#stone mountain cemetery

[mothmiso]

Wakayama (2) (3) by satoru kobayashi

Via Flickr:

(1) Jizo (2) Japanese old cemetery     

#statues #forest #path #cemetery #stone lantern #mountains #evening light #village #japan #wakayama prefecture

[dinneronvenus]

Doesn’t Matter Now

⭑ Gojo x fem reader

⭑ inspired by the song “doesn’t matter now” by flyingfish (listen to that while you read for max effect)

⭑ tags: ANGST ON 100, description of a jujutsu technique that forfeits the sorcerer’s life, death, a funeral, a hopeless and depressed Gojo goes to a medium, hinted reincarnation

⭑ synopsis: Gojo already lost his only true friend, so he never thought losing a woman could hurt him so badly

“There’s nothing you could’ve done, Gojo. You didn’t even know.” Utahime spoke softly, her own pain wanting to break through in her voice. “Nobody did.”

Gojo remained silent, eyes glazed over, a cocktail of negative emotions mixing in his mind. He couldn’t even look at Utahime, whose outfit would remind him of you. They stood in the ruins of the shrine your family had built and ran for generations. It had come under attack by many cursed spirits and you had fulfilled your duty to protect the people who lived and worked there, as well as its secrets. With everyone else safe, it would be rebuilt and restored to its original glory, something that should have been a silver lining.

“It is not uncommon for a high priestess to give her life for her people.” Utahime said, voice breaking at the end. This brought Gojo even less comfort.

“You think I don’t know that? You think I hadn’t heard her say those exact words to me before?!” He snapped, still not able to take his eyes off the scene in front of him. It was Utahime’s turn to stay silent.

In the middle of the leveled temple, there was the evidence of your bravery. A set of heavy stone doors bearing an ancient inscription, left open by whatever you had summoned to walk through them, loomed over the two sorcerers. Gojo already knew they’d be used as a gate to honor your memory and remember your sacrifice. His eyes begged to see any scrap of you in the rubble. Maybe this was just a trick, and you were hiding behind one of the doors.

“What could her technique have been to have killed her in the process?” He whispered to the open air, not thinking anyone could’ve heard him.

“Gehenna Gate, it is a technique with the highest of costs,” A raspy voice broke the unbearable quiet. It was your mother, who despite everything, managed to keep a small smile on her face for your surviving friends. “I am sorry she never told you that properly. She wanted to protect you, in her own way.” Her hand came down on Gojo’s shoulder and the kindness in her touch almost burned him alive.

“I didn’t… I wish she…” Gojo stuttered out, hot tears stinging his eyes. Your mother pulled him into a hug, shushing him like a child.

Five days later, your funeral was to be held at your family cemetery in the mountains overlooking the temple. Gojo had no idea how he would survive that. He spent the time until your funeral looking for someone who could communicate with the dead. Thanks to his power and connections, he found one the night before and prepared himself to have one last conversation with you.

“Welcome, sir. I assume you’re here to see Mistress Takemi?” The young man spoke just loud enough to be heard over the jingle of the bell from the door shutting behind him.

“Yeah, and she knows already so I’m just gonna head back there,” Gojo sauntered through the foyer and down the hall to the back room where a woman in black and purple robes standing over a large glass table was waiting on him.

“Welcome Satoru,” she spoke cheerfully with a deep voice that echoed her years of life.

“Don’t call me that. Can we get started?” The overly familiar attitude irked him. The woman cleared her throat and dropped her cheerful act.

“I suppose we can get right to it then.”

The woman had a technique that essentially made her into a human ouija board. Her hands rested on the glass table and it began to glow a soft greenish-blue. Gojo could see the dark circles and puffiness of his eyes in the reflection, suddenly feeling ashamed of himself for being this unable to accept that you were gone.

“Satoru?” His name again, but this time he could hear your voice mixing with Takemi’s voice. He said your name in disbelief, tears of joy in his eyes.

“Yes, yes! It’s me, I wa—”

“You can’t do this, Satoru. It’s against the laws.”

“Please, don’t tell me that right now. You hid so much from me, please just let me ask you one thing.”

Silence. Fearing he’d miss his chance, he went ahead with his question.

“Did you ever really love me?” The depth of sadness and desperation in his voice was unbearable to you, even in your disembodied state. “Why couldn’t you have told me? I could’ve helped you, I would’ve done anything to have saved you.”

“In the mountains where they’ll bury me, follow a trail that begins with pink and white flowers. You’ll find everything you want to know at the end. Goodbye, Satoru.”

“No, no, no,” He wiped the tears from his face and gripped both of Takemi’s shoulders, shouting. “Please come back! I can’t do this again!”

Regaining full control of herself, Takemi pushed Gojo off her and had him escorted out of her shop. The whole world was one hideous shade of grey. He walked for a while with no destination in mind but the grave. He wanted to go find that trail right now but he didn’t have anything else left in him. He wanted to sleep for the rest of his life. Returning home, he set his alarm and went to bed with your instructions in mind.

Utahime and Gojo walked with each other up the mountain to the funeral site. Utahime thought it was odd but refreshing to see him dressed in more traditional clothing. Just one more thing that only you could get him to do.

Everyone took their places, and your father stepped up to the podium. “We are gathered here to send our beloved high priestess to her place of final rest with her ancestors…”

Once the funeral was complete, no one but Gojo, Utahime and your mother lingered too long.

“I’m sorry again for your loss, ma’am.” Utahime said, bowing deeply. Your mother gave her another one of those wise, otherworldly smiles.

“I don’t think I’ve really lost her.” She said before taking a last look around the cemetery and turning to leave. “Why don’t we give him some space?” She motioned to Gojo and Utahime followed her.

Now alone with your memory and your ghost, Gojo began to look for this trail you had mentioned. It took him a while to find it but when he did, his path to the end was quick. It led to a small clearing where the grass was lush, and he was consumed by the smell of many different kinds of flowers and plants. The sight of the small garden was as beautiful as you were to him.

Looking around for anything that could be the answer you spoke of, he saw a faint bit of energy coming from inside a tree. When he got close to the tree, he found it had a hollow spot in it where you’d left a diary. He fished it out and walked to a shaded place in the clearing to begin reading it. Every page was an entry about the two of you together. All of your private feelings from when he was just a crush, and once you had gotten closer, you even glued in pictures you’d taken together.

Gojo couldn’t control his tears or hide his sobs. His body shook against the tree as he held the diary close to his chest. He calmed down enough to continue reading it, with the last entry being dated a week ago.

She knew she was going to die… He thought. You had written about the rise of cursed spirits in the area of increasing numbers and strength and how you felt like it was time for you to fulfill your duty to your people. More than that though, you wrote about how you wished you could have told Gojo. How you wanted to stay with him forever, how he was the only thing you’d ever loved as much as you loved the Gods, and how because of that you wanted to make sure he was safe and didn’t have to fight for once.

It was all too much, Gojo swore he would drown in his own tears right there. The wind picked up and blew the diary’s pages, landing on entry from before you two had met.

6.25 — Training Notes: after a long session of training and studying my technique’s history in my family. I have learned of a way I might be able to circumvent its cost. If I summon a deity of destruction that has the ability to reincarnate, then I will reincarnate too! One of my ancestors did that long ago, although it took 59 days for them to come back.

Gojo couldn’t believe what he was reading. He wiped his eyes on his sleeves furiously and scrambled to his feet. He stored your diary in an inner pocket of his kimono and made his way down the mountains to the temple ruins.

He inspected the gate and found exactly what he needed to be able to accept the loss of the only woman he’s ever loved. Utahime was strolling the grounds when she noticed him in the air, getting a close look at the doors.

“Gojo, what do you think you’re doing? Get down here!” Utahime found his behavior so disgraceful. He chuckled on his way back to earth.

“I was just checking on something. Had to be sure that I wasn’t seeing things.”

His eyes were red and puffy, but his annoyingly cheerful attitude was starting to return. Utahime couldn’t tell if she was relieved or annoyed.

“Checking on what?”

“Eh,” Gojo put a hand over the diary in his pocket.

“Doesn’t matter now.”

#jjk gojo #gojo x reader #gojo satoru #jujutsu kaisen #jjk fanfic #gojo angst #Gojo x you

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

Direct action works.

Shamefully, there used to be a monument to the confederacy in a cemetery in Seattle, Washington until some cool people tore it down.

From the South Seattle Emerald, July 5, 2020:

A group of local activists supportive of racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement has taken credit for toppling a nearly century-old monument to Confederate Civil War veterans at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle.

First erected in 1926 by The United Daughters of the Confederacy, the granite monument was a product of the Lost Cause movement — a propaganda campaign of historical revisionism employing school textbooks and memorials to shift attitudes toward the Confederacy after the U.S. Civil War.

The “Daughters” had the granite for the monument shipped in from Stone Mountain, GA, which is the birthplace of the modern Ku Klux Klan.

In advancing the Lost Cause Doctrine, groups like the “Daughters” used statues such as the one in Lake View to heroicize Confederate soldiers and also to serve as forbidding symbols of white supremacy to intimidate newly freed Black Americans.

While protestors had petitioned for its removal and city officials had spoken out against the monument over the years, they had little power to remove it, as Lake View Cemetery is privately owned.

Though the monument has been repeatedly vandalized and defaced, including an incident in 2018 when parts of the memorial were busted, it had stood mostly intact for 94 years.

That was until later Friday night/early Saturday morning when local activists decided to take matters into their own hands, toppling the nearly 10-ton structure.

The activists took credit for the toppling in an email sent to the Emerald at 12:12 a.m Saturday, before news of their actions broke:

This monument to the Confederate traitors, who so cherished the practice of enslaving their fellow human beings that they started a war to defend it, has been a blight on our community for far too long. There is no place for monuments such as these in the More Perfect Union, the America that must surely come, for that nation cannot be born until it makes full recompense to the descendants of those enslaved and ceases to justify or cover up its brutal past.

This action is for everyone, living or dead, who has been stolen, murdered, enslaved, raped, tortured, brutalized, terrorized, displaced, incarcerated, colonized, exploited, or separated from land, family, and culture by white supremacy. May the memory of those who have gone home be a blessing to us all, and may their descendants know the peace of true and everlasting justice.

We uplift and center the demands of King County Equity Now and the Poor People’s Campaign and call upon our neighbors to use whatever power they may have to ensure that these demands are met.

Other than saying they were a “group of concerned citizens” worried about “racism in Seattle and in general,” the group did not specifically identify themselves through a spokesperson who wished to remain anonymous.

However, they did say that they consulted with multiple experts and used gear that was rated to move objects that weigh several tons — and they cautioned others about the dangers of tackling similar monuments and suggested taking safety precautions before toppling them.

Seattle City Council Member Tammy Morales, who represents South Seattle, was supportive of the action.

“This monument wasn’t erected to memorialize the deaths of particular individuals. It was erected at a time when Black communities were being terrorized by the KKK in an effort to keep people down. It’s way past time for these monuments to racism to come down,” Morales said in a text to the Emerald.

The Emerald has reached out to representatives of Lake View Cemetery for comment.

The rubble was later removed from the site by Lake View Cemetery.

As of March 14, 2024 there are no plans to rebuild the monument.

#direct action #blm #black lives matter #confederate states of america #white supremacy #racism

[quitealotofsodapop]

Ok, but you can bet when the Noodle Gang hears MK shouting about Wukong having a family and all the monkeys rushing off to somewhere on the island, they're gonna follow. They're gonna find the petrified monkey of Wukong's own father. They're gonna discover the egg with Wukong and all the murals and writings Yē Lín had left for his cub, both the one he had incubated and the one he hadn't known about until after his death. They're gonna see Wukogn get overwhelmed and faint, leaving MK to explain that part of the intricate and never mentioned abilities of the Gold Vision is it let down him see the spirits of those who have passed and not yet entered Diyu due to unfinished business, that during the party he'd run into the spirit of two Stone Monkey and subsequent discovery that one of them still had an egg intubating somewhere and that when he went to warn Wukong of it, he had the realization that Wukong had been the other egg they had mentioned, the one who had successfully hatched!

Everyone's reactions were mixed, Pigsy was suspicious and kinda creeped out. Mei thought it was cool. Sandy and Macaque was more worried about Wukong than anything. But Tang? When presented with the idea that the Monkey King's very own parents were standing here in this cave with them and the petrified monkey was Wukong's dad!?!? Well... kid in a candy shop is putting it lightly

referencing.

MK likely has let it slip before that Gold Vision can let see ghosts - something which Mr Tang is super interested in. But Pigsy reminds him that it might be considered a little odd to act on in public - one too many angry glares at he Gao Village cemetery.

Mei thinks its another super-cool superpower her bestie has, and asks if he can see any ghosts around her family's manor. MK ca't really see anyone, but does meet a cool old dragon spirit thats wreathed in flames (apparently Mei's maternal grandfather, something he has to ask delicately about to Mrs Ao-Long).

