#Platitudes and Barren Words

[smilingformoney]

Rickmas 2023: Day 5. Grave of Snow | Snape & Lily

Read now on Ao3 or below the cut:

Severus wasn’t sure what prompted him to come to Godric’s Hollow, on Christmas Day of all days. But here he was, feet crunching through the snow, his footsteps joining those of others who had been to visit lost loved ones at Christmas time.

Lily’s grave was easy to find. It was one of the newest, after all. The smooth stone glittered in the morning light, a layer of snow on top contrasting against the grey stone.

If the grass was any different where she lay, Severus couldn’t see. The snow laid an even layer on the ground, the line between Lily and James indistinguishable. Severus was glad he couldn’t see the outline - it might have made it too real. To know that all that was left of such a good, pure heart was nothing but an eight by four patch of dirt… and one day the grass would regrow, and the shape of her would be lost.

He knelt down, paying no care to the snow soaking through his robes. Why would he? The cold of the snow was nothing compared to the cold of his heart.

Cold was all he felt these days. When news came to him that the Dark Lord had killed Lily, his anguish had raged within him for days, burning like a forest fire until there was nothing left within his heart. But that fire had died out over the last two months, leaving nothing but a cold, barren wasteland within him.

He had always been unfriendly, grumpy, even mean to staff and students alike, so when his heart froze over, his behaviour hardly changed. A little meaner perhaps, a little harsher - but the unfortunate souls who bore the brunt of his frustrations chalked it down to Professor Snape being a scrooge as the cheer of the holidays loomed. Nobody considered that Professor Snape had a heart, and that heart had been broken.

Perhaps he had no right to be here. He hadn’t attended the funeral; he daren’t show his face and see Lily’s family and friends grieving her death when the blame rested with him. It was too much to face the guilt of his sins, and so Severus stayed away, leaving the funeral to those who deserved to love her.

He waved his wand to summon a flower, a single white lily which rested on the top of the gravestone, its petals blending in with its bed of snow.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” he whispered, so quietly he hardly heard himself, as if speaking any louder would disturb the sacred site.

It was all he could say. He could list his sins, everything he was sorry for, but it would be a useless exercise. He might as well apologise for his entire life.

The sun was still rising, and it peeked out from behind the church to shine on the gravestone, causing Severus to wince at the brightness of the light reflecting Lily’s name.

He wouldn’t come here again, Severus decided as he stood. He had said his apologies, given his offering, and shed his tears. He had no more words, no more platitude. All he had left was action, the fulfilment of the oath he’d sworn to protect her son, the last glimmer of Lily Evans’ light that was left in the world, even if it was tainted by James Potter.

He would protect him. He would hate every moment, but that was his punishment. He didn’t deserve to enjoy anything anymore, not when Lily’s joy had been extinguished.

But even so… he would protect the boy. Even if it killed him.

#rickmas2023 #alan rickman #severus snape #snily #lily evans #pro snape

[bibuddie]

one to ten

he opens his eyes, rolling over and spying the rumpled covers next to him. his brain struggles to piece the puzzle together, a mismatched jigsaw that won’t quite work until his phone buzzes on the nightstand next to him. he’s greeted with a picture taken only two weeks earlier, of sunkissed cheeks pressed together and wide, unabashed grins without a care in the world. three words accompany the photo and the star emoji on the screen. three simple words.

one to ten?

1.5k | read on ao3

some days, buck feels perpetually stuck.

he'll wake up and his bed is empty and he'll resign himself to another day of feeling less than, of his chest feeling hollow to match his barren apartment. he thinks they're not too different — him and the place he's supposed to call home. on the outside, sure. they're pretty and shiny and everyone has nothing but nice things to say about them. inside though, lies the truth. inside lies the things no one wants to talk about.

inside, buck feels everything and nothing all at the same time. he's a mess more often than not, and he struggles to put his finger on his feelings most days. he feels this constant, nagging exhaustion in the pit of his stomach, but he knows he’s pretty on the outside so he paints on his best smile and straightens his shoulders and he tells everyone that everything is fine. even when he feels like he’s coming undone at the seams. even when he feels like the world is caving in underneath his feet.

buck knows the instant he wakes up that it’s going to be one of those days. he feels the tugging in the back of his chest, dragging him down to his bed, pinning him to the spot. his brain’s still kicking into gear after waking up, and he wants to cling to that sleepy fuzziness for as long as possible. he sighs quietly, closing his eyes and taking stock of his limbs, a grounding technique he’s retained from one of his many stints in therapy. he imagines sorting through every cell in his toes, counting every nerve, imagines watching the blood flow from the tips of his toes all the way up to behind his sternum, into his heart, up into his brain. he rinses and repeats over and over, and clings to the brief relief that comes with it.

he opens his eyes, rolling over and spying the rumpled covers next to him. his brain struggles to piece the puzzle together, a mismatched jigsaw that won’t quite work until his phone buzzes on the nightstand next to him. he’s greeted with a picture taken only two weeks earlier, of sunkissed cheeks pressed together and wide, unabashed grins without a care in the world. three words accompany the photo and the star emoji on the screen. three simple words.

one to ten?

it’s a method of quantifying buck’s emotions, on the days where words just won’t come to him to describe them. eddie came up with it when he first saw how deep some of buck’s wounds ran. he sat him down on one of his better days and unravelled himself, and eddie listened. he didn’t tell him everything was going to work out, didn’t try to quiet or soothe him with false platitudes. he just listened to buck as he flayed himself raw, as he exposed every single darkness that resided within him. every single poison thought, he laid it all bare. the aftermath left his chest feeling empty but also free in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time.

he half expected eddie to run for the hills — after all, this thing between them was new and tentative and fragile. and he knows that he clings more than he should, to people and places and ideas, and he wouldn’t blame anyone at all for running.

eddie? well, he stayed.

he didn’t look at buck like he was broken, or like he was something to be pitied, or like he was a child who needed to be coddled. he looked at buck like he always had, like he was worth looking at. like he was important. like he was loved.

buck breathes, wetting his lips as he types out a simple seven. he’s definitely had worse days, but his demons seem to be clinging to him extra tight today, trying to consume him whole, and he doesn’t really want to face that alone. three dots appear on his screen, then disappear, and for a moment, all is silent. a couple of minutes pass, and buck takes to counting the cracks in his ceiling as he tries to remember how to draw even breaths.

he hears the loose floor board on his fourth step creak, and his heart jumps inside his chest before he reminds himself that it’s just eddie. and sure enough, less than ten seconds later he appears, smiling warmly at buck as he clutches two cups, one which he knows will contain black coffee with a sugar in it, the other a latte with extra foam on the top. eddie doesn’t say anything, holding the milky coffee out to buck, waiting for him to take it before he slides back into bed beside him, using his free hand to grab at the newspaper under his arm.

