#v;; doomsday clock (timeskip)

[oncejaw]

@austerulous​

Whenever Marcel dreams, it only ever seems to go one of two ways. Either he falls into the clutches of horrid, blood-spattered fever nightmares, the ones that wake him up with a scream stuck in his throat and exploding in a million silent shards (Marcel never screams, someone had noticed, back in the 104th; they all thought he was brave; he knew a titan had stolen this ability from him the day he had refused to scream at death’s doorstep). And the ones that only ever look like a hazed walk down memoy lane; revisiting old places and old moments, pieces of film cut out and edited back together for him to rewatch over, and over, and over.

Annie was often in those re-runs, and Marcel often wonders why. Those quiet contemplations probably are prime for her silent, eerie presence to slip into. Every time, Marcel seems to recall; those moments on Paradis, around a campfire before the Wall; inside the Walls before an attack, before a plan is meant to be set into motion; every time, he looks up, half dazed, and meets Annie’s eyes, icy and blue and questioning, while they companions agitate themselves in distant conversations. What will you do now? 

And then, he wakes up. 

Today is no different than usual; except instead of his bed, a cot in a trench, or a chair at a desk, Marcel startles himself awake in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital in Marley. His neck and back ache from his awkward sleeping position; plaintive grumble passing past his lips, before golden eyes immediately drift to the bed he has been so faithfully guarding for the past few days. And like every time he wakes up here, his lungs exhale a sigh of relief, as he watches Annie breathe. 

Nightmares be damned. Reality didn’t just miraculously get easier; but he’ll take it with her in it, rather than her ghost ingrained in his conscience like a warning.

“Hey.” Golden eyes meet blue, and his hand reaches out to gently cover hers, light as a feather. “Sorry -  have you been awake long? How are you feeling?” 

#austerulous #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #me placing this immediately after our old thread where annie is recovered? yes #i have no shame #please have marcel keeping watch of her like a german shepherd and growling at everyone who comes a bit too close

[oncejaw]

@dehducer​ said:  “ fine. don’t be their hero. be MY hero. “ (slippery slope prompts) (acc.)

There is a fire burning between them. Somehow, it sucks up all the warmth around it, pulls darkness over their little group like a hungry well swallowing whatever light and colour it may seek to cast. That, or Marcel is his own problem: laser-focused on the flames, staring into them until his eyes maybe dry out or melt in their sockets or burn and leave him blind to the world around him. If he’s lucky, he’ll even get all of the above. If he’s lucky, the fire will get him too. Suck him in, swallow him, engulf him until there is nothing let but one last, furious scream to tear the night apart. 

Marcel stares into the fire, his arms draped around his knees, deaf to the conversations happening around him. He hears Reiner’s voice, distant, muffled, detects some sort of explanation of pleading, and Marcel’s heart drops like a sharp-edged stone in his chest. He hears other voices, Jean’s, Connie’s, angry, remorseful, grieving, and Marcel is tempted to rise to his feet and unleash an onslaught of violence on all present company. Maybe then, Mikasa would take out her blade and finish the job started four years ago. Marcel is has always been familiar with grief, robbing him of comrades and friends left and right; plucking unfortunate souls in the slums of Liberio and in the ranks of the aspiring candidates alike, or in the trenches. No one is safe from death, is a valuable lesson he has known for as long as he can remember. 

Yet there is one soul, and one soul only,  That he had moved mountains to preserve.  And now, he is gone. Grief is a pain soaring so high, Marcel sits in it paralysed, numbed, delirious in his own exhaustion in the face of a scene replaying in his mind, time and time again. Pieck startles him out of his horrific zoetrope, momentarily pulls him out of his miserable abyss and abyssal misery. I don’t care anymore. You guys do what you want. He vaguely remembers telling them that, before tearing himself from an attempt at dialogue - he doesn’t remember by who. I don’t care anymore. Eren Jaeger wants to destroy the world? Annihilate all of humanity beyond Paradis? Good for him. Go ahead. 

A world in which his brother is no more, is no world worth surviving. 

Pieck disagrees, of course. Pieck gently shakes him by the shoulder, not so gently shakes him with quiet voice and harsh reality wrapped in words that hook onto the bleeding heart pitifully hanging in his chest. Hero, hero - don’t you see I’m anything but, Pieck? Hasn’t it been almost thirteen years, since he lost any right to the title? Hasn’t killed, lied, betrayed enough to be stripped of an aura bestowed on him by a group of lost child soldiers desperate for a semblance of safe, protective presence? Enough, he tries to tell her. There is no hero. Never was. Please, enough. Grant someone else the honour, this time around.

Fine, she says; and Marcel’s chest caves in on itself. Fine is not Pieck. Fine is giving up; Pieck never gives up. Especially not on him. She is too entangled in him, possesses too strong a grasp on the threads that command him, for him to resist her iron will. Where he will not move, she will make him. Where he won’t move for anyone, he will move for her. Some bonds move from tenderness to cruelty with such ease, the difference between the two vanishes. 

Curled fist rises to his forehead, presses against his skull, a sorry attempt to disperse the fog and mind-numbing, searing pain splitting his head open. Marcel feels Pieck’s eyes on him, expectant, impatient, demanding. She knows what they have to do; and Marcel’s last walls collapse upon themselves. Fine, he sighs, too. Fine. Grief and pain will have to wait. “... we’re gonna need a plan.” He mutters under his breath. Scrapes at what little is left of combative spirit, looks inside for traces of his own personal monster. 

If he can’t fuel himself, there is at least another, buried deep within him, that will never fail to demand blood and retribution. All those years trying to contain it; and now, Pieck summons it, all teeth and claws and hellish roars. With his other hand, Marcel reaches to grip Pieck’s. One more time. 

It’s only one more time.

“We’re gonna need a plan.” He repeats, a low growl at the back of his throat. He stares into the fire. Angry. Exhausted. Resolved. He looks within himself and brushes against something distant, and familiar, and closes his hand on it. Guilt, determination, courage, rage, he doesn’t care to name it. It is fuel, the same old fuel that once guided his hand and voice as a thirteen year-old boy leading an operation on a distant island; and today, still, it is fuel enough. “And every dual blade and thunderspear we can lay our hands on. Preferably without using them on each other.”