Macaque can't see ghosts/spirits like Wukong and MK can, but he can Hear them. He thought he was going nuts the first time a ghost asked him for a favor. He has to act like the translator between the living and the dead when they collide. So when he hears MK shout about Wukong having more family? He comes running and realises that he hears the voices of two people that only Wukong and MK can see/interact with. He then gets super nervous cus technically he's just meeting Wukong's parents for the first time. Shihua tells him htat she likes his plays.

And ofc when Wukong faints, the whole squad are rushing forward to make sure he and the super-new baby are ok. Tang is rambling aloud and trying to channel his Golden Cicada powers to talk to Wukong's parents, and Pigsy is trying his best to keep the baby stone monkey calm while Macaque and Sandy tend to Wukong + any cubs present.

You can imagine that the monkey demon subjects present are as equally shocked at the Noodle Shop gang. Their prince (MK is a little embarassed by the title) just shouted that their King has a previosuly unknown father and brother, and when they follow him to a recently-opened fissure in the mountain; they see the unmistakable form of a petrified Stone Monkey/Shi Baomu sitting within. And then a little stone egg pops out like how a certain King was born...

The Stalwarts just start howling with laughter.

#stone matriarch au #sun wukong #lmk aus #shadowpeach #six eared macaque #liu er mihou #lmk #lego monkie kid

[coinandcandle]

Anubis Deity Guide

Who is Anubis?

Depicted as a being with the body of a man and the head of a jackal, Anubis is the Egyptian god of the dead. He is also the god of mummification, lost souls, and the helpless. Anubis is one of the oldest gods of ancient Egypt and was possibly derived from the older jackal god Wepwawet, as the two are often conflated.

Due to his role as god of the dead and afterlife, he also held domain over justice and has been depicted holding scales to determine the “weight” of the person’s soul.

Parents and Siblings

Ra (his father originally)

Hesat (mother)

Bastet (sometimes referred to as his mother)

Osiris (his father in later stories)

Isis (his mother in later stories)

Horus (brother)

Babi (brother)

Sopdet (sister)

Wepwawet (brother)

Bata (brother)

Lovers or Partners

Anput (female counterpart of Anubis)

Children

Kebechet

Epithets

Anpu

Tpy-djuf - He Who Is upon His Mountain

Lord of the Sacred Land

Khentyamentiu - Foremost of the Westerners

He Who Is in the Place of Embalming

Guardian of the Scales

Notes

The name “Anubis” is the Greek form of the Egyptian name “Anpu” which means to decay.

The Greeks associated Anubis with Hermes, the Greek god who guided the dead to the afterlife. The two would be joined together to create Hermanubis, making him more accessible to non-Egyptians.

He was also worshiped in Greece on the island of Delos.

Anubis was said to be the creator of embalming.

His epithet “god of the westerners” means “god of the dead” as the Egyptian term for departed souls was “westerners”. This was because it was said that the afterlife was towards the west, the direction of the sunset.

Anubis was often depicted as a black Jackal or other canine or as a human with the head of a black jackal/canine. The black coloring was likely a nod to the discoloration of a dead body as well as the fertile silt of the Nile.

Anubis was regularly invoked for protection as well as vengeance.

The center of Anubis’ cult was set in Cynopolis, or “the city of the dog” but there were shrines sprinkled throughout all of Egypt.

There is a place that was known as Anubeion, where a shrine and a cemetery of mummified dogs and jackals were discovered east of Saqqara.

Originally Anubis’ father was Ra, though as Osiris gained popularity Anubis’ story got mixed up and he became the son of Osiris and Nephthys. In this later story, Nephthys tricked Osiris into having sex with her and became pregnant with Anubis who she soon abandoned for fear that her husband, Set, would find out about the affair. Osiris’ wife, Isis, found Anubis and adopted him.

In other stories, Anubis was said to be the son of Set or Bastet.

Modern Deity Work

Correspondences

Most of these are modern correspondences I've seen across many

Rocks/Stone/Crystals

Obsidian

Smoky quartz

Onyx

Jet

Labradorite

Herbs/Plants

Cypress

Cinnamon

Myrtle

Lotus

Animals

Jackals

Canines

Symbol

Ankh

Offerings

Items or items with images of the things listed above

An altar

Beer

Bread

Candles

Cold water

Dark chocolate

Acts of Devotion

Clean up local cemeteries (don’t try to clean graves unless you have the correct supplies and have been given permission to do so)

Leave flowers on old graves of strangers.

Volunteer or donate to local dog shelters.

Research him

Get involved with spirit work

Volunteer at or donate to orphanages, as he is the patron of lost souls and orphans

Get into herbology; his priests were skilled herbal healers and dealt with many herbs during the mummification process

Practice divination; in the Papyri, Anubis is noted to be an intermediary for divination.

As always this is not an end-all-be-all list. If you have different correspondences or devotional acts in mind then that’s totally fine!

References and Further Reading

Offerings to Anubis - Patheos

Anubis - Egyptian Museum

Anubis - World History

Anubis - Britannica

Anubis - Ancient Egypt Online

Death Dogs - Jackal Gods of Egypt

Devotees and Followers to check out:

@crystalgerblin-enchantress

#Anubis #deity deep dive #deity guide #anubis deity #kemetic #witchcraft

[kimberly40]

Grave houses, also called a grave shelters, were sometimes seen in the South, especially Appalachian areas, to protect loved ones’ graves from the elements and grave robbers. They usually resemble small houses with peaked roofs, and could be made of logs, lumber, stones or brick.

Grave houses are believed to be of European origin where house-tombs in Catholic countries were widespread. Most of the surviving grave houses can be found the in Appalachia, upper South and southeastern parts of the United States.

As soon as the burial was complete, some mountain folk constructed a grave house or grave shelter to cover the grave to provide extra protection from rain, snow and sleet. They were usually constructed in family cemeteries and covered little more than the length and width of the burial site. The typical grave house was rectangular with open sides, picket fencing and gables at the head and foot of the grave. Most of them were enclosed structures so that animals and grave robbers would not disturb the departed. Some grave houses varied from having low latticed houses resembling doll houses to some made out of rock with a tin roof.

Not much is known about the original purpose of grave houses but one can rationalize aside from superstition that they served to keep livestock and wild animals off the grave, provide shade for visiting family members, maintain a memorial to our loved ones and give comfort and a home to the dearly departed spirit. Some grave houses may contain more than one grave.

Today, grave houses of Appalachia are vanishing. Most of the grave houses constructed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have decayed, disappeared or have been torn down. Long past family cemeteries that have been isolated and forgotten have disappeared from the landscape due to neglect and overgrowth of foliage.

References:

•James K. Crissman, Death and Dying in Central Appalachia: Changing Attitudes and Practices (1994).

•M. Ruth Little, Sticks and Stones: Three Centuries of North Carolina Gravemarkers (1998).

•Mildred J. Miller and Pat M. Crooks, Time Is, Time Was: Gravestone Art, Burial Customs and History: Iredell County, North Carolina (1990).

#appalachian mountains #appalachian #north carolina #appalachian culture #appalachia #western north carolina #the south #nc mountains #appalachian folklore #southern #southern gothic #southern life #southern history

[yril-writes]

— PARTNERS

synopsis ; years have passed and you mysteriously came back from the dead, and from the moment you've been revived only one goal in mind came to you and that is to see your partner.

scenario ; you've made a contract with a devil to bring you back, but this is not meant to go on forever. Until you achieved your goal you live, that is why you came looking for them causing havoc to an extent even.

type ; drabble

include/s ; kishibe

pairing/s ; kishibe x gn! reader

genre ; angst and a mountain filled with sad corn

"Who would've thought I'd see you like this again." that same familiar voice tone, made you look back only to see a not so familiar face. He looked older and by the looks of it the man standing behind you had these empty eyes, smoking cigarettes like there's no tomorrow, he shrugs and takes a step closer to you. "You, have I met you somewhere?" he raises your chin to take a good look, to the left and to the right then he sees something familiar with a birth mark, shaped almost like a flower. He racks his brain, trying so hard to remember who is this human nor devil in front of him. But you didn't speak, too speechless to even say a word, now that you had a closer look at him as well you knew him by his scent and by those pesky cigarettes of him. (Kishibe, it's been a long time...I'm sorry I had to erase your memories back then.) Kishibe doesn't remember a thing, he doesn't remember his first partner before Quanxi came along, it's because that partner of his died the first week in the job. And the catch is that, ever since then he doesn't remember even having a partner or the small tiny moments they had, just like a bubble, popped and disappeared into thin air. And that bubble was you. You made a contract with the Dream Devil, and for the last time you implanted that the day you died is nothing but just a mere dream for him, so that he could forget. (Kishibe, it's really good to see you again like this...) giving a smile, Kishibe furrowed his eyebrows perplexed as to why this shadow figure in front of him seemed familiar a while ago and then turned into this. "A fiend. Why did you seem familiar to me? Do you perhaps know me?"taking a stance, he grabs a knife from his coat and points it towards you. "You may not know me but I know you, nothing about me seems interesting at all. But you, you are interesting, Kishibe.) covering more of yourself with the shadows of darkness the more you feel alive and strong, but of course you expected to be killed by this. Before you could've explained something you were slain without hesitations. On your last breath you removed the curse from Kishibe, it took a toll on him to remember it all, but he does now. And even more, because he had slain you. Cemetery, yes, the place where he mostly goes. Now looking down at the grave, he remembered why he would always stand on this peculiar grave he knew nothing of, it was because this was the grave of his first partner that had died. You didn't want to burden him, you didn't want to blame himself to what had happened to you, so your last resort was to make him forget and it did work. He forgot. "You, you are a complete fool. When you became my partner I told you not to break easily, and within a week you died. And the worst thing is for you to be cursing me for years now, I underestimated you. You are strong even the dead couldn't stop the curse...did you only come back to lift this stupid curse, from an old man? If so, thank you..." leaving a bouquet of flowers on the grave stone, he walks like the wind swiftly away from the grave. "I see you now..." he utters as the wind carries away those words to the horizon.

a/n ; thinking of making more chainsaw man fanfictions in the future, I've been obsessed with csm and have these cool ideas to put together with!

taglist ; @sammushy @ryuuudesuwa @gcj-doesart @jasugoi

masterlist ; more stories here!

#chainsaw man #chainsaw man fanfiction #chainsaw man fandom #chainsaw man scenarios #chainsaw man imagine #csm x reader #csm kishibe #chainsaw man kishibe #csm scenarios #csm imagine #csm drabbles #drabble #writers on tumblr #fiction #imagines #my writing #writing #character x reader #kishibe x reader #kishibe x y/n #kishibe x you #fanfic #yril

[shu-bullshit]

The Broken Man

Story about a man who thinks himself is broken. From my book Lost & Found.

This story comes from an old thought of mine, that once we're broken, we can never out ourselves back together, like ceramics. But I've found more in life since then, and this story is about what we could be after becoming broken.

(The other story "The Big Girl" is here. If you want to view both of them smoothly with better image quality, here's their page on my website.)

There once was a man in the mountains.

"Oh no," he looked at his own body and thought, "I am broken! "

"I have to get myself back."

He meandered down to a stream, where the soft grass caressed his feet gently, unlike the stones in the mountains. 

He picked a wild flower in the grass.

"This looks like a piece of me." he thought.

He followed the stream to the place where it met the river. A small bridge stretched over the river.

He reached into the shimmering water. There was a piece of glass hiding there. “This looks like me.” He left with the piece of glass.

He crossed the river to a barren highway. The cruel sun was burning his skin.

He saw a used ticket on the ground near the bus stop. He picked it up thinking, “maybe this was a trip I took.”

Leaving the highway, he found himself walking in a desert. All the yellow sands escaped from his fingers in the wind.

But he found something firm under the sands. It was a broken watch. “Maybe I left it here.” he said to himself.

Coming out of the desert, he reached an endless field. Above the sky was filled with birds floating in the strong wind.

He looked down and saw a black feather. “Did I use to fly?“ He asked himself.

He walked on through many more places.

An abandoned village,

A crowded cemetery,

A silent forest,

A forgotten coast…

Eventually, he returned to the mountains, along with the pieces he’d found.

“But why am I still broken?” He cried to the mountains, “How can I get myself back?”

The mountains replied: “You were never broken.”

“But now you are what you have found.”

#my art #illustration #artists on tumblr #watercolor #watercolor illustration #watercolor painting #original art #picture books #childrens books #graphic novel #black and white

[stalkedbytrains]

Stone Face Sorrow

The mourners were all there, in their elaborately carved masks. Each carved face covering was unique to the person, to the family, to the emotion the wood conveyed for flesh. All of them showed sadness or regret or, in a few cases, sorrow.

All of them were draped head to toe in black, not a piece of skin showing, only masks, frozen in a single emotion. The procession started, passed the freshly dug grace, passed the coffin, passed the crying masks of a tall figure, passed the three smaller sad masked figures, the husband and the children of the deceased.

