in collecting pottery than making it, but I thought this might be something fun to do as a couple.–

Nomura followed the link Barbara had texted her to a digital flyer from a local pottery studio, offering classes on Thursday evenings for six weeks.

There were essentially two ways to make pottery: handbuilding, which was self-explanatory, and throwing, where the project was crafted while being spun on a pottery wheel. The first three weeks of class would be devoted to handbuilding, and the final three to working with wheels.

–It would be nice to have a standing date night. (heart)– Nomura texted back.

–I'll sign us up?–

–Go ahead. (smiley face)–

–(smiley face)(heart)(blown kiss)– –Done and done; and look, I found a vase emoji! (vase)–

–That's an amphora. They were used in Ancient Greece to store and transport food such as grain, fish, or olive oil. And especially wine (champagne flutes clinking)–

–(heart-eyed smiley face) You are so smart.–

Barbara had blocked the time off in her schedule, although they both half-expected her to be called away regardless. Nomura was the only troll in the studio, which did not surprise her. Most trolls and Changelings only appreciate ceramics as a snack food.

Another woman, likely the teacher since she had the studio's name on her shirt and was wearing a nametag, gave Nomura an assessing look when they came in and approached immediately with a frown.

Barbara's hand tightened around Nomura's. Nomura itched to draw her khopesh – except she didn't just carry her swords everywhere anymore.

"You need to wear shoes in the studio, ma'am. I'm not sure how that works with – hooves," gesturing at Nomura's cloven feet, "but it's policy everyone has to wear shoes or boots."

Nomura blinked. She was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, rather than her usual dress, and had tied her hair back, but footwear had simply not occurred to her. None of the, admittedly few, businesses she'd patronized since getting stuck in troll form had enforced a 'no shoes, no service' policy on her, regardless of what the signs on their doors proclaimed.

"I keep a spare pair of runners in my car," offered Barbara, "you know, in case I'm out wearing heels or sandals and then have to go to work. But I don't know if they'd fit you."

Barbara's sneakers did not, in fact, fit Nomura. They ended up missing their first class to shoe shop. In positive news, they found a pair of towering wedge-heeled boots that worked with Nomura's unique foot shape and, so Barbara claimed, were "amazingly sexy".

Class 1 had been simply to get the students used to the materials, tools, and layout of the studio. Nomura didn't feel like they had missed much by not getting to carve and etch into flat clay squares.

For Class 2, they were making shallow dishes.

"Ash trays used to be a common project for beginners," said Jenny, the instructor, "but if you don't smoke, and still want something more practical than a display dish, you might consider making a spoon holder." She held one up. It was round and flat-bottomed, with short walls and a divot on one side. "You can keep it in your kitchen by the stove, to put a spatula or large spoon down while you're cooking without getting whatever's on it on the counter."

Barbara's hands clenched, squishing the clay through her fingers. Nomura carefully bumped elbows with her. Barbara looked up and blinked away some tears.

"You okay?" Nomura whispered.

"Yeah," Barbara insisted. "I just … You know I don't cook much."

"Well, maybe having a new gadget in the kitchen will inspire you."

"Gadget." Triumph; Barbara laughed. "That's an exaggeration."

For Class 3, they made coil pots. Nomura kept making her clay 'snake' too long and having it tear in half as she worked with it. The difference in the thickness and texture of her fingers in troll form compared to human form never felt as obvious as when she tried to do something delicate. At least her stone skin was easier to wash the smudges of clay from than human skin was.

"I think the trick is to use shorter sections and blend them together at the ends?" said Barbara. She was making little spirals of clay and sticking them together, with grand ambitions of crafting a fruit bowl.

"Or give up and call the ragged bits an artistic choice."

"I thought you were planning to smooth out the sides when you were done?"

"I changed my mind. I'm putting too much work into this to just erase the evidence."

"You're cute when you growl."

Nomura froze for a second, and then growled again, far more playfully.

The first lesson with a pottery wheel was a simple one: to centre the clay and pull a cylinder.

Once Nomura accomplished that, she squashed her clay back into a blob and tried again, until she could do it with ease. Then she took her cylinder off the wheel and used the handbuilding skills from past lessons to add handles and embellishments, turning it into the mug that was this week's assignment.

"Can any of your glazes withstand an intense scouring process?" she asked Jenny.

"… You mean a dishwasher?" the human asked.

"I mean a harsh antibacterial soap." Nomura looked to make sure Barbara wasn't listening. She was safely across the studio, testing the different speeds of the wheel and reshaping her cylinder abstractly. "I'm hoping Barbara could take this mug to work when it's done, and she works at a hospital, so it absolutely has to be sanitized."

"Mm … Clay being porous, I'd have to advise against anything made here being used in a hospital setting, even with a glaze. I'm sorry."

–Sorry, babe, I'm just not going to get out of work in time. Have fun for both of us tonight?–

–It's no fun without you.–

–You're sweet. But go anyway.– –Make something to surprise me with. (winking smiley face)–

The final project was a covered bowl or a jar with a lid.

"Let's try to make ours the same size," Barbara suggested. "That way we can use the lids interchangeably."

"Sure." Making them as a set would be nice; something they could use 'together' by swapping the lids even if Barbara's bowl stayed at her house and Nomura's bowl stayed in her apartment.

Of course, that meant their project took longer, since they had to keep swapping and adjusting everything, but that meant they got to work together instead just alongside each other.

"You can pick your projects up next week," Jenny promised, when the jars and bowls and lids were taken away to be glazed and fired, and the classes were officially over.

Barbara held onto Nomura's shoulder to keep herself upright as she laughed. A box of nearly-broken pottery sat before them. Each item was in one piece, but each piece was technically non-functional.

Nomura's ceramics, nested safely in another box, had turned out fine. Barbara's had … not.

"I can't believe every single one of my projects cracked in the kiln! I mean, I can believe it, I do, but, wow. Even when it's not food, I cannot bake!"

"Just say the word and I'll eat the evidence," Nomura promised, purely to hear Barbara laugh even harder. Once her girlfriend regained her composure, Nomura suggested, "We should sign up for a painting class next."

#Nomura #Dr Barbara Lake #Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #fanfiction #Barbmura #short story

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sher-soc-the-famder · 6 years

Text

The Show Must Go On- Chapter 10

Word Count: 3536

Pairings: Gen, Platonic LAMP, Platonic Roman&OC, Platonic Virgil&OC

Warnings: Violence, Explosions

Masterpost

Read on AO3

<– Previous Chapter Next Chapter –>

Roman didn’t bother to open his eyes as light filled the strange compartment in the back of the van once more.

“Come on brat,” the man grunted. “It’ll be easier if you don’t fight us on the way.”

Roman hummed to himself, and made no move to follow their directions. He wondered if Patton had a point about the whole non-violent protesting. It could certainly be more entertaining, even if it felt less honorable. He tapped a rhythm out on his leg as the silence stretched and grinned to himself at the frustrated noise the man made.

“Kyle,” Rose said softly, “he's got a right to be angry—”

“Oh shut up,” Kyle growled, and Roman opened his eyes to see them glaring at each other for a brief moment. Rose looked down and away and Roman barely had time to brace himself before the back of Kyle’s hand meet his cheek. His neck snapped to the side and Roman focused on his breath as the man snarled.

“We gotta right to be angry too.”

Rose sighed heavily, and pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering something that Roman didn’t catch.

“Just–” she said through gritted teeth– “just let’s get him with the other one alright?”

Roman licked his lips, tasting salt that he wasn’t sure was sweat or blood until the extra iron tang hit the back of his throat. Blood it was, lovely.

Kyle hauled him up roughly and unlocked the handcuffs. He jerked Roman’s arms behind his back and reapplied them, before shoving him forwards. Roman focused as best he could, trying to focus through the ringing in his ears as they marched him through the almost warehouse.

The moment that they stepped through the door, he had to bite back a gasp, because godmother, Logan would have been dropping a Doctor Who reference then and there. The indoors gleaned in ways that they outside could never manage and Roman could have sworn there hadn’t been a second floor, but they were tugging him past a set of stairs anyways.

