#I'm not sure what to do if TUMBLR decides to die though | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ugh-yoongi · 2 months

Text

the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance—whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. <3

#jimin x reader #jimin smut #bts x reader #bts smut #jimin imagine #jimin scenarios #jimin fanfic #jimin x you #jimin x y/n #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts x you #bts x y/n

332 notes · View notes

makeste · 5 months

Note

I think there’s some speculation that AFO made sure Yoichi got actual clothes and that was the discrepancy between their clothing choices. It could also be a reference to AFO’s current clothing choices

okay first of all you have the best user avatar I have ever seen on tumblr dot com, just wanted you to know that.

anyway, re: AFO, I agree he was almost certainly the one who found clothes for Yoichi. although I don't necessarily think it's some kind of self-sacrificial thing, like "I don't care if I'm out here dressed in a trash bag as long as my baby bro has something decent to wear 🥺", lol. I count five different guys in the panel right before Yoichi throws the beer can, all of whom are wearing perfectly stealable clothes. AFO's whole thing is that he does whatever he wants and takes whatever he wants. so if he wants clothes, he's getting clothes. I think it's more likely that he just didn't care about that for whatever reason. maybe he stole some quirks that kept his body from feeling cold, or thickened the soles of his feet to prevent damage, or whatnot.

but as far as Yoichi goes, it's almost akin to buying a decent case and a screen protector to make sure your cell phone doesn't get damaged. Yoichi is AFO's favorite possession, but he's weak and frail and vulnerable to the elements. so yeah, sure, get the lil dude some clothes. because you gotta make sure he doesn't up and die on you, because he's not allowed to do that, because he is yours.

like it's just so fascinating to me how he's constantly on the cusp of almost genuinely caring about his brother, but his own selfishness keeps holding him back. Yoichi is incredibly important to him, because he was his only companion during what must have been an incredibly lonely period in both their lives. Yoichi knows him better than anyone. Yoichi reads to him. Yoichi believes in him. so of course AFO is attached to him and wants him around. and he protects him and takes care of him. but it's because Yoichi can give him something that he can't get anywhere else. it's a selfish love. and that's where the whole thing ultimately falls apart. when Yoichi stopped listening to him, AFO locked him up and tried to force his obedience. and it's very strongly implied -- guess we'll see for sure in two weeks -- that when even that failed, AFO decided that if he couldn't have him, no one would.

anyway so yeah. tl;dr I'm not sure why AFO was so opposed to wearing pants for so long, but for what it's worth he did make sure Yoichi never went without. just not necessarily out of the goodness of his heart. I love their relationship though, and Horikoshi has me 100% invested in seeing how this will all ultimately play out.

#bnha 407 #all for one #shigaraki yoichi #ofa the first #bnha meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks

134 notes · View notes

random-introverted-blog · 5 months

Text

Across Stars and Time [Ascended!Astarion x F!Reader]

Spawn vs Ascended oh my gawd

Edit: Due to incredibly popular demand on AO3 (again) this story has been converted to a full story called His Star - His Queen. It's being cross posted between here and AO3

Read His Star - His Queen on AO3

Read His Star - His Queen on Tumblr

Intended Audience: Mature [Merely a suggestion, like speed limits, right?]

Who be smoochin?: Astarion x F!Reader

The Bit: At long last, Astarion will be free of his master and you will be his most enthusiastic cheerleader as he ends Cazador, once and for all. So you think until you find an Imposter Astarion that waits in the center of the room for you. Cazador tortured and dying at his feet. And your Astarion, to his horror, faces the true cost of his ascension. You.

Warnings/Advisories: ANGST, no happy ending (though it ends on a brighter/hopeful note), major character death (not either Astarion, that would be too easy on both of them), references of past SA, references of suicide, a reference of sucidal ideation, violence, injuries, yandere doing yandere things, obsessive and possessive behavior, your boyfriend is getting the shit kicked out of him, your "husband" who is the same man from another universe is kicking the shit out of himself, "HERE COMES ASCENDANT ASTARION WITH THE STEEL CHAIR FROM THE TOP ROPE", is it time magic or jumping across realities, "SPAWN ASTARION WITH THE SUPLEX"

Words, all the word (count): a whopping 5,390

Writing art and breaking hearts in 3...2...1

-ˋˏ’✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈-ˋˏ’✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈-ˋˏ’✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

"Save it for when I'm standing over Cazador's bloody corpse." Astarion had said when he stopped you from kissing him today.

And that was fine, sure, you really wanted to, but you could understand he was not in the head-space to be affectionate with you. It didn't change how he felt, or how you felt, so what did it matter? You could wait your whole life for his kisses and embraces and still die happy, so long as it was a life shared with him. There was nothing you wanted more than Astarion, baggage and all. No matter how unsure and self conscious he was about what he believed he lacked or couldn't give you. You crossed your fingers that it would be enough he would decide against completing the ritual. It would change him, that you knew without a doubt. And you were nervous it wouldn't be a change for the better.

You loved him for him, as much as you were afraid to use those exact words, and you had seen plenty of times what immense power does to people... your heart clenched thinking of that happening to him.

Nights nuzzled into his chest, legs tangled together, fingers in your hair. The safest and warmest you've ever felt was being in his cold arms. These were some of your best memories in the few you still held from your past life. And you made sure he knew he didn't even need to do any of that, the cuddles and kisses, to have your love. It was unconditional. It always would be.

You couldn't wait to stand with him as he finally ended this chapter of his life and turned the page, and his eyes toward a brighter future. Hopefully, if he wished it... it would include you.

But something was wrong. There wasn't a single servant to be seen in the whole place. You found the signet ring left on the floor in front of the sealed door and Astarion chalked it all up to Cazador paving the way for his "homecoming party". It didn't sit right with you, and you had tried to express as much to him but it just made him snap at you. After all, he spent two hundred years as a slave to the vampire lord. Who were you to question what he did and didn't know?

After that, you had kept your mouth shut. It hurt, but you had already forgiven his bad mood. You understood he was going through a lot, anxiety eating him from the inside out. So you kept your thoughts to yourself and did your best to keep your perceptive eyes peeled for any clues. Your gut instinct was right. When you found the elevator to the crypt, you had silently hoped it would ease your own troubled thoughts, your paranoia, but truth be told; it made it worse.

You looked among your companions to gauge if they perhaps felt the same. As rare as it was to see them all together on a mission, Astarion had earned their friendship just as much as you had, and not a one turned down the chance to deliver a long overdue beat down on Cazador Szarr.

But the only thing you registered on their faces was a determination for violence. Glad as you were, you were just as eager, of course, but that did little to soothe your nerves. It wasn't uncertainty, like Astarion's, much as he tried to mask it. No, something felt... changed. Unbalanced. Your tadpole, maybe? No, it was quiet as a babe. Your urges? No, your bhaalspawn blood, despite feeling a mite antsy, was relatively subdued.

As you crossed the crypt on the way toward the two large, ancient doors, a voice called out to Astarion. He stopped, glanced at you and turned slowly toward the cell. Expression impassive but footsteps cautious, until his eyes widened. "Sebastian??" He gasped, taking one step back.

"What are you doing out here?" The spawn asked, clinging to the bars. "You're supposed to be in there!" The man jabbed a finger toward the door.

Drawing your brows together, you glanced at the doors behind you, and you started to drift toward it. Screams caught your ears from within. Muffled, but sharper as you moved closer. A hand on your shoulder, and you found Gale, Halsin and Shadowheart at your back while Astarion was distracted with the spawn. Tempted as you were to stay, he seemed to be really distraught. Something was undeniably wrong now. Why were they so convinced he had already come through here?

Those screams were unlike anything you had ever heard, sounds of terror and agony that sent shivers down your spine. You had heard and seen a lot in your travels, you all had. But nothing quite like the sounds coming from beyond these doors.

Halsin took the lead and pushed the doors open, you close behind, Shadowheart and Gale took the rear behind you.

You were startled when the doors slammed shut behind Shadowheart, and the four of you looked among yourselves, searching for an answer for the other. When all you received were questioning stares, your eyes wandered to the center of the chamber and you descended the long stone staircase. Lining the platform, hovering above red sigils, were Astarion's siblings. Veils of darkness covered their faces, whatever it was doing, the source of their twisted symphony for relief.

Dead center of the platform, a figure in top-grade studded leather armor hunched over someone on their hands and knees. Hands visibly trembling against the floor, drenched in sweat.

As if sensing your presence, the figure tossed something from their right hand, a blade skidding across the floor, their now free hand raised in the air and snapped their long fingers. Instant silence fell over the ritual chamber. "Ah, there you are..." a voice greeted in a low, familiar purr. "I've been waiting..." they continued, slowly straightening to full height, presenting you the equally... hauntingly familiar white curly haired back of their head. "Waiting since the moment I set eyes on you." Looking over their shoulder before at last, turning to face you. "Waiting... to have you."

"What kind of sick magic is this? An identity spell?" Gale questioned, as confused and audibly disturbed as the rest of you. Bewildered at this seemingly perfect copy of Astarion. No... something was off. You just couldn't put your finger on it. It wasn't anything on a physical level, as far as you could tell. He wasn't wearing the same armor, though. Like you noted earlier, this was top grade studded leather armor, dyed a midnight black and dark red. Yours was wearing the set of Spidersilk armor you had pried from the dead drow woman back at the Emerald Grove.

"Cazador, if you think hiding behind his face is going to stop me from peeling yours from your bones, allow me to let you down now." You glared, readying your weapon and assuming your stance. The others followed your lead, as always.

But the Mimic chuckled, a soft, airy sound too like Astarion for it to be a mimic. "He won't be able to answer you, my dear" they chuckled, tone filled with amusement. "He's long swallowed his own tongue." You watched the deep crimson cloak sway behind them as they circled around the trembling man, turning him over their black boot. The man fell onto his back, and you assumed the dark-haired elven man, face swollen, bloody and almost too distorted to be recognized as a face, was all that remained of Cazador.

He gasped and wheezed, and the mimic used their foot to force Cazador's head up to face you, providing you a better look. Sure as they said, there was no tongue... or fangs, either. Only two gaps in the top row of teeth where they should be.

Unceremoniously, they dropped his head to the floor, and you realize the mimic hasn't actually taken their eyes off you since they circled around Cazador. "I am a man of considerable patience, but even I grew bored idling about, waiting for him to bring you to me, my treasure."

"A shapeshifter." You blurted out as the thought crossed your mind. "Really, an imposter of my lover? I'm almost flattered, dear sister" a mocking grin splitting your lips, hand tight around your weapon, magic crackling at your fingertips, waiting to be unleashed should they make a move against you.

The imposter raised their eyebrows before meeting your grin with their own. "No, darling. I'm more Me than that... creature you've been putting up with."

"What in the nine hells are you then?" you bite impatiently, tired of this back and forth. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. That you couldn't figure it out was wearing on you.

Behind you, the doors burst open, but neither of you looked away from your standoff to see. Footsteps rushing down the stairs, "y/n!" Astarion called after you, coming to an audible skidding stop at the scene before him.

"I'm the man you love, pet." The Imposter responded, as if the rest of your team didn't just rush in, as if the real Astarion wasn't joining your side, daggers drawn. "I'm the man who in another life you denied, using a disintegrate scroll on yourself to reject everything I gave you. The man who has crossed the stars and time itself to return you to his side." They took a step toward you but you held your ground, ignoring every impulse to turn heel and bolt the other way as they partly lifted their hands from their side. "I am High Lord Astarion Ancunín. Vampire Ascendant." Smirking from ear to ear in a way that was undeniably Astarion. From the glance you spare at your Astarion, he seemed just as stunned, confused... worried.

Still, you searched him for it: deception, doubt, a half truth, anything and your heart sunk further, the more you found to only prove his point. To your horror, this was Astarion. Somehow, as he said, crossed the barriers of your realities to be here.