#dehducer #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #I HAVE BEEN STARING AT THIS FOR DAYS DAISY #this got so long and for what

[oncejaw]

@austerulous​ said:  “ when i look at you, i don’t see someone who’s evil, cruel, bad… i see someone who’s lost. who feels alone. but you’re not alone. you have me. “ (slippery slope prompts)

Their legs dangle over the edge of the walls. Above and beyond, endless, crismon skies stretch to horizons the people of the island have never even fathomed. Above and beyond, lies a home from whence they have been exiled; and every passing day is another day towards their inevitable end, towards the end of a life cut so short, they have no choice but to burn everything around them to be deemed worthy of every scrap. Burn, maw, destroy, crush, kill. Evil deeds done to supposedly evil people. Theoretically, the equation cancels itself out. 

Too bad Marcel has stopped buying into Marley’s maths a long time ago. Too bad his original sin reaches far beyond what he has done to this island; his ugliness was born in Liberio, and had infected the nobility of his sentiments for his brother with rot. 

“I know, Annie.” The usual stubborness of his voice softens with the half-smile Annie forces on his lips; her own stubborness overriding his, as usual. This is not a fight he can win: half of it is not a fight he wants to win. Bertholdt and Reiner are off to the Survey Corps; Marcel and Annie now left to their own devices, dynamics shift and masks are lifted; in the past few years, there has never been more unwavering presence at his side than hers, demanding he holds himself to a certain standard, for the sake of their mission, for their common goal; demanding, too, that he treats himself with the indulgence she grants him.

It is a game they have played before, where he listens to all she has to say (he always does, for those who speak the least are often those who have the most to say - she has taught him that much) and quietly accepts her kindness, at least temporarily, if only for this conversation; and keeps close to his heart that part that counts the most: you have me. “I know.” He repeats, and at last tears his gaze from the glorious landscape before them to look at her...

... and his face falls at the same time his heart drops in his chest. “Annie?” Aghast, Marcel stares into the empty space at his side. Atop the wall, the air suddenly turns chill and electric; somewhere below, below his dangling feet, a scream, a terrible, infernal scream, erupts into the air and sends a thundershock from his nape and down his spine. In his chest, the thrumming of his heart becomes unbearable; and at last, Marcel looks down.

Down on a swarm of thousands of titans, all hungry maws, bloodied teeth and open jaws, stretching and reaching and gripping with mindless tenacity. Down on the Female Titan, hanging onto the smooth surface of the wall by crystal claws and sheer willpower alone; desperation raging behind the icy blue of her eyes.

Suddenly, she falls.

“ANNIE!”

The scream dies, strangled in his throat, as Marcel’s eyes blow open in the darkness of his room. His outstretched hand grasps at nothing but a thin blanket, crumples the fabric against his palm with a strength that would easily snap glass and leave the flesh bleeding. Somewhere, outside, one of the Marleyan’s guard’s dogs barks into the night. And Marcel grasps at nothing, at an absence that stuns him blind, leaves him gasping for air as reality catches up with him. You have me, he hears, crystal clear, in the haunted silence of his room. You have me, he hears, holding onto the sheet, a last lifeline while the rest of the room, the bed, everything seems to cave in and swallow him whole, send him tumbling down an endless hill. You have me, he hears, distinctly. The tears in his eyes would almost convince him that she is right here, muttering right at his ear. 

But the silence in his room is deafening; and nothingness is the greatest torture device ever invented. He curls up onto it, lets it sink into his chest, reaches into it and finds nothing nothing, nothing, a huge, unbearable nothing that takes exactly Annie’s shape, a nothing he can fill with nothing but smothered sobs. 

#austerulous #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #puffin i am not okay #i don't know what possessed me #it coud have been the sweetest thing and i made it sad i'm SORRY #i'm not even satisfied with it but if i don't post it now i never will :')

[oncejaw]

@gerichteter​​​​ said: "I said don't touch me," Bertholdt bristles like feral animal, stiff-spined, callous. Without a glance, he jerks his arm back and jabs his elbow into Marcel's ribs. Nothing artful, nothing with strategy to it. In the aftermath of dread, his voice spikes and so does his pulse. All nerves alight in his body, the warrior, cornered and quaking, backs up further. Away from the pity-disappointment, the attention you'd pay a mad horse before putting it down. There's places on his body can't be touched. There's places that got brambles growing in them. Now the thorns are burying into his heart. Bertholdt set up every warning sign: Beware of dog. Now it's not his fault if Marcel gets bitten."Just- stop. Stop all that. Stop hovering, stop giving me that worried look! I'm fine! And even if I'm not— You have some damn nerve playing bedside nurse, you know that? You didn't give a fuck about any of us, you just reared us for the slaughter like everybody else. Sent us all to hell, one after the other. So just... Spare me."

-------------- Pain comes as a shock as much as the blow itself does. It shouldn’t, really. Bertholdt has always been the best fighter among them, second only to Annie; but four years are a long time, and it is the first time Marcel gets the chance to measure his friend’s new strength first-hand. It is the first time, too, that Bertholdt hits him with intent. There is an entire world of difference between sparring and self-defense, between disciplined exercise and survival. He had just never thought he would be the one Bertholdt would have to defend himself against. 

It packs a punch, that realisation. Bertholdt recoils under his touch, kicks and seethes like a feral animal, and perhaps it is his fault. Perhaps he clings onto something that is no longer there, something he can no longer provide, a role he has outgrown years ago while failing to tailor himself a new one. For four years he has been grasping at straws, holding onto shriveled ropes tied to broken masts to keep a sinking ship going. 

In just a few chosen words, Bertholdt makes all the ropes snap at the same time.

The world opens up and collapses under his feet. The abyss swallows him whole but bites him at the nape right before he gets to the bottom. Half of him sinks at vertiginous speed while the other freezes in undescribable pain, remaining limbs twitching in excruciating agony. Marcel’s body is always in movement, restless, alive, but in this instant, he is completely paralysed. You didn’t give a fuck. Bertholdt might as well have punched a hole through his chest with his bare fist and torn his heart out of its rotten altar. 