eddie knows buck probably won’t be in the mood to verbalise for a while yet, turning on the tv and allowing the comforting monotony of friends reruns to wash over the apartment. buck’s eyes drift to the screen as he sips mindlessly at his coffee, allowing it to warm the hollow emptiness within him. it has an almost immediate effect, soothing an ache within his stomach that he didn’t even realise was there. it allows buck to breathe and focus on something that isn’t the tender spots in his psyche. the scratching of a pen against paper as eddie completes his crossword provides a comforting background noise.

an indeterminate amount of time passes before buck puts his coffee cup down, sighing quietly as he tilts his head, landing directly in the crook of eddie’s neck. he smells of buck’s shower gel and fresh cotton and it’s just another tether to keep buck from getting too lost within his own thoughts. one of eddie’s hands lands in buck’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp. on days above a five, eddie won’t initiate physical contact without buck doing so first, knowing that sometimes he just needs to be left to his own devices. just another thing that eddie has never judged him for.

at some point, eddie begins quietly narrating his crossword puzzle. pointing his pen at clues and speaking his thoughts aloud. he never speaks like he’s expecting an answer, never leaves gaps in what he’s saying. no empty space. no room for anything other than exactly what he’s saying and it helps buck probably more than anything else. it gives him something to follow, something that he doesn’t have to be afraid of clinging to. eddie’s voice is gentle and soothing and it manages to loosen some of the knots in buck’s back, easing the tension there.

a while later, he begins to respond to eddie, simple replies to some slightly more pointed statements and eddie never misses a beat. his hand in buck’s hair never stops and he pauses every so often to press a gentle kiss to buck’s hairline and it helps. eddie always knows the right thing to say and do, and he moves in perfect sync with buck even when buck doesn’t know what the next step’s going to be himself. 

they finish the puzzle together, and eddie goes to make them a simple lunch of pasta with sauce, bringing it straight back upstairs, knowing that buck probably wouldn’t be up to getting out of bed today. it hits buck then, just how lucky he truly is. he knows that a lot of people don’t have the kind of support system he does, and he even remembers being confused when eddie didn’t run, wondering what he’d done to deserve it.

“why?” he spoke, voice cracking in infinite places. “why are you still here?”

eddie smiled, corners tinged with sadness as he brushed some of buck’s hair away from his forehead, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to the newly exposed skin. it felt like a promise.

“there’s no where i’d rather be. and i’ll be here for as long as you let me.”

(buck knew it was the truth.)

the food manages to bleed some life back into buck, and though he still feels rough and frayed around the edges, he’s able to acknowledge the comfort that comes when eddie slings an arm over his shoulder, and when eddie laughs at the tv and his automatic response is to laugh with him, it doesn’t feel fake or forced. he knows that there’ll be plenty more days like today, and he’s well aware that there’ll be days when he feels worse. depression isn’t a one and done situation, he knows that.

but he also knows eddie knows that, too. and he knows that as long as he lets him, he’ll be there waiting for when he emerges from the darkness. and knowing that he’s there, waiting, hand extended and oh so patient? it helps. and that can be enough for buck, even on his darkest days.

#evan buckley #eddie diaz #buddie #buddie fic #911 on fox #rebecca writes #depression tw #this is very different to anything i've written you've been warned #i literally wrote it in two hours

[hobbitsetal]

The reason you're getting this ask, is you're one of the Christians that's made me feel like you listen and actually consider other perspectives

I saw a thing that amounted to "If you're feeling down just remember that there's a great God who loves you", and the people who always say stuff like this... I just wish for one day they'd consider if there wasn't, what would you do then?

When I say consider there's no God for just one day, I don't mean in the sense of faith. I don't mean stop believing for a day. I just mean... for just one day consider what it means if there's no one above, there's no great plan, when the suffering cry out in anguish there's no one coming to save or redeem them

For just one day we're alone on this earth, and every hungry mouth, every suicide, every sick and broken person here has no great reward waiting for them. They're just hurting and it means nothing

For just one day I want them to ask themselves what they'll do if there's no help coming. Do they abandon their fellows to their fate? Or do they step in and help? Do they offer hollow words to those in agony? Or do they offer a hand?

Just once I'd like not a crisis of faith, but a simple accounting of what the world looks like if they were wrong and there's no God to back up their platitudes

Because forgive the presumption of an agnostic, but perhaps God's hope would be to offer acts of service and not just words

If you look out at the world and say that without God it's empty and barren, what will you do? Leave it desolate while basking in God's light to make it right for you? Or do you work the world till there's truly a bounty there for all, for the followers and the lost alike?

Anyway... I hope you're having a good day. I hope your family is having a good day. I hope everyone's happy and healthy

I just get a little tired of it all sometimes and wanted to share it with someone. Me, I haven't seen God yet. I look out and I see a lot of pain, and I'm just one very small person without much influence or skills. Still, I try to fix up things around me so I have more to give, try to lend a hand the rare times I can, at the very least lend an ear since I'm able to do that a bit more often

I'm not much good at much of anything, but I'd still like to help how I can, when I can

Honestly? What an excellent question. And what a fantastic challenge.

Whether there is or isn't a God, how do we live? Christians would say how we live is influenced by our belief in whether God exists or not, but what do we do to prove that? How do we relate to others? How do our decisions and actions demonstrate that we truly do believe in a Higher Power to Whom we are accountable for our actions?

And, to repeat your questions, how would we act differently if we knew for a fact there is no God?

#James 2:14-19 is one of my favorite passages #applicable to this conversation but I didn't want to derail the thought experiment #if there is no God how does that change how we live #I think for me personally I would still help people and want to understand them #but removing the hope of eternity and of a physical resurrection? #that would take away some hope #and yet at the same time #this life is all I know and tangible results are all I know #and I love tangible results #give money to a friend: bam! they can pay rent or get surgery or what have you #have people over for dinner: voila they enjoy a meal and company #talk someone through their brain worms: they have tools to make their life a little easier #the practical is hugely important to me #so in that sense #if I believed for one day there were no God #I don't think it would change too much about how I live #it would just change my interior hopes

[onlyhurtforaminute]

CHILDREN OF BODOM-PLATITUDES AND BARREN WORDS

#CHILDREN OF BODOM #MELODIC DEATH METAL #MELO-DEATH #HEAVY METAL; #METAL; #HEXED #2019 ALBUM

[ghostace]

it's been a long while since i did the writing thing, and never really for swtor. everything is 🤷

doc x jedi knight

on ossus, sometime during the kotfe/et separation, wherein doc misses his wife

There was more grey in his hair these days. Distinguished, he'd call it, when Nadia caught him examining it in the mirror. Everyone loved a sexy, older-but-not-old-old doctor, and it just added to his charm.