Ascendant... This is what Astarion would become if he completed the ritual.

You searched his eyes, for what you couldn't say for sure, something to reject this, reject him. Something that would wake you from this nightmare. His eyes were cold, dark with malice, lacking any of the warmth you felt when you stared into your Astarion's, they were commanding, all-consuming.

Your body stiffened, rigid. You couldn't look away.

"There..." The Ascendant sighs, almost dreamily, "come here to me, my treasure..." Extending his arms wide, inviting you into them, and you feel every muscle in your body acting on its own.

Panic nearly takes your senses. "No, I can't..." you force the words out before your throat tightens and your tongue stills.

But that's all he needs to hear to understand. Astarion's arm wraps around your waist as your feet move, pulling you into his arms instead. With a mind of its own, your body thrashes and squirms against him as if desperately trying to heed the Ascendants' command, but he doesn't let go. "Easy, darling, I've got you..." He murmurs in your ear, not unlike the nights he's comforted you, tied up and writhing on your bedroll. "I won't let him... I won't..." you detect the softest of tremors in his voice while you struggle to regain control of your limbs.

Behind you, you listen to your friends scrambling to form a protective line between both of you and the Ascendant. "I don't know what damnable creature you are," Wyll says from somewhere in the line, "but I know my friend Astarion, and that's enough reason for me to drive my blade through your putrid heart."

"What you are is an abomination." Halsin speaks right after him, "part of understanding and appreciating the artistry of life is understanding the role death plays in nature's beauty. But frankly... I cannot imagine any reason for your existence." He concludes with a harsh glare at the Ascendant.

Who merely lifts an eyebrow. "How imbecilic." He says impassively, glancing among your six friends. Suddenly his eyes glow and mist red, and with a wave of his hand the very shadows at their backs surge to life.

Halsin's shadow is upon him with a viciousness you've only seen in rabid animals, shredding him to ribbons before he even turns to face the monster.

Lae'zel holds her own well enough before hers takes her to the ground. Though it seems grim, she appears to be regaining the upper hand quickly.

Gale whips around and reaches to grab Wyll and cast Dimension Door, but his own shadow counterspells him and blasts him with a ray of frost so hard it sends him hurtling through the air.

The Ascendant watches the wizard sail past him with a barely suppressed humor to his features. "Oh, dear..." He mutters just loud enough to be heard, "not going quite the way you expected, is it?" He mutters, raising his hand to examine his nails. Only appearing mildly interested in the chaos unfolding in front of him.

Wyll dispatches his shadow, only to watch Karlach overwhelmed by hers, and he shouts in horror. Barely reaching her in time to block the downswing aimed for her chest.

"And how about you druid—Oh, dear..." he gasps, a feigned expression of shock flitting across his face, moving that same hand to his mouth, a wicked smile barely concealed behind his splayed fingers. You shiver at the sadistic delight dancing shamelessly in his eyes while he gawks at the sight of Halsin, savaged and lifeless, face down in a pool of his own blood. "You always had that coming, you dimwitted oaf. The first time too..." He huffs, straightening his posture and holding his head up as he leers down at the body with blatant disdain. "And you know what they say about your own worst enemy...." As he glances among your friends, one by one struggling and fending for themselves.

Astarion tugs at your arm when your body stills against his. "We need to go, now!" he hurries, dragging you behind him.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs before you pull your arm free. "We're just going to leave them?!" you ask incredulously, raising your voice, gesturing and looking behind you.

Shadowheart thoroughly thrashes her dark copy with impressive efficiency, diverting her energy now to the Ascendant. The familiar chant falls from her lips as she begins to cast Turn Undead. Vanishing in a blur of crimson mist, he reappears in front of her, and she successfully gets the spell off a mere second later.

But he stood there, unfazed. Flashing a wicked grin, he confidently takes hold of Shadowhearts' hands, lifting them up and then abruptly wrenching them in opposing directions, sending an uneasy wave through your body. She cries out in agony, and the Ascendant allows her to collapse to her knees before he callously brushes her aside with his boot, treating her as though she were nothing more than a worn-out toy.

Astarion takes your arm again, returning your attention to him and desperate urgency flashes over his features. "You don't understand. I know what he wants, and I won't let him—"

Just as he turns around for the stairs, a flash of red mist. "Tut-tut." The Ascendant scolds, clearly unimpressed, scowling at Astarion as the very shadows of the room gather around his hands.

Reacting faster than your vampire, you swiftly shove yourself between the two Astarions, acting on instinct.

Pain ripples through you unlike anything you've felt before, like a hammer of fire and ice that makes your blood boil and freeze all at once. The blast launches you back into Astarion hard enough to send you hurtling through the air, past Gale casting another spell.

Your body slams into the unforgiving coldness of the stone platform, causing a sharp intake of breath and a loud grunt of pain involuntarily slips past your lips. The force of the impact propels you into a chaotic, disorienting tumble, your cheek scraping the rough texture of the floor as you skid to a halt.

Despite the pain on your face, you dug deep and pushed on your arms, your body trembling slightly as you managed to roll onto your back. Vision hazy and unfocused. What in the sweet hells kind of magic was that?

Where's...?

Straining your eyes, you see Gale rushing toward you before ominous black chains materialized from the floor and curled around his arms and legs, forcefully dragging him to his knees. Instinctively reaching for the wizard but your thoughts and concerns quickly shift elsewhere at the sound of your name. Tilting your head backwards, your heart almost settles at the sight of your pale elf scrambling to his feet toward you, "Astarion!" you call back, mustering your strength again in an attempt to get back on your feet.

And as quickly as you felt some sense of relief at the sight of him, your heart sinks violently at the tendril, the whip of dark magic that coils tightly around his body and flings him backward, away from you. With his rogueish reflexes, he quickly gathers his feet under him and lunges for his attacker. Fiercely, you struggle to your knees, desperate to help him.

The Ascendant effortlessly extends his arm, gathering at his legs, "even vermin must kneel before a god," he sneers, snapping his arm back to his side, sending a grunting, growling Astarion down with it, knees slamming to the ground. A fury to his stride "you were always worthless, sniveling..." raising his boot and pressing it harshly onto your vampire's shoulder, "groveling." Pushing him harshly down onto his hands.

Lightning flies from behind you, a quick glance reveals Gale had managed to get the spell off, and the Ascendant winces at the unexpected attack, stumbling off of Astarion. Who doesn't waste the opportunity and tackles his full weight into him. It doesn't do more than throw the Ascendant somewhat off balance as the two wrestle for the upper hand. "Bluster all you want, but I see what you really are! A lost, empty, miserable creature! Trying to fill a hole in your heart that all the power in the world will never sate!" Astarion snarls with his fangs on full display.

With a shove, the Ascendant puts distance between him and Astarion. His eyes glow red again and he grabs Astarion by the throat, lifting him into the air like a rag-doll. A familiar hand touches your shoulder and you're about to turn and thank Gale when the Ascendant's head snaps in your direction. The chains, which never fully released Gale, tighten around his arms and legs but begin to pull slowly in opposite directions. Then he opens his hand, his palm flat and level with the ground. Darkness swirling from the room and around his fingers like moths to a flame, and he steadily curls them back into his hand as it simmers a soft, red glow.

Blobs of shadow ooze from the floor and take the shape of monsters, soldiers, ghouls... One dozen, then two. Far more than you know your friends and you can fend off on your own. "Wait!" You shout before you can fully think of why you're doing so, rising to your feet at last, despite the way your legs ache and demand you don't.

Eerily, it all comes to a stop. All of it. And though the Ascendant pauses a long while, even he flings Astarion carelessly behind him before he slowly turns to you. "Apologies, my treasure... I got carried away." He says calmly, watching you cautiously circle around him.

You hesitantly look around the room. From Cazador's body, to Halsin's mangled and brutalized and the six spawn still muzzled with dark magic... "why are you doing all this?" is all you can ask in a barely audible whisper.

"You." He answers, so simple yet with such reverence. "For you, for us, I have dominated this city, compelled it to kneel before you, reduced it to little more than your personal footstool for your amusement." His eyes were distant with fond memories, and evidently clueless to the horror in your eyes. "I made you my queen, and I sat you beside me on a throne befitting of one, one that embodied your grace and beauty." You watched his eyes gaze upward, still deep in his recollections.

"The sight of you seated beside me never failed to make my heart swell with pride and fill me with contentment, like a melody playing in my soul." The words tumbling out, as if he'd been holding them in for centuries, bringing a hand to rest flat against the chest of his armor, over his heart.

"Hundreds of servants who kissed the ground you blessed with your every step as you tread the halls of our palace... and still, you rejected me." The Ascendant growls, taking a step toward you that has you quickly reeling backward, away from him. "After everything I taught you, all the delights of obedience, slow as you were to learn them... Countless nights spent coaxing your body to submission to me with nothing but pleasure. And you. Still—"

"No wonder I fucking killed myself." You spat, cutting him off before he could make you vomit... gods, how your stomach churned... "By the hells," you muttered, a look of disgust on your face. "What made you think I'd ever want that? The Astarion I know, my Astarion, would never... He knows me. Sees me." Gesturing behind you, and on cue, you felt his hand brush yours. "Did you?" The words sounding like a soft plea on behalf of your Other Self. A life, by what he described, you loathed.

The Ascendant regards you, his face impassive and impossible to read and all you could hope - pray for, was that your words were getting through. Even if he may not be your Astarion, it still pained you to see him like this. Amazed you he didn't look any different in the physical sense...

But then you watched his piercing scarlet eyes swirl back, full of malice, the twisted obsession of a love now corrupted, a chilling fury smoldering in his gaze as it consumed you. Commanding.

He grinned as your limbs once again went rigid. "Yes. I do." Casually raising his hand, this time you can only helplessly watch as another burst of foul magic slams into Astarion behind you, "now be a good girl, stop struggling and come to me."

In an instant, you berated yourself for your own stupidity to fall for this again, as your body stiffly, though slowly, moved forward. Behind you, chaos erupted as the creatures summoned by the Ascendant swarmed upon your friends. To your relief, you hear them fighting, possibly even holding them off, but that just meant you were on your own against... this.

Straining with all your will, you tore your gaze away from his eyes and fixated on the center of his chest. Though it had no effect on the command already imposed on your unwilling body, it felt less forceful. You grimaced, wriggling your fingers as you fought to regain any semblance of control from him. You never told Astarion you love him, you have to tell him, and you need to beat this if you ever want to...

With a fierce growl, your arms at last heed your demands, allowing you to swiftly reach for the dagger holstered at your side. However, you misjudged the distance between you two and realize too late you're within his grasp, and he quickly seizes your wrists, forcefully pulling you towards him. "Gods, I've missed you, my love..." The Ascendant's warm breath caressed your ear, his grip strong and possessive. Tight and suffocating.

Warm... He's...

With precision, he extends his hand towards your face, gently leading it to meet his own. The moment your lips touch, a searing heat spreads through your body, intensified by the graze of his fangs against your lip. As if anticipating your resistance, his other hand swiftly clasps the back of your head, holding you in place. Preventing any thought you may have had about breaking away before he's done.

It freezes you at first. The similarity, yet stark difference, of his lips hits you like a sudden gust of wind. It's a complete contrast to the cold you've grown accustomed to and sincerely enjoy from your Astarion.

How similar, but utterly different, his lips are. They radiate warmth, as do his hands and breath. It's a complete contrast to the cold you've grown accustomed to and sincerely enjoy from your Astarion. The smell of the Ascendant, rosemary and bergamot, differs from yours, though, with his comes a tinge of a frosty winter evening. Against every sense in your mind, screaming at you to stop him, fight this, your heart races with a sickening blend of fear and want.