A processional of carved mourning faces moved passed the grieving family, offering flowers on the grave and hushed, muffled words of condolences. The masked family nodded their acceptance of the comforts but didn’t say anything, the masks conveying their emotions for them.

With the processional was almost done, only one person was left. There was no billow of breath rising from beneath the elegantly carved sorrow mask. Not a single indication that it breathed, or if it did, the breath was warm.

Empty, sad eyes of the mask looked over the small remains of the family and placed a small statuette on the coffin, before turning to leave. The footprints left behind in the semi-frozen mud were much deeper than the others of the processional.

The tall remaining figure, the husband of the deceased woman, looked at the statuette only to see the small representation of the Wailing Father.

That would mean…

The man quickly turned to see where the last person went, the one with the heavy Sorrow mask, but they were gone, off into the late evening mist that was rolling off the mountains.

He was nervous now, was it possibly they were just visited by The Sorrow?

He didn’t know, didn’t want to know.

With the processional, and the funeral over, the husband took his children out of the cemetery and back to the house.

Once inside, in private, the family could remove their masks and cloaks. They sat together in silence. The twins hugged the little one, a girl no older than four.

The father was just about to rise from his seat to fetch something. He was dimly aware that the girls needed to eat, but he wasn’t hungry. That was when they heard the loud footsteps on the front porch. Slow, heavy footsteps.

Then the door burst open revealing in the Sorrow masked figure, dressed all in black, with a cold, late winder wind blowing in behind it.

The figure stepped in, crossing the threshold with heavy, steady steps. Then with a black clad hand, reached back and closed the wooden door behind it before standing in silence.

In the absolute silence that radiated from the being’s presence the family could hear a quiet, raspy, labored breathing despite seeing no breath coming from it earlier.

The father moved, stood in front of his daughters and yelled, “We don’t want you here! We didn’t pray to the Wailing Father! Leave us in peace! Please!”

But the hollow eyes of the Sorrow weren’t directed at the father, or at the older girls, the twins with the dark hair, past them to the smallest girl, the four year old with the shock of bright blonde hair. The instant girl felt the attention on her she ran away from her father and sisters and into the back bedroom.

“Just leave us alone! We thank the Wailing Father for sending you in our hour of despair but we don’t need your services, please. My wife… my wife is dead. There’s nothing to be done. She drowned,” the father choked out.

Suddenly the younger girl was back, this time she was holding up a much too large mask of dark wood, painted red, with an angry snarl carved into it.

With the wooden barrier between herself and the masked Sorrow, she spoke up, “Will you find out who killed mommy?”

Sorrow descended, resting on knees that were hidden the large dark robe. With a voice like air escaping from a long sealed tomb it answered, “Yes.”

“Good,” the girl said. “I’m mad at them. Mommy was supposed to come home. We was gonna read the end of the Princesses story together. But now she can’t.”

Sorrow’s empty eyes stared back at Anger held up by the four year old. For a long moment there was silence.

The Sorrow stood up and exited the house with a slow but determined gait.

The next night was just as cold and windy as the night of the funeral, but today had a sleety, half frozen rain to add to it.

The tavern’s fireplaces were all roaring and the food was hot. All of the patrons were dressed in their warmest, their masks were often the woolen or knitted variety, politely hiding half their faces while leaving their mouths exposed as to better talk and drink.

Through his informal, dull, half-faded mask that showed off his cheeks and mouth and chin, the bartender surveyed the bar.

All of the masked faces turned when someone burst through the door. All of the people that were usually here were here, and everyone else was in the safety and warmth of their own houses. It was either an out-of-towner or bad news.

The new arrival threw off their clock, soaked with freezing rain and before the tavern stood a tall, red cheeked, auburn hair elf with pointed ears, high cheekbones, bright eyes and no mask.

After shaking out some of the water from their curly and graying hair, the elf took a seat at the bar.

“What do you want here bareface?’ the bartender asked unkindly.

They always started with the maskless insults before they moved into the racism.

But the elf was tired and having none of it. They reached into their pocket and produced a hand sized piece of metal. The second they slapped it on the table it glowed, white, and brilliant and outshone everything else in the tavern. After a second the light faded and the metal returned to being just a highly polished metal star.

The bartender’s attitude changed. “What can I offer you Lady Investigator?”

“Whiskey,” they said. “You may refer to me as Investigator Stalking Heron.”

“Start with what?” he asked nervously, adjusting his mask to sit correctly over his face.

“I heard Sorrow is in town. Has anyone in town died recently? Or anyone seen the Sorrow faced being?” they asked loudly.

Once again the silence filled the room like smoke, choking out the sound.

“I’ll take that oppressive silence as a yes. Any one seen The Sorrow? Anyone pray to the Wailing Father?” Heron asked.

They were only greeted with more silence.

“Do you want me to break out my mask? I’ll get it and conduct this investigation all proper like if that’s what you all want,” they threatened.

When the elf was met with only silence, the mysterious Investigator started to reach for their coat when the man slumped on the bar next to them drunkenly raised his head.

“It was me! My wife died three days ago. Drowned in that damn lake out back. My littlest prayed to the Wailing Father himself and he sent The Sorrow down on our heads. Maybe we’ll find out if a godsend can fight a lake.”

Heron sighed heavily. “I’m sorry,” they said with genuine sadness. “But if Sorrow is here, then I hate to tell you that your wife was murdered.”

The drunk and bereaved man broke out into a fresh round of sobs.

"I’m going to need a room somewhere,” Investigator Heron said. “I’ve got to solve a murder quickly before you’re burying someone else.”

“If they killed my wife,” the drunk shouted. “They’ll be lucky if there’s anything left to bury!”

“Alright Elijah, I know you’re grieving, but it’s time you went home,” the bartender told him.

The drunk was already asleep.

“Silah is dead, someone prays to your damn elven demon god, Sorrow is here, and now a barefaced elven Investigator here. How can it get any worse?” the bartender muttered as he looked at the passed out man on his bar.

“The barefaced elf is Inspector Heron,” they said with a menacing finger pointed at the bartender. “And as if your ignorance couldn’t show any further, the Wailing Father is one of the very few gods that exist in all six major pantheons. Now, if you’re done choking everyone with your extreme aura of stupidity. I need to get to the bottom of this, get to the murderer before Sorrow does. If I do, there’s a chance that Sorrow will back off. They usually stand down when the murderer is brought to justice. Otherwise it’s just a death sentence. And it’s only a matter of time.”

At that moment, outside the bar, the figure in the Sorrow mask stood silent into the rain, empty mask eyes fixed on the bank of the slowly defrosting lake.

It stood there for some time, just looking without eyes or perhaps waiting.

Elijah stumbled out of the bar, with the help of one of his neighbors. The light spilled out of the open doorway for just a moment, illuminating the Sorrow, but in the next moment it was gone.

The two men walked through the slush and frozen rain towards Elijah’s house, masks keeping out the worst of the rain.

Neither of them noticed the Sorrow outside the house down the small lane from the both of them. If Sorrow had eyes to read it held the posture of something reading the name sign posting on the outside of the house.

But the men were too drunk and too eager to be out of the weather to notice the dark figure lurking.

Back in the bar, Investigator Heron started questioning patrons. They held the shining star in their hand at all times, metal gently pricking into their hands, as they passed from patron to patron. The human’s masks and half masks made it difficult to tell if someone was lying to them, but that’s why they had the star.

Every time someone lied to them the star started to glow. It made it easier for them. Even though Heron was a master liar at one point in their life, mask or no mask. But it still didn’t change the fact that they were no investigator, not really. So they held on to the star all the tighter.

They discovered that the deceased Silah was in the bar the night she died. Her husband was at home with the children. Silah and some of the other wives met once a month in the tavern for some time away from their usual duties. The last one to see Silah alive was the barkeep since she stayed till the tavern closed. The innkeeper was rapidly moving up the list of Heron’s suspects. He was right behind the husband, because it was always the husband.

Heron moved to put on their own mask, the terrifying bird shaped mask all investigators wore, their head a bit too small for it, even with their hair. The long beak and dark wood made it the long and thin elf look even more avian.

They’d barely got it on when someone burst into the tavern looking terrifying.

“Sorrow! It’s here!” the frightened young man yelled. “It’s in the cemetery!”

Heron swore, not bothering to take off their mask, and ran out into the driving rains, barely taking time to put on their clock as they ran.

If Sorrow was in the cemetery, then there was a chance. A slim chance, that maybe Sorrow would be occupied with the body of Silah. Hopefully they’d get there before Sorrow left.

They spoke a quick word that rolled off their tongue and a bright little marsh light appeared before them, lighting their way through the darkness.

Sorrow was in the cemetery, seemingly looking at headstones. Black shrouded fingers traced lettering on gravestones. The figure stood for several moments surrounded by the dead, a bit of it was touching their gravestones as if absorbing their lives through the tiny little epitaphs that sum up entire existences in as few words as possible.

By the time the marsh light got to the cemetery, Sorrow was already gone.

Heron swore, their tongue flying other lilting syllables in elvish, cursing everything, mostly themselves.

There was a statue of the Wailing Father in the cemetery, for the dead center. A grief stricken father kneeling over all the graves in the cemetery. Permanent, unending anguish over his finely sculpted face.

“You’ve already figured it out haven’t you?” Heron asked the statue, dropping the mask in the mud. “I’m not even half the investigator you were. Not even close. I don’t even know if I should go after the bartender or the husband.” They sank to their knees, falling into the freezing mud. “I know I’ve said it before, but I’d give anything to trade places with you. You should be the investigator everyone knows and fears. I should be the one that’s… that’s… Why? You were always the good one, the better one. I was the fuck up. I never wanted your job, your name, but you’re gone. And I’m trying, I’m trying so hard to be a better person, to be you, but I’m not. I’m just still me, and I’m awful at it. Just… just come home? Please? I can’t do this without you.”

The elf with the assumed name Heron knelt in the half melted snow and mud and midnight night rain before the Wailing Father. They knew it was too late. Sorrow had their target and was probably on its way. And they didn’t even know where to begin.

The rain blurred away the tears as soon as they fell, but it didn’t wash away the cries of anguish and failure.

Heron was alone, cold, tired, and failing more than they succeeded. All of that barefaced, raw emotion was coming out as they mirrored the emotions set in stone before her.

The weather did not care. If the Wailing Father cared, he didn’t show it.

“We’re closed!” the tavern keep called as he heard the door open and shut behind heavy footsteps.

He turned around to repeat the phrase, but instead found himself face-to-face with a pale weeping mask of sadness and stone.

“Fuck!” he cried and fell backwards.

“Murderer,” whispered the voice from behind the mask like a stale breeze being let out of a cave.

“I did nothing!” he yelled as he reached beneath his bar for the short sword hidden there.

He held up the sword between himself and Sorrow. The being did not move, save for the masked face that followed him as he slipped out from behind the bar.

“I did nothing! Ya hear!” he yelled again.

Sorrow took a single step towards the tavern keeper but he slashed out with steel.

That rebounded. Bounced off whatever passed for flesh beneath the black shroud.

“Cursed, demon elven gods! I didn’t kill her!” he cried once more before attacking.

But the blows bounced off once again. This time Sorrow reached out and grabbed the blade in one hand and ripped it from the half masked man.

The man yelped as the other hand rose and knocked off his mask revealing all of the barkeep’s worn, terrified, scratched face. He had several scratches by his eyes, which were concealed by the mask he wore.

The touch of the frozen hand of Sorrow caused him to leap out of the way and over to the fire. Her grabbed the hot iron poker from the dying embers and brandished it like a sword.

Still Sorrow advanced slowly.

The tavern keeper lashed out with the glowing poker. It connected with Sorrow causing a dull thud.

Nothing seemed to even affect it till the hot poker caught the robes on fire, then it only warranted a brief look down.

Sorrow took another step forward. It continued advancing, unceasing.

Until the tavern keeper struck with the heavy iron rod, right in the mask of Sorrow.

Two blows in quick succession and Sorrow stopped moving. The stone mask cracked. Heavy cracks like scars spread across the mask.

The tavern keeper laughed and smashed the iron into the mask once more, deepening the cracks and wounds.

A dark, thick red substance started to pour from the mask and a sound like rocks groaning before being split under pressure escaped Sorrow.

Another attack came from the over confident tavern owner. He tried to strike the figure with the bleeding stone mask, but Sorrow’s hand intercepted his own.

The hand was heavy and strong and it squeezed and the small bones in the attacker’s hands snapped loudly.

Sorrow took the weapon from the man and threw it into the bar, shattering liquor bottles and catching it on fire.

“Oh shit,” he swore.

The blood was pouring out of the cracks in the mask. Sorrow reached up and removed the wounded mask, dropping it heavily on the ground, then removed the burning, smoldering clothing.

Before the tavern keeper stood an ethereal beauty.