They paused outside a door without any handles and Kyle hesitated.

“You really think it’s a good idea to put them together?” he asked.

Rose shrugged. “Boss’ orders.”

Kyle grumbled something before tracing what Roman assumed to be a run along the metal of the door. The F-shaped rune glowed and Roman couldn’t help his gasp as the door slid open on its own. He stumbled as they shoved him in and he whirled on his heels as the door ground shut behind him.

“Well, a good day to you too!” He yelled back, and rocked back on his heels.

Something shifted behind him, and his breath caught. He was the confident one, but in that moment nothing felt certain. What if he thought wrong, what if this wasn’t who he thought it was? What if Virgil hated him? What if Virgil didn’t remember? What if—

“I can hear you thinking from here,” the voice was dry and exhausted, but it wrapped around his chest and Roman’s body shook with a single sob before he stopped himself.

“Well of course you can,” he said lightly, (fake fake fake) ignoring the way that his fellow cellmate would most certainly see his hands shaking. “My thought processes are perfect and need to be shared! My princliness is simply so out of this world that—”

“Roman.”

It was the waver in Virgil’s voice that did it and Roman took a deep breath, turning smoothly on his heel. He forced a grin on his face, and would have thrown his hands out if they weren’t cuffed behind his back.

“The one and only…” His words died off as he got a good look at the other side, eyes widening.

Virgil gave him a single tired wave from against the wall, black eye gleaming even in the low light. His clothes (too ragged, too worn down; even Roman had better) hung off of his frame and Roman could have sworn he caught sight of a scar before Virgil tugged the collar of his shirt up a little higher.

Virgil’s eyes were just as feverishly bright as they raked over his form, and Roman straightened as best he could. The anxious side’s emotions swirled in his eyes, too dark for Roman to pick them all up.

“Oh fuck,” Virgil breathed. “Seriously what the fuck, you look like they put you through a meat grinder, Princey.”

Roman let out an offended noise, somehow deliriously happy at the insult.

“Excuse you,” he wheezed, “I always look perfect. My beauty cannot be tarnished by something as simple as a kidnapping! If anything, my injuries only highlight the natural contours of my jawline, so how dare—”

He snapped his jaw shut as Virgil started to drag himself up against the wall, his legs shaking the entire way. Roman strode over—less than three steps, the cell was tiny—and cursed the fact that he was handcuffed. At most, he could offer his shoulder for support; only instead of taking it Virgil reached out and Roman yelped as he was yanked forwards into Virgil’s arms.

Virgil trembled, burying his head into Roman’s shoulder. Roman felt himself melt into the hold, pounds of stress dropping from his shoulders. Something clicked and Roman buried his nose into Virgil’s hair, pressing up against him desperately as if they could absorb each other through contact alone.

Maybe they’d go back to being Thomas and this whole thing would just be a bad dream.

Virgil’s fingers dug weakly into his back, and Roman could pick out a simple repeated mantra, mumbled into his shoulder.

“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.”

Roman’s breath hitched and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“You’re real,” he allowed himself to murmur, just once before he pressed his lips to Virgil’s head, waiting for the other side to calm down. Godmother, kidnapping or not, Roman was ready to do cartwheels for the next week. He felt a grin creep up his face and he wished that he could pick Virgil up and present him to the world with a scream, a twirl, serenade him until the other felt comfortable.

“Wh-whatever y-you’re thinking,” Virgil hiccuped into his shoulder. “No, just no.”

“Roman, yes,” he crowed, giddiness seeping into his voice.

“Roman, no,” Virgil’s voice was muffled by Roman’s shoulder, but Roman could feel his trembling ease.

As Virgil finally pulled back he had to bite back a whine; he knew it was ridiculous but it felt like Virgil would disappear again the moment they were apart. Virgil scrubbed at his face, taking a shuddering breath before blurting out.

“I’m sorry.”

“Pfffft,” Roman shrugged the apology off, turning to sink down against the wall. It scraped against his bruises, but he ignored it, preferring the way that Virgil sank down next to him, pressing their shoulders together. “I deserved that sock to the jaw, which of course, I handled masterfully like the prince I am.”

“You cried,” Virgil scoffed, a weak smirk curling up his face.

“I did not,” Roman shrieked, and winced as Virgil slugged his shoulder.

“You totally did, but that’s not what I meant,” Virgil replied, his face falling. He looked away, legs curling up towards his chest and Roman purposefully leaned against him even more. Maybe he’d be a grounding presence for once. “And you know it.”

Roman hummed, and brought his own legs up so that he could attempt to tangle them with Virgil’s. He rolled his eyes at the glare that Virgil sent him, and only shuffled closer every time that the other tried to shift away.

“I’m afraid that I really don’t,” Roman said softly, leaning his head back. “From my point of view you have nothing to be sorry for.”

The laugh that slipped out from Virgil’s mouth was dry and sharp.

“I dragged you into this. They never would have found you if you didn’t come here. Maybe you never would have gotten caught; maybe you would be, I dunno, living it up in the city somewhere,” Virgil muttered, digging his hands into knees. “But goddammit, I thought you’d at least be smart enough not to get caught after seeing the tail end of mine.”

“Wellll I mean...” Roman replied, drawing his vowels out and glancing up at the ceiling. Virgil’s eyes darkened as his head turned slowly to look at him, and Roman whistled innocently to himself.

“You didn’t,” Virgil growled.

“I have back up,” Roman scoffed, “There’s a plan. It’s a great plan, I love my plan.”

“A plan,” Virgil said slowly, “That started with you getting caught by the people you should be trying to avoid.”

Roman rolled his eyes.

“A true hero can escape from any bonds he is thrown into!” Roman barreled on before Virgil could object even more. “I wasn’t about to just leave you behind! The only other option to track you down would have been to use the ten year old. At least I think he’s ten; I haven’t actually asked. And Patton would have killed me for that! It wouldn’t have been right!”

Roman took a deep breath, pasting on a grin. “And so! You’re hero has arrived to rescue you from the lair of the Evil Organization that would dare get in the way of our reunion.”

“Oh my god,” Virgil buried his head in his hands, and Roman spared a moment to be jealous that he could even do that. His arms were starting to cramp already. “You’re hopeless. You’re going to die and I’m going to be stuck here watching it. If we’re lucky, I’ll die first. Do you even bother to, I dunno, tell your back up about this plan?”

“Of course I did!” Virgil turned expectant eyes to him and Roman relented, “Victoria and Richard were somewhat helpful in pointing out the very few flaws in the idea.”

Virgil froze next to him and Roman blinked.

“Richard,” Virgil said in disbelief, “The twelve year old Richard? That Richard? A child helped plan this Roman?!”

Roman rolled his eyes again, “It wasn’t just him Virgil calm down. I came up with most of it, and Victoria checked it for how realistic it would be to pull off. We are infinitely prepared for whatever could happen.”

“Tell me Victoria is like, Logan 2.0,” Virgil begged. “A genius of the highest calibre; someone who keeps you grounded.”

“Well of course! Victoria is the first person to recognize my perfection so…” He trailed off as Virgil groaned. Roman rolled his eyes. “Oh come on! I come up with marvelous ideas, Monster Mash!”

“We’re gonna die,” Virgil moaned. “They’re going to pull us apart to see how we tick and no one will ever know what happened to us. Everything will crash and burn. We’re never going to see the others.”

Roman sighed, leaning in against Virgil and struggling to set aside his pride and excitement to focus on the other. Virgil’s breath hitched and Roman grumbled under his breath about not being able to properly hug him. The lack of response made his stomach drop and he nudged Virgil lightly.

“Come on Virge,” he coaxed gently, “trust me on this. We’re going to get out of here. You can get Vic to yell at me with you for pulling this off. You’re going to love her and hate her at the same time I promise. We’ll go find Patton and Logan, then you and the nerd can yell at me some more. It won’t change the fact that I was a hero, so.”

He wanted to tug Virgil closer to himself, but he settled for leaning his head against Virgil’s.

“It’s going to be alright. I promise.”

