#* gloryseized & kane / if i'm alive‚ my brother can't be dead. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

balladetto · 5 months

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reasons to cup a face / always accepting / @gloryseized ( Shion )

GROUND, during a moment of intense emotional stress, the sender gently takes the receiver's face in their hands to ground them until they're calmer again.

It happens in snapshot moments.

As he registers the feel of a palm between his fingers, somehow heaving against him without toppling him over, Kane opens his eyes. He blinks — blinks again, and the inside of the Temple of Time comes into focus: a muted colour to the light that pours in through its stained glass windows as if the very air has mildewed. There's a silence here that unnerves him. He realises, at once, three things.

Kane is in a body he does not recognise but knows, deep down, is his.

He is holding onto someone he does not recognise but knows, deeper down, is his brother.

This is a Dream. Which is different from a dream, 'cause this is the type — the only type — he can still vividly recall after waking, like echoes bleeding into reality. He's been getting these recently.

Almost as though he's been waiting for these things to connect, the likeness of Shion wrests his hand from Kane's. He steps away. He's— so tall like this, figure looming, shadows on his face that can't be cut through, but so is Kane; so is the form he's been warped into, and they are two brothers divided by a space that shouldn't be making his breath quicken so hard.

"I promise," Shion's image signs, a bold declaration with bold movements, and Kane — for the same reason he knows without recognising — wants to scream at him. What are you promising? Do you have any idea? You can't promise me something like that. You can't promise me something you've already broken!

Don't leave me!

The quiet stretches. He can't move. He's stuck in a moment he doesn't know how to break out of, hand vainly outstretched and wide eyes pinned on a face he can't see. His skin feels one touch removed from splitting apart the way his heart feels one nudge off from falling over the precipice of some knife's edge, yet he aches anyway, willing to be ripped open if it means his brother will be there.

His brother will not be there.

Kane watches in helpless horror as Shion turns, boots tapping out a decisive farewell march. He's distantly aware of the little light following after him — Navi, it takes a second to place, blue and a perfect fit and so out of place at the same time. They're going ahead without him, approaching the pedestal made for the sword on Shion's back, and Kane is struck with such a sudden desperation that his body, frozen as it is, trembles. Convulses.

Stop, he can't cry. Don't leave me, he can't plead. It's only when his brother raises the Master Sword high, about to return it to its resting place, that the stone Kane's trapped in releases him. He stumbles forward — forces himself to keep stumbling forward, throat strained raw as he calls for his brother, but he can tell— he's too late. He's too late. The Dream stills, suspended on knowledge he can't look away from—

Kane wakes up to arms binding his hands to his sternum and a hot face pressed into the back of his neck.

For a second, the change thoroughly dazes him. He blinks, capturing nothing, and in its span: the world rearranges itself. Pain flares from his chest, throbbing in time with the harsh, too-fast breaths strangling him. The night is lit by firelight, casting a dim glow over cave walls and along the things in a campsite for two travellers. With how sticky his nose and cheeks and eyes feel, he thinks he's probably been crying. His brother is here.

His brother is here.

"Shh-ii—" he starts, and finds he won't complete the name.

Shion jerks against his side, inhaling so sharply it sounds like it'd hurt before hurriedly pulling away from where he's curled around Kane. The motion has him nauseous with a fear carried over, snatching at a forearm the right size with hands the right size, but his brother isn't— isn't going away. He moves until they're facing each other, gaze searching for Kane's. This up close, he can trace every contour. He can delineate every crease, put an emotion to every feature — helped by a nearby fairy's shine. Yellow. Tatl.

He— lets go. "Shion," he shakily, unnecessarily, forms with his hands. It's too cramped for brother to be signed well, so he repeats it again, and again, and again. The shape falls apart further each time, until it's little more than his left hand knocking atop his right.

Don't leave me. Don't leave me. Don't leave me. If he could carve this into his skin so Shion can see and understand it when his voice and fingers are as useless as they are now, he would. And maybe some part of him really tried, maybe that's what the twinges running along the lengths of his arms are, but— his brother has never needed Kane's words to know what to do.

Shion holds him gently. Carefully, palm and fingertips assured in their own tenderness. He presses a different message into the skin of his cheeks, the answer to all that goes unsaid but not unrealised.