Was she out there somewhere, getting older too? Laugh lines deepening, skin softening, only ever growing stronger? Any other possibility couldn't be considered, even if the ache in his chest said otherwise. Heartburn, he'd say, to wave off any concerns. The wrong diagnosis, perhaps, but who were they to argue with a doctor?

Maybe they were just too polite to point out the lie.

It wasn't like he understood how the Force worked. Maybe she was the only one who could read him; dark eyes narrowed, words cutting right through the bluster to the heart of the matter. To his heart.

There was hope, once, that she would find him, find the rest of the Jedi, that somehow his need and desperation could reach across the galaxy to bring her home. Kira insisted she was still out there, distant but alive, but Kira wasn't here to repeat those daily platitudes.

The others asked, sometimes, about travelling with the Jedi who had taken on the Sith Emperor. Before, they'd called him an ally, a friend, and he'd wink at her across the room. Now he had to smile through gritted teeth, pretend as if he wasn't her husband, vague generalisations instead of loving anecdotes, left wondering just how much they could sense he was hiding. They thought her a martyr, a mythical hero to add to the archives, and each day he came closer to slipping, to revealing just how little they knew.

Even cut off, they kept a galactic calendar, to celebrate milestones and life days. Time passed strangely on this orange planet, so occupied with the need to simply survive, that he might have missed it if it weren't for that.

Ten years.

Ten years, and more than half of it apart.

Ten years since he'd pulled himself together to admit what he really wanted.

Ten years since she took his hands and repeated those words back again.

And here he was, alone on a barren rock, surrounded by people who didn't, and couldn't know.

That was the crux of the issue, wasn’t it? The secrecy, so enforced because he couldn’t risk her position: Jedi rules. They’d argued about it, talked in circles into frustration, and now? It was time wasted instead of appreciated, time he could have spent lost in her arms, her eyes, her smile. What would even happen if he told this group of Jedi, so cut off from the galaxy? Would it tarnish her memory, or ruin a future when she returned?

If she returned.

More than half the colony weren’t Jedi, other regular people fleeing the destruction and seeking protection. There’d been looks, moments when tending a sprained ankle could have turned into something else, but the charm wasn’t always there when he reached for it these days. What would be the point? His heart had been ruined– saved– so it didn’t matter how hard they flirted, no one else could hold his attention now.

The colony had a working still, which was built approximately ten seconds after the first building’s roof was installed, and it pumped out some sort of clear alcohol that would knock even Gnost-Dural on his back. It lived now in a spot dubbed “the watering hole”, and most nights that was the place to be, with both Jedi and civilians sharing stories, dancing, playing cards– whatever sort of pleasure they could derive from this hellhole of a planet. He’d gotten to know a lot of them over a drink, but tonight he waved a polite decline to the usual carousers inviting him in.

There was a rock near the perimeter sensors that he’d spotted a while back, wide and flat and out of sight of most of the habitation buildings, the perfect size to stretch out and watch the stars. When he’d arrived, he’d tucked away a bottle of good Ralltiir rum with an ever-despairing hope that he might crack it open someday, to share in a reunion, a celebration. This might be as close as he’d ever get.

He could taste the memories as he sipped directly from the bottle, could almost see her eyes in the stars reflecting off the glass. Darkening cheeks, unrestrained laughter, falling into each others’ arms; it used to be so easy to love her.

It still was.

“Ten years, beautiful,” he said into the night. “You better be raising a glass wherever you are.”

Not that he’d hold it against her if she wasn’t.

“Remember the first time we went to Ralltiir together?” he chuckled to himself. “My parents hated both of us so much that we just got a hotel and stayed in bed all week.” The humour felt hollow even to him. “Then we dressed up to go to the ritziest restaurant on the entire planet and you, you looked like a princess from a holonovel, but you couldn’t stop worrying about how expensive it was or whether you’d get recognised…”

We really shouldn’t be wasting credits on such frivolous things, she’d fret. Jedi are supposed to live frugally, Archie.

Archie. He missed that name, as ridiculous as it was. From her lips it wasn’t a curse, but a gift. What he’d give to hear her say it, even one more time…

“Sounds like someone who means a lot to you.” Shit. Gnost-Dural’s filtered voice floated over the breeze, and like a teenager caught out, he instinctively hid the bottle of rum in his coat. Idiot, the Jedi don’t care about that.

“Something like that.” He leaned back, but Gnost-Dural waited, patient yet present. He wasn’t going to accept the deflection.

“My wife’s been missing a long time now,” he admitted, eventually, trying to shut down the line of questioning. If the Jedi really could read lies there was probably a holosign above his head right now.

“You’ve mentioned her, on occasion.”

“She’s a very private person, even if she’s…” he struggled to get the word out, “even if she’s gone. I wouldn’t want to…” He sighed, trailing off. What could he say? He would shout from the very highest point of this planet, plaster the holonet with hearts, graffiti their names on the walls if he could, but he’d made a promise.

Even if it was going to kill him.

“Well, I hope there is someone here you can talk to.” Gnost-Dural’s voice grew sorrowful. “We all need support sometimes.”

“I’m fine, really,” he lied. “It’s just an anniversary.”

#swtor #swtor fic #swtor doc #jedi knight #doc's romance is good actually and i will die on this hill #don't follow me expecting more of this my next fic blurb will be in approx 2028 at this rate #i've just been having teness/doc feelings as of late and i love them

[hellmouth-manor]

virtus junxit mors non separabit

There’s no sign of the Hellmouth that can be found after all that transpired. Perhaps it closed up entirely. Perhaps it moved. Perhaps there are others. Perhaps there aren’t.

At first, it’s hard to feel that you can put everything behind you. It’s difficult to feel like you aren’t being watched, or to accept the possibility that you’re safe. But… you can feel a hidden strength inside your soul.

✨✨✨

For Arisa, the virtue of Unkindness: not nearly as pretentious as Mercy, and not to be mistaken for her cruelty (although, she wields that perfectly fine as well). She will be sure that those she cares for are prepared to face the rigors of the world at large, even if she must impart that lesson herself. And when all is said and done, she knows the gap between platitude and truth.

For Cu, the virtue of Devotion: a grand word for something that in truth comes down to something much smaller and softer than worship. Cu’s devotion is a special appreciation for friendship, and every small thing it means– each and every ritual repeated being an act of preservation for each cherished thing.

For Eli, the virtue of Renewal: to shift one’s perspective and find another angle– to illustrate, over and over and over again, as many times as it takes. Obfuscate into colors and imagery, reinterpret, reimagine, re-abstract, until the underlying meaning can be conveyed to any other manner of individual; a picture is worth a hundred thousand words. Eli’s renewal is a form of connection, where the self portrait is a picture of the viewer themselves.