Still, you fought, barely resisting the intense urge to kiss him back. This wasn't your Astarion. Yours was... calling out to you, and you could barely hear him. Could barely hear anything other than the Ascendants' breaths and mouth moving on yours, as if tempting you to sync with the kiss before he silently gives up and barely separates from you. "Come with me, my dark consort." He practically purrs, his lips brushing yours. "Faerûn waits eagerly for the return of its queen..."

The realization dawns on you, and your gut clenches in anticipation of what is about to unfold. You make one final, desperate attempt to wrench yourself free. Sights and sounds beyond the Ascendant return to you. Prying your arms free, you push against his chest.

Gods above, you don't want to live the nightmare he just described for yourself.

He sighs at your struggling and tsk's, "it seems I truly will have to teach you, and your body, all over again... And here I was hoping I could have the chain removed from the bottom of your throne..." murmuring softly, words dripping with disappointment, like the steady fall of rain.

Did your other self have a spare scroll handy...?

You writhe in his arms, twisting away in your attempt to untangle yourself from his grasp and slip down to the floor, knowing that attacking him with your hands will be useless and unable to grab your dagger in this position. You focus all your energy on trying to escape.

Across the floor, your eyes meet Astarion's. Your Astarion. Fighting viciously through wave after wave of monsters, unable to make any ground toward you. A shared desperation in your eyes, even as a sinister red glow slowly surrounds you. You never told him... you need to tell him...

Damn this. Damn him. "I love you, Astarion." You choke back the sob threatening to spill out, praying to whatever god is listening that he at least hears you say it.

For better or worse, his eyes gloss, "I'll find you, my love, I swear..."

Red swirls blind you.

And you're gone.

‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐–‐

The moment you disappear, so does the small horde of creatures. Astarion shakily crosses the floor until he reaches the spot where they stood. Where He took you.

He collapses.

And he screams.

Screams until his throat is raw. Screams ugly, heart wrenching sobs that stung the ears like knives, with the power to move even the most callous heart with pity.

Today was supposed to be the start of his new life. One he dreamed of for two centuries, that he would share with you. Cazador lay dead beside him, so it was still possible, but what use was this freedom when he felt emptier than he's ever felt in his entire existence, living and undead? While within reach, it offered no solace. He would be alone. Again.

Astarion swore he would find you, but how would he? Would he have to ascend? Seize that power and ascend as well? Could Shadowheart bring back Cazador, just to use and spend him, so that Astarion could save you?

The way he... the Ascendant looked at you... It was vile. Utterly devoted to you, yet possessed by obsession. A gnarled, grotesque, and barely recognizable idea of his own love for you. The things he would do to force you to... love him. While wearing his face.

The terror that if he ascended here and now, that he could become that bastard...

Not even the tadpole, the Absolute mattered to him anymore. Not when he faced life without you, the only person to see him, to love him... For him.

He truly meant it. Not everyone had a heart like you. No one was like you. He would never find another love like what he feels for you.

Why didn't he just kiss you this morning when he had the chance...?

An odd, dense mist formed in front of him, and Astarion reluctantly watched it. Hells, the last thing he needs is... whatever this is.

"This simply cannot be permitted." Said a soft-spoken voice as an elven woman emerged from within. Her eyes scanning over the scene. She wore a light grey robe and a symbol around her neck shaped like a golden, dawning sun with five half crescents like spokes of a wheel. Her hair was long and bright, eyes a pale blue.

She knelt in front of Astarion, her fingers brushing what he is only now seeing. Dark, simmering runes that form a circle around where He stood, where He took you. "Are you keen to uphold your promise?" She asked without looking up at him.

Astarion blinked, but he refused to hesitate. "If you have a way to help me save her, talk quickly." He replies impatiently.

The woman slowly rose to her feet and Astarion, though his knees trembled slightly, rose to join her. "Save may be too strong a word. Her suffering is inevitable now, and it will be plentiful in supply." A small frown flickered across her features. If she noticed the anguish that those words caused him, she paid no mind. "But we may yet return her here, where she belongs. Where she's needed." She says calmly. "But it cannot be so without you."

"What part of 'talk quickly' do you not understand? Are they not words you comprehend? Tell me what you need and I'll do it."

"Patience, little vampling." The woman soothes, unperturbed by his temper. "This timeline must sleep before her disappearance can affect it. In turn, your parasite will sleep, just as hers has already." She explains patiently, as another figure, a small Elven man with a journal and quill in hand, emerges from the mist and joins her side. He kneels down and begins studying the runes, drawing them on the parchment. "It will not be simple or easy. The Ascendants' power has risen to heights we haven't seen in other timelines. But he cannot continue his rise unchallenged." She continues with a small shake of her head.

Astarion moved to take a step toward her, only for the man to catch his foot gently, holding it back from covering one of the runes. "Tell me what you need from me, and I will give it." He says back firmly, a growl edging his tone.

The woman nodded. "Come with me. We have much to discuss." She gestures slowly with one hand behind her, toward the mist.

He's about to start toward it with little hesitation, before he stops and looks back. Karlach kneeling beside Halsin's mangled remains, Wyll's hand on her shoulder. Gale and Lae'zel were on either side of Shadowheart, who was nursing her broken hands.

She gives a nod, committed to this just as much as he was. "Get her back. And thrash the bastard for me." The cleric encourages with a weary but determined smile.

With a nod and a silent promise, he turns back to the woman and now the man, their presence looming at the edge of the mist, and he strides resolutely forward to enter it alongside them.

"I love you, Astarion." His heart shattering all over again remembering the tremble in your voice.

Astarion swore he would find you.

And this time he would say it back.

-ˋˏ’✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈-ˋˏ’✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈-ˋˏ’✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈

A/N: Sorry, I just didn't have the heart to end it on a note of "oh no Spawn Astarion is just fucked now I guess".

This had been an idea on and off, but was inspired to go for it when I saw it prompted during my regular tumblr scroll. I have written, and rewritten and written it again, over and over, and this is the culmination of endless suffering. So... Thanks for reading this far! Hope you liked it!

EDIT: this is intended as a one-shot. There is no planned continuation. The ending is written to provide an alternate, a sense of hope, if you, the reader is unhappy with the "bad end". You can decide for yourself if Astarion is successful at finding you, if he survives a second confrontation, the consequences of it all, etc.

Of course, I have plenty of ideas for how I'd continue it but I have no serious interest to at the moment. I might write it privately for myself if I do, but it depends how much people care about this.

#baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate #bg3 #astarion #baldurs gate astarion #baldurs gate 3 #ascended astarion #astarion ancunin #bg3 astarion #baldurs gate #baldur's gate astarion #baldur's gate spoilers #baldurs gate fanfiction #yandere #yandere male #tw yandere #His Star - His Queen #HS-HQ

138 notes · View notes

saltygilmores · 8 days

Text

Thoughts While Watching Gilmore Girls, Season 3, Episode 8, Part 4: "Let The Games Begin", the part where Lorelai says that if Jess was trapped inside her burning house she would save her shoes first

Lorelai Gilmore, you are no Jack Pearson. I won't complete that thought, even though I'm feeling nice and mean and I totally should.

Scene: Lorelai and Rory are discussing the upcoming road trip to New Haven with the Gilmore Grands. Rory forgot to pack. Lorelai goes into panic mode. Rory questions why she needs to pack her entire closet for a short road trip. Lorelai recounts a family vacation story from her childhood that would be best unpacked in a lengthy therapy session, frets that her mother will lecture them for under-packing, starts rummaging through Rory's dresser. Rory catches Lorelai making a double entendre about a meaty taco and declares it was dirty. The show makes another dig at New Haven after Lorelai brings home a pamphlet about Exciting Things to Do In New Haven but it's only a few pages long.

You sound surprised, as if ya'll aren't wearing heavy coats and long sleeves in the spring and summer. I swear there's something in the drinking water affecting everyone's thyroids in this town, they can't regulate their body temperatures.

Could anyone tell I'm stalling here? Classic Salty.

Rory: Mom, stop rummaging through my shit. Awwwe. Even Evil Villains like Lorelai Gilmore get the blues. I'm surprised she decided to go on this road trip to Yale instead of sending Rory off alone with the Grands, that way she'd have the house and Dean Forrester to herself the entire day. Since Dean's sexual stamina only extends to 1-2 minutes, they could have had sex hundreds of times in a day.

Two quips that sprang to mind (couldn't decided which one was better): The only words Lorelai is thinking about right now are "Dean" and "Shower". Lorelai thinks Jess removed Rory's bracelet while they're in the shower together? Jess could only hope.

Excuse me for a moment... *deep inhale*

I went into the Tumblr gifs library and looked up "peaceful". Here is a nice, presumably not-evil, Peaceful Bunny.

So not only does Jess commit attempted vehicular homicide, and steal Quarters on a String, he steals said QOAS by forcibly ripping them directly off the wrists of poor unsuspsecting delicate young ladies.

Nice try. You think you're so slick, but you're not, Slick Gilly.

You all don't understand the effort it takes for me to break down a scene like this without taking the cowards way out and simply rage quitting (which I have done before). I have to come up with multiple lines of witty, cutting commentary about what is unfolding before me, when all I want to do is KEYBORD SMASH. SO, YOU KNOW WHAT I WILL!! ITS A FREE COUNTRY ISNT IT! BALD EAGLE BASEBALL APPLE PIE! (Deep inhale) sagfshafgahfgasvxzcywtryqwuhajlkansjbkfagsfyafvabsfvsdgr2347527q2y4q#&$T%#^%^#*U@(%)&@tGSHFBSHFSVAGFSFS FUCKYOULORELAIGILMORE#^&#^%&#^WGHFSHGAS@$%@^@

Thank for reminding the audience the reason why Lorelai thinks Jess should, ya know, die painfully and slowly. He was mouthy once. (the Netflix captions borked the line; Rory also said "and wrecked my car", but as if that makes Lorelai's treatment of Future Nephew any more justifable).

I am told that in a later season, Lorelai bemoans the fact that unlike Dean, Jess never offered to change her water bottle for her. NOW WHY WOULD HE DO THAT? YOU'RE ABOUT TO WISH HIM A FIREY DEATH. AND WHEN HE WAS (FORCIBLY) APPOINTED TO CLEAN YOUR GUTTERS YOU DIDN'T WANT HIS HELP..

Lorelai practically moans this, lol. We know "Change the water bottle" can mean two very different things. You ain't so slick, Slick Gilly.

Welcome to Gaslighting and Emotional Manipulation Theater! See, here's the thing Slick Gilly, I watched an entire frigging episode about you accusing Jess of being a thief, it was called Lost and Found and it took me four frigging centuries to finish, I'm quite sure I have concrete evidence that you have accused him of stealing things. I am Jess Mariano's defense attorney and I will see you in court. Bring Rory too, she should also start getting used to what a court room looks like.

Rory, honey. Sweetie. Sugar bear. It's best you don't wish for a crystal ball. Just strap in to the rollercoaster that is dating Jess Mariano while living with your mother, and pray.

See, here's the thing Slick Gilly, I watched an entire frigging episode about you not letting Jess enter your house, it was called Swan Song and it will take me four frigging centuries to rewatch it.

This "Jess talks in grunts" shtick is getting old and moldy.

So not only does Jess commit attempted vehicular homicide, steal Quarters on a String, and steal said QOAS by forcibly ripipng them directly off the wrists of poor unsuspsecting delicate young ladies, but he's also an arsonist, and not only is he an arsonist, he's such a bad one that he'll apparently be killed by his handiwork? (he also can't be trusted to clean gutters). He was probably trying to off himself instead of live in Stars Hollow for another minute. Can we recall another time Rory tried to play this same grim hypothetical with her mom? Does Rory, like Jess, also have some kind of firey death wish? I mean, who can blame either of them. *twinkly flashback music to early season 2*

I notice Pigtails didn't say "my daughter" this time, either. Sorry Rory. Maybe try playing a third time until she answers with "Some form of human life." Lorelai lies to Rory's face that she "promised you before and am promising you again that I will cut "this kid" some slack." Alright, I ran through my 30 screen shots, let's stuff this scene in a sack and throw it into the lake with Shane and her swan family.