Don't leave me, Kane begs with a bitten lip, heaving shoulders, and a weird, awful certainty that he'll be ignored.

I'm here, Shion swears with circling thumbs, eyes that reflect his twin's pain, and a steady, near irremovable warmth.

Kane's voice trips over an ugly sob. He pushes his hands over his brother's, drinking in the touch with an overwrought exhaustion, and tries to match his breathing to the slow cadence of that terribly profuse love.

( What a strange Dream, he will later think as they drift back to sleep. A strange fear, he will correct, squeezing-hand-in-squeezing-hand. Shion would never leave him. )

#gloryseized #* gloryseized & kane / if i'm alive‚ my brother can't be dead.#( hi. i'd say sorry for the length and sorry being obsessed with them but. i'm really not sorry at all #[collapses on my face] HILARY. HILARYYYYY I AM SHAKING YOUUU #touching on what we discussed re: memories of adult timeline kane crossing over to child timeline kane #i imagine the tailend of those memories comes mid-mm so that's great!! that's so cool!! [bursts into a puddle]#also thinking about how kane would not develop the intense touch aversion grasshopper does. esp @ his brother. and god. GOD.#eternally emo over these two thanks 😭😭 TRULY THANK YOU FOR SENDING THIS IN!! )#* lionheart / ic.#* lionheart / answer.#* ic / para.#* v / stars of unchanged fates.#ask to tag /#long post cw

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balladetto · 5 months

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reasons to cup a face / always accepting / @gloryseized ( Shion )

LIFT, sender gently cups the receiver's face and lifts their chin so the receiver is looking up at them.

It takes a heavy intention for Kane to ignore the rustle of the front curtain being drawn aside. He twitches on instinct, head turning just the slightest, before he remembers he's supposed to be Very Upset right now and coils into a tighter, stonier lump on his bed.

"Go 'way," he tells his brother, 'cause only his brother would have the guts to approach Kane as he is right now. Well, that and he's the only one who gets to enter their house without needing to announce himself. Even his footsteps are recognisable — tha-thump, tha-thump — and Kane feels his shoulders involuntarily unclench from where they've hunched up around his neck.

Still, he holds onto the anger that's been simmering in the arch of his brow and under his fingernails since he stamped up their ladder. "M'not...sayin' sor-ry," he preemptively huffs, just in case Shion's here to make him be nice. Kane doesn't wanna be nice. Not to Mido, who doesn't deserve any apologies from him for anything — even hitting him and causing a fight — when he was being a stupid little weed.

He shouldn't have worried, really. Shion may not have been there when it happened, no doubt hearing the story from others, but this is his brother. A hand lands on his shoulder, gentle and sympathetic. It's such a Shion thing that Kane has to deflate at it.

"He...was bein'...mean," he mumbles, glare turning into something sadder as he stares at the wall. Mean doesn't even feel like the right word for it. Mido can get prickly, sure, but there was a bite to all his mocking this time that practically barrelled over the line of annoying and into genuinely hurtful — worse that half of it was aimed at someone who wasn't there to defend himself. Kane has only had six years of experience in handling emotions, much less Big Ones, and loves his brother very much. Pouncing on Mido had seemed like the best thing to do.

Fingers press against his exposed cheek, patting lightly, before they trail down to cup his chin. Shion pulls. Kane lets him. The look that greets him as he turns gets a corner of his lips to start tugging upwards, and the smile is fully complete when he sees what's being held in the other hand.

Forget him, Shion says without saying anything. Kites, freshly made with how big and green the core leaves still are, promise a much better time than being Very Upset. Kane laughs, soft, and follows his brother's hand the rest of the way out of their house.

#gloryseized #* gloryseized & kane / if i'm alive‚ my brother can't be dead.#( this wasn't supposed to be so long but we were setting up context and he would not shut UP. the little brat fskjdlf #ended up going with early childhood oouhhhh 🥺#which did not fit with the initial idea i had with kites but i did not want to scrap such a cute concept + you were vibing with it so!!#i hope this is okay!! fluff after the Hurt we put them through <3 thanks for this hilary!! )#* lionheart / ic.#* lionheart / answer.#* ic / para.#* v / stars of unchanged fates.#* intermission / queue.#long post cw

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balladetto · 5 months

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@gloryseized ♡ the lads: grown!