For Hibiki, the virtue of Vindication: there is a special relief in finding a body of work that validates your bottled feelings, to have your worries and fears resolved through struggle and reinforcement both. This isn’t an act of pride or judgment– but rather, an acknowledgement of feelings and source of inspiration. To be caught when you fall may as well be flying.

For Hisashi, the virtue of Ferocity: it is more honed than viciousness and more precise than brutality, yet it is something purer and baser that sits inside all living creatures– the love of ferocity is an unspoken thing that is both difficult to accept and undeniable, like the broken bird brought to the doorstep by the feral cat that has made itself a part of your life.

For Kamiya, the virtue of Sincerity: to be a pillar of truth in a den of lies is no easy feat, but sincerity shines like the northern star. He is a point of stability around which one can orient themselves when rocked by uncertainty, a bright light to rally around when all feels lost. His outstretched hand doesn’t have to be questioned.

For Micah, the virtue of Deception: or perhaps, it would be more accurate to call it the virtue of Revelation. To know that people are layered, and to know how to reach past those layers to find the truth. To know when to hold your own layers up, and when to take them down. To understand the importance in refusing to follow others blindly, and refusing to believe the unkind untruths people say about themselves.

For Minami, the virtue of Solidity: it is something more tangible than reliability. It is the weight of a hand clapping your back, and the person who will not falter to hold your gaze when you look towards them each and every time. It is a support you can lean on, but not one that you must rely on– she will be sure that you can stand on your own two feet. She is the solid path that you can follow, or walk beside, or stray from as you please.

For Miori, the virtue of Resilience: where even withered grass can thrive again, and clipped feathers can be grown. She is the strength found in the ability to endure, not just for herself in today but for trying again tomorrow. While resilience persists, even a stifled hope has means to break barren ground– and every pain endured is a pain understood when it is glimpsed in others.

For Mirai, the virtue of Reflection: of inner contemplation, she is the quietude in which the most important things come to be heard. She is the harmony that amplifies the melody. The moon that lights, with the sun’s rays, the deepest dark. She is the pause and all that it entails– the unseen space of time in which a flower blooms, the vital space of time when one stands at the edge of a precipice, the liminal time in which all that exists is yourself and the grass underneath and the sky above and, momentarily, peace.

For Miranda, the virtue of Survival: of knowing that survival of the fittest is a misrepresentation of strength– that the saying should really be survival of the kindest, in truth. When one exists by ‘one step at a time’, every second is sharp and grueling against the senses. When one walks alongside others who chatter and laugh, time passes without realizing and one day you find you’ve already climbed several mountains. Living is more than just being alive. Surviving is more than just experiencing loss.

For Nikephoras, the virtue of Authenticity: it is one side of a two-faced coin. To know truth is to know untruth. To have clarity is to recognize obfuscation. Each pearl of a lie begins with a grain of truth, a grain that she is unafraid to grasp or acknowledge themself despite how rough it may be. To know the hearts of others, and choose to treat them with respect and care is his strength.

For Olwin, the virtue of Foolishness: the value of which cannot be understated. It is a virtue more mature than whimsy, more focused than capriciousness; wielded with intention to disarm not just enemies but allies as well. Foolishness and play are the beginnings of friendship– a space created for non-judgement, an atmosphere that is safe for exposing fears and admitting vulnerabilities. He paves the path for change, in himself and in others.

For Poppy, the virtue of Mourning: to hold remembrance and to preserve the things that are important. It is living for the memory of those held dear, and finding the meaning underneath the wounds that they and their loved ones sustained. Continuing to live is a type of retribution. Continuing to love in spite of everything the world has tried to make you, too, is a type of vengeance. When one razes their hurts to the ground, from the ashes again they can rise.

For Raoul, the virtue of Belief: not to be mistaken with naivety– it takes true courage to believe. It is a choice, to leave himself vulnerable, to offer again and again the opportunity for his peers to be better. To invest in those around him and offer unconditional kindness is true love for humanity and all the potential it entails. He is the unerring patience of a door left open to the stray– watching day by day as their true personalities emerge underneath the pain and misery inflicted upon them by the otherwise uncaring world.

For Ruby, the virtue of Imperfection: the uneven lumpy crust of a homemade pie painstakingly made, the rumpled throws on a couch that betray their use, the crooked bough of a tree that makes it the perfect place for a swing– the hundreds of thousands of imperfections that make life unique. She is where flaw becomes potential. She is the scar that holds stories rather than pain. 

For Shoji, the virtue of Acceptance: it is not as simple as just taking things as they come. No, he is the intentional acceptance of the things that are worth having. And you are worth having, always, without question. It is the virtue of letting others know that they are enough, after all. The ability to show them that it is okay to accept themselves, too. And when you come, whole and all-encompassed, you discover things about yourself that you might have never realized before.

For Touji, the virtue of Outrage: it is a form of empowerment. Little else is more healing than to be cared for so deeply as to provoke outrage. He is the voice that reverberates in your bones and the pounding of your heart in your ears. When you feel alone, and small, and weak, it is the outrage that truly drives it home that you are strong, and large, and in the best company you could ask for. How much easier is it to fight for yourself, when his booming anger tells all just how much you’re worth it?

For Wakako, the virtue of Rejection: she is the refusal of what is handed to her. To scream and cry and rage is not a sin. It is not broken-ness to demand better of the world. Rejection provides the room necessary for growth– a cup overflowing cannot be filled. Defiance is an act of self-love.

For Yukiko, the virtue of Indulgence: to allow oneself their own right to happiness, and to fight tooth and nail against the forces that would prevent the happiness of those close to her. For all her deceit, she is also the simple enjoyment of a sunbeam; of spun sugar; of soft plush fur. There is nothing complicated about that. There is nothing wrong with indulgence. There is nothing wrong with you. Or if you’re wrong for wanting those things, why should you care anyways if it makes you happy? She gives you the space to see that.

✨✨✨

The virtue inside of you was there all along, waiting to be realized. Its strength means that no strings will touch you ever again.

(Not to mention, you’re reasonably sure that any other Hellmouth that tries to swallow you will probably have an allergic reaction to you, now.)

From demons at least, there’s nothing for you to worry about. Touji put it best–

Humans are going to kick demon’s asses any fucking day.