What is there left, once somebody does that to you? Sideration, first. Marcel looks inwards, and sees the gaping hole, the echo chamber in which Bertholdt’s accusation reverberates in infinite loops. And then? Then there is the bile, bleeding from where a fist squeezes and twists while the rest of the condemnation settles. Sorry, what? He did what? Bertholdt has his arm halfway through his chest already and keeps pushing and drawing blood; how else would Marcel explain the ferric taste in his mouth? You reared us for the slaughter, he says, like everybody else, he says, sent us all to hell, he says. Amber eyes widen under the violence of the blow. You, you, you. Marcel was once part of an us. Today, Bertholdt boots him out. From you and us, to you and them. From comrade and brother to oppressor and executioner.

Marcel searches for his own breath and cannot find it. His lungs have caved in on themselves, and the colour draining from his face washes off in one cold, deadly wave. He does not bend, but he sways. And when the second wave hits, when it comes crashing down with the force of a hurricane, he very nearly breaks. Even his back cannot withstand this much guilt, shame, and anger.

He doesn’t deserve that. Indignation, denial is his first instinct, virulent, swift and sharp as a child screaming out in injustice. He had done his best, hadn’t he? He was thirteen, and put in charge of a suicide squad, and he had done his best - and it turned out his best had not been good enough, but dammit, he had tried. Five years (five years!!) leading a hopeless charge without any of them questioning his decisions, without any of them questioning his position. I never heard any of you three volunteer to take the job, did I? He almost says it; the words dancing on the edge of his lips, on the tip of his tongue like acidic poison, but he keeps them in. Swallows them back, forces them down his own throat, because he heard himself say the words in his mind, and the sound of it birthes a sickening pull in his stomach. He had done his best. He had kept the mission in mind. And all it had amounted to had been four years of hell for Bertholdt and Annie gone missing entirely. Not to mention Reiner -- his very own original sin. He supposes this is part of what Bertholdt is referring to. Who would ever trust someone willing to put a friend’s head on the chopping block to save that of his brother’s? 

Apparently, three desperate children with no other option, who had not wanted to take any other option, and had kept their fears neatly locked away until the rot comes pouring out. Maybe he does deserve that. He forbids himself to think he’s not the only one.

Marcel stands there, split open. Blood beating at his temples, heart thumping in his chest like a madman banging his head against the walls of his cell. 

“I’m sorry I overstepped my boundaries, Bertholdt. I truly am.” Never in his life has Marcel tried so hard to control his own voice; but it leaks though gaping cracks, the simmering magma, the contained savagery trapped in his nape rearing its ugly head everytime its host is under attack -- regardless of where or whom the attack comes from. He has to hold it back, keep it in a chokehold. He would rather suffocate and die on his own rage and ache, than break form of his own immutable, withering, decaying stance.

Marcel’s only salvation, at this moment, is being, perhaps, more stubborn than the young man in front of him, than the open wound Bertholdt has become, determined to set him on fire.

“I’ll spare you the bedside nurse if you want me to, but try as you might, you won’t make me give up on you. Not again.” Once, they had been friends. Brothers. All care, consideration, attention and affection. Have they been stripped of it all entirely? They are both furious dogs unleashed, sinking their claws and teeth into each other until one of them bleeds out; Bertholdt bites to hurt and shake him off. Marcel bites to not let go. He is sorry - he doesn’t know how.

#gerichteter #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #so this got a bit long #somebody asked bertholdt if he could hurt marcel and bertl said 'hold my beer' #and i said thank you #ok posting this before i edit and add 3 more nonsensical paras

[oncejaw]

@fhynite​ said:  ' you can forgive yourself now. ' (misc. quotes)

It’s the red, that surprised him the most. The one he wears at his arm, the one he used to wear at his arm, that he did not recall to be so bright, and vibrant, and vivid. It’s the red that catches his gaze when he lies awake at night, the armband resting on the back of his chair; it is the splash of crimson at the corner of his eye whenever he moves his arm, or Reiner or Zeke come into view. It cuts deep against the strict beige of his uniform, the dull greys and browns of the internment zone. It looks like an open, bleeding wound that never heals. 

Marcel sometimes thinks it is exactly what it is.

His frown burrows deeper between his brows - that typical Galliard scowl he and his brother sport in equal measure - as he lays the piece of fabric on his desk. In the faint reflection of the window, Frankie’s shock of red hair almost looks like an echo of it; he can feel the drill of her inquisitive gaze between his shoulderblades and keeps them straight and proud, proud Warrior who has finally reached his redemption. Deemed worthy by the highest authorities of Marley, his mistakes and shortcomings forgiven as altruistic reward for his recent successes on the field. 

Some would say Frankie is right. Some woul say he has paid the price for it all, maybe ten times over.

He would beg to disagree; even if rejecting his friend’s kindness and understanding hurts as much as refusing the warmth of a bonfire would a man dying in mortal frost. 

“We’ve had this conversation before, Frankie.” He sighs, unbuttoning the very top of his shirt - those collars always seem to strangle him, the rigid fabric to dig into the skin of his neck, and he has had enough sharp things digging into his neck for a lifetime, thank you very much. He turns around and allows himself to flop onto a chair, hand reaching for the cup of coffee he has elected in lieu of alcohol as his regular poison. His body is worn. The weight of that war will drag on for a while, even with the victory he can wear as a badge of honour. “You know it’s not that simple.” Yeah, she knows. All the pride he can bring his family pales in comparison to what he has done to his brother - and all the blood he has shed, guilty blood, innocent blood, will nevr wash off his hand. No matter how necessary it was to help his family and his home. 

“Did you just come to try and absolve me, or are you taking me out to dinner? I’m starving.”

#fhynite #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #- bites my fist - #i've missed them

[oncejaw]

@jawlost​

The last thing he remembers is an explosion... no. The last thing he remembers is the scathing burn of the detonation and shards of shrapnel tearing through his titan’s flesh (the hardened skull of the Jaw the only part left unscathed); and the keen, astute awareness of his brother’s presence beneath the beast’s protective stance. How exactly Porco had found himself smack in the middle of the battlefield and in the line of fire, Marcel had had no time to figure out - nor had he cared enough to even ask himself the question before launching the Jaw above the trenches and into the bloodied, rotten mud of the no man’s land. Marley may have taken him from his brother years ago, but they could never take the brother out of him. Magath’s yelling had been as lost to deaf ears as the rattling of machine guns - even the explosion of the anti-titan rocket had been mere distant echo, compared to the voice of his brother shouting his name - confirming he was alive, confirming, as he had glanced down, that he would be okay.