An elf, naked, pale skin looking exactly like porcelain stone. But the stonework was so perfect, so smooth, it looked like flesh transmuted or, perhaps, silk made stone.

Slowly, with all the ease of chiseling stone, Sorrow’s face turned from one of neutral interest to one of abject rage.

The figure raised its hands and advanced upon the innkeeper.

Sorrow didn’t stop until the murderer’s face matched the Sorrowful expression on the mask it wore.

A little while later Sorrow knocked once on the door of the residence that once belonged to Silah.

The father was passed out in his bed. The twins were up in a moment, the little one rising a little slower.

Sorrow entered the cabin, shrouded in black with the sad, broken expression on the mask it wore.

“It is done,” wheezed the voice behind the mask.

It held out a hand towards the youngest girl.

She nodded solemnly and turned back into the bedroom.

A moment later the girl returned and placed a well worn, much loved stuffed bear into Sorrow’s waiting hand.

“Thank you,” the girl said. “Take care of him. His name is Bubbles and he needs lots of hugs.”

Sorrow’s hand disappeared with the bear back inside the robes, then it turned and left without another word.

Once outside Sorrow’s mask turned towards the smoldering tavern fire. Heron was watching, forlorn and sad. Another missed opportunity.

Sorrow stood in the dark, watching the light for some time until the rain had stopped.

Then, as dawn was breaking, moved on.

In a little network of roads beneath a great tree, in a small area that formed a little cave Sorrow built itself a little fire, hung up the cloak and mask beside it.

It sat down, orange flames dancing across the pale porcelain skin that was gently reflecting it back. Then, very carefully, like it was reaching for a holy object, Sorrow grabbed the stuffed bear. In the dim firelight Sorrow examined the bear, almost as if it was trying to remember the object’s significance.

After several seconds the stone lips parted and Sorrow said in a rough, cracked voice becoming a being of stone, “You need lots of hugs.”

Then gently embraced the bear like Sorrow was once a small child with an animal.

#stone face sorrow #fantasy fiction #one off #death and other epilogues #my fiction #writeblr #original fiction

[probablyfunrpgideas]

The Graveyard Book

Shout out to Divinity: Original Sin 2 for having a graveyard that contains different burial practices for the different cultures. What a neat way to show off the depth of your worldbuilding! And each one also has things for the player character to interact with, so they're fairly memorable.

In my world of Tephra, humans usually are cremated while family and friends tell stories of their life. Usually, they ask for their remains to be buried on the site of a new endeavor - beneath their granddaughter's first shop, or scattered in the orchard their best friend is planting. Orcs are buried facing east, into the sunrise. If they die of natural causes, they are are buried with a weapon so their spirit will not be defenseless. In Estier, the grave goods may include a protective magic amulet made from quartz, while the orcs of Dorend prefer to leave a bone flute or whistle. The burial practices of the gnomes could fill a dozen books, but for simplicity's sake, family ties are paramount. A gnome's body must be returned to someone who knew them or was a relative (through blood, marriage, or choice) so that they can be remembered on special days of the year at the family shrine. For the sake of hygiene, this means skeletal remains are kept in almost every gnomish home, though some wealthy families have the means to keep up magical preservation spells in a mausoleum of some sort.

Halflings are buried at liminal spaces, the edge of a grove or a crossroad or a shoreline. In the south of Estier, they usually plant a tree where the body lies, and discern the age of a village by the size of their grave-forest. In the northlands, there's a tendency to make reference to the local earth spirits in an epitaph or ceremony. Some outsiders say that dwarves value the community more than the individual, but a dwarven cemetery is a testament against that. Some outsiders also say that dwarves turn into stone when they die, and this is a more understandable mistake. For in that peaceful cavern or quiet field, life-sized statues stand over each grave. The sculptors who work on these are usually masters of their craft, capturing facial features and showing the subject's role and personality. Rare is the Elf who leaves anyone behind to think of their burial. They are so solitary and long-lived that most end up returning to the life cycle of the Forest. One famous exception is the Lavender Flame, a magical knight-errant who asked her noble paramour to build a splendid tower when she finally fell in battle. This tomb still stands in the town of Flamerest, where the steppe rises into the Shield Mountains.

Goblins seem to decompose very rapidly, and it is unclear whether their kin on the airships have a meaningful ceremony for the remains. They claim to be unconcerned with death, but avoid it as much as anyone else does. Shoalsali (or Lizardfolk) keep written records of all the family and apprentices who have been part of their tribe, but they leave the bodies for birds or fish.

#idea #d&d #tabletop rpgs #d&d 3.5 #d&d 5e #worldbuilding #tephra #tw death

[protege-not-protagonist]

Criminal Minds: The Protégé Chapter 8

Ch 8: The Mountain King- Pt. 1

Blurb: With Nathan Harris' death confirmed as suspicious, Grace and Spencer start work on the case. But there is another case in the Appalachian Mountains that requires the team's attention. Immediately, Grace is unsettled by something about the case, but she struggles to figure out exactly what her instincts are telling her. In the meantime, Spencer tries to navigate the grief of having his mother not recognise him. He throws himself into working the victimology of this new Unsub killer.

Masterlist

Previous Chapter

Audience: 16+ mature audience for depictions of violence and sexual references Author's Note: if you see a trigger warning that concerns you, you can scroll to end and I'll have a brief description what happens. And how to read around it. TW: violence, crime scene depiction, This case mentions sexual assault, horror, kidnapping, decapitation, reference to the infamous Bloodlines episode, Alzheimers.

Appalachian Trail, Wertzvile, PA, Friday July 7th 10:00PM

‘Help me!’ Her sister’s voice bounced off the trees around her.

‘Lori! I’m coming, hang on!’ she screamed back. Another disembodied scream echoed around her. ‘Lori!’ she called out again, frantically running towards the sound.

‘Please!’ her sister begged in response. She sounded closer. ‘Steph! Help me! I’m down here!’

She swivelled her head, scanning through the forest. She couldn’t see a valley or a cave. The ground was relatively flat. What did she mean down? Down where?

‘Stephanie!’ she cried.

She crept forward slowly.

‘Lori where are-’ There was a metallic click. The ground gave way beneath her. She screamed as she fell into the darkness. The solid rocky ground met her and she cried out at the impact. Groaning, she dragged herself to sit up. Thankfully, the pain subsided, and she released a breath of relief. Nothing was broken.

‘Lori?’ she called to her sister, crawling across the rough stone floor. The mineshaft she must have fallen into was cold, damp and foully metallic smelling. Shallow, stagnant puddles of water licked her hands as she felt her way in the darkness. Her hand hit something cold and fleshy. She jumped back and yelped before regaining her senses. ‘Lori? Is that you?’

‘Steph.’ A sob echoed around her. She reached out again and felt the softness of her sister’s hair under her hand. She ran it down her face to caress her cheek.

‘Hey it’s okay, you’re okay now, are you hurt?’ Steph felt around her own head for the headlamp’s on switch.

‘Please! Help me!’ her sister cried again.

Steph frowned. There was no relief or recognition in her voice. It sounded the same as the cries she had heard before. Exactly the same. Her finger found the lamp’s switch and flicked it. ‘Lori?’

The light turned on. Her eyes halted on her muddy red hand in front of her face. Blood. She gasped out panicked breaths as her gaze drifted to the other hand that held her sister’s cheek. Lori’s glazed over eyes stared unseeingly back at her.

‘Steph! Help me! I’m down here!’ Lori’s voice echoed around her, but her sister’s mouth didn’t move.

A strangled scream tore out of Steph's throat as the light of her headlamp revealed the extent of the horror.

Her sister’s head in her grasp was not connected to a body.

Mt. Olivet Cemetery, DC, Monday July 17th 10:00AM

Spencer sat amongst the small group in plastic chairs at the graveside, listening as the celebrant’s words echoed through a cheap sound system.

‘Now, we have a few words from, Sarah,’ the man stepped away from the portable lectern next to the closed (and empty) casket as Dr Harris wearily stepped up to the microphone. Much like all 12 people there, including the funeral home staff, she wore black dress clothes.

She unfolded a piece of paper from her pocket and smoothed it on the lectern. Taking time to compose herself before she spoke.

‘First of all, I want to thank every single one of you for coming today. I know my son was a difficult person to love, but all of you saw past his troubles and …’ Dr Harris choked out, ‘Sorry.’ She glanced back down at the paper in her hand and folded it up, abandoning it. ‘You all saw the person he was underneath that. He was smart, very curious, and engaged in the way the world worked. I wished he got to enjoy it, but as we all know, He… I-it just wasn’t a possibility. But we all did the best we could. My son was my world. He may not have had the ability to be as kind and caring as most, but he tried his best. He wanted to be helped, and he wanted to get better. And I’m proud of him… He was many things, but one thing I can say with no convictions is that he was a good son. I love you Nathan, and I miss you so much.’ She cried and stepped away from the microphone.

The funeral assistant was there with tissues, giving her a reassuring hug as the celebrant spoke into the microphone. Spencer hung his head and let out a shaky breath. He couldn’t imagine what Dr Harris was going through. He also couldn’t imagine what it was like to pretend that this funeral was for your son that had taken his own life while knowing that, in fact, someone had taken it from him. Agent Matthews had a tox-screen run on Nathan over the weekend. It had confirmed what she suspected.

‘Sarah has organised a small tribute for Nathan that will play in a moment. We have some petals here for you each to come and lay upon the casket. We encourage you to take your time, reflect and say goodbye as the lovely piece, Ashokan Farewell, is played by Isabella Goodwin.’

A tall woman with blonde hair pulled into a French twist walked past them all from the back row, a violin in her hand.

It was a strange coincidence that the woman would share the same name as the NYPD’s first female detective. Even stranger was that when she stood at the front and played, she looked familiar. Spencer squinted at her. Slowly, he joined the short procession that passed the attendant holding the basket with white flower petals. He got closer and studied Isabella’s face.

She had smokey eye makeup, thick black glasses, large pearl earrings, and appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her face was expressive, scrunching up in an emotional stance that musicians adopted when playing. Did he know her? She caught him staring. Her eyes flicked to him and he saw it; recognition. Only for a second. Then her eyes darted back to a point near the casket where people were laying petals and wishing their condolences to Dr Harris.

He took a handful of petals and approached the casket.

‘Goodbye Nathan,’ he whispered. He thought of an accurate but poignant thing to say at his empty graveside. He settled on the words; ‘I’m sorry, we couldn’t do more for you.’ He scattered the petals and made his way past Dr Harris, offering her a respectful nod.

‘Thank you for coming, Dr Reid. I know things were difficult, but you saved my son, in more ways than you realise. Your visits meant a lot to him.’ She told him.

He didn’t know what to say to that. He murmured his condolences, sat back down on the plastic chair, and stared at the small selection of photos in the memorial program that had been handed out.

A boy smiling and playing with a train set, juxtaposed with a man in a psych ward rec room, using a plastic knife to cut a cupcake decorated with the number 30. What could have been done? What should have happened? And other ‘what if’s’ plagued him.

Everyone was seated again as Isabella finished the song. He didn’t know too much about violin playing, but she didn’t have sheet music, which means she had memorised it. She played in a way that conveyed emotion with her sound and movement. It must have taken skill. And to play a song for Nathan’s funeral seemed very personal. She must have been a close friend of the family. But her face frustrated him. How did he know her? Maybe he had seen her in a concert once? But if that was the case, why would she seem to recognise him too?

Isabella made eye contact again as she walked back to her seat, this time offering him a small, nervous smile. And Spencer recognised that expression immediately.

After the ceremony ended, the guests, mainly family and a few doctors, left for the wake. He remained, feeling that attending the wake would be intruding. The violinist seemed to feel the same way. She approached him as they watched the funeral assistants winched back up the empty casket to move back into the hearse. Once Nathan’s autopsy had been completed, he would be buried, but for now, for the sake of the investigation, the funeral had to carry on as planned. If the unsub knew they were investigating Nathan’s death, one this elusive might disappear.

‘Isabella Goodwin, the first police matron to make detective, known for her undercover work. It’s a fitting choice. I didn’t recognise you.’ He said.

‘Well, that’s high praise, with your eidetic memory, Dr Reid,’ Agent Matthews smiled at him and removed the glasses.

‘How long have you played the violin?’ He asked.

‘Since I was 7.’

‘Wow, did you ever play professionally?’

She laughed. ‘That’s flattering, but no, never had the drive to be a professional violinist. To the untrained ear, I’m passable. I could never read music well enough, but to add to that, a while back, I had a wrist injury.’ She held up her right wrist and rotated it. It audibly clicked and groaned. He winced. That sounded like bones that hadn’t been set properly after breaking. He doubted it had received treatment at all, and if she had, she should sue. ‘Means I've finally got an excuse for the state of my handwriting, but unfortunately my bowing isn’t as good as it used to be. I can’t play for long periods time anymore.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t know if I’d see you here. It was good of you to come. I think Dr Harris appreciated it.’