#mm trial #endgame

[myfugglydragons]

Coatl in Crisis Bio

Ebony, the eldest of Crueak's and Tijari's mighty brood that never received the call to serve the Wingsinger in exalted service as an acolyte. Her life had been planned out long before she'd even hatched out of the egg, and so it was nothing in her life went according to those plans. Dragons, from a far off land of barren rock, and sun bleached sand a lair in the Shattered Plain, had already decided that a Coatl of dark colours and a flashy tertiary would be a most pried addition to their lair. But in their strange, far off land such a thing must have been a great difficulty to come by. So they sought the aid of a distant ally in the Abiding Boneyard. What the specifics of that alliance as she never learned, nor why it was that when she was little over a week old, it was those ferocious and infested drakes from the Scarred Wasteland that came to collect. Through a tumultuous terrain, of oozing molds and pulsing fungus, where the air was thick with with rank decay, humidity, and glittering with moats of dust and spores, she was safely guided, and led on and onward, out of a festering muggy land of festering pestilence and out into the scorching sun where silt and sand were littered with bleached white bones long picked clean. Water was scarce, the earth barren, and heavily the molds of the Wandering Contagion had settled in her lungs. She'd taken fever, coughing, hacking, and choking for days, as she was laid to rest under a shelter of cloth and old bones to sweat through the worst of the illness and the sun's merciless heat. The water that soothed her raw burning throat, was discolored, sour, and metallic, and the medicines used to keep her stable were pungent, acidic, and bitter. Bleary-eyed, and brutally aware of how unlucky she would have been without these Plague Drakes to watch-over and guide her, Ebony was relieved, when after another week of horrible travel they made it to the Lair...or to the odd assortment of hodge-podge the diseased savages considered a lair. There she rested. There she recovered. Word was sent to the dragons in the Shattered Plain. And there she waited... ...For her future to arrive... ...For these strange Dragons from Dragonhome to take her away... ...There she waited... Days turned into weeks. Weeks bled into months. Months slowly scraped by and turned into a year. Once a guest, she was now a lair-bound pest. Again and Again they tried to contact their allies in the Shattered Plains. They wanted compensation for taking the time to collect her in the first place. But again and again those same letters went unanswered. Unwanted, and unnecessary, she was a burden these dragons could not afford, but for all their savagery, they did not cast her out. Cut-off from her family in the Windswept Plateau, and seemingly abandoned by the dragons that would have been her family, she was inexplicably alone. Mumbling and burbling her monotone agony that few dragons could understand, fell on deaf ears. Her heart rose every day with the sun, and the frail hope of a returned letter. Her heart sank every evening, as no word arrived. One year became two. To their credit the Plague Drakes were tenacious and stubborn, and they continued trying to send word, no longer trying to make an exchange, but simply to determine what had come of their distant and worryingly mute friends. Two years become three. Unwanted, unnecessary, bereft of a home, living on the charity of those who did not want her, Ebony stopped talking. She stopped crying. She stopped trying. It was a burden to breathe. A burden to exist, living every second of every day on the mercies of those who did not want her, and could not afford her. There was upheaval in the Boneyard Clan, and they had stopped sending messages. They had stopped caring. They gave her a familiar to keep her company, but they could not claim her as one of their own good faith, nor could they cast her out, as she was theirs. Hopelessly she prayed, desperate for any platitudes from an uncaring world. But the Plaguebringer, did not call her to be exalted. Even the mother of pestilence and blight had no use for her. No one did. Three years blurred into four. Desolation, was her constant companion. Torment, Ebony's one true friend. The Plague Drakes, adjusting to the loss of their leader, and settling into a new routine around a new hierarchy, still refused to cast her out into the wastes. One the one occasion she did fly away into the death strewn wastes of the Abiding Boneyard, had been disastrous. Forced to land in an effort to seek shelter from the blazing sun, she was ambushed by Serthis Warriors. Exhausted, famished, dehydrated, and sick at heart, she was in no position to fight them. It was the timely arrival, of the plague dragons sent out to find her, that saved her. With nowhere to go, and nothing to do, she went back to the lair with them, not as a guest, but now as a prisoner. A prisoner they seemed to find both irritating and pitiable in equal measure. They would not cast her out. They would not abandon her. They would not let her go. Once again they sent a message to the clan in the Shattered Plain. Once again to no avail. Four years became five. Under the cover of darkness, the leaders of the Plague Clan she'd been staying with called her for a private audience. A tundra, and Guardian, they were an odd pair, but one that together exuded a measure of authority and power. They may not have hatched in the Scarred Wasteland, but in spirit they true heirs of the Plaguebringer, and it was the Tundra that at last gave her the news. "We have done all that we can. Our allies have either abandoned their lair, or have been lost to some disaster or Beastclan Raid. We must look to our futures, and to yours. We have sheltered you and harboured you, and have done all we can to keep you comfortable during your tenure. But we must move on." "Under other circumstances we would welcome you with open arms, but too long you've known misery here. Your heart, Ebony, will not know peace under the scalding sun, or the amid the vibrant viruses that sprawl across our land." The Tundra nodded. "Somewhere, out there, is a clan for you to call home. A place where you will find purpose, reason, and perhaps peace of mind. And if you're truly lucky life long companionship as we have known. We will be formally sending letters to all lairs across Sornieth. We will find you a place called home."          

#Coatl #Flight Rising

[beauty-at-matrix]

Platitudes and Barren Words solo - Alexi Laiho & Daniel Freyberg

#Children of Bodom #Alexi Laiho #Daniel Freyberg #Janne Wirman #Platitudes and Barren Words #Hexed #Masters of Rock #my video #guys wait until the very end

[nuclearblastuk]

#Children Of Bodom #Platitudes And Barren Words #Nuclear Blast #Metal

[rockattitudegr]

#children of bodom #music video #new song #new single #platitudes and barren words #hexed

[favoniuscodex]

(angst, death) most to least likely to, while dying in your arms, smile brokenly and tell you not to cry?

bro blink twice if u need a hug...

most

jean -> she thinks you’re so pretty when you smile, so won’t you do it one last time for her so she can experience the freedom of ur love in her final moments?

kaeya -> he’s used to hiding how he truly feels. he’s nervous and he’s scared to die. he’s nervous about leaving you behind. he’s nervous about how both mondstadt and the abyss will interpret his death. he can’t prevent it at all, so he has nothing left to do but try to cheer you up in his final moments.

venti -> the bard sings a song the world has not yet encountered. it’s one of a phoenix, rising from the ashes. yet it describes not him, for his soul will soon depart this barren earth. it will describe you, rising once more despite the death of the anemo archon in your arms.

thoma -> he wants to make others happy and he hates that you’re crying because of him. tells you to cheer up, buttercup and that it’s only a scratch. the two of you will be eating hotpot together soon enough, right?

zhongli -> why are you crying for a god who has lived eons longer than you? his gnosis is gone, yet he cannot bring himself to cry. he tells you to run. he has seen what the death of havria did to her people and he does not wish to condemn you to the same fate.

xiao -> his duties are over and platitudes are useless. he wants to see you smile, but his tongue feels thick in his mouth as his eyelids grow heavy. instead, he murmurs two words as you hold him close. thank you. he truly means it.

least

#//mail #//mutuals #starfell !

[weirdolesbo]

#music #Spotify

[karezzasstuff]

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was a British author, most famous for his novel Brave New World. He was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and younger brother of Julian Huxley.