And then... then everything is a blur. For the past few hours, Marcel has been slipping in and out of consciousness in his military hospital bed, fingers twitching in the heat of the gushes of steam oozing from his maimed body (he would later find out a good chunk of a projectile had hit his titan in the back, severely injuring him in the process). His entire being runs piping hot, regeneration working its cursed magic, regrowing tissue, flesh and limb at lightning speed, leaving only titan marks untouched along aquiline face and tired neck - the Jaw’s rapid regeneration rate has always been a wonder in Marley’s scientists’ eyes; others might read it as the signs of a boy and a monster all too eager to jump back into the fire or make sure his brother had really made it out alive and well. 

His own hitched breathing startles him out of feverish slumber, a hiss of pain smothered against grinded teeth as he struggles for air. The room around him is nothing but a too-bright haze. “Porco?” Hoarse, coarse voice escapes mistreated throat; tens of questions press into his mind, none of which able to take form in coherent words; his awareness and consciousness stuck at a primitive, primal state, an instinct lurching forward and threatening to burst through his chest. Marcel lost a lot of things, over the past few years; himself, his brother, through lies and betrayal; but never the indomitable will to keep him safe at any cost. “Por - “ A couch cuts him short abruptly, silences him in a hiss of steam; and the boy fails to notice the silhouette seated by the side of his bed.

#jawlost #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #I'VE MISSED THEM AAAAAAAAH #i remember we talked about their reconciliation and i rolled with the drama of it :') #he's confused he's wounded he doesn't know where he is but pORCO #give your brother a hug pock he needs it

[oncejaw]

@jawlost​​ said:  ❛   you brought this on yourself.    ❜ - gallibros when marcel survives and comes home for the pain

----------------- The hit is as expected as it is sudden and brutal. Porco’s fist connects with  his brother’s face, and the pain instantaneously splits his skull open - or maybe that is a natural follow up to the back of his head hitting the wall. The world goes black and an explosion of stars dances before his eyes; five years, and Porco apparently has not learnt to pull his punches. To be fair, he probably had not had any intention to. Marcel can’t say he can blame him. 

He stays on the floor like an old, beaten dog. Marcel Galliard never bends his back; never stays down, offers his neck for execution. Today might very well be the first time. A heat sears and spreads through an entire half of his face, paralysing, debilitating. Not as bad, of course, as the scathing, boiling fire eating him up inside; shame is always that much more powerful once it is laid bare in the open; before the very eyes of the person who has been wronged. 

You brought this on yourself.

Yeah. Yeah, he expects he did. 

He has been imagining this scene for years. Truth is an ugly monster, that only grows in monstrosity the more it remains hidden; it rears it terrible head and burns everything to the ground in a fraction of a second. Marcel had known this day would come, but his brother’s fury is every single one of his worst nightmares come to life. The anger. The disappointment. The betrayal. The hurt. Marcel sees it all the second he turns his gaze back to him. His brother’s eyes drill into him and slice him open like Paradisian blades; somewhere deep inside of him, an eleven year-old little boy wants to scream. Wants to rip himself from his heart and run to his brother and cry until he drowns in his own sorrow, or until his voice gives out after begging for forgiveness for hours on end. But he must silence him. A scared child may have made a decision, a long time ago, but it is the adult who must bear responsibility. Own your decision, Galliard. 

“I’m sorry, Porco.” His voice comes out croaked and broken; steam hisses and rises in thin volutes from where blood drips as if to add insult to injury. It’s done. The truth is out. He cannot take it back, no matter how badly he wants to. It was me, Porco. Seven years ago. I convinced the brass that Reiner was a better candidate than you. The guilt burns like acid in his chest, where it has fermented for far too long; seven years! “I’m sorry.” Shit. He slips; panicked, he feels the child inside escape his grasp and bolt forward; old tears from around a campfire welling under his eyes again. “I know what I did was wrong, okay? I freaked out. I just -- I just wanted to keep you safe!” Marcel stumbles on his last word; something cracks and he is eleven again, as desperate and helpless and terrified. What a crock of shit. He isn’t owning up to anything, as he faces his brother’s wrath - he has completely forgotten how.

#jawlost #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #aye it's fine :') #the way marcel instantly cracks #all going exactly opposite of according to plan #what is also not going according to plan is how long this got i'm sorry

[oncejaw]

@flcos​​ (cont.)

------------- For a moment, he almost thinks himself thrown back in time. For a moment, he is eleven again, sitting in the grass with a dejected, heartbroken little brother, weeping over destiny lost and confidence lying in tatters at his feet. Marcel picks a green blade of grass, twists it around his finger, just like he used to; but he is no longer a child trying to comfort his little brother. ThiS time, Marcel is an adult, trying to comfort someone else’s brother. He hopes there is not much difference between the two scenarios. 

“Now, what makes you say that?” A smile, patient and amused (but serious - always take children’s woes seriously; Marcel knows this too well), curls up the corner of his lips; cat-like, he observes, gauges, curious. From one generation of Warrior candidates to the next, patterns repeat themselves, dynamics so uncannily recognisable, he would laugh at it, if it weren’t so puzzling. But it is amusing. They traded one pair of brothers for another - if Falco is nothing like his own brother, he cannot help the pang of nostalgia whenever his eyes trail on Colt and his younger sibling; too familiar with the protectiveness, the lion’s instinct to watch out for their own, the worried gaze following the youngling everywhere. Of course Marcel Galliard would take a particular liking to these two. How couldn’t he? Kinship forms in the most unlikely places; but older brothers can never look away from the little ones. Even those who aren’t their own.