‘I think she would have appreciated you offering to play for Nathan. To my untrained ear, it was very moving.’ He watched her eyes dart around, unsure how to take his compliment.

Who did such a number on you, Grace? He wondered. He wondered if she was like this all the time? She wouldn’t be in the field if she didn’t have a confident side. It must be her interactions with him, he concluded. She told him when they had met she admired him, and Garcia said she was more reserved around people she didn’t know or thought were superior. He didn’t want her to think he was like that. He enjoyed their conversation. It was nice to talk to someone who shared his interests.

Agent Matthews nodded and glanced down at her violin case. ‘Well, I’m glad it came across like that, even if I was technically only here for the investigation.’

‘Yes, I figured, given the disguise.’ He eyed her blonde wig. ‘Am I allowed to ask why?’

‘If I was an unsub, who was this good at getting away with murder; this is where I would be; among the victims, seeing the aftermath. This is where they would feel the most power. This is as close as they get to being caught. Here is where they'd feel the most satisfaction. They were here, I know it. No one stood out to me, but I’m hoping I caught a slip up from the unsub on camera,’ she explained, tapping the thick black glasses in her pocket. ‘I needed a vantage point that saw all the interactions with the casket and Dr Harris. I needed to be close the whole time and be in plain sight, but be unrecognisable to those medical staff I have already spoken to or end up interviewing later. Hence-’ She gestured to herself from head to toe. ‘-Isabella Goodwin, the violinist.’

‘You could have been a funeral assistant.’ he pointed out.

‘I could have,’ she agreed. But her eyes went to the grave open in front of them. ‘But when I discussed the plan with Dr Harris, I saw she was struggling with trying to make Nathan’s funeral special. I just really felt for her, you know? Having a good funeral is part of a good death. To be denied both is just… awful.’ Her eyes didn’t move from the hole in the ground. ‘I don’t know. Everyone has their thing. That thing that they can’t stand. Like JJ’s is when things involve kids, you know?’

Spencer nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. His was when a case involved bullying and highschool kids. She looked back at him and sighed, gesturing to all the surrounding graves.

‘I guess how victims are treated after is my thing. I wanted to help, so I gave Dr. Harris a list of traditional pieces I knew, and offered to play any she chose.’

Words failed him. It was such an unfathomably kind gesture. Agent Matthews hadn’t even known the Harris family until four days ago.

‘I also do birthdays and weddings, as long as I get cake.’ She added, attempting to downplay the action with a joke.

‘I think that was a very kind thing to do, Agent Matthews.’ He said. She shrugged and tried to stuff her hands in pockets but found none in her pencil skit. Instead, she clasped them together and stood there fidgeting, not sure what to say next.

Spencer opened his satchel and pulled out her pen and notepad, offering it back to her. ‘You left this behind the last time I saw you. I wrote out the list of unsubs I visited. Garcia has compiled a list of all the cases with potential victims. I think she sent it to you. I can help narrow it down. But I haven’t had time to sit down and look through it. I wanted to do it over the weekend, but…’ He didn’t want to think of it, but it came to the front of his mind; the blank look on his Mother’s face when he entered her room. ‘…I got held up with a personal matter.’

It was the second time he had visited, and she hadn’t recognised him for the entire time he had been there. The doctor had reassured him she talked to staff members about him. She remembered she had a son, even if she didn’t recognise him every time. It didn’t help take away the hurt and loss he felt, though. Never did he think he could lose someone who was still there, who hadn’t gone anywhere. It wasn’t death, but it was close.

‘Oh my gosh, thanks! I was wondering where these went.’ Grace startled him out of his thoughts. ‘I leave things everywhere. It’ll get me in trouble one day.’ She tapped the notebook to her head and flashed him a goofy smile, but it faded. Grace stared back at him with a tilted head. ‘Hey, I hope everything is okay with whatever’s going on. You don’t have to compile a list of anything for me. I mean, it’s my case. I hope you don’t feel like you have to. If you’re busy, don’t worry about it-’

‘Oh no, I settled it. It’s all fine now,’ he assured her. There really was nothing he could do. And that was the worst part. ‘I am happy to help. I have got little to do these days, anyway. Two days at Georgetown and two at the Academy a week, feels like a continuous weekend after 18 and a half years at the BAU. An occasional extracurricular consult will do me some good. So please, you're more than welcome to ask me anything. ’

‘Thank you, Dr Reid.’ She nodded, then seemed to pause as if in deep thought. ‘You know, if you’re looking for a hobby to try, let me know. I’ve tried tons of things, and well, I haven’t really stuck with many of them, but I’ve started a lot of them. I guess what I’m saying is I have a lot of recommendations, so-’

She was interrupted as her phone vibrated. She pulled it out of her suit jacket’s pocket. He glimpsed the caller ID and frowned.

Keep it PG

‘Hey Garcia,’ she answered.

Spencer stifled a chuckle. He got it. It was a pun with Garcia’s initials and the rating system for films. It was even more humorous knowing Garcia personally. The nickname suited her.

‘…I’ll be there in 20. Um, do you have any makeup remover? You did a wonderful job, but my face is starting to feel a little heavy. Yes… Awesome. You’re like my fairy godmother, thank you. I’ll see you soon.’ She hung up and turned to him and sighed. ‘I’ve gotta go. Thanks for returning this.’ She held up the notebook again.

‘Got a case?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, sorry, it seems like I maxed out my quota of non-work socialisation for today. I guess… I’ll see you around?’ she asked and looking at him expectantly. To him, it seemed Agent Matthews was testing the waters for something.

‘Of course,’ He nodded. ‘If I need a new skill to try my hand at, I’ll ask.’

She nodded and waved politely, but he read a bit of disappointment in her expression as she walked away. Then he realised; she had given him a subtle an invitation for friendship. ‘See you around?’ The way she posed it as a question; It was an offer to meet without an obligation to work.

‘Agent Matthews?’ he called after her.

‘Yes?’ She turned around.

‘Do you play chess?’

‘Not really,’ she admitted, but after a moment of seemingly debating with herself she added, ‘Not sure I’d give you a good game, but I’m happy to give it a go?’

‘Well, if you want, text me if you’re around the academy on Thursday at lunchtime. There’s a board near the cafeteria. I'll bring the pieces.’

‘Um, okay, fair warning though, I think I've only played once or twice,’ she admitted.

‘That's okay, I can teach you if you can't remember or we can just eat lunch if you find you don't like it,’ He said. Grace’s posture seemed to relax a little after that suggestion. ‘See you on Thursday?’

She smiled brightly, ‘Yes! Sure thing, Thursday, unsubs permitting.'

BAU, Quantico, VA, 11:10AM

‘Who’s the consultant Rossi?’ Tara asked with a smirk as a blonde woman walked into the conference room.

Rossi smiled widely. ‘I don’t remember asking for a consultant. Must be getting old.’

‘Anyone seen Matthews?’ Simmons jokingly squinted and looked around the room.

‘Haha, hilarious,’ Grace said, taking a seat at the round table. ‘I’ll get changed on the plane. I didn’t want to waste time.’

‘Gone Baywatch Blonde on us, Five-O?’ Luke smirked. Grace screwed up her face at him and rolled her eyes.

‘Jokes aside Matthews, I Love your makeup,’ JJ commented with an approving nod. ‘You pull off the smokey eye well.’

‘Well, I can’t take credit for that. That was Garcia’s work.’ She gestured to the brightly dress woman standing by, remote and tablet in hand.

‘She’s my masterpiece,’ Garcia beamed. ‘Argh, she looks so good! Don’t you just want to take her out and show her off?’

Tara and JJ laughed. Grace frowned. Was that a good thing? What was she supposed to say to that?

‘That will have to wait till we’re back, I’m afraid,’ Rossi let a fond smile fade from his face as he prepared himself to start the meeting.

‘Unfortunately, Prentiss won’t be joining us for this one. She has paperwork to file and a conference to attend tomorrow, so this is us. Garcia, you ready to walk us through the case?’

Garcia sighed heavily at the tablet in her arms and pressed a button on her remote. ‘Unfortunately, my job isn’t just all smiles and makeovers. Three days ago, the bodies of two women were found on a creek bed by hikers just outside Werztville, Pennsylvania. “Which trail were they hiking?” you may ask, unfortunately it is one of our favourites, the Appalachian trail.’

‘Ugh,’ Tara remarked.

‘What so bad about the Appalachian trail?’ Simmons asked.

Rossi sighed, ‘Last case we had there was real nasty. Cormac Burton killed male victims that reminded him of his father and then, unknown to him, his mentally disabled brother would follow him, hide and dismember the bodies all the while convinced he was looking after a dog the boys had briefly in their childhood.’

Grace frowned. There were a lot more reasons to dislike the trail. The BAU didn’t have the best track record with cases on that particular mountain range.

‘I thought you’d say it’s because there were two unsubs we never caught, Shane Wayland, the paedophile and serial killer in 2010, then there was that case in 2014 where the unsub was the product of ince-‘

‘-Yep, we remember Matthews. Are there only two bodies?’ JJ asked, trying to change the subject.

Garcia clicked a button on the remote and a map of the area came up. ‘Local police have linked them with two other cases from the past two years. Harrisburg is the closest city centre just across the river and county lines, but they have the most resources, so they have coordinated the investigation. The first was victim was killed in mid January last year near Summerdale Cumberland county, then there was a similar scene in Marysville, Perry County in April 2022. All disposal sites close to the trail and near creeks that branch off the Susquehanna River but, the similarities with state the bodies were left in is what got them to contact us. All the victims showed signs of sexual assault and… were also left naked, wrapped in sheets and… uh, headless.’ Garcia averted her eyes from her tablet. ‘Which you can see from the crime scene photos on your tablets.’

Simmons frowned. ‘So no heads? No secondary disposal sites anywhere?’

Grace clamped her lips together. The “So no head?” Vine played in her mind involuntarily. Don’t laugh, not now, don’t laugh you sicko, don’t laugh. Please, for the love of your job, keep it together. Don’t think of the vine. She instead stared at the crime scene photos, at the pale corpses, and regained her composure.

‘Looks like we have a collector,’ Luke grimaced.

‘Have they been identified?’ Rossi asked. She clung to that. ID-ing was something she could focus on. It was something she was good at. She scanned the pictures, but whoever had taken them had seen to shy away from them. There were hardly any usefully close ups.

Garcia clicked to the next slide. ‘Victim one was Hope Freeman, 22, student at Central Penn College. Reported missing by her parents when she didn’t make it home from a new year’s party. Sadly, no ID for victim two, no one has claimed them. And the M.E. hasn’t finished with three and four but with no clothes or heads, it’s not likely we will get an ID if their prints aren’t on file or nobody’s looking for them.’

‘So this guy killed one girl, waited three months to kill a second victim, then went 15 months without killing to suddenly killing two victims on the same day?’ Tara pointed out. ‘That’s a weird cooling-off period. And two in one day, is that an acceleration or was it just that there was an opportunity for two victims at once?’

Rossi nodded along with a contemplative frown, ‘My question is; why the missing time? Was our guy locked up or are there victims we haven’t found? I don’t like the looks of this one.’ He sighed as he put his tablet down.

Grace felt it too. This was a bad one. All cases were all bad. But sometimes she felt like there were moments in her life where she was a character from a Star Wars movie saying, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ This was one of those moments. But unlike a Jedi, this feeling came with no other helpful instruction other than; the vibe is off. And annoyingly, the ‘vibes being off’ was not a quantifiable or describable sensation she could tell her colleges to warn them of danger. All she could say was there was something real off about this one and hope that she could figure out what in time.

‘Wheels up in 20. Make sure you have good shoes. I got a feeling we’ll be hiking through the woods in this one.’ Rossi dismissed them.

Grace picked up the recorder glasses from her desk, grabbed her go bag and violin case and headed towards Garcia’s cave. She couldn't take her violin with her and it wasn’t good for the strings to be exposed to wildly varying temperatures it would experience in a car. So that left only one thing to do.

‘Garcia?’ she asked, immediately frowning when she realised she wasn’t that only one who had come to say goodbye to Garcia.

Alvez was there too. Which wouldn’t have been weird if it weren’t for the few steps back from Penelope he had jumped when Grace entered. Grace raised an eyebrow. Luke casually flicked one of Garcia’s bobble heads and watched it with way too much interest.

She felt Like she had walked in on something… but what kind of something?

‘Yes, Grace?’ Garcia asked, reminding her why she was there.

'I have the glasses and the footage for you. Can you send me a copy directly, please? Saves me trying to file it in the file system.'

'Yah okay.' she nodded. Her eyes flicking between her and Alvez. 'Anything else?'

'Also, can you watch Vincenzo for me while I’m gone?’ She asked and stepped in to the room fully.

Garcia lit up. ‘Absolutely. What does he eat?’ she asked excitedly.