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

See also:Brave New World

Something inexpressively lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And, oh, inexpressively terrifying...

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Words are good servants but bad masters.

It's a bit embarrassing... to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'

I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it.

The Gioconda smile, in Mortal Coils (1921)

Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time.

The Gioconda smile, in Mortal Coils (1921)

'There are quiet places also in the mind', he said meditatively. 'But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately — to put a stop to the quietness. ... All the thoughts, all the preoccupations in my head — round and round, continually What's it for? What's it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost that it isn't there. Ah, but it is; it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night — not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep — the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits ... we've been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like the outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows — a crystal quiet, a growing, expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying ... For one's alone in the crystal, and there's no support from the outside, there is nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or stand on ... There is nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiast about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressively lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And, oh, inexpressively terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize you and engulf you, you'd die; all the regular, habitual daily part of you would die ... one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously in some strange, unheard of manner.

Antic Hay (1923)

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

Those Barren Leaves (1925)

What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.

"Where are the Movies Moving?" in Essays Old and New (1926)

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong.

Part II: Malaya, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, (1926)

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

Part IV: America,Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, (1926)

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will (1929)

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.

Do What You Will (1929)

Men show at least as much zeal in mischief as in well doing, in folly as in wisdom. The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. Men must be bribed to build up and do good by the offer of an opportunity to hurt and pull down. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

Introduction (July 24, 1933), in Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1934), The Easton Press

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

Readers Digest (1934)

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

The Olive Tree (1936)

History teaches us that war is not inevitable. Once again, it is for us to choose whether we use war or some other method of settling the ordinary and unavoidable conflicts between groups of men.

What Are You Going To Do About It? The case for constructive peace (1936)

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

"Pacifism and Philosophy" (1936)

My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists; for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism.

Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (1937) edited by Nancy Cunard and publisehd by the Left Review

As for 'taking sides' — the choice, it seems to me, is no longer between two users of violence, two systems of dictatorship. Violence and dictatorship cannot produce peace and liberty; they can only produce the results of violence and dictatorship, results with which history has made us only too sickeningly familiar. The choice now is between militarism and pacifism. To me, the necessity of pacifism seems absolutely clear.

Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (1937) edited by Nancy Cunard and published by the Left Review

A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane.

Grey Eminence (1940)

Other curious and rather ominous consequences of war are the increased anti-Semitism which one meets in all classes, particularly the common people, and the strong recrudescence of anti-negro passions in the South. The first is due to the age-old dislike of a monied, influential and pushing minority, coupled with a special grudge against the Jews as being chiefly instrumental, in public opinion, in getting America into the war

Letter to his brother Julian Huxley (1943), published in Letters of Aldous Huxley (1970), p. 486, also in Aldous Huxley: A Quest for Values (2017)

The Quaestor turned back the pages until he found himself among the Pensées. “We are not satisfied,” he read, “with the life we have in ourselves and our own being; we want to live an imaginary life in other people’s idea of us. Hence all our efforts are directed to seeming what we are not. We labor incessantly to preserve and embellish this imaginary being, and neglect that which is really ours.” The Quaestor put down the book, ... and ruefully reflected that all his own troubles had arisen from this desire to seem what in fact he was not. To seem a man of action, when in fact he was a contemplative; to seem a politician, when nature had made him an introspective psychologist; to seem a wit, which God had intended him for a sage.

“Variations on a Philosopher” in Themes and Variations (1943), p. 2

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

Essay "Distractions I" in Vedanta for the Western World (1945) edited by Christopher Isherwood

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

"Variations on a Philosopher" in Themes and Variations (1950)

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour, and survival a thing beyond the bounds of possibility.

Themes and Variations (1950)

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1952)

The trouble with fiction... is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

"John Rivers" in The Genius and the Goddess (1955)

You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.

John Rivers in The Genius and the Goddess (1955)

Ours is an industrial civilization, in which no society can prosper unless it possesses an elite of highly trained scientists and a considerable army of engineers and technicians. The possession and wide dissemination of a great deal of correct, specialized knowledge has become a prime condition of national survival. In the United States, during the last twenty or thirty years, this fact seems to have been forgotten. Professional educationists have taken John Dewey's theories of ‘learning through doing’ and of ‘education as life adjustment,’ and have applied them in such a way that, in many American schools, there is now doing without learning, along with courses in adjustment to everything except the basic twentieth-century fact that we live in a world where ignorance of science and its methods is the surest, shortest road to national disaster. During the past half century every other nation has made great efforts to impart more knowledge to more young people. In the United States professional educationists have chosen the opposite course.”

"Knowledge and Understanding", in Vedanta and the West (May-June 1956); later in Collected Essays (1958)

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956); later in Collected Essays (1959), p. 293

We may not appreciate the fact; but a fact nevertheless it remains: we are living in a Golden Age, the most gilded Golden Age of human history — not only of past history, but of future history. For, as Sir Charles Darwin and many others before him have pointed out, we are living like drunken sailors, like the irresponsible heirs of a millionaire uncle. At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth's crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on? Estimates vary. But all are agreed that within a few centuries or at most a few millennia, Man will have run through his capital and will be compelled to live, for the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and seventy or eighty centuries of his career as Homo sapiens, strictly on income. Sir Charles is of the opinion that Man will successfully make the transition from rich ores to poor ores and even sea water, from coal, oil, uranium and thorium to solar energy and alcohol derived from plants. About as much energy as is now available can be derived from the new sources — but with a far greater expense in man hours, a much larger capital investment in machinery. And the same holds true of the raw materials on which industrial civilization depends. By doing a great deal more work than they are doing now, men will contrive to extract the diluted dregs of the planet's metallic wealth or will fabricate non-metallic substitutes for the elements they have completely used up. In such an event, some human beings will still live fairly well, but not in the style to which we, the squanderers of planetary capital, are accustomed.

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956); later in Collected Essays (1959), p. 293

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

"A Case of Voluntary Ignorance" in Collected Essays (1959)

Of course I base my characters partly on the people I know—one can't escape it—but fictional characters are oversimplified; they're much less complex than the people one knows.

Interview, The Paris Review (1960)

Words are good servants but bad masters.

As quoted by Laura Huxley, in conversation with Alan Watts about her memoir This Timeless Moment (1968), in Pacifica Archives #BB2037 [sometime between 1968-1973])

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.

As quoted in 

Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they do not dare to trust themselves, to walk in liberty.

#yoga #awakening #kundalini #meditation #nirvana #relationship #studyblr

[zeussim]

Opinion on Children of Bodom?