“There’s only five of you candidates left. You were hundreds when you started the programme, weren’t you?” He remembers it like yesteray; the new cohort, the new batch, hundreds of children led onto the training field and dragged into the mud until only the best could stand on their own two feet. Off to Paradis, he hadn’t seen them hatch from their shell and go through their first baptisms of fire and dirt; but what he sees now is not too different from what he saw then, when he was just about Falco’s age. “No one who is weak would have been able to make it this far, Falco. Whatever happens now, you’ve already proved yourself to be among the strongest. That’s why you still have that yellow armband, and hundreds of others don’t.” He commands himself encouraging, reassuring; ignores the bile that pools in his stomach. Keep your opinions to yourself, Galliard. “Did Gabi say something again?” Doesn’t that ring a bell too. Truly, children never change. 

#flcos #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #thank you for that wonderful reply! your writing i - chef's kiss - #i took the liberty of continuing this / hope it's okay!

[oncejaw]

@dehducer​​ said:  She knew she needed to cheer him up, try and pull him out of this seemingly permanent depression that had settled in around Marcel since he had returned home. It pained her to no end, remembering just how exciting birthdays had once been between the two, to them now. Reduced to just another day on the calendar. Pieck knew she needed to change that, or at least distract Marcel enough that they forgot about it all, even for a few minutes. She'd woken up early, stupidly early, to cook him a cake. It didn't turn out quite how she wanted, but she knew it was as good as it was going to get. Managing to find a single candle, Pieck placed it directly in the centre of the cake, lit it, and wandered through to Marcel's room. Catching him before he even woke up, Pieck let herself in the door, setting the cake in her lap and sitting on the edge of his bed. Pieck ran a hand through his shaggy hair, admiring how young he looked here. "Hey birthday boy." Quiet and sing-song, Pieck gently shook him. "Time to wake up."

------------- Sleep is as good as it gets, these days. As he approaches the end of his term, the body grows even more restless; as though running a constant fever, turbines that never know when to stop. Where the body goes, the mind follow; exhaustion is his only respite, and sleep, a breath of fresh air in the furnace. His days are spent swimming in molten magma; at night he stumbles across something cool to lie upon and heal the burns. 

Light trickles through poorly shut curtains, and yet the Warriors’ little lion sleeps on, unbothered, one arm dangling off the side of his bed, the rest of him dangerously threatening to follow suit. Agitated as it may be by dreams of lost comrades and gaping maws and dual blades, his sleep is deep and difficult to disturb; not even the door cracking open, or Pieck’s light footsteps on the floorboards, or the shift of her weight on the mattress, succeed in pulling him from his slumber. But she is nothing if not stubborn; that, he has always admired about her. Soft voice pierces through the weight keeping his eyelids shut; “Hmrm?” He perks up, the gentle tickle of familiar fingers entangled in his hair propelling him back into reality.

Birthday boy. A low chuckle is muffled inside his throat as he rises on his elbows, half-asleep still, awake enough already that Pieck’s initiative makes him smile. One more year down the drain, one year added off the countdown before -- immediately he catches the thoughts, yanks them off the rails, pushes them back down the pit in which they belong. Her attention warrants way better than his moodiness, her care and affection echoing in the emptiness of the room, like cushions against the harshness of a world he has a harder time bearing with each passing day. No unhappiness allowed today, she seems to say as he looks up at her, a firm gentleness in her eyes; and he, as always, is eager to follow her down the trail she blazes. 

“Am I still dreaming, or did you make a cake for me?” He teases, voice still drowsy from slumber - the smell of it already appetising - she knows his weaknesses too well. And there is a candle too! “Damn, you went all out! Okay hold on, gotta do this properly.” From under the rubbles of disaster and grief, the voice of a child who never quite grew up comes through; thinly, but unmistakable. Marcel pushes the covers back, sits up on his bed, cross-legged, just like he did all those years ago; and, after taking a (probably unnecessarily dramatic - but is it unnecessary if she finds it amusing?) long breath, blows out the candle. Success. With the brightest smile yet that he has had to offer in a long time, he leans in and places a kiss on her cheek; grateful, cheerful, everything they can rip from the flank of reality. “Thanks, Pieck. Birthday cake for breakfast - you know me too well, it’s almost scary.” No it’s not. And if she were to share it with him - even better.

#dehducer #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #pieck looking at marcel sleeping and saying 'he is baby' made me too soft i cried #THIS BOY FEELS LOVED #this was too cute thank you so much daisy ;;

[oncejaw]

@gerichteter​​ said:  ‘  i  feel  like  we  should  stop  him ,  but  then  again  i  also  just  kinda  wanna  see  what  happens .  ’   (umbrella academy starters) (acc.)

------------- Marcel leans on the back of Bertholdt’s chair for support, then flops onto his own, pretty content with the fact that he had, in fact, managed to drag himself from the bar back to their table in a relatively straight line and without spilling half his drink on the way. The air is hot and thick with effluves of alcohol and sorrows drowned at the bottom of bottles; the cacophony of voices almost drowns out his friend’s in the rest, but even drunk off his own ass, Marcel never fails to keep a particular ear out for whatever his fellow Warriors have to say. For better or worse, he is attuned to them, in ways that might very well, one day, kill him. If, of course, he doesn’t do himself in with one too many drinks.

Bertholdt has leaned in, so Marcel leans in too, mirrors his posture and follows his gaze, only to spot, a few tables away, his beloved brother locked in an arm-wrestling match, that very obviously involves money, with an opponent that is very obviously at least twice his size, and very obviously only half as drunk as he is. This is not going to end well. Marcel lets out a click of his tongue against his teeth and squints, before he leans back on the backfeet of his seat, and leans forward again, elbows on the table, drawing Bertholdt in for a confession of the highest importance. 

“You know, I feel like this is an important teaching moment. This is us, the reformed worrywarts, learning to take a step back, and trusting our friends and brothers in whatever hurdle they have to face...” A few tables down the room, the crash of splintered wood interrupts him; a voice he knows all too roars. Marcel suspends his glass of whiskey mid-air. Amber eyes remain hooked to steel grey ones. This is it. The ultimate test. More crashing sounds behind him. “... as I said, an important teaching moment. Let us enjoy the disaster from afar, for once.” More crashing sounds. Through the haze of alcohol, Marcel is having a difficult time determining the difference between wood and bones. “... just tell me if he starts bleeding, yeah?”