Rory: "You're just waiting for the day I break up with Jess." Lorelai The Villain: "Did I like Dean? Yes. Did I worry less when you were with dean? Yes! I never expected you to be with Dean forever. I don't expect you to be with Jess forever." What a pile of rancid baloney. Maybe he won't be with Rory forever, but 13 years later Jess becomes her nephew and will be a part of her family forever and I will never, ever, ever stop loving that. What JUSTICE.

When I hit my lowest of low valleys listening to this wretched woman spew her many lies and Gilly-Nonsense, It's often the only thing that makes me smile.

#jess mariano #literati #gilmore girls #denise rewatches gilmore girls #gilmore girls season 3 #let the games begin #ltgb #now I just have to suffer through the ridiculous shit fit she has at Yale

27 notes · View notes

yuuneeyart · 16 days

Text

Well it's been a while hasn't it? After everything that's gone on and my twitter suspension back in December, I've just decided to take a step back and focus on my personal life. Spending less time online, focusing on my job, that kinda boring shit that adults do.

But I have (slowly) and (only when I can) been working on shit. Mostly my Undertale creepypasta, UNDERTALE: The Garden. I'm sure some people remember that… but not many probably do. So I thought that since it's The Figure’s (formally Flower Child’s) birthday, I thought I'd show some stuff off.

art by me

So what is UNDERTALE: The Garden? Well.. UNDERTALE: The Garden is a story about an Undertale fan game that had been lost to time. The story focuses on the narrator finding an old and unfinished version of a fan game titled UNDERTALE: The Garden that had started its development fairly shortly after the original game’s demo had come out back in 2013. Created by an anonymous tumblr user who went by Tokumei, the game was originally meant to expand on the small amount of lore of the demo, adding more areas to the ruins, giving a new interpretation and backstory to the world, and much more. However the game went radio silent after a few years of development hell and Tokumei had not been seen since then.

Now years later, the narrator finds a gamejolt page with a familiar game on it. Excited to play it, they decided to discuss their findings on a tumblr blog. As well as archive any assets, information about development, and songs they can get their hands on. The narrator eventually finds out the game has much more to it than it was originally leading on…

art by me

There's a lot of things I have planned for the story that I don't wanna get into here (don't wanna spoil things before they come to light) but I've been working on making the actual world of The Garden much different than the original game. I've been taking an NES Godzilla approach for worldbuilding where the game just looks so vastly different from its original state using real life caves as well as Christian and Muslim imagery and cultures for inspiration for everything.

art by anonymous, pixel art by me and anonymous

But now the main attraction of the au, The Figure. She's definitely changed since you first met her 2 years ago. Instead of going to exes and helping them, she's now someone who simply wishes to be left alone. Staying in her world trying to make it as perfect as she sees it.

And now some trivia i guess for the funsies

She is not sentient, everything in the garden that happens is just a weird fangame. The whole idea of *The game is alive and REAL!!!* has become a cliche of the creepypasta community that I don’t wanna repeat

She has a canon voice now, which can be heard here

Her facial expression never changes

The monsters that get deformed are still alive. If they were to die, you would have seen a pile of dust

art by me

That's all I have for now though, hopefully this at least peaked interest for some. This isn't me making a grand return either, just thought I'd at least post something about a character I've cared about for the past 2 years since it was her 2 year anniversary. Anyways, imma go to bed, cheers.

#undertale #undertale exe #undertale au #undertale creepypasta #creepypasta #i dont tag shit often #undertale the garden #uttg #sans #toriel

27 notes · View notes

wildflowerwoodsworld · 4 months

Text

So, for those of you who don't know, Charlotte is my (current) favourite character. She's been one of my favourites since I started the series, but now she's in the top spot. Which means it's her turn to get put through torment in fic. Hey, that's just the price you pay for being the favourite.

Anyway, as those of you who are familiar with my writing probably know, I like pulling characters apart and figuring out what makes them tick so I can depict them falling apart in a more believeable way. For some characters it's fairly easy to figure out what the core of their motivation is (Asta wants to be acknowledged as worth something even though he lacks magic) others it's far harder (I still don't know what the fuck motivates Yami). I thought Charlotte would be a tricky one, until I was rereading the manga and came across this panel. (specifically the middle one)

(official VIZ media translation; volume 12, chapter 104, page 72)

She's just been cursed. We don't exactly how old she is in this scene (I tend to put her at twelve, for a couple of reasons, but that doesn't change the fact that canon hasn't actually given us an answer), or even why she's been cursed, but the fact remains that she has just been cursed. And yet she is the one reassuring her parents. She is telling them not to worry. She's the one telling them that she'll fix this. And she's just a kid! She is canonically just a kid!

(Official VIZ media translation, volume 18, chapter 169, page 130)

This is the start of Charlotte shouldering every burden she comes across. She has to do everything herself and if she can't she's not good enough (I know it's anime-only but her "I should be executed" line over being possessed against her will raises a lot of red flags for me). She also holds everyone else to these impossible standards, rejecting every suitor she meets immediately. If they can't keep up, they aren't good enough, and nobody can keep up. She's pushing herself harder and harder and harder because if she doesn't, if she doesn't give everything she has to break this curse then she definitely won't, and the curse activating its going to be her fault for not trying hard enough. She canonically calls herself pathetic and apologises when it inevitably activates. She sees this as a personal failing.

(official VIZ media translation, volume 12, chapter 104, pages 73 & 74)

Never mind the fact that she is, at most, twelve years old when cursed. Which means that she's lived a minimum of six years with it hanging over her head. Sure, she keeps saying she's going to break it, but there has to be a part of her who is convinced that, when she turns eighteen, she's basically going to die.

On top of that, the fact that she's cursed is caonically common knowledge. We get all the townspeople outside screaming about it. This implies that a lot of people know she's cursed. Know she's different. And, well, you're here on Tumblr. I'm sure you know what happens to people who are different. They get socially isolated. That would explain her trouble talking to people about her feelings. And her issues with expressing herself.

So, we've got this girl, who is no more than twelve, is suddenly being shunned by all her peers for something she can't control, has decided to shoulder the entire burden of this curse (everyone else we see talking about it in the flashback says "curse on House Roselei" or something to that effect, Charlotte says "my curse"), keeps pushing herself to try and do what, as far as we can tell from canon, is impossible, and is convinced that if she can't pull off the impossible she's going to basically die on her eigthteenth birthday.

Oh, and all of this is happening around the age she's supposed to be figuring herself out.

The fact that she is a fully functioning adult is a goddamn miracle.

Looping back to my original point though, I think that, at the core of her character, Charlotte is someone who wants to believe that she's worth saving. And not because of her power, or her family name, or her looks. She's desperate for someone to look and see her and see someone worth saving. But she's bad at expressing herself and also scared that if she lets anyone in close they're just going to let her down like everyone else she thought would save her when she was cursed did, so she snaps and she snarls and she drives people away because if people are going to leave anyway (because of the curse) then it's easier to drive them off first, because at least that way she can pretend it's what she wanted rather than being abandoned again.

#black clover #black clover meta #black clover analysis #charlotte roselei

43 notes · View notes

blue-banana-the-first · 10 months

Text

Annabeth Determined The Outcome of the Prophecy in the Last Olympian

I'll insert the prophecy real quick so I can talk about it,

"A Halfblood Of the eldest gods shall reach sixteen against all odds, and see the world in endless sleep. The hero's soul cursed blade shall reap. a single choice shall end his days, Olympus to preserve or raze"

ok, now that we're caught up on that let's talk;

the first two lines are pretty simple and straight forwards in a way, it doesn't mention who the halfblood is as it takes account that it would depend on who survives and so on (the only thing consistent with the timeline that Rick did was make sure Jason and Hazel were both younger than Percy in HOO)

The third line also goes with Percy so far, so no need to talk more about it.

the fourth to sixth line though are different stories,

it mentions that a hero will die but never mentions who right? i wanna talk about it , in the second book we know Percy claims the prophecy for himself, and that's what's usually talked about, but i wanna focus on Annabeth.

In that same book Chiron makes Annabeth swear on the river Styx to protect Percy, we know that anything related to the Styx is also directly related to the fates.

trust the process please cause I promise this is kinda going somewhere.

in the battle of the labyrinth Pan tells Annabeth that she has an important role, just not in the way she thinks.

then in the fifth book Percy dips into the Styx, gets the Achilles heel, imagining Annabeth, which is romantic but also correlates with Annabeth swearing on that same river to protect him as if a subconscious part of her was also protecting him so he can survive the river, like the river was just using her promise to protect him.

the fates were really pulling all the romantic strings to save Olympus

kinda ironic cause they gave out this prophecy in the first place

In the Last Olympian, two cursed blades attack Luke and Percy, the Scythe for Percy and the Dagger Luke gave Annabeth which is cursed with a broken promise and all that angsty poetic stuff.

Guess who makes the decision tho?

Annabeth, she decided who the hero is

she took that knife for Percy, because she felt like he was in danger, we talk about that being because she's his mortal tether, but i also think it has to do with her swearing on the river to protect him.

River Styx was their main shipper and I will die on that hill.

Annabeth saved Percy due to her promise, and let Luke die with his broken one (somewhat of a deep quote right?), Annabeth's role has been to decide who the hero is and I can't get over that.

The single choice she made to save Percy or not was the deciding factor in this war.

Either Luke or Percy was going to die by a cursed blade, you can also say that in a way Chiron also had a hand in it, making her swear on the river.

but it just blew my mind, Percy's existence brought the world to its near end while hers saved it

ofcourse that is not 100% accurate but for the sake of it sounding tumblr level poetic it is

idk if you all already made this conclusion a while ago and i'm just slow, but even if i just think that this series was just so beautifully tied together, and Annabeth is so valid for this, emotional, nerdy, literal puppy (not all puppies are overly enthusiastic creatures ) with so much live to give, saved the world with the power of love ( and a childhood crush)

She literally deserves so much, i also wanna talk about Aphrodite in a future post

67 notes · View notes

rawliverandgoronspice · 9 months

Note

I can kind of see why Hyrule reads as imperialistic to you in totk, but why do they read white? Sonia is brown and rauru is a black goat. What makes the difference between them and Ganondorf so bad?

Hey, thanks for the ask!

So... I have an answer, and it's kind of in layers. So I hope it's fine if I kind of go on Journey TM where I figure out my own feelings on the topic alongside you, the person reading! It's long! Kind of meandery! Sorry!!

Also, I had written a great version of this reply to this ask that Tumblr fucking ate and I'm furious about it, so this version is slightly more annoyed as a baseline because of Tumblr and not the ask itself. But I got stubborn and decided I would rewrite the whole thing tonight. So.

Here we go.

Layer One: My Basic and Unfiltered Gut Reaction

My first, potentially unwarranted gut-level reaction would be: I kind of think it's a stretch to consider them POC-coded. Sonia gives me more tanned Ariana Grande vibes than anything else, but that's... I mean, I'm aware that there are brown people with lushious blonde hair and blue eyes out there, that race as USA-infused Internet understands it is Complicated (I'm half-brazilian, and even though I'm very very white and don't consider myself biracial but bicultural, I had people discussing my ethnicity to my face a non-zero amounts of time, including quite recently, including in my own family! so I super get that it's more complicated than what I make it out to be here). But given vibes don't count as an argument, I completely get + accept if that reading on her ethicity is therefore dismissed. She could very well be brown. Fine by me.