Hmmm I do normally like Finnish death metal so I listened to these songs "Morrigan", "Under Grass And Clover" and "Platitudes and Barren Words" and other than me not being a huge fan of synthesizer I really liked it. The fast tempo is a good contrast to the death-doom metal I listen to. It's probably only smth I'd listen to for a short period of time since I prefer listening to yes doom metal and such when I'm going to listen for a long time like when I'm doing cc or painting. It's just more relaxing, especially Swallow the Sun - soooo relaxing to listen to without being boring.

#ask #anonymous

[metalshockfinland]

CHILDREN OF BODOM Release Third Single & Video 'Platitudes And Barren Words’

CHILDREN OF BODOM Release Third Single & Video ‘Platitudes And Barren Words’

Finland’s melodic death superstars CHILDREN OF BODOM are going to release their tenth album »Hexed« on March 8, 2019 via Nuclear Blast Records.

Today, the band reveals the official video for the third single ‘Platitudes And Barren Words’ which can be seen here:

COB frontman, guitarist, and mastermind Alexi Laiho comments: “This one…

View On WordPress

#&039;Platitudes And Barren Words’ #»Hexed« #children of bodom

[raidbossmadi]

People Like Us : Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Night Out

Previous Chapter: here

The smell of cologne and weed alerted Sloane to Troy’s presence before the door of the technical could even open. The priest who had opened the door and led her there in the first place bowed and offered her a hand as she stepped up to the technical, these vehicles, aside from Tyreen’s personal technical were not designed with shorter people in mind. She thanked stars above that the ‘fancy’ clothing Iris had delivered to her room for this outing consisted of a mint green blouse and black slacks, she could only imagine making a fool of herself trying to get in and out of Troy’s technical in a skirt.

The God-king gave a short chuckle as she clambered into the seat next to him before he took another drag of the blunt in his hand. He offered it to her as he coughed into the furred collar of his vest.

Sloane took it looking at it rather quizzically, of course she knew Troy smoked, it was hard not to know. She however, had never seen the appeal, she’d read a lot about getting stoned but never could bring herself to do it.

“Go ahead, take a drag.”

“I uh, I’ve never done this before.” She admitted sheepishly.

“What? Really!? Not even to spice up that drab little shack in the woods.”

She shook her head.

“Alright, don’t worry I can teach you Slo, I’ve got plenty of experience.”

He mimed holding the joint and brought his fingers up to his lips and winked at her. She got the hint and took the joint to her lips.

“That’s it, breathe in.”

She did, the new taste and flash of heat as the smoke sucked into her mouth startled her but Troy held up a hand.

“No no, hold it, you gotta let it get in your lungs.”

After fighting the initial desire to spit out the smoke she held it in for as a few seconds longer than she thought she would manage before she doubled over herself coughing.

“See, you did fine? First hits a bit rough yeah, but you’re over that hurdle now. Wasn’t so bad was it?” He placed the joint in the ashtray and offered her a water bottle which she drank from greedily. “Like all things, it just takes practice.”

“Where are we going tonight? The Priest who fetched me didn’t mention anything in particular.” It was peculiar for her not to be briefed on where they were going and the fact that they were dressed down despite this being a date made her wonder what Troy had up his sleeve.

“A place where the sun does not shine. You don’t have to worry about anything tonight, it’ll all stay between us.”

“Oh poetic, but not what I asked.” She snorted as she took a cursory glance out the window. The cathedral was just a small speck on the horizon now and she realized this was the farthest she had been on Pandora. The Cathedrals' ever looming shadow over Temple town seemed so comforting compared to the harsh sunlight that shone over the barren desert.

“We have a settlement in the western desert, it’s picked up the name Scrapburg. It's where the rest of the engineers live when they’re not on assignment at the cathedral or deployed at an outpost. A bunch of my people live there actually. It’s not like Temple town, or the Cathedral, you’ll see. I think you’ll like the place.” Troy explained and patted her knee before awkwardly letting his hand rest on her thigh. She let it stay there, the willing contact with him appreciated.

The rest of the ride was mostly silent save for the sounds of the wheels as they bounced over the uneven surface of the desert. It wasn’t for lack of things to talk about, Sloane was buzzing with things she could say, but given this was a date she figured it better to save that for when they got to their destination. She had however kept her eyes on him for the rest of the drive not even noticing that they’d stopped until the door opened, their driver bowing to his gods before he spoke.

“Meet you here at the arranged pick up time, my liege?”

“That’s right, and don’t make us wait. You know how much of a pain in the ass it is to get through Cathedral gate at peak hours, even for us.”

Troy hooked his arm around Sloane’s waist, he led her away from the technical and through the gate. It was then that she got her first good look at the city proper. It was different from Temple Town in every conceivable way, where Temple Town was ever changing and movable Scrapburg immediately gave off the aura of permanence.

Instead of ramshackle buildings and tent camps,there were well built almost metropolitan buildings. They still had the typical Pandora flare but she had never expected something like this compared to the CoV capital. Solar panels were affixed to roofs and dust shields were installed on the balconies she could see.

The streets were covered by colored tapestries which she presumed were also to keep the sandstorm from buffeting the people who traveled. There were no cars, only carts pulled by large Skags and the occasional Motorbike. A bell tolled in the distance and she watched as people on the street stopped, others coming out onto their balconies and the sound rang through the city. Troy however did not stop instead speeding up his stride.

“Troy you’re gonna trip me, I can’t keep up!” Sloane protested.

“I was hoping we could avoid the attention, guess I should have known better than to send word. Even if that word was explicit, I did not want to be bothered tonight.” She could hear his fangs pressing against each other as he finished speaking, his agitation palpable in the air.

“Lord-Father Troy, how honored we are to be in your presence again.” A red cowled figure stepped out from the alley way, moving far too smoothly for a normal human.

It was only once the man was standing in front of them that his strange movements made sense. In the place of legs the heavily robed figure had four insectoid robotic limbs; two facing the front, two facing back. His right hand was also replaced with a robotic prosthetic that looked more like sleek black bone than the hulking form that hung off Troy.

“High Priest Deimos, I quite remember being very clear in our communication about tonight.” Troy glowered at the man.

“Forgive me for the intrusion Lord-Father. I was hoping I could escort you and the Verdant Lady to your residence.” Deimos said his fingers nervously bounced off each other as he spoke.

“We’re a bit busy for small talk.”

“It’s a ten minute walk my God-King, I won’t be burdensome for long. You can’t deny it’s been a fair while since we’ve spoken face to face, judging mother keeps you away from us.”

The more Sloane watched Deimos the more she realized he was more machine than man, a shift of his robe revealing a pump and tank system where his digestive system ought to be. She supposed that those who worshipped Troy would be more open to body modification but she couldn’t imagine casting away her organs for mechanical replacements.

“Fine.”

Deimos reached for Sloane’s hand only for Troy to swat it away with his prosthetic. The force behind the swipe reminded her just how easily he could crush someone with a flick of his wrist, he didn’t even need a weapon.