#gerichteter #alcohol tw #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #sometimes all you need is the warriors getting shitfaced and bert and marcel trashtalking them in a corner #like they're in any position to judge

[oncejaw]

@vvasilisa​​ said:  ‘  i  lost  someone .  the  only …  the  only  person  i’ve  ever  truly  loved  more  than  myself .  ’ * pieck uwu  (umbrella academy starters) (acc.)

-------------- There is a veil in Pieck’s voice ash she speaks, that makes her intentions impossible to decipher. Her admission falls into his ear and sinks like a stone to the bottom of the dark waters he would call a soul; slowly, they erode and take a new life of their own. From admission of grief, they become a profession of love. Then they morph into a call for help. Finally, polished off of all their coating, they reveal their edges, turn into accusation. Whether Pieck means to or not is irrelevant. He sits still under the scorching light of her judgement, be it real or imaginary - the effect on his damaged mind is the same. 

She was with you. You were supposed to bring them all home - why isn’t she here? Marcel asks himself those same questions, every day, every waking minute, since the day they had left Paradis. Sometimes he hears them in his own voice, sometimes Magath’s; very often Pieck’s, though he cannot recall her asking them out loud. Not to him, at least. There is an open, gaping wound in his best friend’s chest, and she lashes out, sometimes; more often than not, directs her ire at Reiner. Marcel has gotten off easy, thus far. It feel unfair, really. It’s my fault, Pieck. I’m the one who failed to bring her back to you. 

“I’m sorry, Pieck.” His voice used to be akin to a proud roar, once. These days, it seems to be barely more than a whisper. It is late at night, and they sit by the pier, with nothing but the sound of waves quietly crashing against the docks and bleak moonlight for company. They sit next to each other, shoulders almost brushing; and yet, there is the absence that sits between like, like hungry maw swallowing everything up to their silence. “We... I failed her. I failed you.” Dare he tell her, how every time he closes his eyes, he sees them? Bertholdt, carved out of his invincible titan; Annie entombed in crystal coffin. How he wishes he could say he would do anything, sacrifice anything to bring them back. How he wishes he could spit such a promise without flinching, honest and earnest. They both know it wouldn’t be true. They both know there will always be one pull more powerful than anything else. Arguably, that pull had already been. Arguably, Annie and Bertholdt are paying the price for it. “If there is anything you want to know... I’ll tell you everything about Paradis. Fuck the brass and their classified bullshit.” 

#vvasilisa #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #pieckannie pieckannie pieckannie :)) #with just a dash of pain #also featuring marcel swearing for possibly the first time in his life

[oncejaw]

@gepanzrt​​ said: "Marcel." There's something of a grunt to it, bone-weary and deep-chested, as he collapses atop an ammunition crate wedged into the corner of the dugout. He ignores the mud tracked in from the trench, the dingy water that pools around the soles of his boots, the foul byproduct of a week's worth of uninterrupted rain. One becomes numb to the morass when they linger in it long enough. Instead, Reiner reaches inside the thick tent of his grime-spattered overcoat, producing an elongated object tucked away in a brown bag. There is a heft to it as he carefully hands it over, a full glass bottle of something strong and amber hidden away behind the creased and dampened paper. "Don't ask me where I swiped it from. They can't bust you for what they don't know," he offers candidly, a lukewarm jab at his own thievery. What's the worst the Marleyan command could do to them, anyhow? What punishment could be exacted that they haven't already suffered through in some form or another? Maybe that's why it felt fitting to take what he had. Even stolen reparations are still reparations all the same. "Happy birthday."

---------------- Don’t ask. Not exactly his specialty, though it is an exercise at which he has progressively become adept over the years; one that always leaves a bitter taste in his mouth and a corrosive burn in his throat every time he swallows back a question. These days, they veer on the territory of ‘what the fuck are we doing here’, here being muddy trenches, flooded with dirty water, dead rats, gunpowder and poison gas residues. Because those are our orders, is the answer he is supposed to be satisfied with. But Marcel Galliard is not satisfied with it. Arguably, he has not ever been satisfied with this state of affairs. It just becomes more difficult to play pretend as his personal countdown draws to a close - life stretching thin as much as his patience.

The days go by in lamentable indifference in the trenches. One grey day equals another one grey day. Sometimes a shootout or a bombing will liven up the place - sometimes they’ll even summon their titans. He and Reiner spend most of their time huddled together in resigned silence, exchanging the occasional glance that speaks louder than the words both of them are on too thin ice to say out loud. His rifle slung around his shoulder as he sits atop a crate, a small, funny-shaped rock rolling between nimble fingers. Solitary in his contemplation, absorbed in muddled thoughts, Reiner’s re-appearance startles him back into motion, with sharp, golden eyes raising immediately to meet his friend’s, before lowering to the brown bag he is being handed. Surprise makes him blink, as he weighs it in his hand - what the... 

A chuckle bubbles in his chest, almost a snort, almost childish. “Woah. I hadn’t even realised what day it is.” He snickers, identifying the bottle of alcohol inside the bag - he’s right, probably best not to ask, though curiosity bites at his heels. His birthday. One more year. One year down. Birthdays shouldn’t be cause of celebration for Warriors like them; and yet, Reiner’s initiative has a flavour of something forbidden and something taboo, far beyond the simple act of theft. They shouldn’t be celebrating. Then maybe, celebrating is, in itself, a small form of rebellion too.

They’ll take what they can, won’t they? 

“Thanks, Reiner. I mean it.” For thinking there is still something in him worth celebrating after Paradis, after his betrayal - even if it turns out to be nothing more than the memory of the friend he used to be, it is better than nothing. Call him pathetic and pityful, but he’ll take that over total oblivion and banishment. Plop, he uncaps the bottle, and hands it back to his comrade with a grin. “You’re not gonna let me drink on my own, are you?”

#gepanzrt #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #post-paradis marcel-reiner solidarity is giving me all the life i didn't know i had left #thank you that was adorable and heartbreaking at the same time :')

[oncejaw]

@gepanzrt​​ said:  41. — insanity   (one word prompts) (acc.)

-------------- “What do we do, Marcel?”