‘Nothing,’ she held up her case.

‘Is that an assault rifle? Are you qualified to handle it?’ Luke asked.

Grace snorted, ‘No, to both.’ She unclasped the clips and opened it for them to see. ‘I can’t leave him in my car in the parking lot. He needs a steady temperature and to be handled with care.’

Both Luke and Garcia peered into the case. Garcia gasped, and Luke gave her a surprised look.

‘You are an enigma, Five-O.’ Luke shook his head and walked off.

Grace watched him leave, wondering what he was talking to Penelope about that he was not comfortable saying in front of her. She was forming a hypothesis, but she would need to observe more interactions to tell if it was an accurate one.

‘I will guard him with my life,’ Garcia promised.

‘Thank you so much.' Grace handed over the recording glasses. 'Now I’m sorry, I know I’m your master piece but I need the remover wipes before we go.‘ Grace asked.

Garcia pouted. ‘I was hoping you’d forget. Do you like it?’

‘It looks good, but it's not really my style.’ she shrugged. ‘Actually, you did such a good job. Dr Reid didn’t recognise me.’

‘Really?’ she beamed. ‘Cause you can totally pull it off. I thought you’d like being a mysterious-’ she gestured down at the violin, ‘-violinist. Showing up unannounced with your dark eyes, pearl earrings and heels. Straight from a mystery thriller, like all sexy-’

‘-No.’ Grace said more sharply than she intended.

She quickly back tracked seeing Garcia’s hurt face; It wasn't her fault. She didn't know that word was a sore spot for her. How could she? No one knew it was, well except Rossi, and he only knew because he needed to.

Grace softened her face. ‘What I mean is, I-I’ve read Agatha Christie novels, and I know what you mean… but it's not really a character that appeals to me. I’ve had a hard time being comfortable enough to be… just me. And I know what I like, what makes me comfortable and how I dress is part of how I be me. I’m not saying I hate it, the makeup and the heels. It looks good, great even, and I don't mind it occasionally, but it just doesn't feel like me, you know?’ she explained. ‘Plus, my face is itchy.’

Garcia gave her a heart melting look of understanding and opened the draw of her desk, pulling out some make up wipes.

‘Very well, my lovely, the clock strikes midnight, but this fairy godmother will be here whenever you need a transformation. Just say the magic words.’ She held out her arms, asking for a hug. Grace stepped forward into the embrace, stooping a bit to wrap her arms around her.

‘Thank you.’ Grace did her best to return the hug, trying to tap out after three seconds.

Garcia giggled and held on tighter. ‘Nope, you’re not getting away with less than five seconds after saying something like that gorgeous girl. Come here.’

Next Chapter

Taglist: @bridgeoverstrawberryfields

If you love this story or even just like it, leave a comment, like, reblog, ask a question with Character Mail, whatever, it is much appreciated and it really motivates me.

if you want to be added to taglist please comment on this post.

Sexual assault: I will try not to be graphic at all in this story, this chapter just has it mentioned as part of what the unsub does, but later chapters will have a scene at the medical examiner’s office and the next chapters will also reveal that the unsub is a necrophiliac. I will try to bookend the scenes of time stamps if you don't want to read that scene.

Horror: this is supposed to be the MGG directed ep of the season, so… sorry. Maybe just skip the first scene straight to time stamp Mt. Olivet Cemetery, DC, Monday July 17th 10:00AM.

violence, crime scene depiction: cannon typical throughout this story

kidnapping: Unsub is implied to kidnap victims and hold them for a few days.

decapitation: this is part of the unsubs M.O. a graphic reference to this is in the last line of the opening scene.

Reference to the infamous bloodlines episode: it's just mentioned in passing, don't worry.

Alzheimer's: Reid visited his mum on the weekend and she didn't recognise him.

#spencer reid #BAU #criminal minds #mentor spencer #big brother spencer #spencer gets a happy ending #the protege #OC Grace Matthews #the protege chapter 8 #fanfic #my fic #criminal minds case #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds fanfiction

[heavenzscent]

Working Title : OUT OF OUR HANDS

WIP Rated: M

867 

The Mountains of Hizuru were as beautiful as they had looked in the history books. He rolled down the automobiles windows to allow the crisp coastal breeze to keep him up. The trip from Odiha to Hizuru had been a last minute one without much comfort. 

13 years had passed since Eren had trampled upon the world upon the citizens of the proud nation of the North Eastern sea. Luckily most of it was located upon mountainous islands full of caves which had served as natural bunkers. What had done many of the citizens and survivors had been lack of food. But still they stood. Not as old, grand and mysterious but still just as proud. 

He pulled over into a rest stop. In the walls they would bury or burn the dead. Burials where costly because their was little room for cemeteries it needed to be made useful. Here the cemeteries where different they where streaming with life, trees, ponds and hillsides. They doubled as parks. This one was dedicated to the victims of the rumbling. 

Their where statues made of marble and bronze of angels. Shoguns, emperors and heroes of the past. Alongside statues of those who had fallen from familymen who always helped the community and grandma’s. Their stories written on plaques in both Hizuruan and Eldian. Every tree and statue had a story written upon it. Some where beginning to grow out of eyelevel becoming last to future eyes. 

In the center was a large marble structure that contained all the names of those lost in Hizuru in their complicated writing. 

“Ambassador!” 

He turned around and nodded his head at the frantic scout who he had left asleep in his backseat. 

“Please -uh– refrain from leaving sir.” 

“Sorry Yua. Just needed to stretch.” 

“Don’t do it again. It’s my job to protect you.” The young scout insisted. 

He sighed. Even during a time of relative peace in an empty park a soldiers duty never seased he supposed. 

“I used to be a soldier too yuh know?” 

“This is my first mission out the castle and My Empress trusted me with you.” 

Jean cocked his brow and huffed from his nose. Mikasa had

“Do you happen to know the reason for this visit.” 

The Yua simply shrugged in reply suddenly unable to look him in the eye. 

“How old are you, Miss Tanaka?” He asked taking one last look at the memorial. 

“18 years.” 

He hummed. She had been 5 at the time. He turned around and followed her back to the automobile. 

859

The palace was lovely and fresh but it lacked the grandeur of the original which he had only seen in paintings and photographs but one day it would be. Kiyomi boasted about how the building of the palace was part of the economic plan. It was a joint project between Paradise and Hizuru, the first of many she hoped. The lumber had been issued from the island and some of the stone as well. 

It had been a tactic to show peace and to share access to Hizurus knowledge and  industry. 

The workers who built it were in contract to work on all co-country projects and many of those in the village were on the state's payroll. 

Unlike Eldian palaces that were closed off and tall like fortresses the structure was wider, only going as high as three stories but usually just two . 

“How was it?” He asked Mikasa once they were left to themselves. She had been so quiet but her eyes looked so inquisitive the whole tour. 

“I wish we had more time to see it …before.” Jean nodded in agreement. “But I try not to dwell, I don’t like getting angry at him.” Jean nodded again. He understood it was a useless sort of anger. 

“Hey.” Jean whispered. Mikasa leaned in her face perplexed over the sudden shift in his demeanor. “Ring the bell.” He smirked, pointing at the button. 

“It’s my first night here.” Mikasa rolled her eyes. 

“Come on.” Jean pleaded. 

It didn’t take much convincing.Mikasa never needed much convincing when it came to Jean. 

Within the hour they had a cart full of food and drinks wheeled into their room by an awestruck servant girl who spoke slightly broken but good Eldian. They asked her to join them as they ate dessert and asked her about life in Hizuru, working at the palace and her life. 

To both Jean and Mikasa’s surprise what she said aligned closely with Kiyomis version of the truth. 

867

Once entering the grounds he saw her sons first. The twins, So and Kaito, were hitting a topiary with wood swords as their older brother, Wren, was supervising, pointing every which way yelling unintelligible commands. 

He had thought that he would resent maybe even hate the boys but he quickly found that he could never hate anything that came from Mikasa.

Yua yelled in Hizuran once the twins began climbing the decorative tree and bending it into odd shapes , causing Wren to begin crying and hollering to try to gain his authority back over the younger boys. 

The twins screamed and laughed until they recognized Yua stomping towards them. 

“See this is why I need a promotion.” She said in annoyance although her lips were tugged slightly upwards. 

Jean stopped to wait for Yua to fish the boys out of the bushes. 

He looked down, swearing he heard a small thump. 

Wren was standing in front of him as stiff and straight as he could muster and was giving him the old military salute of the walls. 

Jean mimicked the gesture and bowed. “Crowned Prince Wren.” He addressed the boy as though he were a commander, one day he would be after all. 

“Mr.Ambassador Jean.” The boy mimicked a soldier's tone. Jean tried his best not to laugh at the stern little boy. 

“How have you been? It's been five months.”  

“Yes, since the winter.” Wren was smart. Some six year olds barely knew the months or their birthdays. But the prince was smart like both his mother and father. 

“How has everything been since winter?” 

“I started mine schooling with the other children. Kaito and So still learn with the ummm babies.” Wren seemed quite smug. “My Hizuran and Eldian are very good my mommy and father say so. Oh! A-and uhhh Miss Ao is upset at father right now!”  

“Huh, why?”Jean asked, trying not to seem too interested.

Ao Tanaka was the emperor's mistress and very much the love of his life. At first Jean had hated the man for not loving Mikasa. The emperor had the person in which Jean coveted and was practically spitting upon the blessing. But with time he saw that the arrangement seemed to work for everyone and that the world was larger than what he had been raised to know after all. 

Ao was a kind woman and had been from the emperors home village in the countryside. They had grown up together and at one point thought they would make a life together.That was until the rumbling happened and he became the best and most supported candidate to lead the nation.

He was a kind man as well; Jean supposed. 

He wondered what that bastard had done. Ao can barely swat a fly without looking guilty; he couldn't imagine her being angry.Espcially not enough for even the kids to take notice.  

“I’m not sure… maybe you can cheer her up. Your very funny uncle!” 

“What happened to Ambassador.” Jean faked indignation. Wren simply laughed. He was a confident little boy. Most kids needed an adult on their knees to feel comfortable speaking but Wren could hold a conversation looking up with complete ease and cheerfulness. 

“I’ll try my best.” Jean bowed deeply which made the boy giggle with delight. No one really bowed to him unless the event was formal. Both Mikasa and her husband agreed that it would spoil the boys. 

So ran up to his brother muttering some unintelligible Hizuran/Eldian mishmash of a sentence (Wren seemed to understand the bilingual squishing of words perfectly.);Jean could swear he heard the word child. 

This was followed by another scolding from Yua trying to get the twins to sit on their hands for a few minutes until they calmed down. She quickly gave Jean a glance that left him uneasy. 

“I give up! Do as you will. I need to take the ambassador to your parents. I’m going to give Chiyo a whipping later.” She announced.He supposed that had been her replacement while she undertook her first mission. 

Wren gave him and Yua a final salute before they disappeared through the heavy palace doors. 

INFO SHEET

The Imperial family of Hizuru

Her majesty the Empress  Mikasa Ackerman

His majesty the Emperor Arata Azumabito-Ito 

Crowned Prince Wren Ackerman-Ito  (both sounds Eldian for the bird and sounds Hizuran) 

Prince So Ackerman-Ito

Prince Kaito Ackerman-Ito

Courtesan to the Emperor Ao Tanaka

Yua Tanaka, Scout and serves the Imperial family. 18 years old 5 at the time of the rumbling.

Kiyomi Azumabito - states woman and ambassador   

Unified Nations Federation

Jean Kirstein, Lead Ambassador of Eldia and The Unified Nations Federation. 

Reiner Braun, Ambassador of Eldia and The Unified Nations Federation. 

Connie Springer, Ambassador of Eldia and The United Nations Federation. 

Pieck Finger, Ambassador of Eldia and The United Nations Federation

The Government of Eldia 

Queen Historia Reiss of Eldia 

Armin Arlert, Minister of the Eldian Empire.

Annie Leonhart, Retired Ambassador, Assistant and body guard to the Minister

#Jeankasa #Post rumbling X Royals #WIP

[the-starless-reader]

Death by a Thousand... Stars?

I've been going through my notes on Siege and Storm, and one particular detail stood out. It's an excerpt from the prologue:

[...] they stood together on deck, picking out constellations from the vast spill of stars: the Hunter, the Scholar, the Three Foolish Sons, the bright spokes of the Spinning Wheel, the Southern Palace with its six crooked spires.

The note says: Double-check the constellations! Alina's bedchamber has a star-speckled dressing screen! The Darkling's bedchamber has constellations on the ceiling!

And then I remembered my notes on Ruin and Rising. And guess what? The monastery of Sankt Demyan, otherwise known as the Spinning Wheel, was turned into an observatory 'a few hundred years ago'. Double-check the constellations!