Roman wrapped his arms around Virgil as soon as it registered where they were. He felt Virgil’s hand dig into his back once more and Roman squeezed back as hard as he could. They stumbled over and crashed into Thomas’s couch, the soft cushions familiar enough that he felt Virgil tremble.

“What if they’re not– What if—”

“They are,” Roman insisted, hooking his chin over Virgil’s head. Here he felt almost like things were normal, that they were alright. His voice grew urgent, hoping that the other would understand. “I’ve seen them Virge! Here! But not really? Dreams are weird and I’m not quite wired to understand them on this level anymore.”

Virgil shifted, shuffling until he sat between Roman’s legs, fingers tangled in his shirt with a grip so tight that it pulled at Roman’s skin.

“Are–” He hesitated– “Are they alright?”

Roman tightened his grip on him, closing his eyes and feeling the room shift as he tried to dredge up the old memories of the dreams that had drifted at the edge of his consciousness. Virgil stiffened beneath him, and Roman hunched his shoulders inwards, waiting for the words of reproval. For Virgil to ask why he hadn’t gone after the others first.

How he could have chosen any of them over the rest.

“God, Logan, mood,” he heard muttered instead, and he couldn’t help the hysterical giggle that escaped from his lips.

“We're going to find them,” Roman murmured. “Together.”

Virgil leaned back into his chest and nodded, whispering back.

“Together.”

Victoria's knees jiggled as they stared at the warehouse just down the block from them. She wasn't alone in her nerves; Richard gripped Roman's cape tight enough that Vic almost thought he was going to tear the cloth.

"Okay." She let out a breath. "Okay, we just have to get inside and find them right? Easy. They're not expecting us, we can go invisible. Just– Just get under the cape and wander around just like Roman said. Simple. Easy. We can do this."

"Not," Richard groaned.

"Hey, hey, hey, no. I need you to be with me on this kid," Vic protested. "Repeat after me: it's possible"

"No."

"God, you're a little shit," Vic told him, and earned a weak smirk in return.

Richard twisted the cap in his hands again, eyeing the warehouse with an even darker look than she leveled at it.

"It's not that large—" Victoria started weakly.

"No," Richard interrupted. "Large. Bigger inside."

"Oh so now we're throwing Doctor Who into this now too," Victoria said dryly. "Sure why not. Let me know when the werewolves and fairies are going to show up. I want to get my silver and iron early. I hear Target has a sale on crosses."

"Vampires." Richard eyed her. Judgmentally.

"I know that– We're just stalling now aren't we?"

"Yup."

"Fuck. Alrighty then."

She took a deep breath and threw her door open, climbing out of the car. It wasn't a huge step but getting moving meant that she couldn't just sit in the car forever. She shuffled and narrowed her eyes at the warehouse. She couldn't make out any vans or cars, meaning that they must have taken Roman around the back.

Or they were invisible. Who knew. Not her, that's for sure.

Richard slipped a hand into hers, and startled Vic. She looked down at him.

"Hey," she said softly. "Like you said kid, it's going to be alright. It's gotta be. or I think Roman will do something even more drastic and I love him, you know I do, but I don't think it's possible to get even more Extra than planning your own kidnapping and not end in death. Please, no death. So we gotta make it work here and now.”

Richard blinked at her.

"Don't look at me like that," she said, inching towards the building. "You haven't seen the way that he's escalated before. He doesn't take things one step at a time. He leaps over the entire staircase and wonders why he broke a leg. Moron."

"Afraid." Richard whispered, almost tripping over her legs from how close he was standing to her. They walked closer to the gaping maw of death that was the warehouse before them; Vic wondered if maybe there was a 'Beware' sign somewhere that would complete the image. Or even 'Evil Villain Lair here!'

God, some part of her hoped so. That would be perfect.

"You and me both," she muttered, glancing down at Richard before taking a deep breath. "There. See it?"

She pointed towards a side door, just visible from where they were standing. A woman stood at the entrance, leaning back against it. Her suit was rumpled and every inch of her screamed indifference as she took a slow drag from the cigarette in her mouth.

"We can wait until she goes back inside," Vic whispered. "Slip in after her while the door is open. Then it's just a matter of finding our boys."

Victoria took a deep breath.

Just think like Roman, she told herself, and threw her shoulders back. She tilted her chin up, flipped her hair despite it not really being long enough for that action, and took the cape from Richard’s hands. She swirled it around them. The cloth did it’s magic thing, settling around them.

Richard huddled even closer to her side, gripping at her shirt. Once Vic was confident that they were out of sight, she strode forward. Richard kept as close to her as he could, to the point of almost tripping over her feet as they approached the door.

Vic bit down on her lip the closer they got, trying to ignore the way that Richard’s breath hitched.

They were going to this. They could do this.

She thought that up until the moment that Richard’s foot finally caught on her heel and they both went tumbling forward.

“Fuck!”

Her hands slammed into the concrete in front of them. She hissed at the sting and—

Wait.

“Well, what have we here?” The mage at the door asked and Victoria squeaked at the look in her eye. “A pair of young teleporters. Don’t you know that this is private property– wait.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Are you who I think you are? You both—”

She took a step towards them. Victoria threw her hand out as she scrambled to her knees, trying to place herself between the mage and Richard. Her heart pounded in her ears. Of course she had ruined it right from the start.

Richard let out a shriek as the woman took another step forward and flung his hand out.

“Back!” the kid screamed.

Victoria’s ears rung from the explosion that echoed around them. Her eyes widened as the woman flew back, slamming into the door and tumbling even farther as it almost shattered under the force of whatever the hell Richard had done.

“There is no way in hell that they didn’t hear that,” Vic breathed, her ears popping and the alarms from the building starting to wail in front of them. Richard shrunk in on himself, and fuck, they didn’t have time for guilt now.

“Okay–” She swallowed– “new plan. You get to do that. A lot. Away from me. As distraction. I’ll look for the boys. Take the cape. Be loud, be bright, be distracting.”

She shoved the cape at Richard, and put her hands on Richard’s shoulders.

“Can you do that?” He hesitated, and she shook him, just enough to snap his attention to her. Her entire body thrummed with the need to get to her best friend. She had to make sure that Roman got out of there. “Richard we don’t have time. Can you do that?”

He nodded, fingers turning white as he gripped the cape and pointed his fingers again. The building shook as a wall crumbled under whatever he was doing and then Richard was racing off deeper into the facility. Vic watched his retreating back for a long moment.

She wondered if his pale, thin-lipped face already streaked with grime would ever be something she could forget.

She shook her head of the thought and dove into the warehouse herself.

Her feet pounded against the metal of the hallways and Victoria cursed Richard for being right. The whole place was huge despite what it looked like, for every hallway she ran through it seemed like there were three more to turn into.

Her eyes darted over the doors she passed, looking for a clue, for a map; anything that could help her find where they had put Roman and Virgil.

Her chest heaved, and every muscle in her legs protested running anymore. She gritted her teeth and took off along the farthest left hallway, the one that lead deeper into the facility.

She took the next corner at a sprint, passing by a mage as she raced past. From the corner of her eye, the light caught the man’s face, his eyes reflecting almost a yellow color.

She skid to a stop, whirling on her heels and bringing her gloved hands up. The nails gleamed in the low light, ready for a fight.

But Vic blinked as she stared at the empty hallways.

She could have sworn—

She rolled her shoulders, and shook off the sudden chills that ran down her spine. She had to hurry. Victoria didn’t have time for mirages. She spun on her heels and took off at a dead sprint once more.

#sanders sides #TSMGO #Urban Fantasy #Roman Sanders #Virgil Sanders #OC: Victoria #OC: Richard #Explosions #Violence #TS-Storytime 2018 Submission

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darquedeath4444 · 6 years

Text

Of Tales Now and Long Ago

Chapter SEVEN

When Sakura stepped out of the office, Kagetsu hurried over to her. He did not question what the Mizukage had wanted, but he gave her an once-over to see if she was okay, and she once again felt pity for the man who seemed to genuinely care for her.

She knew his fate, after all.