We run. That’s what they were supposed to do -- that’s what he told them to do, the order he carved from the back of his throat in a moment of terror, and none of them had listened. If only they - if only you had; why didn’t you run, dammit? Marcel looks down at Reiner, beaten to a pulp, bloodied and pained and painful to even lay eyes on; the boy’s voice croaks out of his throat like a raven’s talon on chalkboard. If Marcel shifts his gaze, he knows what he will see. Bertholdt, an empty expression on ghostly wan face; Annie, staring straight ahead, jaw clenched and fists digging nails into palm and drawing blood. The ground on which they walk has shattered into a million pieces and they cut themselves on the scattered debris. They stand or sit right there, all three of them, his friends, comrades, brothers and sister, frozen in what rings to his ears as one very long, very horrible, very silent scream. 

“What do we do, Marcel?” Reiner’s broken voice is trapped inside his skull. His question pushes against the bone, and for a brief, very brief moment, Marcel wants to scream, too. He traps it in his throat, but sharp claws dig into his flesh and soon he can feel himself choking on his own blood. We run, we should have run, we didn’t run, why didn’t you run? Why are they not running now? 

The ground splits open underneath him. It is a gaping wound and it swallows him whole. Blood-coated walls are too slippery, seeping hot and thick, red dirt accumulating under his fingernails. If there ever was a thread tethering him to the world, it has just snapped clean in the middle. 

Like him.

Like he’d snapped clean when titan’s teeth severed is head from the rest of his rididuclously small body. 

***

The marks are still here.

Amber gaze catches his own reflection in the mirror and halt on the marks; amazed, petrified, each and every time. The lines on his face, his titan marks, should be the only ones scarring a body broken and remolded too many times to be called his own, every limb, patch of skin, organs maimed and lost and regrown one way or another. Their bodies are not the ones they had been born with; what does that make them, in the end? Copies of children massacred and left for dead on hundreds of battlefield. Marcel’s eyes are fixed on the other marks; the ones that did not do away no matter how much he forced his body to heal and seal them up. He looks at them, thin lines along sharp collarbones; bears a shaky hand to light scarring and barely touches the skin. 

His whine is that of a wounded animal, hand jerking back as blood oozes from titan teeth marks.

The door creaks open behind him like displaced bones - only the sharp, golden gaze of his fellow Warrior traps the air in his lungs instead of letting it out in laboured rasps. Reiner says something to him, and Marcel  fails to hear it, through the sound of the entire world pounding inside his head, bones, chest, body. Marcel looks again in the mirror. No blood. But his hands feel so sticky, still. “Sorry. Am I late?” Not his body, not his voice; he gladly concedes control to that other who seemingly knows how to maintain his sorry excuse of an act. “Just give me one sec. That anti-titan artillery got me pretty good out there. Can’t go facing the higher-ups looking distracted, huh?” It all feels like a dream, slipping a clean shirt on, turning around to face Reiner with a semblance of a smile. It’s alright, he thinks to himself, gratifying his friend with a pat on the shoulder as he walks past to get his uniform’s jacket. He’s the only one who sees the blood, after all. 

#gepanzrt #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #i'm very sorry for whatever this is walt

[oncejaw]

@fraterniite​ said:  ❛   you needed someone to blame, so you cast it on me: a dead person.  ❜ ( from Marco at fraterniite uvu pick your poison on which verse it is! )  

-------------- “Shut up, Marco.”

Slurred syllables stumble past his lips and into the near-empty glass his absent-minded eyes seek to drill into. His latest report lies on his desk, discarded and forgotten already - when he was still a candidate, never would Marcel Galliard leave a task incomplete. How things have changed. Inches away, the light of a lampdesk flicker; casts shadows around the room that, in the dead of night, thicken, swell, end up taking all the space and even, sometimes, body and voice.

Sometimes the shadows become people, and he can’t seem to be able to shake them off. Especially not when they are dead. Persistent ghosts with mouths that keep yapping at his ears.

He can feel it drilling into the back of his neck. Marco’s gaze, or what he imagines to be Marco, tucked away somewhere in one of the dark corners of his room. Whiskey turns sour in his mouth, a metallic twinge dancing on his tongue - blood, so much blood, oozing and pooling, dark and black and thick like tar; Marcel knows what blood feels like, tastes like, nobody had warned him that the Jaw’s senses would be so directly connected to his. He was not the one who had eaten Marco; but he thinks he can taste it all the same, and it makes him sick beyond what he knows himself capable to stomach. 

“If you hadn’t heard anything...” Worse. If he hadn’t said anything, they would have been none the wiser. Maybe they would have even pretended. Marcel’s fingers curl into a fist that he presses to his forehead. Stop justifying yourself, Galliard. Doesn’t he owe him at least some sincerity, in this hour of perfect solitude and desolation? Even if he is only a ghost. Even if he is only a part of the sick imagination of a young Warrior with nothing left to his name but the flip side of a blood-stained medal engrave directly onto his chest.

“Your death was not the cause of our failure, no matter how much it broke the others.” The others. Not me. I couldn’t. “You were only the beginning of the end. We were screwed the minute we broke through the wall.” The minute we didn’t turn back. His fist is clenched so hard, he feels the sting of fingernails digging into the flesh of his palm. In the darkness, amber irises flick over his shoulder to drill into the shape standing in the shadows - come out, Marco. Aren’t you dead already? What else do you have to lose? “If you want me to say I’m sorry, I am. Hell, I’ll even admit we shouldn’t have done it. But guess what.” A growl at the back of his throat; a beast, restless, blood-thirsty; it never sleeps, never quietens, always stretches and claws and longs to roar. Don’t say it, a quiet voice whispers at the back of his mind. Own up to it, another one barks. There used to be a time when he knew how to weave kindness and toughness together; how to keep his back straight without making himself too sharp-edged. No longer. Not anymore. No matter how much he tries to remember. “If that was the only way I could keep them safe, even just for another day, I’d do it again.” 