[...] the bronze columns were constellations—the Hunter with his drawn bow, the Scholar bent in study, the Three Foolish Sons, huddled together, trying to share a single coat. The Bursar, the Bear, the Beggar. The Shorn Maiden wielding her bone needle. Twelve in all: the spokes of the Spinning Wheel.

It's been abandoned 'for over a century'. This version of the Darkling is approximately 120 years old. Coincidence? I think not. Sugar had been rationed in Ravka for the last hundred years, which can only mean that the current war had started around the same time he'd made himself known again.

But what about the monastery? I think that the Darkling was the one who'd turned it into an observatory. My only proof is a tale found in The Language of Thorns. It's a story about his half-sister Ulla, titled When Water Sang Fire. Our Youngling was the seer's apprentice in the lost city of Söndermane, a scholar cloistered in the Prophetic’s Tower. A stargazer!

At each level the apprentice named another subject: history, augury, geography, mathematics, alchemy. Ulla hoped they’d wind all the way to the top of the tower, where she knew they’d find the famous observatory.

However, stargazing wasn't his only preoccupation there. But we'll come back to that later. Double-check the constellations! Let's get back to the twelve spokes of the Spinning Wheel.

The Hunter with his drawn bow? That's Sankt Petyr, with his still-burning arrows. The Scholar bent in study must be Sankt Dimitri. The Bear is obviously Sankt Grigori. The Shorn Maiden wielding her bone needle is probably Sankta Vasilka, the first firebird.

What about the others? Thirteen Saints were shown on the massive triptych behind the altar in the original Lantsov chapel, where the first Ravkan kings were crowned. Thirteen Saints were featured in the original version of the Istorii Sankt’ya. But there are only twelve spokes, twelve constellations. Who's the odd one out?

Sankt Demyan is most certainly not, and here's why.

According to The Lives of Saints, the site of Sankt Demyan's death is the tallest mountain in the Elbjen. He was the nobleman who owned the land upon which a cemetery stood; and when the birches started to obscure the path, he had his servants cut a new one. When the rains came to disturb the cemetery, Demyan designed the aqueduct around the graveyard, diverting the water to irrigate the fields. But the people still complained.

He was desperate to please them. He asked the Saints to raise the cemetery up to the sun itself, so it would no longer be obscured by the shade of his previous creations.

He laid his hands upon the soil, and the earth began to shake. The ground rose higher and higher, until the highest mountain was made. The cemetery was intact, but his own family crypt was broken. The people accused Demyan of disrespecting his family name by using dark magic, and the angry mob stoned him to death. He became known as the patron saint of the newly dead.

Sankt Demyan's miracle was the creation of the highest mountain in the northern Sikurzoi.

But why is this important? Because the Sikurzoi mountains cover most of Ravka's eastern and southern border with Shu Han. And the Spinning Wheel is located in the Elbjen, which is the Fjerdan name for the northern range of Sikurzoi. More so, it's the place the first firebird came from. And that firebird is Ravka.

But what if I tell you that the first Taban queens also come from the highest mountains of the Sikurzoi range? The palace of the Taban dynasty has the Court of the Golden Wing. You know who else has golden wings? Sankta Vasilka, the first firebird.

It's said that the borders of Ravka were sketched by the firebird's flight. Its rivers run with the firebird's tears. And when one of her feathers fell to earth, the young warrior picked it up and carried it into battle. No one could defeat him, and so he became the first king of Ravka.

But where are the stars? The old Taban queen resides in the place called the Palace of Thousand Stars. Even before the first Taban queens have come to their rule, Sankta Neyar was already one of the Six Soldiers, the sacred protectors of the Shu Han.

Remember the constellations? The Southern Palace and its six crooked spires? The Spinning Wheel? It's all there, written in the stars.

And the Starless Saint knows that.

His bedchamber is built on a hexagonal plan, like the temples of Ahmrat Jen. His dark wood walls are carved into the illusion of a forest crowded with slender trees. The birch trees, like the ones growing around the cemetery. He almost died there, once.

Demon in the wood. Demyan in the wood.

The domed ceiling above his bed is spangled with chips of mother-of-pearl laid in constellations, to create the illusion of the Spinning Wheel. The ebony screen in Alina's bedchamber is speckled with mother-of-pearl stars, too. It was probably brought from his rooms, as only his chambers are furnished in ebony.

It's death by a thousand stars...

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone meta #grishaverse meta #shadow and bone worldbuilding #sankt demyan #sankt demyan of the rime #aleksander morozova #the darkling #the starless saint #grishaverse #the grisha trilogy #the lives of saints #leigh bardugo #parallels and references #a searing burst of thought

[ofmermaidstories]

Mermie at this point I am convinced that you can make anything so beautiful with your writing. You can write a prose about trash and move us to tears XD

you give me too much credit, castle. 🥺 i don’t think anyone or anything could make trash in the least bit emotional, beyond highlighting how destructive our choices are to this planet. 🥺 i’ve been lucky enough to travel a couple of places, in my life, and i think the ones that stick out to me in terms of being so stark in how we affect our surroundings would be the Maldives (beautiful, picture-perfect and dealing with the tonnes of rubbish generated by tourists every year) and home. 🥺

sometimes, when i need five or ten minutes to myself without the noise of other people, i’ll pull into the cemetery on the way home. it’s a big stretch of parkland, now, and when im there i’ll park near the new lawns, near the pond. it’s man made! man made and overgrown enough now to look like it was always there. i like watching the swans glide around, breaking up the bickering of the little water fowl—or the white flap of the ibis wings, in the dark green scraggle of the little island in the middle. on the other side is a copse of trees with a pocket of these bright little yellow flowers that the bigger birds like to pick through and throughout the cemetery are these tall, tall gum trees that sway and rustle and it’s so, so peaceful—unless the council guys at the rubbish tip next door are working. 💀 driving their giant yellow tonka-toys with their high pitched beep beep beeping as they push dirt over the mounds of rubbish and make like, makeshift hills that now over look the graves. literally. hills of rubbish keeping watch over the dead, instead of—idk. stone angels. or the gum trees. sometimes you can see a plastic bag, half caught in the dirt, waving out like a flag and it’s so—like, okay, we have to deal with our waste somehow, right? but it’s so horrifying seeing it in person. we generate that. we contribute to that. we did that.

idk. sometimes i look at the rubbish mountains and sometimes i refuse to, LOL. i’ve been up there, just beyond them, to where the tip is still open to the public—dumping what i needed to amid the piles of old, broken square TVs or bent bicycles. crows like to hop around the rubbish, noisy, looking for food i guess and i suppose they’re the same crows that end up crying out over the cemetery, but like—idk. what do we do? what have we done? the cemetery is beautiful, and peaceful, and eventually it’ll fill with more people and they will all be under the watch of guardian hills made up of, what? thirty year old nappies. broken takeaway containers. the wave of that translucent, plastic bag.

#ofmermaidstories-asks #humans are the worse LOL but we’re trying to fix it ig 🥹 #anyways use glass instead of plastic where possible 🥹 tote bags instead of single use 🥹🥹

[studentinpursuitofclouds]

Hi! Do you have any headcanons about the townspeople's reactions when they first heard that the farmer joined the adventurer's guild?

Ooh this is interesting one! I had a lot of fun writing this headcanon. But I didn't expect the headcanon to be so huge! Well, I write about everyone in the valley, so it's fair enough, I guess... Thanks for your ask! Hope you enjoy the headcanon!

Digression: Given that Farmer just joined the Guild, I'm guessing they don't know Farmer that well yet, so this would be their very first reaction.

SDV and SVE townspeople's react to the news that Farmer has joined the Adventurer's Guild:

The mines are full of various gems. So if Farmer doesn't mind, they could bring some Emily to meditate on. She will make someone in return, of course! Maybe sew a warm and comfortable suit for long adventures?

Well, if swinging a sword is more interesting than being a farmer or fishing, then who is Willy to disturb the youth? Although, maybe with the help of an adventurer, an old fisherman will be able to catch rare fish in dangerous caves?

Are you going on long trips? Make sure you stock up on food. Leah can help them with simple snack making, just a few hazelnuts and berries are enough, there are plenty of them in the Valley.

Well, if the Farmer is happy to be an adventurer, then why not? Robin wishes them good luck and offers to go to her workshop on the way to the Guild to say hi. Maybe they look at some new buildings upgrades on the farm, or will become Sebby's friend?

Oh dear, it must be cold on top of the mountain and in the mines. Maybe Evelyn could make them a warm scarf or hat? It would be terrible if they caught a cold.

Who? Adventurer? George doesn't care who they are, as long as they don't block his TV show.

Fantastic, Andy thought. So instead of cultivating a huge area with fertile land that any farmer would dream of getting, they moonlight as a monster hunter in that Guild? Andy is pissed off. Like, If you want to be an adventurer - sure whatever, just sell the land so real farmers can use it.

Linus knows that everyone chooses their own path in life. But Farmer, in the early days of Linus's acquaintance, treated him politely and without prejudice. So Linus would be sad if another grave appeared in the cemetery near the railway. He will never forget Getra...

Wow, they got accepted into the Guild? This is awesome! Abigail would also like to become a member of the Adventurer's Guild too, but her parents will freak out.

Since the Farmer, as an adventurer, will descend into the mines, Demetrius recommends paying attention to various crystal formations and stones. If the Farmer wants, then let them bring him a couple of crystals for research, he will pay for their discovery.

Well then. It is unlikely that, apart from food, Caroline can advise something in her husband's store. But let them come in, at least just warm themselves near the fireplace, or pray at the altar of Yoba.

So they will be constantly covered in dirt and monster blood? Eew, stay away from Haley. She doesn't want them to stain her beautiful new dress.

Come on, young adventurer! In the Saloon, Gus always has delicious food, cold ale and warm beds. Don't forget to tell him if you have any allergies.

Oooh, Vincent is already starting to throw a bunch of questions at them. Have they already fought monsters? Will they show weapons? Do these monsters have long fangs? Jas is more restrained than her friend, but her eyes also sparkle with interest in listening to them.

Aren't they too frail for such adventures? Look, Alex doesn't care, but he believes that without any physical training they will not be able to hold out for a long time.

Susan heard how many brave warriors became crippled or died in battle with monsters. The cemetery next to her farm and Marlon who often goes there is proof of this. So please be careful sweetie, and don't forget to take time to rest.

And Elliott is just thinking of dedicating the next novel about a brave adventurer who fights a huge monster for the hand of hero beloved. Don't forget to tell him something interesting over a glass of ale! Maybe he can find inspiration in their stories.

Oh, there's another adventurer in our Valley? If they come across any artifacts in their adventures, come to the museum. Gunther will find something to repay for the find.

Adventurer, you say? And how much do they earn? Enough to give Old Pam a mug of beer at the Saloon?

JojaMart always has tasty and cheap food to go for long hikes. Doesn't spoil, cooks quickly, very tasty and nutritious, we cares about our customers! So come to Joja, Morris will help you choose what you want, and don't forget the 20% discount coupon!

If they have an extra gold bar or a diamond lying around in their adventures, then bring it to Maru, she will need them for the next inventions!

Wow, Victor read so many books about different Guilds around the world! He hopes that the Farmer, as a full member, will tell about the famous warriors and magicians of the Guilds. Oh, they don't know them yet? Well, okay...

Hmm, given their connection to forest magic, Magnus isn't surprised they followed in the adventurer's footsteps. Guilds and mages have worked side by side for many years. At least he knows, looking into the future, that the Farmer will definitely not die until they brings the iridium bar to the wizard. Ok, that's a pretty cynical thought on his part...

Cool, and? Honestly, Sebastian thinks it's pretty cool, but don't expect reaction from him. He barely knows them.

O-oh, alright... It's their choice. Just please don't show Penny any parts of the killed monsters, she's too sensitive and doesn't want to ruin her appetite.

Jodi keeps an eye on her sons so that they, too, don't go down the dangerous path of adventurers. It's so scary there, and all these monsters! Not to mention the dubious diet and the inability to wash normally in constant trips.

Sweetie, are you sure that's how you want to earn your living? If they go to the Guild believing that they can get rich there, they better contact Olivia. She can help them earn a lot of money in the stock market.

Merciful Yoba, please, be careful. Harvey may be making money as a doctor, but he wouldn't want to see Farmer dying in a clinic. Patients who die right in the doctor's arms... This never goes away from memory.

Do they really think it's important for Shane to know who they've become? If they don't put a mug of beer in front of him in the Saloon, they can go to hell with their fucking Guild.

Lewis expected a new farmer to come to the valley, not a new adventurer. Oh well, they know better...

Pierre, in addition to seeds and fertilizers, also has delicious and fresh vegetables and fruits that will not spoil for a long time and will be a wonderful camping dinner! Everything is natural and of the best quality, not like Joja... Even Marlon buys here, so don't miss the opportunity!

Hey, that's actually very cool! Sam, as a child, once thought he would also go on adventures, but playing the guitar is more dear to him.