Sakura clearly remembered the puppets that had acted as servants around the Haruno compound and when she reached out, a countless number of chakra signatures that weren't quite human replied to her call. Sakura made her way down towards the isolated cave located deeper down, and the moment she even got close, the smell of blood and rotting flesh hit her nose. She wordlessly commanded the puppets behind her move past her into the cave and begin the cleaning process.

Not like these caves would ever be used again.

At one point, she approached the mess and reached for a part of the bone that had begun to crystallize The process would be much faster deeper in the caves. Once she had them brought to the tunnels she had spent years living in with Toneri, they would turn to dust and crystalize on the walls in mere days.

With this thought in mind, Sakura commanded her puppets to clean any bits of flesh still left and to leave the bones in the tunnels. The puppets let out a series of clicks and they all floated out, soon leaving Sakura alone at the mouth of the cave that had changed her life.

Sakura spent a majority of her time in Kiri experimenting with the chakra techniques written down in the Haruno archives.

The Haruno chakra, or the Otsutsuki chakra, was the purest form of chakra. When shinobi clans took this chakra and made it their own, something distinctively theirs became a part of this chakra as it was honed and passed on. However, Sakura's chakra was the rawest, that was not tainted by generation after generation of human usage, and due to this nature, she could incorporate this energy into several other techniques.

Sakura broke out of her thoughts when her water dragon drew itself out from the river she had used as a medium and leaned down towards her. It's nuzzle left her cheek wet and she had to wipe at it lest she dirty her clothes but she merely smiled at the creature and it made a gurgling sound as its liquid vocal cords strained to create noise. Sakura could see her Puppet Cursing sphere glowing in its chest, where it heart would have been had it been a real being.

Two weeks had passed since her arrival in Kiri and by now, people were used to seeing her walking the fogged streets of the village. Some smaller shinobi families even extended invitation for tea and dinner towards her but she always had Kagetsu, and when he was not available Mangetsu, accompanying her and that kept a majority of them off her back. If that wasn't enough, the eerie clicking of her ever-present puppets warned the rest of them away.

It was that clicking, which people found creepy but brought her comfort, that alerted her of an approaching figure. She looked back to see Suigetsu rushed over, a wide grin on his face. "Sakura!"

Sakura spun on her spot to face him and greeted him with a soft smile of her own. "Hello, Suigetsu."

The boy skidded to a halt beside her. "Let's get lunch together!"

Sakura glanced back in the direction the boy had come from, but saw no members of his clan accompanying him. "You snuck out of a meeting?" She guessed.

"Academy," Suigetsu corrected, like it did not matter either way. "Now, let's go."

And just like that, her time in Kiri slowly drew to an end. Sakura stood at the gates of Kirigakure, checking over herself one last time. Kagetsu stood beside her, ready to accompany her back to Konoha, while his wife and children stood opposite them.

"I'll see you again?" Suigetsu asked.

Sakura smiled faintly at the similarities she saw between the boy and Sasuke.

'Allies,' her Inner said. 'He will make a good ally.'

Sakura nodded. "Of course," she told him.

"Take care, Sakura," Mangetsu said.

"You too," Sakura straightened her cloak over her shoulder then turned to Mizuki. "Thank you for having me."

The woman smiled. "Anytime, Sakura-san."

Sakura bowed one last time before she turned to the man beside her. "I am ready, Kagetsu-san."

"I'll be back." Kagetsu told his family, then nodded at her. "Then let us depart."

Sakura watched Mizuki, Mangetsu and Suigetsu wave at them as she followed the Hozuki head out of the village.

He's not coming back, she almost said. He's playing a role, just like the rest of us.

Hozuki Kagetsu's death was as swift and as painless as any death could be. Sakura watched him collapse onto the ground, then turned towards where the burst of chakra had come from.

"Is this mercy?" She asked softly.

"Some say death is release," Toneri stepped out from behind the trees. His empty sockets landed on her and a smile graced his lips. "Personally, I do not care too much."

Sakura crouched down beside the man that had taken care of he for the past month. "I'm sorry," she said simply. She felt something heavy in her stomach but could give it no name, so she pushed it aside.

Toneri laughed. "I took into consideration his service to you and made it as painless as possible," he said. "His body simply stopped working. Without a working body, one cannot register pain."

"A blast of sheer chakra powerful enough to simply force a body to shut down," she said in wonder.

Toneri nodded. "It only works against a single target and requires a long time to prepare," he said. "It is not very functional in battle."

Sakura hummed thoughtfully and allowed her companion to cut into her arm to extract a little of her blood. He proceeded to toss it around the clearing they were in, then tossed away the kunai as well. He left a few scuff marks on the ground, then turned towards her. "I believe that will be enough," he said.

Sakura looked one last time at the dead body lying in the clearing before she nodded. "Shall we depart?" She asked.

Toneri nodded and turned towards the trees. "The closest entrance to the caves are a little away," he told her. "From there, we will be heading home."

Sakura's thoughts went blank at the word. "Home?"

Toneri smiled. "Yes, home."

Sakura liked to think that the Haruno tunnels existed in a dimension of its own, where normal humans simply could enter without a Haruno or Otsutsuki guide. This was because these pathways, which had existed for as long as the shinobi nations, or even life itself on these lands, stretched out across the entirety of the lands and no one had ever come across them.

Of course, there were rumors about them, and they had grown during the Shinobi Wars when the Haruno had often used them as a means of transportation of backup, supplies, and information, but even if one did see them simply vanish, no one could follow them.

Sakura paused in her steps and looked around the stone structure. There was no sunlight, no fire, and the tunnels were simply lit up by the glowing blue-green crystals that symbolized their history.

Soon, in the distant, she could hear the sound of water. Toneri sped up, almost subconsciously, and Sakura followed without complaint. A while later, they arrived in a clearing with a small spring, and Sakura felt a sudden, powerful pull towards the glowing liquid. Her companion did not even stop; he simply kept going, pausing only when Sakura stopped at the edge of the water. He turned around, standing knee deep in the surprisingly deep spring, and smiled. "There is nothing to fear," he told her gently and slowly held out his hand.

Sakura took it without hesitation and allowed the older teen to guide her into the water. A few steps later, only her head was sticking out of the water. Toneri released her hand and moved a little further until he too was beck deep in water.

"There is nothing to fear," Toneri said again. "I will see you on the other side."

As if on cue, Sakura suddenly lost her footing. She immediately tried to find the bottom of the spring, only for her feet to hit nothing. She took an unwilling sharp breath, expecting water to come flowing into her lungs, only to blink and suddenly find herself sitting on the floor, completely dry, with Toneri smiling down at her. "That was the portal," he told her.

Sakura's head whipped up and glanced around. She allowed Toneri to help her to her feet and almost blindly followed him as he began walking in a certain direction.

"This is the bridge between the Earth and the Moon," he told her. "These orbs contain memories of all humans that have ever walked the lands," He gestured towards the glowing spheres. "Some are forever trapped in their memories and can never escape." However, when he reached towards one, the sphere floated away from him like it was being repelled. "That does not apply to us."

Sakura smiled as Toneri cleared a path for them and soon, in the distant, she could make out a huge shape. "The Gatekeeper," she whispered.

Toneri nodded. "The Guardian of this dimension."

Sakura knew of this creature from the tales passed down. The Gatekeeper guarded the doors to the moon and stopped anyone not Otsutsuki from entering the sacred grounds. The crab regarded them with its beady eyes and let them pass without any interference.

Behind the huge creatures was another spring. This time, Sakura did not even hesitate, and when she appeared on the other time, she found herself overlooking a very familiar scenery. Above them, the artificial sun brought light, and below the ledge they were standing on, was the Otsutsuki village.

Minato placed the letter on his desk and took a deep breath. "Please call in Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Itachi, and Uchiha Shisui."

His assistant hurried out of his office.

The two Uchiha entered his office mere minutes later and Kakashi was relatively early as well. Minato pushed aside his surprise and gestured towards the letter. "I just received a letter from the Hozuki."

Itachi instantly stiffened and SHisui glanced over at his cousin in worry. Kakashi remained reactionless.