“And Sloane stays with me.”

“My apologies Lord-Father. I did not mean any offense.”

“Don’t get me wrong Deimos. I appreciate the hard work you all do, but Sloane and I are on a tight schedule. It was hard enough to convince Tyreen to let us have the night out.”

Troy and Deimos continued their back and forth of annoyance and platitudes as they walked Sloane tuned it out for the most part. She instead watched the street as they walked. She couldn’t recall ever seeing children in Temple Town but here she caught sight of more than one child being ushered to bow their heads like their parents before them as they walked past.

The filtered sunlight gave their procession a more somber feeling, especially as smoke from freshly lit censers wafted into the street. A bell tolled as they approached the steps she assumed belonged to the city hall. Troy released his grip on her hand and took a step forward, obscuring her slightly. Her gaze moved to the crowd that gathered at the foot of the steps.

She noted that those who had gathered seemed to be more calm and relaxed than the crowds that gathered to meet them in the great wandering city. That most of them seemed to have cybernetic parts which made sense, given Troy’s own disability it would make sense that his town would be made of people like him.

So wrapped up in taking in the foreign city’s spectacle she almost didn’t notice the men had stopped walking before she felt the tug of Troy’s grasp as she walked out of range.

“Uhh Pandora to Sloane, didn’t you hear me? We’re here.” Troy said an amused smirk pulled at the corner of his cheeks.

She looked up at the skyscraper that climbed greedily for the heaves. “Wow, sure is big.”

“Only the best for a god am I right?”

She snorted and nudged his arm with his shoulder. “Oh definitely. Totally not letting anyone think you're compensating eh.”

Troy turned red around the cheeks before he turned back to Deimos. “Well go on then you bucket of bolts get out here. And tell Phobos I’m expecting his report on my desk in the morning.”

The priest tapped his mechanical legs against the asphalt nervously before nodding emphatically. “By your will be done.” The priest skittered away back the way he had come before Troy’s temper could flare.

“Compensating, really Sloane? I could have any person in the CoV if I wanted, think I need to compensate to get that?” He was back to his jovial mood like someone had flipped a switch.

“I’m just saying it’s a big tower is all.”

“I like the view. Now, you coming in or shall we spend the night looking at my big tower?”

Sloane playfully rolled her eyes before she took his hand again.

The inside of the building was fairly standard for CoV buildings, the inverted vault symbol hung over the reception desk between two graffitied eyes. On the far wall a copy of Troy’s stained glass window from the Cathedral bathed the lobby in warm tones.

Troy did not acknowledge the receptionist simply strolling on by to the elevator. He placed his hand on a bioscanner located beneath the call button and a soft hum emitted from it before the ding of the lift's arrival cut through the otherwise silent lobby. The moment they stepped into the elevator and the doors clicked shut the atmosphere tangibly changed, Troy relaxing much the way he had been in the technical.

“I’m sorry about all that, I just wanted to get you here without being mobbed by followers who would want to meet you and ask fifty questions a piece. Tonight’s about relaxing and that’s what it’ll be from this moment on.” He smiled one of his warm and genuine smiles, unlike the smirk he used when dealing with followers this one went up to his eyes and softened his features. Sloane had come to relish seeing it in her few months among the twins.

They stepped out of the lift immediately into a fancy penthouse suite. Again it had all the design choices that made it read as Troy’s space, from the organized chaos to the books left turned over to hold their place.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tonight’s about you and I and nobody else so just tell me what you want.” He said hanging his vest over a chair as he went about the steps of removing his prothesthic. If they were going to have a cozy night in he needed to be comfortable.

“Yeah I’m starving, I haven’t eaten since Juniper brought me lunch.” She agreed, they hadn’t been gone from the cathedral more than a few hours yet it felt like ages ago now.

Troy turned to head into the kitchen when something caught Sloane’s eye. A black rectangular shaped box with a pair of controllers sat on top of it.

“Is that a Flaystation?” She asked her head tilted like a curious puppy as she spied it.

“Fuck yeah it is, we can play a game once we eat.” He reassured before he continued his quest to the kitchen.

Sloane made herself at home like Troy had suggested and plopped herself down on the plush sofa in front of the television. She was slightly surprised when a helper droid came out of a hole in the wall much like the ones back at the Cathedral. It pushed her shoes back over by the front door after she took them and returned shortly with a folded blanket on its head offering it to her.

She must have dozed off as the next thing she knew Troy was prodding her side. “Hey, hey! Dinner’s ready, sleepy head.”

She blinked awake and saw him grinning far too widely as he looked down at her curled up on the sofa. The same kind of look he gave when he had something up his sleeve in their game of bunkers and badasses, a genuine Troy smile.

Troy ran through his games library while they ate, pointing out the games he thought she would like. She was pleasantly surprised when he got it right, though they had spent months hanging out, doing their jobs, and sleeping in the same bed it had always felt like something they’d done out of obligation. When Troy had broken down the night of her coronation she had been caught off guard that she was so trusted and even now on an actual date with him it was only just clicking that he saw her for who she really was.

After a few hours of gaming, during which Sloane learned that Troy had taught himself to use a Flaystation controller with his feet which she found very impressive, the nature sire found herself yawning again. She leaned into Troy’s side, her head rested against the curve of his rib cage.

“It’s been a good night.” She sighed a content smile on her face.

“It has, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I did too.” He paused and took a deep breath before his hand came up and caught her under the chin, he gently tilted her head up to look him in the face.

“So, you think we can uh, make it official then. I know we’re in a weird situation where like we’ve been doing stuff couples do but it’s just been professional. I’ve really come to care for you these past months Sloane, more than I have anyone else. I would be honored and humbled to call you my girlfriend.”

Sloane’s face went red with blush as he spoke. “I would love to be your girlfriend Troy.”

She stretched up to meet his lips though she only stayed for a moment. As she pulled away she blinked in surprise as a thought registered with her.

“Holy fucking shit that was my first kiss.”

“Wait really?! Well…. it won’t be your last.”

She gave him a playful shove giggling as she did so. Her time away from Eden-4 had in general felt dreamlike and unreal if she thought about it too hard. Now however she found herself hoping that if truly was a dream that she would never wake up.

“So what changes at home? Is there anything I need to avoid doing around other people or something?”

Troy’s face steeled and his eyes darkened. There was an uncomfortably long pause between them before he spoke his voice had a hard edge, the kind that came with experience behind it and frightened her a bit.

“Tyreen cannot know. Not yet. Keep your head down, act like nothing changed unless we’re in private. I’ll handle it when the time comes.”

#Borderlands 3 #Troy Calypso #Tyreen Calypso #Borderlands #Sloane the Siren #People Like Us #My writing #My Hcs