(so, I feel like I have to add this borderline-conspiratory reason why I'm suspicious of her skin color being considered a factor here, which can 100% be dismissed but I still want to bring it to the table: I've been to several meetings and heard about many instances where "diverse traits" are being handed over to characters with the explicit purpose of using that diversity as shields against deeper criticisms of core aspects of the storytelling instead of fixing the storytelling itself, and honestly it could very well be the case here. I really hope it's just the team thinking Sonia would be prettier with a darker skin tone, because her design is genuinely lovely and I really like it, wish she didn't die like immediately and had a character arc of her own, but. Imagine the kneeling scene with two very white ladies and everything else, etc. It might be overly paranoid of me, but I can't help but squint a little bit in this specific instance, especially since the biracial trait here is so toned-down that it's barely there and barely committed to anything. Which would also make a good argument against this suspicion too tbh! Anyway. Just wanted to bring that up so you get the whole picture of where my brain is at.)

Rauru... Okay. Here's the thing: I can't unsee The Rauru. The original one I mean (and his Skyward Sword Gaebora counterpart), aka: the White Patriarch of all times.

(this has nothing to do with anything but Link's little recoil animation here is so funny to me, like he looks so shocked and his nose is so pointy)

I do think that removing the origins of this character from his DNA for TotK is kind of overly convenient when discussing this iteration, especially when his role in this game is basically a mixture of OoT Rauru and the Unnamed King of Hyrule (and every king of Hyrule that came after). I mean, okay sure maybe the Unnamed, Unseen King of Hyrule wasn't white but... it's obviously not true, right? And while I understand this is a different iteration of that character, many characters in the series maintain their base ethnicity across different reimaginings (even Blue Pig Ganon remains a gerudo at heart post OoT, at least in the way we keep on understanding him). And beyond this, given the fact that Rauru retains this energy of a Founding Father (in the largest possible sense), I feel that, at the very least, that patriarchal energy is extremely important to his character to a core degree.

But even so, yes. Rauru is now indeed a Goat Man. Not only is he a Goat Man, but he dresses in ways that are very inspired by mesoamerican cultures; undeniably so. So that would make him at least mesoamerican-coded, right?

I mean... I guess? I guess. Sure. But. I have now to introduce the Layer 2 of my argumentation, which is that...

Layer Two: Zonai Culture is Hylian Coded

So. Pretty bold claim I know. Let me explain.

Now I certainly do not want to say that mesoamerican civilizations are not *everywhere* in the aesthetic inspiration for the zonai culture in Tears of the Kingdom; I'm sure these real life references are overflooding the moodboards, from the color palet to the symbols to the artstyle, the costumes and the buildings. It's the main way the game communicates zonai-ness to us the player. And it's great! I wish they had went even harder in that direction (I think there's even pretty dramatic differences between the zonai ruins on the surface, much more interesting imo, than what was done with the actual zonai architecture at its peak).

But now, I will ask a question that I asked myself often while playing. What is zonai culture, beyond the feathers and the indented patterns and the swirls and the dangly bits? What characterizes it? I would say that zonai civilization is primarily interested in automation, technology, mining to develop said technology, and things that float in the sky. Beyond this, and from the limited perspective the game gives us through Rauru and Mineru, we see a society ruled by a patriarch (neutral term, it is just patriarchal in nature), married to a woman who is a priestess and doesn't seem to hold an equal amount of power (she doesn't speak as much, seems content to handle the religious side of things), who values collaboration and engineering prowesses, has an army, servants, robot servants, administrates other races through, to be docile and go the game's way, collaborativeness... It's Hyrule. It's just Hyrule, except older and with a different paintjob; but at heart, the style of society upheld by Rauru is very (eerily?) similar to what we get to know in the TotK/BotW era. Actually, this version of Hyrule seems extraordinarily similar to the Hyrule we get to see in BotW pre-Calamity: replace the zonai technology with the sheikah's, and what's the difference --except that this later version of Hyrule isn't trying to pass itself off as perfect? Zelda doesn't experience any kind of culture shock. Even the language seems to be basically the same. It is Hyrule, because it is. It's the origins of the kingdom. This is the whole point of the zonais: being that familiar thing that we know and love, except more pristine and more glorious and more mysterious so we can be sad when it gets destroyed.

So is it aesthetically inspired by mesoamerican cultures? Yes. Does it evoke specific details about said culture? The way politics and religion interconnect perhaps (unless we consider Rauru coming from the gods as such, but it's nooot super specific and not really elaborated upon)? What that culture valued, or what we assume it once valued? Cultural shortcuts we tend to make with these cultures, for better or for worse? I may be extremely uncultured here, and if that's the case I apologize, but I never really saw any of the aspects highlighted as the core pillars of the zonais commonly associated with either mesoamerican ancient civilizations, or current living native decendants of these civilizations. The biggest connexion or shortcut I see is the "mysterious ancient advanced civilization", which is pretty vague and was honestly more convincing in BotW.

Then of course, it doesn't invalidate that connection. But now, as a point of comparaison, to see what happens when Zelda takes active steps in coding one of their fantasy races... Let's take a look at the gerudos, shall we?

(Urbosa appreciation break. She's just so freakin cool look at her goooo!!! okay now we can keep going.)

I have said my whole spiel about the gerudos about a bajillion times now so I will try to make it quick. My tl;dr is: gerudos were always meant to be culturally disruptive. It's their whole point in the Zelda series. I won't rehash the whole thing about the crescent moon, the orientalism etc, but I think it's important to remember that they are meant to be considered foreign in a way no other Zelda race ever is. What I mean by this is, if we return to OoT: they are the only race hostile to Hyrule enough to not only consider and carry out an invasion, but to forbid entrance to their territory if you are not one of them. They have a different (apparenly evil-looking) god and their ears are rounded when everyone else is some sort of elf, their script is different, their cultural values are different, it's a weird semi-matriarchy where the man-king's occasional patriarchy has a very different social role than the king of Hyrule even if we don't get to see all the details... Won't return on the thievery and the 90s islamophobic kick of that time period, but the gerudos were very obviously crafted to be culturally deviant to the Hylian norm; their difference so great that getting accepted by them is an actual fighting and infiltration challenge. And even though they are much friendlier in TotK/BotW, they are still, by far the most innaccessible and different race out of all the rooster of, and it's worth mentioning, fish-people, bird-people and rock-people. They are the only one with their own language, their own strict rules that oppose your freedom as a player, a series of side-quests that directly address the subject of culture clash and differences; and, even then, they still parallel the real life western fantasy about the Orient TM (even more-so in TotK I would say, which I didn't love): the locked-in harem foreign men are forbidden to enter. This core idea is so entrenched that it becomes gameplay.

When it comes to Ganondorf, the parallel remains, more present than ever: in that game he gets to embody the foreign, cruel, brutal, cunning, manipulative, uncomfortably feminine at times, envious, physically intimidating, oppressive Man of the Desert in a long tradition of Men from the Desert and the rich legacy of literature and movies that portray them. It's not new to TotK, to be very clear: but TotK did double-down on the trope at the cost of Ganondorf's specificity as a character instead of questioning the trope that birthed him the way the series had tried to do in the past (even TP wasn't that bad, doing away with a lot of the baggage altogether --for better and for worse).

So to me... saying that zonais are mesoamerican-coded, in a world where we simply do not actively interact with these cultures all that much anymore (not at all to minimize the very real oppression of their descendants and the extreme and sickening violence their ancestors were met with to be extremely clear --I'm just saying that the violence wouldn't have worldwide cultural resonance in the same way and I don't think would have much reality in Japan unless, again, I'm saying dumb things and in that case please do correct me), or the extremely mild and non-invested way Zelda handled these cultures (to me it's much more costume than coding), positively too (good!), and comparing them to the active coding of the gerudos (and especially Ganondorf) as a means to equalize them as "basically the same thing" feels... a little off to me.

But! Now we're getting to the last layer!!

(you have no idea how long I searched for this gif, I typed "Ganondorf kneeling" in the gif search, like a fool, and parsed through much, much horniness to finally find my little dude anyway layer 3!!!)

Layer Three: It Isn't What Actually Matters Now Is It (at least according to me, the person writing this post)

Honestly, I don't really care whether Rauru and Sonia are white-coded or not. They could be, they could not be, cool by me either way. I don't really care if the zonai culture is meant to stand-in for mesoamerican cultures for Real for Sure or not, and heavily doubt it was done to increase diversity (otherwise Rauru wouldn't be, like, a Goat-Man but just a brown man). I do appreciate the visual diversity of the cast of NPCs, that hylians can look like a whole number of people and it's really cool Hyrule is moving into that direction instead of being very typecast into a sort of Japanese-ish representation of western middle ages/fantasy/fairy tale thing.

But at heart, what bothers me between this whole dynamic has less to do with whom is coded as whom than the fact that this game twisted itself into knots to tell a very suspiciously clean story about its complicated world and complicated history, and I feel like it's completely fine to ask for more than the bare minimum of visual representation and question the way these characters get to interact with each other and how their real life struggles are meaningfully talked about in the worlds Nintendo spend millions crafting? Sometimes, what they do is already great! Sometimes it's half-great! Most of the time, it could be so much better --especially when some of these subjects have been talked about to death for over 25 years (sorry to beat that dead horse one more time btw)

At the end of the day, the story itself is strange for many reasons. The power dynamic between the characters is attempting to be several things at once; maybe it's not on purpose, but either way, the world TotK paints is a strange one that only holds itself together if we accept to take it at face value. Which we don't have to.

And to me, TotK felt particularly shallow in that specific department of representation due to the whole... Imperialist Vibes thing (the other ask about this is queue'd, it's coming!), which nullified a lot of these efforts for me. It's not only about who's represented, but how they are represented as well, and, very importantly, why.

61 notes · View notes

elvisabutler · 1 year

Note

would you consider doing a professor presley request on the first night belle slept over? her insecurities making sure he really wants her there, she isn’t taking up space and him needing her to be there in the morning, holding on tight all night and that one little scene where she goes up to go pee and he times her. i love them so much

lover, be good to me

summary: your first official night staying over at graceland as professor's presley's girlfriend manages to go far better than you think it will minus a small hiccup. fandom: elvis presley | elvis ( 2022 ) rating: t just for a brief implication of sexual activities pairing: professor! elvis presley ( big daddy flavor ) x student! female reader word count: 1219 warnings: big daddy elvis. elvis using a walking stick/cane. student and professor relationship ( everyone is of legal age ). use of the nickname belle for the reader. brief mention of past traumatic experiences with past partners. brief mention of imagined violence toward intimate partners. brief concerns about being abandoned. author’s note: so i almost made this not just pure fluff. thought briefly about adding a little bit of smut to it before i decided against it mostly because it felt like that wasn't the point of it. that it really needed to just be the pair of them. once again, this is part of the professor presley universe, see the tag for all the parts and such and never worry about sending me stuff about them because i love them and these two are so near and dear to my heart. picture austin as elvis or elvis, i'm not picky even though i know i see real elvis more. also if you want to be on my taglist for anything, click here and fill the form out. responses are anonymous when it comes to me getting your email, obviously i'll know the tumblr name though.

You know better. You both actually should know better if you honestly think about everything for too long. After everything the two of you have gone through you honestly shouldn't be moving this fast. You've been burned enough times and he's old enough that you both should know better. The two of you shouldn't be wrapping yourselves tighter and tighter around one another as the hours go by. Perhaps though, perhaps you always were wrapped around one another. Perhaps from the moment you sat in his class the two of you caused what would be just a flicker of light- an ember of desire from afar turn into a roaring fire of something akin to love. Who were you kidding, there was nothing akin to about your love for him and his love for you. Nothing small and reserved about how you worried about him and how you both fit so naturally against one another. Almost as if you were made to find each other at this moment in time and no other.

It's only been a week since you had broken down in Elvis's office. A week of bliss between you going to your classes and him teaching his own. A week of bliss that you didn't dare ruin by asking or agreeing to spend the night with Elvis because you know what would happen. Old habits die hard even when presented with such love it threatens to choke you from the sheer intensity of it. Old habits die hard and you're so terrified of waking up to Elvis regretting everything and kicking you out. He wouldn't hurt you but when you sleep sometimes an image of him using his substantial bulk and weight against you, dragging you out of bed, smacking you with his cane until you left comes to unbidden. It terrifies you.