"Sakura left Kiri, accompanied by Hozuki Kagetsu, two weeks ago," he paused. "Travel times would have taken a few days at most. However, the Head has not returned, and Sakura has not yet arrived."

"So they're missing?" Shisui asked.

Minato nodded solemnly. "There is a possibility they had been attacked."

"Toneri," Kakashi said.

Minato nodded again. "That is a possibility," He held out a scroll. "You will head out to Kiri. The Mizukage has been alerted of your arrival. We will search around on our own, but any information found will be shared between the two villages. You have permission to enter Kiri and talk to the Hozuki. Kakashi will act as team leader. Track down their routing, and see if you can find anything on their whereabouts."

The Hozuki were surprisingly willing to meet them, especially considering the relation between the two villages, but Uchiha Shisui was not too shocked, considering that their clan head was missing. After receiving the confirmation that the two had left the village gates and there were many witnesses, they headed out of the village and immediately began tracking their pathing.

Kakashi sent out his dogs and Pakkun came back a while later, eyes serious. "We found something," he said. "But you might not like it."

Indeed Shisui did not like it. The lifeless body of Hozuki Kagetsu lay limp in a clearing and Sakura was nowhere to be found. There were blood splotches on the ground and Pakkun immediately confirmed that it did not belong to the Hozuki head.

"Send a summon to Hokage-sama," Kakashi ordered Itachi, then turned to his summon. "Is there a scent trail?"

Pakkun shook his head. "Well, there is a scent trail leading that way." He gestured with a paw into the trees. "But it vanishes after a bit, almost like they just disappeared."

Shisui watched Itachi send off his crow, eyes dark. He knew his cousin had been close to the girl, and his brother liked her as well. He stood awkwardly to the side as Kakashi stood up.

"Let's return to Kiri," he finally said. "We should return the body to his family."

Itachi returned to Konoha with a sense of dread weighing him down. It had been a while and he was sure most of them had forgotten, or had at least put to the back of their minds, the reason Sakura had ended up in Konoha.

And just like that, she had vanished. Whoever had taken her had left a dead man in his wake. He could not stop himself from worrying. This dread only got worse as he went with his team to report their findings, or the lack of it thereof, to the Hokage and returned to the Uchiha compound. The Academy had started a week or so ago and Sasuke had been complaining nonstop about the girl's delayed return. He had been pressing him about information on the girl and he could not decide if it would be kinder and right to tell him of the truth or keep him from it just a while longer.

The kidnapper had held the girl captive for years and had come after her once again. He had a nagging feeling and a growing fear that this time, they may not find her. In the end, when Sasuke ran up to him, he could only say that there had been a delay.

He could not bring himself to crush that smile, not just yet.

The Otsutsuki village called to her, that was the only thing she could think of. She was sure she had never been here before, never stepped foot on their home planet, but there was a heavy sense of familiarity that made her run her fingers over the structures that stood on either side of the streets as the two of them traveled through the village towards the main Otsutsuki compound.

It was almost as though she knew this place, knew where exactly she was going.

Perhaps it was her blood.

"Sakura-sama?"

Sakura turned towards Toneri, who had stopped a little ahead of her and was now waiting for her. "Sorry." She quickened her pace, so that she was walking beside him.

"No worries, Sakura-sama," Toneri said softly. "I understand it must be..."

"It's strange," she said, eyes once against wandering. "Like I've been here before."

Toneri did not say anything. Instead, he merely continued to smile and Sakura firmly turned away from the streets and towards the looming compound of the Otsutsuki.

Time passed differently on the Moon. A day on the Moon was around twenty-nine days on Earth, but they lived underneath the surface and an artificial sun supported life. It was not easy to see how much time has passed.

Sometimes, when she was not busy reading the scrolls and books found in the library and training with Toneri, she thought of Konoha.

Sasuke must be missing her. People must be worried. She felt a little bad, because she had promised the boy she would return. Of course, she would be returning. She had just not factored in this little detour with Toneri when she had stated so. The boy was a ball of innocence, she thought often. Just like that blond friend of his. And yet, they were both going to attend an Academy that taught them to kill using a gift that was meant to make life better.

Teaching was done by those who knew better. Perhaps they could simply kill the adults? The children were innocent until they were tainted, were they not? Not to mention, she quite enjoyed the company of some of the human children she had met.

Perhaps she could bring it up with Toneri.

If there was one thing Toneri feared, it was the influence human ways of thinking would have on Sakura. The girl was his, his to cultivate and sharpen, the one being that would share his ambition and the one who would remain with him once the sinners were purged.

However, he could not be with her all the time and all that stood between them and the taint of humankind was her loyalty towards their blood and him, and her belief that humans were wrong. He did not doubt that Sakura would fail to see their superiority to humans, but he decided that that was what fear was, an unreasonable force that made one think irrationally despite them knowing.

"Toneri!"

The teen paused in his musing when he heard his name being called by the very girl that haunted his current thoughts. If there was second thing he feared, he mused, it would be the strange feeling that filled his chest at the sound of her voice.

Distractions, after all, were very unwelcome, not when they were two beings trying to take on an entire world.

"The main reason this meeting was arranged was so that you can learn about your Dojutsu." Toneri told her. "The Tenseigan."

Sakura's hands slowly went up to her face. The Otsutsuki had several Kekkei Genkai, powers that had been lost and gained throughout their time as the rulers of the world. Even after they had ceased to be nothing more than a myth, a bedtime story of the history of the Shinobi World, their bloodlines lived on in the flesh and blood of their descendants.

However, in a way, it was no longer only theirs.

"It is your job, as the head of the Otsutsuki, to retrieve what truly belongs to us," Toneri had said. "As the last head of the clan who is the history itself of the world humans know today, you must right the wrong and punish those who have forgotten just who exactly they owe this life to."

Sakura clenched her fist. The Tenseigan activated in order to protect the user. The first awakening of the dojutsu came when the body truly felt it was in danger. Sakura knew that despite her role, she had grown up relatively sheltered. She hoped that as she rose in rank within Konoha as a shinobi, she would gain the chance to awaken the Tenseigan.

"We will research the other Kekkei Genkai that have been stolen from us," Toneri had said. "That is the other main reason we are here."

Sakura smiled faintly. This conversation had occurred a few moon days ago when they had eaten their first meal on the Moon.

"'Main reason'?" She had asked."There are others?"

"Of course," he had said. "I wanted to see you, Sakura-sama. I wanted to make sure you were safe."

This battle had started with just the two of them and no matter how many new pieces were introduced to her, she and Toneri would remain the two constant forces that affected the rest of them. Toneri had then smiled, empty eye sockets as dark as ever and his expression losing all the tenseness it usually held. This was a teen that thought and acted with the Otsutsuki constantly at the front of his mind. In a world that had forgotten their kind, he was the only one left here that truly understood her because he was almost just the same.

And any doubt had flown right out of her head.

Chapter EIGHT>

<Chapter SIX

#Of Tales Now and Long Ago #naruto fanfiction #sakura #toneri #poor kagetsu i kind of liked him #but too bad #plot is op and all consuming

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limitedrevolverworks · 6 years

Text

My Mother 2.0 [2]

[Chapter 1]

Above all else, it’s the silence that that he cannot comprehend.

A deep quiet fills his ears, flooding with a silence so paradoxically deafening. Mere instinct reaches out as best it can, grasping for the slightest vibration it could feed to eardrums sorely starving for that hint of familiarity, but all it can scoop out of the stale air is an utter anomaly it doesn’t know what to make of. The frightening shadow of an indecipherable unknown looms over him, daring his powerless, broken shell to do something, anything about it that he obviously cannot. He could chalk it up to the numbness that seems to envelop his entire being, from the smallest atom to the very thoughts produced by his half-comatose brain, but even in his stupor, the boy knows better. And of all the interrogatives pressing down on him, this one feels the most daunting precisely because he can blame it on himself, rather than some factor outside the scope of his perceptions. It’s a minuscule, vibrant spark of audacity that the very mind culpable for its creation regards it with cautious hesitation, unable to fathom its own ability to birth it. For a time that his diluted consciousness desperately stretches into a seeming eternity, the child refuses to acknowledge the one truth he could process, choosing instead to wallow in an uncertain oblivion that is at least partially of his own making. It’s a long, drawn out, tiresome battle, a silent war fought without weapons, a peaceful, stubborn conflict where nothing happens aside from waiting, waiting.