Yeeep! Don't scare Sophia like that anymore! They are covered with dust and something green. Is that the blood and slime of monsters?! Eeeeeeeew!!!

...Kent has known so many horrors in battle, and they want to fight monsters in a fit of altruism? Trust him, slimes and golems are not monsters. What he learned in this damned war... That's where the real horror is.

Well, your choice. If she has an extra glass of milk or cheese, then Marnie will generously share with them, adventurers probably often starve because of the inability to buy normal food. At least that's what she heard...

Another adventurer, another sword. For Clint, it's more work in the forge, and more dull thoughts.

#stardew valley #sdv #stardew valley expanded #sve #sdv headcanons #sve headcanons #i just cannot tag everyone I'm sorry

[heliads]

Andrew!Peter x male reader… reader and Peter have been best friends since childhood and the reader always had a crush on Peter. But Peter got with Gwen and after she died reader was there to comfort him and Peter would make a move on reader which would cause the reader to blow up on him cause he thinks he just wants to distract himself from loosing Gwen but it turns out he does really like the reader 🤭😗 (there’s more coming)

back to back fics for the sole purpose of making sure they come out on odd numbered days

masterlist

Peter Parker has been quiet as of late. He has been quiet for quite some time now, ever since Gwen died, but this is something else. You’ve long since learned to cope with Peter’s silence, how to tell the shifting of his emotions from the barest of sighs or nonverbal cues, and today is no exception.

It’s not hard to learn it, you know. It’s not hard to see Peter as someone who needs saving, or at least someone trying to run himself into the ground in an attempt to make penance for the fact that he failed Gwen twice:  once in killing her father, once in killing her. No matter how many times you tell him that neither of the recent deaths in the Stacy family are truly Peter’s fault, he won’t pay attention. Peter bears the weight of his grief in full, calling it responsibility and duty and obligation, anything to keep it around that much longer.

That’s what Peter is afraid of most, you think. He’s terrified that he’ll wake up one day and be alright. If Gwen can’t do that, why should he? Peter will bind himself to his grief until the end of time if you’d let him, and never have a life outside of it.

You don’t let him, though. You understand that he needs to mourn, you all do– you can’t throw a stone down one of the shifting streets of New York City without hitting someone that’s been affected by Gwen Stacy in some way. Her work in science, her easy laughter, her kind spirits, they’ve all been parceled out to somebody or other throughout the years. You don’t know that you’ve seen a funeral with such a massive attendance in quite some time.

What Peter is doing to himself is different from the normal sort of mourning. You know what it’s like to grieve Gwen– if it didn’t kill you, hearing about her death for the first time, it certainly felt like that. Soon enough, however, the worst of the despair started to leave you. It takes a shorter amount of time than you would think. You swear to yourself that this loss will never be anything but constant, but it isn’t. At some point, you realize that you’ve gone a few days, a few weeks, without locking yourself into a trance of hurt and nothing more. At some point, you start to move on.

Peter hasn’t. He visits Gwen’s grave almost every day, leaving flowers that join the other bouquets in piling up in mountains of pink and white and red. He always comes to school with his hands smelling that same sickly sweet of rotting petals to let you know where he’d been in the morning, how his nightmares of that one time he couldn’t save the person he cared most about have haunted him to the point of having to visit the cemetery as soon as he could.

You’ve tried to talk him through it. You’ve lost track of the amount of times you’ve shown up at the Parker household with food or movies or something, anything to help take Peter’s mind off of how it felt to descend to the base of that ruined clock tower and realize that he hadn’t done it, he hadn’t saved her. Peter has told you the story of that awful discovery so many times that you almost think that you must have been there for it yourself instead of just hearing it through word of mouth.

May Parker is grateful for your presence, you can tell that. Peter’s grateful too, even if he refuses to admit it to himself. During the first few weeks, he would hardly say a word, just sit there beside you staring out into nothingness. He came back slowly, though, slowly but surely into someone whose only words were about. Gwen, and only Gwen.

If you were feeling particularly selfish, you would admit to yourself that you hate it. You are Peter Parker’s oldest friend, the one who’s stuck with him through everything. Back when you and Peter were just two boys in grade school, when kindergarten hide and seek partners on the playground were the only sure sign of a camaraderie that would last more than a week, you swore you’d never leave him. Best friends forever does have a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?

You haven’t given up on that promise, either. There’s another reason for it too, you know. This isn’t just you being a truly excellent friend, why you’re here for Peter day in and day out. No, you’re worse than that. Peter has always been the saint. You’re just the one in his shadow, watching as the sun casts a halo around his head and leaves you staring hopelessly after him.

You don’t entirely remember when you fell in love with Peter. There’s a year you associate with it– eighth grade, certainly, if not earlier– but no specific time. Some part of you thinks that you should be able to nail it down to the date, that you should have had some moment of great and terrible gravity when you looked up and just knew it, but you don’t. At one point in your life, you were content with just friendship. Seasons later, you weren’t.

Peter doesn’t know, of course, but if he does he’s kind enough to pretend he doesn’t notice. It’s hard not to love Peter. He gives you reasons for it every day. Still, Peter has loved Gwen Stacy for even longer than you’ve loved him. You knew that he would be able to get with her at some point, just like you knew that losing her would end him. You can’t possibly think that he would ever look at you now that he’s forced to live without his one great love, but for some reason your foolish heart still keeps beating, conjuring up fantasies in which he finally realizes.

Obviously, it’s not going to happen. You learned a long time ago to content yourself with quiet moments when you’re thinking of everything the two of you could have had while Peter had no idea. You’re going to go about your life and perhaps even to your grave while harboring this all encompassing secret, and that is okay. You have no choice but to make it okay.

On days like this, though, when you knock on Peter’s door for yet another check in, you find yourself wishing in spite of yourself that maybe this wouldn’t be the case. Peter answers within about half a second, leaning against the doorframe as he gestures for you to come inside. Even after you plunk your backpack down into a corner of the room that’s been unofficially dubbed yours after the months you’ve spent dropping in, Peter stays there, still looking at you. Arms folded across his chest, Peter just stares. As someone who’s done their fair share of hopeless thinking, you know how to recognize a lost cause when you see it.

You jerk your chin towards him. “Everything good?”

Peter lifts a shoulder absentmindedly. “Just as good as ever.”

It’s a lie, of course. Peter Parker has not been good since Gwen died. He had been doing better, though, in inches clawed back from rock bottom. He’d almost gotten to a point in which you thought he could get out of this, then something happened in the last few weeks. All of a sudden, Peter was quiet again, like he was testing out the truth in a mental laboratory with a procedure only he could understand. Just like that, you weren’t privy to his innermost thoughts again. You can freely admit that it hurts– after all this, surely you don’t deserve to be cut out of his mind once more?

What you want doesn’t matter in the end. If this is what it takes to make Peter feel better, you’d do anything to keep his spirits up. You accepted that a long time ago.

Peter starts moving at last, slinging an arm around your shoulder as he heads towards his room. “Let’s do something fun.”

You arch a brow. “Fun?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, “fun. I think we both deserve that.”

You’re certainly not going to deny that, but it is a little out of character. Peter hasn’t been in the mood for fun in what could be months. If he wants to start acting as he had before the accident, though, who are you to stop him?

You make eye contact with his aunt May as the two of you cross through the kitchen. She’s sitting by herself at the table, a mug of tea held in her hand as she eyes the day’s newspaper. You do your best to send her a quizzical look, but even though you’ve long since mastered telepathy with May Parker when it comes to concerns about Peter, she seems just as at a loss for explanations as you are.

That leaves only Peter to clarify whatever is going on with him. You can sense some sort of reasoning hovering on the tip of his tongue, weighing down Peter’s normal restless chatter with the burden of not knowing how to quite put his thoughts into words.

Peter’s idea of fun ends up being channel surfing until you find something interesting. It’s an activity that the two of you have enjoyed for years now. No entertainment could ever match up to the sheer thrill of skipping to some random show and teasing it mercilessly until you run out of complaints and have to move to the next channel. Cruelty never tasted so sweet as when you make Peter laugh so hard he almost cries from insulting some poor woman’s cooking show.

Raising a hand to wipe the beginnings of tears from his eyes, Peter stills. The two of you are sitting side by side on the edge of his bed, crowded together to avoid falling off. You’ve done this a thousand times and you’ve been the only one to ever overthink it, but now you swear that Peter might be joining you in that camp. The sun is in his eyes as he looks at you, tinting the brown of his gaze into a gold that even kings would covet.

Peter leans forward slowly, tentatively. Only when he’s barely an inch away from you and his eyelashes flutter shut, at last releasing you from that immobilizing power of his stare, are you able to come to your senses and jerk away.

Peter looks hurt. It makes no sense, of course, because Peter reacts like you’ve rejected him and that can’t be so, because Peter Parker would never do something like try to kiss you, not in a million years.

The words rise to your tongue, excuses and defenses to clear you away from whatever this is, the raw ache in Peter’s eyes that cuts you as surely as it does him.

“This isn’t right.”

Peter shakes his head. “Why not?”

You pause for a moment, incredulous, before you manage to continue. “Because it isn’t, that’s why. We’re friends.”

“Just friends?” Peter asks slowly, “have you really believed that all this time?”

It’s your turn to be at a total loss for words. At last, you manage to get yourself together long enough to continue.

“No. No, I’m not going to do this. Let me tell you what you’re trying to do here, because it’s not love me.”

Peter scoffs. “What, because you know me so well that you can read my mind?”

“Yes, Peter,” you say exhaustedly, “when have I not?”

Peter looks away. “If you know me that well, you’d know that I do love you. I have for a while, and–”

You cut him off, unable to entertain another of those terrible syllables. It’s exactly what you’ve wanted to hear for so long, yet now that it’s actually upon you, you cannot allow it to exist.

“No, you don’t. You’re reeling from Gwen and you’re looking for someone to make you feel better. I’m not doing this.”

Peter blinks dazedly up at you. “You don’t love me back?”

You sigh. “Of course I love you, Peter, that’s not the point. I just deserve better than this, that’s all. I have loved you for so long that I’ve let it consume me, yes, but I want somebody who actually loves me for who I am rather than because they’re so lonely that they’d convince themselves they could love me. You don’t love me, Peter. You never have. You just like that I love you, and you’re sure that’s better than feeling nothing again.”

Peter flinches. “That’s not true,” he begins.

“Yes, it is,” you argue, “you have been miserable for months. I’ve watched it happen. You’re wonderful with words. You could talk yourself into thinking that you loved me if you thought it would make you feel better. I want you to have the world, but I want you loving me to be real. Don’t break my heart like this.”

You stand, ready to leave and clear your head. Peter jumps up after you, flinging himself between you and the door.

“Wait,” he says, “hear me out. I have loved you, I swear it. I just didn’t know how to put it into words. I mean, Gwen was dead and all I could think about was you. Doesn’t that make me a terrible person?”

He takes a shaky breath. “Do you think that if I hadn’t loved you then, if I had loved only Gwen and no one else, I could have saved her? Maybe I would have been faster. It would have mattered more. Do you think it would have been different?”

At last, you understand. There’s a reason Peter has been beating himself up so badly over Gwen’s death. It’s not just because he loved her, it’s because he’s certain he’s to blame just as much as that deathly fall for snapping her neck. Peter has been caught up in enough guilt to kill any lesser man. It’s a miracle he survived it.

You take a slow breath. “It’s true, then?”

Peter nods solemnly. “All of it.”

The two of you stand there for a moment, the weight of that awful truth wrapping around you, and then you give in at last. You don’t kiss Peter, not yet. Not today. Both of you are still too fragile for such a thing. Instead, you pull him close in an embrace you’ve been wanting to give him for quite some time. He smells like he always has, like the boy you knew before Gwen died and his entire life fell out of control. Wood smoke and a sharp winter breeze. The same sweater he wears every fall without fail. Honey in your tea.

All yours, all familiar. Peter will never forgive himself, not entirely. No one in that position could. He knows what you know, though, which is that he has the means of healing. You’ve seen trees that grow around fences or bits of metal, enclosing those painful pieces within themselves to keep on going. Peter is capable of such a future, all because he knows he has something to grow towards. You, his sun. His reason to look ahead. No one has ever needed someone more.

marvel tag list: @namoreno, @thatfangirl42, @rogueanschel, @mycosmicparadise, @ellobruv, @caswinchester2000, @with-inked-solace, @sher-lok7d, @amortensie, @23victoria, @watchreadfangirlrepeat, @gods-fools-heroes, @w1shes43

#peter parker #peter parker imagines #peter parker x reader #peter parker oneshot #spiderman #spiderman imagines #spiderman x reader #spiderman oneshot #marvel #marvel imagines #marvel x reader #marvel oneshot #tasm #tasm imagines #tasm x reader #tasm oneshot #andrew garfield spiderman #andrew garfield spiderman imagines #andrew garfield spiderman x reader #andrew garfield spiderman oneshot