It's Noelle who finally tells you to just try one night with him. One night where you don't leave out of fear of a wake up call he's unlikely to give. You almost tell her you refuse to, that you'll go on doing this stupid little dance where you love him and show him affection and would do anything for him but where you refuse to even consider sleeping at his house overnight. Except after she tells you to try he asks over lunch with such an expectant look that you can't help but say yes. You can't help but feel warm from the inside out as he grins at you and looks like he wants to pick you up and twirl you, his leg be damned.

There's something different about purposefully falling asleep next to him though. Something different about curling up next to him as he reads, his glasses perched on his nose and hushing you when you tell him that it seems a little too dark in the room. You distract him enough that his book is forgotten no more than ten minutes later and you find that both of you are a little sweaty as you lay your head down on his chest, hand playing with his chest hair almost rhythmically until you doze off to the sounds of his snores.

His grip on you is tight, his hand cupping your hip in a way that you're not too sure if his fingers are going to leave bruises. It would be disconcerting when anyone else does it but it soothes something inside your chest. It soothes that angry and scared monster beneath your breast that snarls that he doesn't want you here- not really- and that you're going to need to leave soon before he kicks you out. It soothes the smaller voice inside your head that tells you that you're making him uncomfortable laying on his chest like this. That you're the reason for his snoring and that you should detangle yourself from him before he detangles himself from you. His grip on your hip and the way his arm fills around you and the way his body heat is right next to you has everything quieting down and narrowing your thoughts to just the two of you.

Well. The two of you and how much you kind of need to use the bathroom. You're loathe to leave him but you know better than to try and sleep when you need to go like this. It's a recipe for having to wake up at best ten minutes after you fall back asleep. A pillow is unoccupied behind you and you shimmy just a little to grab it, noting how Elvis shifts in his sleep a little, his grip tightening as he growls in his sleep. Your heart twists at the knowledge that he's going to likely realize you're trying to get up and think maybe you're leaving again when nothing could be farther than the truth. Nothing could be farther than the truth because all you want to do is just stay curled up against him, listening to his heart beat only for you in this moment.

It takes longer than it should to detangle yourself and replace your body with the pillow but when you finally slide off the bed you let out a sigh of relief and start to tiptoe to the bathroom when you hear a sleep addled voice that you realize you want to hear every night for the rest of your life- though perhaps not sounding so hurt.

"Where ya goin', Belle?" He asks, his sleepy eyes somehow still betraying quite a bit of anger.

Your answer is briefly caught in your throat as you frown. "I have to use the bathroom. I'm not- I'm just going to the bathroom."

His arm tightens around the pillow as he stares you down and frowns. "Wait til mornin'."

It almost sounds like a plea, like he doesn't trust that you're going to come back. That his body that's already trying to pull him back into the land of dreams and if he shuts his eyes you'll leave him just like you did that one night. Your chest feels tight just thinking about it as you move close to cup his face, watching as he nuzzles his cheek into your hand.

"I'll be back in a minute, Elvis. I promise. I'm not," you start before bending down to kiss him and place a hand on his chest, "going to leave you. Your heartbeat's lulled me to sleep so well. I've been in such a deep sleep."

His own eyes are starting to shut again, something about your touch comforting him but he can't help the next words that slip from his mouth even if he doesn't mean them. "I'm timin' ya."

"I better get going then, shouldn't i?" You retort, continuing your tiptoe to the bathroom finally and taking less time than you ever think you have in there before coming back out to the pillow where it should be and his arms open for you to burrow back into them. His breathing's evened back out but you can't help but kiss his chest where his heart would be even as your hand moves to play with his chest once more before you fall asleep. As you're dozing off you say three little words.

"I love you."

You swear he says the words back even as he sleeps.

taglist: @ab4eva, @blurredcolour, @butlersxbirdy, @precious-little-scoundrel, @eliseinmemphis, @prompted-wordsmith @missmaywemeetagain, @lookingforrainbows, @araxw, @thatbanditqueen, @ellie-24, @austinbutlersgirl67, @heartbrake-hotel, @ccab, @18lkpeters, @slutforsomegoodlettuce, @dkayfixates, @kendralavon7, @chasingwildflowers, @notstefaniepresley, @wanderingelvis, @kxnnxy, @powerofelvis if you don't want to be tagged for this series, tell me, i mostly just went through my elvis presley taglist answers and went from there. also if i missed you in this tagging and your name doesn't look like everyone else's welcome to the horror of being one of those people who tumblr won't let me tag.

#elvis presely #elvis presley x reader #elvis presley fanfiction #elvis presley x you #elvis presley x y/n #professor presley #big daddy elvis #elvis presley fanfic #elvis presley fluff #elvis presley fic #austin elvis #austin butler elvis #ally writes

109 notes · View notes

sweetmariihs2 · 6 months

Text

List of inspirations that I noticed in ✨️The Amazing Digital Circus✨️

an almost-essay (PART 1)

When I watched the first episode for the first time I started to notice several similarities to other subjects that I also like and know, other fandoms and popular things on the internet, and I soon thought about sharing them on Tumblr (which I'm doing now).

I know there will be things that other people have noticed that will be missing from the blog, but I will try to include all the things that I remember recognizing at that moment. Feel free to share them, though!

I don't know the formal names of some things I'm gonna mention, and also my english It's not the best, I'm trying to practice my writing <3

I'll have to divide this blog into two parts because Tumblr doesn't support more than 10 images per blog. grrgrrgr I really wanted to put everything together but I can't. At the end of the blog I will put a link to part 2 and you can continue reading [when i finish the part 2 of course]

1 - Popee the Perfomer

Popee the Performer is a low-budget animation made in 2000, at the time when 3d animation was still a new technology. It's a collection of shorts and they talk about three circus performers' interactions. People found this on the internet in 2021 and they started a new fandom on top of it. What makes this show talked about it's the disturbing situations the characters put themselves through. There are a lot of violent scenes and sometimes the characters die by the end of the episode, but when we go to the next one they're just alive again, and that makes us question if they are living stuck in an eternal loop with no way of getting out of that small circus setting.

The 3d is pretty simple, mostly because it's old, but that makes me think about the connections between PTP and TADG are the aesthetics, the whole "disturbing adult cartoon about serious topics with a children's colorful aesthetic" thing, and also those connections with the Nintendo 64 graphics. I'M GONNA MENTION IT TOO!!

And a part of this fandom also it's part of Raggedy Ann and Andy's fandom. They were pretty close in 2021.

2 - Raggedy Ann And Andy

Ragatha, next one

I'm kidding there's more

Their fandom started around 2021 because the YouTube algorythm just decided that it was time to recommend a video about Raggedy Andy to EVERYONE! And that's how I discovered them too <3 (I WAS THEREEE I WAS THERE). Andy got the main focus and he was everyone's dream boyfriend lol

Also that's completely unrelated but I wanted to say that I'm one of the people whose video was recommended to everyone through YouTube algorythm and helped the fandom to grow even more (I'm so proud of myself guys I'm sorry awnqbehdjwndbwjdnh)

I believe that if that first video that helped me (and more people) to discover them were never recommended to us, maybe Ragatha wouldn't even have that design!! It's alright that Ann is a doll from the 1900s, but the whole "Raggedy Ann And Andy" thing wasn't a fandom topic, they were just normal ragdolls and they were recognized only by grannies and "the anabelle doll" (this one makes me pissed)

3 - Nintendo 64 (and old 3d art)

And this recognition that it is a fandom united this subject to other famous fandoms, leading to the same audience, and this audience is also TADG's audience. I'll talk more about this at the end of the blog! (Edit: Part 2 of the blog. *silently cries*)

And there's this blog:

That low budget 3d aesthetic it's turning really popular recently. I'm not much of an expert on the subject since I don't know much about games, but I recognize it from the old graphics and my biggest reference is Mario 64. There's a good explanation for it being so popular, I have a theory that it's related to liminal spaces, but I'm not sure. Still, it's worth mentioning.... and also that bubble character really looks like chain chomp!!

They're besties

4 - liminal spaces (backrooms and the "dreamcore" aesthetic)

happy balloons because the backrooms scare me (i hate it)

I think if you're on Tumblr it's very likely that you already know what the backrooms are. A part of our reality, but outside of it. There are floors and floors of eternal levels, where you wander in the same place and don't go anywhere. As if you had broken the matrix and were trapped outside, in a bug. This has become very popular on the internet and it's interesting that it is being used as inspiration for creating a show.

Furthermore, there was also the popularization of aesthetics such as dreamcore, traumacore and weirdcore, which consist of images that look like they came out of a dream. Things that you recognize, but don't know where they came from, like a deja vu, which makes you uncomfortable. It's extremely linked to the backrooms, since it's the same feeling. Many of the images are things that take us back to childhood, to the past, but they are not right, as if they were corrupted. Old 3D is also used a lot to make some of these images, like the example I gave of the Nintendo 64. The fandoms are all interconnected!

In this whole concept they also like to be inspired by childhood characteristics, such as old images of toys, empty birthday parties, playgrounds, and it also takes us to that famous sensation on the internet that I don't remember the name of, but it is basically feeling afraid of a place where people should be going, but they aren't. Abandoned places. The fear of being alone. All those topics revolve around each other. They makes us question abour reality, "do I even exist?" (I know I do, but writing characters that way and exploring the possibilities is kinda nice)

I know a brazillian youtuber that made a good video about it, her name is Replai and in the video she talks about how Poppy Playtime's art was made, but I know that most of the people reading this don't know how to speak in portuguese so... yeah. It's a good video.

5 - Children's aesthetics (but something's off)

This gif speaks for itself. It's that traumacore/dreamcore/weirdcore thing that I was talking about.

Still talking about that empty feeling of knowing that something it's familiar but don't knowing where it came from, childhood memories can be related to this, as they are vague, distant and sometimes carry a feeling of sadness. I'm not a great expert on the subject, but somehow the way that's explored scares us, I know there's a good explanation on the internet. This reminds me of the reason why people are afraid of clowns: they wear this fixed smile on their face and try to appear friendly, but it's this frozen, empty expression that leaves us afraid that there are other intentions underneath. And the fact that they are so related to childhood and children's innocence makes us fearful, because we don't know if they can do any harm to them. (of course, this all happens subconsciously, you don't think about it that way but your brain activates this instinct of fear) (not you YOU, people with that phobia)

I refuse to believe that these things are not interconnected. There is a strange feeling that can be explored from this childish aesthetic and connection to childhood.

Many media are using this aesthetic as part of their stories, especially horror ones. Five Nights At Freddy's was a pioneer, exploring this in the early 2010s, and then there were other franchises like Poppy Playtime, Bendy And The Ink Machine, other FNAF games (and there are also discoveries of things that do this unintentionally and that were created before this popularization, like Popee the Performer. In music we also have great examples like Melanie Martinez's old albums, during the Cry Baby era. There are also other aesthetics who like to explore this childlike-creepy vibe, and they're a little unrelated to all this stuff, like Morute/Dollcore). Whenever I talk about this I remember FNAF SB Daycare, as it is the result of all these topics we have talked about so far. The Security Breach DLC "Ruin" decided to explore this fear of empty, abandoned places, but which once had happy children walking through the corridors. This feeling is very scary.

Do you remember when I gave clowns as an example? The circus is also a way to explore this scary+childhood feeling. A place where there should be lots of games, but which only causes fear, as in the case of those scary clowns. It's quite common in the media for the circus to be used as a focus of terror, however in the internet version we were talking about just now, it doesn't have to be directly a horror circus, just feeling that childish sensation and feeling that something is wrong is enough. Enough to make us feel uncomfortable. It's like the characters were suffering, but they can't scream for help, and it's a disorted vision of how a circus should look like. Hi Pomni!!