Waiting.

He doesn’t realize the gradually shifting tide of his struggle until his sole serviceable eye timidly spreads open to brave the unknown sight that has been waiting all along for his acceptance.

Now, the boy finally admits it: that the very unknown he should fear, he very much welcomes far more than anything he’s ever been acquainted with.

And so…

At last…

Time begins to flow anew.

“Hey now, awake alread-D-D-D-D-D-y? Go figure.”

The rapidfire barrage of glitchy reverb is interspersed between words that sound like they’re rattling within a box made of thin metallic sheets. The auditory concoction stampedes its way through the child’s hearing with all the grace of a bombardment and hurting twice as much.

It’s odd, though.

Common sense etched deep inside tells him that the optimal response should involve either lots of thrashing and screaming, or curling into a ball and quietly begging for it to end. There’s the fact that the neural pathways in charge of his muscles are currently fueled with a thick, uncrossable gel paste-like form of paralysis, but that’s not the whole of it. The pain is far from pleasant, yet it conveys a clear message - that he is alive, and not anywhere he would recognize. One of these two conclusions fills him with something akin to relief; the other, not so much.

It’s hard for the boy to decide which corresponds to which. He decides that, for the time being, a better way to keep busy what few of his brain cells are awake would be deciphering exactly what it is that he’s staring at.

Through the fog blanketing his vision, the child sees grey lips, framed by a shade of dull blue well on its way to fading into the latter color. The plated shape gives him the impression that it must be a helmet covering the rest of the stranger’s face, but the two halves hug each other so harmoniously to form a solid mass that he questions this interpretation, despite any other making little sense. He seeks answers in the single black strip cutting into the superior portion: the bright red dot swimming inside it, however, dumps only more questions onto a pile that has already grown rather healthy.

His eye begins to burn, reminding him of such a basic need as blinking that he’d seemingly forgotten in his stupor. The boy’s eyelid trembles: will it manage to arise once more, after it’s fallen? The darkness was daunting, but he felt safe within its embrace. It tasted different from the one he’s grown accustomed to - ah, hold on, that’s not quite right.

As more and more of his consciousness tears itself free from its sleepy cocoon, the child begins to make sense of his own thoughts. He understands that it’s not quite that his unconsciousness felt safe in and of itself - rather, it’s what he feels now, after he’s already gotten out of it. Knowledge informs his less rational side, rewriting his immediate past in light of the present. It’s the fact that he knows what comes after the darkness, that leads him to trust it for the first time his short, young life. And for how utterly fruitless his attempts at making heads or tails of his present predicament may be, he has no doubt that he prefers it to the routine that preceded it.

Lingering for a long, drawn-out second more on the thing that may or may not be a face, the boy tells himself that he has nothing to lose anyway. And in the simple act of blinking once, he perceives the rush of an emotion he’s never known he could harbor.

If he’d ever had any conception of it, the child could relish in his first taste of freedom.

“Do yourself a fa-A-A-A-A-A-vor and don’t move, will you?”

More words come out from a mouth that doesn’t move to spell them. The boy speaks his obedience with silent immobility: at the end of the day, old habits are too stubborn to lie down and let themselves die; he receives a nod for his effort, or lack thereof.

“Not that you can move an-N-N-N-N-yway.”

From the corner of his vision, the boy witnesses what seems to be a shoddy impression of a shrug from a pair of stiff shoulders that must have been made for anything but.

“Had to strap you good in case these aneS-S-S-S-S-thetics failed to do their job, and what do you kno-O-O-O-O-w? Never trust chemic-C-C-C-C-als a couple centuries past their expiration date, kid.”

Peeling off the various layers of noise and glitching haunting it, the voice digs out the impression that he’s been talked to by a woman, despite his eyes’ struggle to acquiesce with this conclusion. If what she’s wearing is a protective suit of sorts, it’s nothing like the ones he’s seen.

Panic threatens to seize him. Could they have transferred him to another research facility?

No! No!

He’d just begun to warm to the idea that perhaps, finally, it had all ended, but now that his lucidity has wrestled back control of his ability to process things properly, he wonders how he even came to that conclusion. His path had never, ever strayed from its repetitive course until that fateful day. Why, exactly, should he believe it to be the case now?

Foolish. Stupid stupid stupid! He dared dream for the first time ever, and he knows that all it did was set him up for greater anguish than he’s ever known. Because now, he has tasted hope. It’s far too late to retrieve the resignation that he cast away at a whim. He’s left himself vulnerable, discarded his fragile shell in the spur of a momentary madness. For all he knows, he’s left himself bare against a realm of suffering that could surpass anything he’s experienced. That is… that is…!

He wants to cry. To scream atop his lungs until his throat will have burned away along with what’s left of his sanity.

Burning…

His throat is burning. He feels a lump in it that has nothing to do with the one born from his desire to cry his heart out. The distraction is a tiny one, yet he clings to it as best he can, a minuscule island in an ocean of self-made terror. He notices now that the noise he was picking up while barely conscious is his own breathing. A ragged, drawn out sound like dusty wind sweeping off a gravelly path. The boy’s eye moves down on its own, seeking an explanation. It can only manage to pick up the vague shape of a cylindrical shape, jutting out of the edge where his pupil meets his lower lid. The woman bends aside so that her masked face can meet his gaze again, her head tilted even further to express what her “face” simply can’t.

“Yeah, that w-W-W-W-W-W-W-ould be the reason why you’re tied like a b-B-B-B-B-undle of rations. I can’t have you thrashing all ov-V-V-V-V-er the place with a tube sticking out of your throat… wait, hold on. Does it hurt? Those painkillers I stuffed you w-W-W-W-W-W-ith are three decades older than the anaesthetics.”

There’s a long, drawn out pause filled mostly with one-sided blinking, and little else.

“Oh! Right! Can’t move! Sorry, this one’s on me. hA-hA-hA-hA!”

For a moment, the boy thinks his… caretaker? Captor? Whoever that may be, the way her voice spazzes out at the end and her whole body shakes, it looks and sounds dangerously close to a seizure. It comes to an abrupt conclusion and a return to her very relative normality, which means… what exactly was that supposed to be?

“That’s a face you’re making there… well, half-F-F-F-F-F a face. Did I startle you, maybe? Sorry, faulty voice m-M-M-M-M-odule. Gave up trying to fix it a couple centuries ago, not worth the has-S-S-S-S-S-S-sle. You don’t find many conversational partn-N-N-N-N-N-ers around these parts, you know?”

He doesn’t, but then again it’s not like he can point that out.

“Anyway, anywa-A-A-A-A-A-y, I’ve just told the IV to inject you with another sleepytime cocktail, so sit tight and relax. You’re g-G-G-G-G-G-oing to be doing a lot of that, honestly, at least until I’m done downloading all this medical training software for the surgery.”

A metal-clad arm raises: at the end of it, fingers lightly curl around a wire that begins somewhere outside the boy’s scope, and ends in a rectangular protrusion connected to a similarly shaped hole in the side of the mysterious stranger’s neck. It makes about as much sense as anything else the child has learned about her, and he’s given up trying to put together all the clues he’s been given into a cohesive, discernible whole.

“I mean, a thracheos-S-S-S-S-S-tomy’s a piece of cake by itself. But anything beyond going stabby-stabby on your tr-R-R-R-R-R-R-achea is a tad more complicated than that. I haven’t half a clue what they’ve d-D-D-D-D-D-one to you up there in that big floaty world of theirs, but whatever it was, it made a mess of your throat. There was enough goop stuck in there I had to spend an hour drain-N-N-N-N-N-ing it to make sure you wouldn’t choke on it. I reckon that when my scanning module’s been updated, we’ll disc-C-C-C-C-C-over that the rest of your body’s even worse for the wear.”