#fraterniite #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #tw alcohol #i had a weird idea and i rolled with it i hope that somewhat works out bjhbjb #heck it can even he actual marco infiltrating marley and catching drunk marcel off guard WHO KNOWS #i think the moral of this story is i need more antogonistic interactions #people please come for his blood

[oncejaw]

@fraterniite​​​ said:  he'd heard Levi's command to stand back. he'd felt Jean's fingers ripped away from his shoulder as he flew forward in the air. for a few moments, he felt weightless, staring at the bone white pillar careening into the sky, at the chaos of titan combat below him. he'd become so comfortable with death -- he'd stared it in the face once and he'd do it again. with another shot, hid against the night sky, he surged forward, straight toward death's maw. scarred arm pulled back, he launched a thunderspear into those gaping jaws. as much as he wanted to erupt in rageful screams, he kept his lips pressed tight. talking hadn't gotten him anywhere last time.

--------------- Hellfire has rained in Liberio; and all the devils are here, be they clad in black or titan flesh. Incendiary rage surges as faithful companion to panic and terror, one the shadow of the other, fueled by the gallons of blood spilled upon cobblestone below them. Marcel’s anger burn so hot, it burns white and icy; oh, the irony, oh, how the tables have turned. That, he can accept. That the Paradisians would one day seek retribution for the destruction inflicted upon them had been as inevitable as snow in winter in the mountains. Marcel is keenly aware of it; doesn’t mean he will offer his neck to the executioner and not put up a fight. There are innocents, down there. Children crushed under piles of debris. His own brother, joining in the fight somewhere below. 

There is another innocent; the ghost of one, an unfortunate victim to circumstances and the cruelty of his cold, immutable determination. Scars had not changed Marco Bodt as much as a near-brush with death had, Marcel had gathered when he first laid his eyes on him. Innocent no more: the thunderspear goes flying right at him, right into the open maw of his titan; shit, shit, shit. The pain is as explosive as the device upon ignition: it sears into the upper half of his body, burn through the right side of his face under the Jaw’s flesh, coaxes a roar of agony out of his monster as he goes crashing into nearby building. Only a lucky reflex had saved him from worse, the titan’s head turned at the last second; the plated bone of its face is severely damaged, but the muscles still hold, and the Warrior inside, injured as he may be, still lives. 

He is like a devil jumping from its box: fragments of bone falling off yet as swift as though he had walked it off unscathed. A torrent of steam hisses from the wound, Marcel putting all his energy into accelerating the healing process, pouring it all into moving the Jaw as fast as possible. The small, cruel eyes of the Jaw barely register Marco’s face; so does Marcel’s brain, a filter put up between him and his victim. Faces blurred. All recognition deliberately thwarted, kinship denied in the must cruel of ways. Should he stop, should he think, should he feel... he shudders, thinking what would happen then. He shudders, and he shuts it down. A switch flicked, a coldness beaten and shocked into him since infancy; sorry Marco. Nothing personal.

He had said it then. He will say it again now.

Finally the Jaw finds its angle; Marcel pivots abruptly and bounces, surges up in the air, claws out to catch the wires of ODM gear - cut his escape route or send him crashing onto the street, doesn’t matter - he will catch him next. Deliberate. Calculated. Cold. This is the anger Marley has drilled into him. A savagery thirsty for blood, violence begetting violence. Four years ago, he couldn’t stop, no matter how much Marco begged him, no matter how much his pleas had made his heart shatter, how sick and disgusted the churn in his stomach had felt. Today, he cannot stop either; no matter how much he wishes he could. For Marco, for all the others.

#fraterniite #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #today we rise and choose VIOLENCE

[oncejaw]

@worstheir​ (starter call)

-------------- “Are you going home yet?” “Not quite, I want to go for a run. Tell mom and dad I’ll be late, and don’t wait on me.” Porco meets his brother’s carefree declaration with a shrug, and makes way towards the harbour, while Marcel turns on his heels and leaves headquarters in the opposite direction. Lying to his brother never fails to leave bitter taste in his mouth - ironic, considering how long he has been doing it; his punishment is perhaps to never get used to it. The cause, he hopes, is worthy of the sacrifice; a selfish part of him finding comfort in the thought, or fantasy, that if he knew, his brother would understand. All while being fairly certain that he really would not want to.

Once more, Marcel and Reiner share a secret; this one infinitely more dangerous than the last. It takes him a good half-hour, to reach the abandoned belltower. There it stands, pointing skyward, old and dilapidated; nobody dares venturing in those old ruins, nobody cares to either, not even the children in the neughbourhood. They would be too small, wouldn’t know how to reach the superior levels; there is a know-how to it Marcel likes to keep to himself, and it looks like his secrecy sometimes pays. A glance over his shoulder; and he ventures inside, swallowed whole by dust and stone, as quietly as if he had never been there at all.

“Historia?” His voice rises as sunlight, warm and red, floods in from crooked boards and crumbling walls; and Marcel forces himself composed when she turns to look at him - struck, as always, by the disturbing familiarity she evokes, by old echoes she stirs in memories that he knows do not belong to him. An anguish, a relief, a longing - shut the trap, close the lid, don’t let anything spill. Ymir is dead. Anything that remains is naught but echoes of distant past, like a voice carried on even though the source is long gone.  

Marcel approaches, a paperbag in his arms, and leaves his burden on the old makeshift wooden table they had improvised when moving her here. “I brought you some food. Reiner said you were running out. I have some more time this week, so if there is anything else you need, just let me know, I should be able to sort it out.”  Retort to pragmatism, down-to-earth consideration; anchor yourself in very real problems, so that the ghosts and their regrets don’t come haunting you. 

A hand rises to rub against his nape; the Jaw humming and waiting underneath; and he turns back to look at her, adorned in crown of golden hair and regal blue eyes that he feels strip him bare. She knows, he catches himself thinking, sometimes, before forcing himself to remember she doesn’t. Ymir, he reminds himself. This is all Ymir. Marcel swallows back a sign, and reaches inside his coat, from whence he pulls a book. “You said last time that you wanted to learn more about Liberio, right? I found this monograph, written by an Eldian.” That is to say, doctored and censored by Marleyan censorship services. Still, better than nothing. ��It’s a historical account of the internment zone. I’m sure you’ll find a thing or two of interest in there, if you want to give it go.”

#worstheir #ic;; je donne ma main à l'enfer sous vos crachats ma rédition (rp) #v;; doomsday clock (timeskip) #HERE WE GO