#gloryseized #* intermission / ooc.#WOE twins be upon ye again <3 #i cannot work on this any longer send POST #this is what i get for going with what Shapes look good and not envisioning how it'd look with colours sdlkfj is okay. i love them anyway #giving them both air smooches mwah #sleep post. goodnight folks have a wonderful day i'll be seeing you <3 #* intermission / art.#* lionheart / image.#* v / stars of unchanged fates.#* gloryseized & kane / if i'm alive‚ my brother can't be dead.

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balladetto · 5 months

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directly referring to this / @gloryseized

There's a part of Kane that's been preparing for this, he thinks.

Because without it, he's not sure he'd be entirely upright. Entirely conscious. He's not sure he'd be here: heart thudding a dull rhythm in his ears, hand outstretched and grasping at nothing, forehead tingling from the last touch it knows and will know from his brother. He blinks — blinks again, and keeps blinking like something is wrong with his vision, like if he just opens and shuts his eyes enough times, Shion will be there again. Shion will be there, sword poised high, and Kane will have the time and wherewithal to stop him from severing the one thing tying them together.

Kane only has time now.

He will only ever have time now.

His chest collapses in on itself, bones shattering and piercing through flesh with all the force of a terrible, terrible grief. He chokes on the blood that bubbles up, chokes on the petrified tears that've turned his voice into screaming silence — and isn't that funny? That they are petrified. That they aren't sobs that hollow him out, that scrape out all the insides of his veins to fill them with a poison seeping to the core, but rather sobs that are still holding out for something.

I will be safe, Shion had said. Had sworn, as if that promise hasn't been broken a hundred times over since they woke up to a fairy who belonged to no one. Kane drops to his knees, a hand pushed against his lips and the awful sounds coming from them, because there's a thread in all that he is — pained and undone — that's blisteringly furious. It tunnels into: what about him? Demands: what about me?

But it's never been about him. It's never been about him. There is no room for it to be about him when his brother is the Hero of Time, when his brother's the one who saved everyone, when his brother's the one who had to sacrifice everything. Kane remembers clasping him in his arms, a quivering hero that needed to not be a hero for a breath's respite — and Kane remembers his tunic ripping out from his grasp, a hero that no longer knows how to be anything else.

He almost expects the world to rupture. To really end. Shion has been the linchpin to it for his whole life that it feels — now that he's gone and faded into a column of light, more than merely absent — an inevitable outcome. Kane cannot hold his breath against the gasps rippling through his body, but he looks at the fucking Master Sword and dares it to suddenly fall to pieces like smashed glass.

The sword does not break. The world does not rupture. Because the world has never only just been Shion; Shion's only just been Kane's world.

His fingers touch the Master Sword's hilt for the first time. Nobody but Shion has been allowed this cursed honour. They wrap around it tight, desperate, pleading as he braces his weight against the plinth and tries to stand. He can't. He can't. He can barely lift his head because he's ten again, his world upended as the Door of Time slid shut behind him — he's ten again, small hands still soft from unpracticed combat pounding on the stone with a reckless ferocity, begging for his brother back. Begging, and begging, and begging.

The dead must find solace in the noise torn from the remains of his throat, because there are several answering ghastly wails. Or that's just the Temple of Time's marble walls, reflecting his anguish back at him: that's just him, echoing so intensely he half-hopes it'll reverberate across timelines to reach his brother.

There is a Kane out there who will have his wish granted. There is a Kane out there he should be deliriously happy for.

There is a Kane out there he loathes with the kind of teeth-sinking resentment he wants the ground to swallow him whole for.

#gloryseized #( [on the floor in gutwrenching pain]#HILARY!! [STILL SHAKING YOU BY THE SHOULDERS]#this is wonderful. adult timeline kane is going to forever haunt and hurt me #CHILD TIMELINE KANE IS GOING TO HEAL ON BEHALF OF HIM BECAUSE THIS IS. SO. SO.#CRYING SOBBING WEEPING SCREAMING YELLING BITING MY ARM OFF AAHHHHHHH )#* lionheart / ic.#* ic / para.#* v / stars of unchanged fates.#* gloryseized & kane / if i'm alive‚ my brother can't be dead.#( < FINALLY WORKED OUT A TAG FOR THIS SPECIFIC FLAVOUR OF BROTHERS. AUGH )#long post cw #ask to tag /#death mention

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