Silence falls anew at the end of a series of informations that the boy tries to digest all at once. Half of his features are still perfectly usable, and could lend themselves to expressing what a metal visage cannot. But the child does not visibly react to the news given to him. His lips do not smile. His eye does nothing but look at the one speaking to him with a half-lidded stare, unsure of what to make of any of it, less of all his worry that this may be a prelude to a nightmare.

The boy is tired. He closes his eye, deciding to thrust himself to the darkness, and the infinitesimal chance of salvation hiding in it.

If he has any hope left in him now, it’s the old, familiar brand that cannot wait for his body to do away with itself.

Sensors that were state of the art back when they were made do their best to try and do what they weren’t built for. The staticity on the little human’s face brings up correspondences with old, untouched corners of her databases. Visual data from times long forgotten by those they begot, visions of broken husks of flesh and bone, deader than the corpses of their comrades. Some of those fallen to the very same iron-cast hands that have done their best to keep a lone boy from biting the bullet, based on what can only be defined a whim.

The automaton born of war kneels besides her guest, and wonders. She does so by sending microscopic sparks across a net of data swimming inside her artificial brain, in search of an act that no medicine or surgical procedure could emulate - a way to heal something other than a body.

Something comes up. A tiny possibility buried among billions of others, at the very edge of her range of intended abilities. Fragments of culture acquired for mere curiosity and to stave off whatever form of boredom a machine could even feel to begin with, knowledge thought obsolete until it came up in this very moment, suggesting a pattern that seems convincing enough to be put into tentative, awkward practice.

Thunk. Thunk.

The child raises his eyelid, startled. A gelid, hard sensation is spreading on his head, where his forehead gives way to his disheveled hairline, right next to where the chitinous substance has overtaken the rest of it.

His view is obscured by something. A shadow that robs his sight of light, only to let him seep through again, cyclically going through the motions while the sharp feeling becomes more defined against his skin. It’s only after the fifth time that the shadow finally relents and draws back enough for him to find its source, staring at him through a red, unblinking light.

“How is it? I’m not entirely confident since it’s my f-F-F-F-F-F-irst time, but apparently headpats are supposed to feel g-G-G-G-G-G-ood for young humans like you.”

Her hand approaches again, stopping short of reaching him. It reels back just enough that he can see the black band where her eye resides, and the mouth whose lips cannot flap, nor curl.

“You want me to stop?”

He hadn’t noticed it before, taken as he was with pretty much everything else assaulting his senses, but… there is something about this voice. Beyond the metallic-sounding raspiness, aside from the occasional slip into an ear-piercing torture, there is a tone about this voice that feels unmistakably reassuring.

It’s a rough, alien-feeling sort of softness.

The boy’s eye lingers on the hand hovering above him, shifting to the person staring back with what he decides must be expectation, then back to the hand.

The lid falls like a curtain, letting the centuries old anaesthetics do their job. If he wishes to protest, he doesn’t make the slightest attempt to show it.

As sleep beckons him back to its thoughtless cradle, the child hears it again. Thunk. Thunk. It’s cold, and hard, so much so that at the epicenter of it he can feel a sharp, prickly pain.

Yet somehow, he doesn’t mind.

#wordy seeds #Let's Meet the Robot

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sanchezashton1992 · 4 years

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#Is It Worth Trying To Save A Relationship Fabulous Cool Ideas #Divorce To Avoid Marriage Tax Penalty

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knives-out20 · 4 years

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Magnetic Pull - Erik Lehnsherr x Male!OC - Part 12

Fandom: X-Men: First Class (2011)

Pairing: Karmel Rosenstein (OC) x Erik Lehnsherr

Warnings: Spoilers for X-Men: First Class, Swearing, Internalized homophobia, Repressed homosexuality, Mentions of suicide (attempted), Angsty backstory,

Notes: I mention a piece of Karmel’s backstory that we’ve touched on before. A bit of a touchy subject, speaking of, so just an FYI. Hannibal references inside. Also I only have a limited amount of Karmel gifs (his faceclaim being Brad Pitt as Detective David Mills in the 1995 movie Se7en) so don’t be confused/surprised/etc if I happen to reuse gifs.

Karmel stood wearing a grey hoodie and matching sweatpants, which strayed far from his usual outdoor attire. Him and Charles stood outside the mansion, in front of a wall of the mansion with the least windows."What'd'ya need me to fuckin’ do, again?"

Charles sighed."You've gotten the hand of using your vines when they grow from out of your own body. I'd like to get you to practice having them grow from out the ground, is all. We can start off small, and work our way up somehow. I need you to grow your vines out the ground, and up this wall- careful to go around the windows."

"Like I'm drawing a line in a maze in some kids activity book?"

Charles paused. He shrugged, "strange comparison, but, yes, that's the gist. Unless you wish to make them form a picture of something. Easy enough?"

Karmel chuckled, "yea, I'll just shoot them up the wall, though."

"By all means, go ahead."

Karmel cleared his throat, slowly raising his hands, palms facing the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, never really being a fan of seeing his powers in action. Especially since twice in his life, they were -nearly- the death of him. Literally.

Charles exhaled, a look of concern on his face."Think I'll be able to teach you to face your vines in motion?"

"I'd like to s-see you try" Karmel stuttered.

"I understand what your powers almost caused twice...I'm sorry that your powers are integrated with these memories" Charles apologized, weeding his way through this pep-talk.

A quick glimpse through Karmel's mind at that moment brought him to the afterwards of Karmel's second attempt: Karmel in his twenties, crying in the back of his car with a blood-soaked patch on one side of his forehead. He was covered in marks and tiny scars that came from the thorns on his vines.

Charles saw tears forming in Karmel's eyes due to the flashback, like Erik earlier when he had a flashback of his mother."But, I do hope you know that you're stronger now, more than ever. Certainly more than you were in those dark moments of your life. You have me, the team, Moira...Erik-" he smiled when he noticed that saying Erik's name made Karmel sprout vines from out of the ground."So that's it." Charles thought, looking back over at Karmel. He now knew that Erik's powers would mostly spring from anger, and Karmel's would at the thought, mention, or sight of Erik. Why didn't he come to this conclusion earlier?

"I keep a lot of things in my head in fear of people like you- telepaths- existing and finding out. And...judging" Karmel started, wiping his eyes quickly.

"I'm not one to judge things that shouldn't be judged in the first place, Kar" Charles shrugged.

"My outburst at the base...over Erik," the vines latched onto the brick wall, slowly crawling upwards."Words can't describe how glad I am that Moira 'n' you didn't fire backlash at me, backlash I've lived in fear of my entire life. It just...I don't wanna talk about it right now."

"And you don't need to, Karmel. We can focus on this wall right now" Charles nodded, turning to the wall.

Karmel didn't look at his vines as they curled their ways up the brick wall, quick to dodge around any windows in their paths.

Charles' eyebrows knitted together as his head slowly panned up, noticing that the vines were making line art of...a face?

"Is it going up?"

"It's going up, alright" Charles answered, recognizing the shape of the jaw anywhere."What's something you like about Erik, then?" He pushed, most likely to test his theory from earlier about Karmel's powers when Erik's in mind.

Karmel exhaled through his nose."His eyes. Erik's eyes are like...two moons, I dunno. With blue-green pools in them- I don't know, man, they're beautiful, alright?" He kissed his teeth in slight frustration, not really that good at sappy stuff. But, his vines sped up, so that meant Charles was right.

"And what about his hair?" Charles suggested.

"Oh, his hair, fuck m-" Karmel opened a wide eye to glance at Charles, humming the 'm' he was so close to using to say 'me.'

Charles tilted his head, looking at Karmel as if he were saying "really, bitch? Seriously?"

Karmel continued humming the 'm', racking his brain for a way to save himself."-Mmman, I dunno, his hairs cool too-"

Charles rolled his eyes playfully, Karmel peacefully closing his eye.

Karmel grunted a bit, hands quivering as his vines looped around the wall, forming a jawline, a pair of thin lips, a perfect nose, and creases around a pair of eyes. His fingers bent a bit as the vines formed the archway of a hairline around a prominent forehead, the vines even spiking up in some places in the shape of hair. This was all unbeknownst to Karmel, that's the best part. He thought his vines were simply going straight up, and around the windows.