The Daycare Attendant also explores that.

6 - Bendy and Fnaf (for the same reasons I already told you all, but one more)

Jax it's Bendy's and William Afton's lost son. We don't need no DNA test.

(I'm obviously just kidding btw, his design was probably inspired by them, MOST ESPECIALLY BENDY and maybe the Cheshire Cat from Alice because of his smile??? Idk)

stay tuned for part 2 <3

28 notes · View notes

play-on-skinners-box · 6 months

Text

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER FIVE OF RAINCODE(And a LARGE amount of text)

I wanted to do more Raincode furries cause they're honestly so fun and are really good practice because I'm kinda rusty in general. I only did Yuma and Makoto this time just cause it's a more manageable workload and they are some of the last ones I'm especially passionate about.

OKAY, BUCKLE UP BABY, THESE CHOICES HAVE LAYERS TO THEM. L A Y E R S

OKAY SO, at some point scrolling on tumblr I saw this post by Nadox showcasing a piece of Yuma's concept art, and in the art he was depicted with long hair. They theorized that this was what Number One originally looked like and he sheared his hair into that wimpy fresh almost bowl cut so he could pass as a trainee, AND I L O V E THAT. I herby declare it as correct on the grounds of I said so.

Going along with this idea, Yuma is a young wolf that has a lame haircut so everyone THINKS he's just a dog. I know a wolf in real life would be a lot harder to reasonably pass as a dog, so this requires a bit of anime logic tomfuckery, but I'm fine with that because Raincode already deals in its fair share of logic jank. I am simply being true to game in that regard! The way I drew him already isn't super wolf-like cause I made him all squishy looking like human Yuma, and made the veerrryyyy tips of the ears flop over because the pointy ones just didn't feel quite right. I know real wolf ears are only ever depicted as pointy but it was for the VIBE. Yeaahhh in hindsight I might have taken a few too many liberties. I suppose to make it a little more sensible you could say he's a wolfdog and not full wolf or something. Other than the logic I really like this choice because everyone would naturally assume Yuma's just a pathetic little puppy dog when his real identity is hiding in plain sight!

I went back and forth on alot of the fur aspects. How smooth is too smooth? How much of it should just look like blunt cuts? Should I even give him his human hair? Usually I don't like giving my furries human hair in general because I want them looking a lot more like animals rather than people, but for Yuma his hair is such an important part of his design that I ultimately decided to keep it on both him and Makoto.

MAKOTO IS A WOLF IN SHEEPS CLOTHING AND THAT IS SO FUN, SO SILLY, SO GOOFY, HOOOORAY(Specifically a dall sheep cause they have those big curly horns). In theory, the hardest part of choosing an animal for Yuma is that whatever his animal is needs to tie into Makoto, and also be able to be implemented in a way where their connection isn't obvious. Makoto having a mask helps of course, but if you pick a really distinctive animal for Yuma you'll have to come up with better ways to hide it. Others have gotten a lot more creative with how Makoto hides his species, but I didn't do that and went in the full direction of just giving him a disguise. Its a littlllleeeeee lazy but I'm too smitten with the idea to care. I was a little confused on what to do with the tail. I considered just chopping off the majority of it to make it look like a short little sheep tail and put the justification for it in his suuuuppper tragic past(Though I honestly don't know if homunculi can regenerate like lizards). Luckily, the pose makes it so you can't see it anyway so I don't have to grapple with the responsibly of weather or not I need to brutally amputate one of Makoto's body parts. I consider this a win.

Disregarding his actual animal, I think the sheep is also weirdly fitting because of some of their associations. When I met Makoto I wasn't sure what to make of him besides being cautiously optimistic about him not letting Yuma die(What a fool I was), and sheep/lambs/rams and animals in that ballpark can vary wildly in their depictions from literaly the devil to good little fluffy guys!

For his actual look I wanted the sheep parts to look costumey sort of. I was going for a similar effect as the blood in chapter 0, where it's very noticeable but you write off the weird things about it because it's not immediately relevant. So, the mask has fake horns attached. The hand hooves are just little caps over the paw fingers, and there are two gold and silver caps to mimic his rings and point to their artificiality. The feet are also fake and are suppose to look a little clunky like Makoto's actual shoes. His hair is also much more full looking, a little less limp; because his actual ears need some place to get tucked away. I think the main problem with this design is it'd make for a really awkward reveal, cause when he dramatically gets the mask taken off then he'd just be a canine with hooves.

For both of them I think wolf works very well in terms of their characters and their shared forte. Yuma spends most of the game struggling with needing to rely on others, and Makoto has been carrying the weight of Kanai Wards secret on his shoulders alone for like three years. They also both have the Coalescence forte, which by it's very nature requires the help of other people, and at the end of the day being with others and working together is what brings them farther then they could do alone(even if some of the themes get muddled at the end and arn't really as clear as I'd personally like I find that Kodaka's games can have some not so rock solid theming with shakey conclusions but this is what I chose to take away from it)

These aspects of their characters fit perfectly with the stereotypical idea of a strong and stoic lone wolf in contrast to real wolves being pack animals that work together to survive!

I thought I'd like Yuma's design more by a landside cause I've grown really fond of his human design, but I actually really love this version of Makoto. I guess any designs with horns or hooves just appeals to me in a way that paws don't. Still really happy with these two. They could most certainly be worse! I think they're both cute little guys though and I learned a lot about how to like, render from this so that's a bonus!

#raincode #rain code #yuma kokohead #makoto kagutsuchi

30 notes · View notes

siriannatan · 9 months

Text

No talking back - Pirates SMP - ScottSausage

Entirely based on my assumptions based on some fanart I saw on Tumblr. Let me know what I got wrong :D

Most of the blame goes to @foxxology, though it's only fair I make it clear :}

Scott knew he should leave the planning for the day. Enjoy a rare day they docked somewhere no one would recognise him as anything but a pirate. But he could not bring himself to leave his planning and scheming half done. So he slowly sipped his whiskey. Sun slowly setting outside the windows of the captain's quarters. The ship slowly swaying. As far as he knew he was the only person on board.

Well.. not quite as it turns out, with a steady, familiar knock on his door. One that has Scott's head hurting a bit more than it already was. "Come in," he said, instead of sending the annoyance away. Not like it would work anyway. And who knows, Sausage just might, for once, have something useful to say. If he wasn't useful and pretty to look at Scott would have thrown him out to the sharks ages ago.

"Working late even when we're docked?" or he didn't have anything useful to say.

"Just get to it, I'm almost done with this," Scott glared at Sausage. As annoying as he was he was very handsome. Tan, long, chocolate brown, curly hair. It was a real shame Sausage insisted on hiding it under his ridiculous hat.

"Always so cold, dear captain," Sausage chuckled and set a plate of fresh fruits on the single, free from papers spot on Scott's desk - table more like with how big it was. "I guessed you locked yourself in here and being a good subordinate decided to bring you a snack. At least you die on us," he chuckled.

Scott just hummed, ignoring the fruit, more focused on how close Sausage leaned to him. With a smirk, the captain finished his drink and pulled his favourite annoyance into a kiss. At first, Sausage froze but he eventually realised what was going on and tried to get himself into Scott's lap but his captain had a different idea.

"How about I get my dessert first?" he grinned, breaking it briefly to stand up. He didn't give Sausage a chance to reply, locking him into another hungry kiss and pulling at his clothes, with Sausage quickly catching up and responding with as much hunger and ferocity and hunger. Scott hummed into the kiss. Happy that all was going according to his plan as he slowly led Sausage to his bed, losing their clothes piece by piece.

Sausage could not move at all once Scott was done with him. Every inch of him hurt pleasantly. His wrists were decorated with deep, red gashes from Scott tying him to the bed when he refused to listen to his orders—speaking of, his captain was already mostly dressed up, by his desk but looking at the mess he left in his bed. Chewing an apple and looking unfairly attractive as he did so. "Where do you have all this stamina from?" Sausage asked, groaning as he made the mistake of trying to move.

Scott just chuckled at his suffering. "I think I found a way to keep that mouth of yours shut," he mused, with a lazy, satisfied smirk. "You make a really good dessert."

Blushing was all the poor pirate could do. How was Scott so well put together after riding Sausage's soul out? Truth be told Sausage was still trying to figure out how he did end up under Scott. His captain looked like a strong wind could break him in half even if he was unfairly handsome. Possibly why a big part of the crew was at all on their ship. "You're... I'll need a moment before I can move..." Sausage admitted and earned himself a dangerous, low chuckle.

"Sure thing, cupcake," Scott mused, already standing up. Shirt sliding off his shoulders. "But you're still talking. I think you need a proper reminder of who is in charge," he mused as he slowly returned to the bed. Sausage could only chuckle nervously. Maybe he should have stayed quiet... or maybe it was worth it?

#my stuff #my stories #pirates smp #pirateshipping #scott smajor #mythicalsausage #fanfiction #suggestive

40 notes · View notes

nightswithkookmin · 1 year

Note

Hi, Goldy, I love your BTS, especially JiKook, analysis. I'm a longtime lurker who started reading BTS Tumblr because of you. I resisted getting an account, but knew if I ever got one, one of the reasons would be to tell you that you should be a comedian, psychologist, and/or writer. You are that good. You are one of the best bloggers I've seen analyze behavior in relation to real life and not glorified views of many supporters & haters. Thanks for the time you take to share your thoughts.

I love my jikook analysis too won't lie😭😭😭😭😭

Sometimes I read them just to make myself cry 😢

Wasn't sure ppl actually liked that though so good to know.

I'm glad you finally decided to pop in to say hi

And is that a compliment 😳

That's too much sugar than I can handle 😭😭😭😭

But go on🙂

I'm tryna die with a smile on mi face😌

I'm glad you like it when I psychoanalyze. as long as you understand it's only my point of view and thus subjective I can give you more of that🙃

So what do you say?

Should I click clack away?

Good. Choose a topic. You've earned it 🤭

53 notes · View notes

collidescopeeyes · 1 month

Text

Time is a Roulette Wheel

Viego: Pt 1

League of Legends | Viego x F!Reader

Chapters: Prologue | Viego: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

Crossposted on AO3 here

SFW

Decided to break this up into parts because Tumblr is a Super Functional Website, but you can read the full thing on AO3.

Summary: Turns out that Runeterra isn't the only place that has a Void. Plucked from your world into one of a video game with nothing but stolen time powers, an inability to die and a middling recollection of lore, you're prepared to do just about anything to get back home again. You just have to find the right Champion to help.

Viego is handsome even with his face frozen in a rictus of rage and despair, you'll give him that much. You can fault Vex for a lot of things, but her taste in faces wasn't one of them. That being said, you're pretty sure the only reason she told you where to find him was so you'd leave her alone, so whatever crush she had on him was clearly skin-deep. Still, you were lucky to run into the edgy little yortle–navigating the shadow isles wasn't exactly easy. The mist was still thick, the dead still restless, and the castle itself still a mess of floating broken ruins. You could've been here for weeks before you found him. Not like you don't have the time, though.

The mist is warm when you lower your hand to Viego’s face, and it hums on your skin in a way that vaguely unnerves you. You wind his past around your fingers and twist, rewinding his months of imprisonment until you reach the moment of his defeat. Then, ever so carefully, you creep his time back and watch the mist creeps down his face, to his shoulders and torso. You freeze it there, just free enough for him to speak, and he looks tiredly up at you.

“Are you here to kill me?” He croaks.

“No,” you answer honestly.

He closes his eyes. “How disappointing.”

Your purse your lips, suddenly uncertain. You suppose that answered that question–you weren't sure if he was actually awake in the mist this whole time. He must have been, if he's not still raging and wailing from watching his wife die before his eyes again. You'd been expecting him to try and kill you, to yell and scream and generally just lose his shit. You'd been planning to exploit that for your benefit. This, the utter defeat in his voice, you weren't prepared for. “I'm here because I need your help,” you say, trying to project confidence into your voice. “I’m not from this world. I need to find a way to get home, to get safe passage through the Void to worlds beyond Runeterra.”