"It's reached the top."

"Finally-" Karmel panted, dropping his hands. He slowly looked up at the big brick wall, colour draining from his face when he could easily make out line art (or in this case, vine art) of Erik Lehnsherr's face. Karmel's head snapped in Charles' direction as his blue eyes went huge.

Charles chuckled simply."If you wanted to do someone instead of something, you could have just said so."

"No, no, no, it was an accident- I didn't- I wasn't- I wasn't even thinking of him, I- I just wanted the fucking vines to grow" Karmel stuttered, frantically waving his arms.

"Karmel, Karmel-" Charles called, putting a hand on Karmel's shoulder."It's okay."

Karmel slowly dropped his hands, raising an eyebrow. His vine art of Erik grew purple flowers, which bloomed quickly. Karmel's breath hitched at that.

"It's okay now, remember? I know, you know, we both know here. And I'm a hundred percent okay with what I know. As of our quick trip to Russia, so are you. It's okay, you're safe here. You can be who you truly are."

Karmel took slow, deep breaths, nodding."Yea, I- I just...I guess I'm gonna forget sometimes, that it's okay. But it's hard to forget that on a scale of one to ten, he's a certified twenty. I'm...I love Erik, man."

"Which is okay" Charles cracked a comforting smile."I'll be around to remind you. It's a slow process."

Karmel looked up at Erik’s face on the wall.”I have to deal with you,” he groaned, pointing up at it.”And my feelings about you.”

Charles looked up at the vines.”You cannot control with respect to whom you fall in love.”

Karmel turned to Charles. He donned a look of inner fear, as if he were still slightly afraid of his love for Erik. In reality, Karmel was just unsure of how long it would take him to get used to it.

Charles pat Karmel’s shoulder.”No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. By that love, we see potential in our beloved. Through that love, we allow our beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, our beloveds potential comes true” he explained.

"Hey, you two!" Erik's voice rang from a way's behind the two of them.

"Fuck-" Karmel swore, and gestured his hands downwards. The vines shot back down into the ground, a couple purple flower petals and a singular flower itself hanging around.

The wall was blank again.

"Hi, Erik!" Karmel nervously greeted. He wondered why Erik smiled like that the moment he saw him.

"I saw that-" Charles grinned as he waved.

"Shut it, Charlie Chaplin" Karmel spoke through grit teeth as he checked out Erik wearing clothes identical to his."Goddamn..." he thought, biting the edge of his lip.

Erik put his hands on his hips, looking up at the wall like it was missing something."What happened to the green lines on the wall?"

Karmel almost choked on his own spit."My, uh, my vines. Charlie Chaplin here wants me to practice making my vines grow out from places that aren't my body. And- And wants me to practice making them move certain ways, up walls 'n' shit, so that I can control them better. They didn't go up the way I wanted-"

"I'd say otherwise-"

"Shut up, Charles. Anyways, they- they didn't go up the way I wanted, so I'm trying again" Karmel explained.

"Those flowers weren't there before" Erik pointed out, literally pointing down at them.

"Oh, yea, I can grow flowers from my vines. Not just leaves, or thorns. They could also have this weird poison effect. Ivy, too. Poison ivy, even. That's a thing" Karmel recalled, his whole body going rigid at what Erik then asked.

"Can I watch?"

"Uhm-"

"Sure!" Charles answered for him.

Karmel shot Charles a glare, slowly turning around to face the wall again. He raised his arms, forcing himself to pay close attention to the way his vines curved up the wall.

"Also, uh, Karmel" Erik called.

"Yep?"

"I'm sorry about what I said to Charles and you the day we arrived here. I remembered what you've told me about your parents, but it didn't dwell on me on how deep it really went, no matter how long ago it was. So...my apologies" Erik apologized.

"Shit-" Karmel cursed under his breath, Erik taking accountability of his actions only making Karmel fall in love with him even more. He moved his hands to the sides, vines smoothly darting out of the way of a window."It's fine, Erik. I don't bare any ill will towards you 'cause of it. Joking like I did was just...an automatic response."

"A coping mechanism?" Charles suggested.

"What are you, my therapist?" Karmel scoffed, getting slightly defensive."Yea, that, whatever" he agreed. Karmel watched his vines lurch this way and that way, recognizing what was now his own face, made up of vine-line-art. Once he finished, he eagerly dropped his arms."I felt like I'd look good up here."

"You thought otherwise just a moment ago-" Charles snickered.

"Shut up, Charlie" Karmel groaned. He waved an arm at the wall, purple flowers blooming on the vines that etched his face around the wall. Karmel turned back around to Erik, who grinned slightly.

"Impressive as always" Erik coughed.

"Beware, it goeth before the fall. How many times I gotta tell you guys?" Karmel joked, Erik and him gigging softly.

Charles arched a brow, looking between Karmel and Erik."I gotta go find Raven. I'll see you two inside later" he bade them goodbye, jogging off and around the corner, disappearing from sight.

Karmel and Erik kept, somehow comfortable, eye contact, Karmel cracking a small smile as he looked down, then turned away.

"So, uh, Karmel" Erik piped up.

"Hmm?" Karmel hummed, walking towards the wall. He knelt down, picking up a whole, purple flower.

"I have something."

Karmel stood back up, and walked back over to Erik."You have something? What? A flu?"

Erik shook his head."No, no, like...physically. I picked it up for you- don't ask when- and I thought you'd like it."

Karmel’s smile broke out into a bigger one.”No one’s ever done that for me...not even Grace. That’s real nice of you” he cooed.

Erik pulled his lips into a sheepish smile.”Don’t think too much of it, though. A simple gesture can only go so far sometimes” he told, digging into his pocket and pulling out a bracelet. It was made out of braided, brown leather, and bore a silver, metal clasp. Erik held it up, holding back a smile when Karmel cautiously took it.

”It’s so cool” Karmel gasped, gently putting it on his left wrist.”Thank you, Erik- I feel bad, I don’t have shit for you-“

Erik held up a hand.”Nonsense, Karmel. I don’t need anything in return.”

Karmel’s smile was glued to his lips, as he remade eye contact with Erik.

Erik rubbed the back of his neck, a faint smile of his own on his face, thanks to Karmel.

“Y’know, actually-“ Karmel looked down at the flower in his hand.”I do have something.”

Erik followed his gaze.”The flower?”

Karmel hummed.”A flower from my own vines, Erik. That’s super fucking personal” he said, reaching up to tuck it behind Erik’s ear.

Erik exhaled through his nose, glancing up at it.”How do I look?”

”Breathtaking, man” Karmel giggled, definitely in love at this point. Not even that ‘in love’ love with Erik’s body; Karmel was in love with Erik as a person, the whole idea of him sparked joy. At first he thought it was merely physical. But the more time they spent around each other, the deeper it grew. Now Karmel just wishes he could act on his feelings.

Erik glanced down, stricken by a sense of shyness.

“See, Erik-” Karmel started, pointing at the bracelet.”There’s so much more to you than you know, Erik. Not just pain and anger, like me. There’s good in you, Erik, I can feel it. I know it. I’ve fucking seen it, now.”

Erik looked up at him, surprised at what was said. Did Karmel really think that of him?

The two held eye contact again, standing in comfortable silence.

Karmel was the first to break his gaze, quick to sneak a glance at Erik's lips beforehand.”I should, uh- get going, though. Hank wanted to show me the library in this place.”

”Yea” Erik nodded, doing the same before looking down.”You’re a librarian after all.”

”Best one in the country” Karmel puffed out his chest, making Erik laugh. He sighed softly, privileged enough to earn a look of genuine happiness and innocence from the man. It felt rare. It felt good. It made Karmel feel like he was on top of the world.”C’mon, let- let’s, uh, let’s go back inside.”

Erik nodded, leading the way.

Karmel watched Erik walk, and groaned softly to himself. He threw the hood of his hoodie over his head and violently pulled on the strings, cocooning his face in the hood.”Stupid fuckin’ faggot fuck” Karmel cursed himself, his feelings for Erik only growing stronger by the second.

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