He slowly opens his eyes to half-lidded, looking up at you dispassionately. “So you came to me?” He gives his still-frozen body a derisive look, skepticism dripping from his every word.

“You scoured the world for anything that would bring your wife back, I figured you might've found something,” you explain evenly. “That, and all my other leads either couldn't help or wanted to kill me, so I'm running out of options.”

He doesn't look impressed. You sigh. “Look, if you help me, I can help you.” And here you pause, because you know what you're about to offer isn't yours to give, but goddamnit, you just want to go home. “I know what you want, and I can give you it.”

His eyes widen slightly, and for a moment he looks heart wrenchingly hopeful, and you think for one glorious moment that you've got him. Then his expression shutters, and his mouth pulls into a thin line of grief. “I suppose you're offering to give me Isolde, then?”

You pause, but after a moment hesitantly nod. This wasn't what you were expecting. He was supposed to be obsessed, wasn't he? You thought he'd leap at your offer, but he just looks…tired. Like you're ripping open an old wound and he's sick of hurting–not offering him everything he's ever wanted on a silver fucking platter like you are. “Whole. Alive. Exactly as she was before she died.” You say, trying to impress upon him that you're offering exactly what he wants.

He snorts bitterly. “She is gone, specter, dead in the truest of ways.” His tone is mournful as he casts his eyes up, through the broken ceiling to the mists swirling overhead. “I cannot feel her in this world no longer.”

He's not listening. You guess you just have to prove it. You reach out and touch your fingers to his forehead, and in your hands you twist the past until centuries fold beneath your fingertips. The sun and moon flit overhead as you rewind, the walls rebuilding themselves from the onslaught of time and decay. He gasps, then chokes, as all at once he is human again, and you stand in the living past of his dead kingdom. There is an echo of the Void in your voice when you say, “Time is mine to command, Ruined King. She may be gone, but I can bring her back, just as she was the day before the poison touched her.”

Viego looks up at you, utterly human and trembling, and you decide your point has been made. The present pushes harshly back against your manipulations, and you let it snap back to it's rightful place with a wave of your hand. Viego is once again a broken thing bound to the floor of his ruined homeland, and he…begins to laugh. It is most assuredly not a happy sound–rather, it's as if he's about to transition into sobbing any second. “Cruel fate,” he moans, and you realize as he looks up to the heavens that he is indeed crying; slick black tears as thick as oil which wisp into mist at the edges, sure, but tears nonetheless. “The one my heart most desires detests me, rejects me in favor of the oblivion I laboured to free her from, and you offer her to me once more?”

You shift uncomfortably, only to lurch as you realize you're swaying on your feet. That little demonstration took more out of you than you thought–time wasn't as malleable here as it was in the Void, and bringing so much back from so long ago was more difficult than anything else you've done since you got here. Viego is still wailing and moaning almost incoherently, and you really don't want to pass out in front of him. “Give it a think,” you say as casually as you can manage. “I'll be back.”

And with that, you walk away with measured steps that hopefully disguise how unsteady you feel, physically and otherwise.

---

You're not sure how long you're out for, but Viego seems to have composed himself by the time you come back. At least a day, maybe two, but it's hard to keep track of time when you can't see the sun. He regards you evenly as you approach, and before you can speak he announces “I decline.”

You blanch. “You what?”

“I. Decline.” He says purposefully.

Shit. You hadn't planned for this. He was your last concrete lead, everything after him was a shot in the dark. “Why? Don't you want your wife back?” You ask, baffled and more than a little panicked.

He closes his eyes as if your words pain him. “More than you can possibly imagine. But Isolde…it is time for her to rest. I see that now.” When he opens his eyes they stay low, gazing down into the weeping hole in his chest. “I thought that she would love me no matter what became of me, as I did her, but I was wrong. I thought that we could be happy together, if only I could find a way to bring her to my side once more.” His tone is mournful, but when he looks up at you his gaze is no less resolute for the pain in them. “My Queen has made her decision. I will not cause her more pain than I already have.”

You blink, desperately searching his expression for a crack, for some indication that he's just putting up a brave face. Then you sigh deeply, and practically collapse onto the cold stone floor. You may as well– no point pretending to have it together anymore. “God, the first time you exhibit a fucking iota of self-awareness just had to be when I was relying on you being a selfish prick, didn't it?” You gripe, though you sound like you're on the brink of crying. The bastard just had to have time to self reflect, didn't he?

He has the gall to look offended. “I'm not so thick as to ignore condemnations from the person I hold dearest.”

You roll your eyes. “The first time you brought her back she stabbed you with your own sword, and then you decided to try doing it again. I would think she was pretty clear about her feelings on the matter the first time.”

He jerks back slightly, which is as far as his bonds will allow. “She…what? I don't…” he casts his eyes down, brow furrowed in thought. “Isolde was the one who killed me…?”

You give him a scrutinizing look, but he seems genuinely baffled. “You don't remember,” you realize, remembering that single line of text in his bio.

He shakes his head faintly. “I had wondered what could have shattered her soul so thoroughly,” he says, voice so soft you're not actually sure he's speaking to you. “My blade and those waters…so that is what happened.” He tilts his head back to look up at the black mist choking the sky, and laughs bitterly. “I truly do destroy everything I touch, don't I?”

You don't have a response to that. You wonder if you should leave, but summoning the strength for that seems like a Herculean task right now. Where should you go next, anyway? Track down more voidspawn? None of the Void's other servants you've found seemed amicable to helping you so far, and the Voidspawn themselves seem mostly concerned with trying to eat you. You hadn't found Ryze yet, but that was just hoping his poorly defined magic crystals somehow could help.

“Your home,” Viego says some time later, interrupting your thoughts. You'd almost forgotten he was there. “Where is it?”

You shrug one shoulder, your body feeling like one big dead weight. “Far. Beyond the stars and the Void, in a world where all of this is nothing but a story.” You wave your hand around you vaguely. It was the best way to describe ‘you were a video game character’ that didn't end with you covered in blood.

He's quiet for a moment. “In my study,” he says finally. “There are notes on the Void. I thought it might hold the answers to returning Isolde to me, but the toll it would take on her fragile soul would have been too great.”

You don't bother to hide your surprise when you look at him. “You…why?”

He sighs. “You speak as if you know me, which means you must know that I am…” his brow furrows. “What did you say? Ah, yes. A selfish prick. But Isolde…Isolde was kind, and selfless, and everything I am not. If I am to make my transgressions up to her, wherever she is now, then I should start by trying to be the kind of man she would have wanted me to be.”

You pause, considering him. He seems genuine, if no small amount grief stricken. “Hard to do that stuck in there,” you point out, testing the waters.

He shrugs as much as he is able. “I cannot say I blame them, the doll and the sentinel. I did kill them. I suppose this is as close as they could get to doing the same to me.”

You tilt your head, examining him closely. “What would you do, if I let you out of there?”

He looks at you warily, but seems to seriously consider the question. “I am…unsure,” he says slowly. “I have lived with but a single purpose for so long, I don't…”

“Vengeance?” You suggest. “Isolde is off the table, sure, but wreaking havoc on the world that dared to take her from you? Covering the continents in black mist and turning it into an unliving graveyard of cursed souls?”

He grimaces immediately. “No, that's not…she would not have wanted that.”

You stand, dusting off your clothes. “That's good enough for me.” You reach your hand out to him, and the Hallowed mist recedes into its needles, the thread falling limply from his wrists without Gwen to guide them. He slumps as it goes, as if he weren't prepared to hold his own weight up. He flexes his hands, and when he looks up at you he seems confused. You can't blame him. You're not even fully sure why you're doing this–just that leaving him here, trapped in this nightmarish stasis surrounded by the memory of everything he's lost, seems wrong.

That doesn't mean you fully trust him, though. “If I hear about you causing problems, I will find you,” you say casually. “I don't know if you can die, but I can stop time from ever passing for you again, and that's basically the same thing.” You glance at the needles still stuck in the stone. “You won't be awake, at least.”

He stands gingerly, and then nods grimly. “If I fail her again, I will be counting on it.”

---

You're expecting that to be it. That you'll go your separate ways, possibly until such a time he turns out to be fully crazy and you have to kill him. Instead, he shows up a week later while you're pouring through his notes. You only notice him because of the reflection in the dusty glass in the study's single intact window.

“You have shit note-taking skills, y'know that?” You say somewhat accusingly. “Beautiful handwriting, but shit note-taking.”

In the reflection, you see him he shrug casually where he's leaning against the doorway. “Academics were never my strong suit, ‘tis true.”

You turn around, holding out a sheaf of yellowed parchment and pointing to it accusingly. “What the fuck is this supposed to say, anyway?”

He leans forward, blinking at the offending word. Then he gives you a skeptical look. “Rest. It says, rest.”

You whip the page back to face you, squinting. “What? How is that an R? How is that an S?” You glance up at his skeptical expression, then flush. “Look, I wasn't taught cursive, gimme a break.” You toss the paper back on the desk. You're pretty sure it's useless to you. All of it is. “What're you still doing here, anyway?”

He gives you a blank look, as if he doesn't understand the question. “Where else would I go?”

You raise a brow. “I dunno, somewhere less miserable? What, are you planning to mope around here forever?”

He looks around as if you're referring to this specific room. “The idea has its appeal,” he says, almost to himself.

Somehow, the thought of him wandering around his ruined castle for eternity like some sort of kicked dog is both depressing and irritating to you. Like he's giving up, when you've been fighting so long and so hard the very idea revolts you. It has to–you don't have any other option. “Didn't you say you were going to try and be the kind of man Isolde wanted you to be?” You ask, probably a bit too sharply. He glances at you, surprised and a little on guard at your tone. “I can't claim to have known the woman, but somehow I doubt she wanted you to spend eternity in what is possibly the most depressing way anyone could spend eternity.”

He looks away, mouth a thin line. “I would not be so sure, after all the pain I caused her.” You open your mouth to argue, and then remember that she did kill him.

“Look, was she a spiteful person?” You try instead.

He recoils as if the thought offends him. “No, of course not.”

“Then she wouldn't want you to punish yourself like this,” you say.

His brow furrows, though you're not sure if it's in confusion or irritation. “And what would you know?”

You shrug one shoulder. “I am a spiteful person, and if you tried that shit on me I would've tried to kill you the second time too.”

“Ha!” Surprisingly, Viego laughs. It's a dry, self-depreciating sound closer to a bark than anything, but it is a laugh. “What am I to do, then? How can I possibly begin to undo what I have done?” His tone as a challenge, and you're about to snap back, but when you look in his eyes he just looks horribly, terribly lost. This is a man who has lost everything that meant anything to him, you realize, and he's desperately struggling to find his way back to the line. You've been there, and despite yourself, empathy tugs at you.

You let out a heavy sigh. “Look. Did she love you, before all of this? When you were alive?”

He opens his mouth, then pauses, brow scrunching. “When we were alive, yes, we were in love.” he finally says, his voice slow as if he's not entirely sure of his own words.

“Then she would've wanted what anyone wants for their loved ones after they've gone. She wanted you to find a way to be okay without her, to be happy without her.” Your voice is measured, with an edge of imploring. You weren't good at the whole conversation thing even before the Void happened, let alone during emotionally charged conversations.

He gives you a look that is all at once bitter, mournful, and as if you're suggesting something both impossible and idiotic. “There is no happiness for me without her.”

“You're like a broken record, y'know that?” You say archly. “Yes, she's gone, and I know how much that hurts, believe me, but that grief isn't all you are. You were happy before her, you can be again.”

He blinks oddly, a strange haze entering his eyes. “Before…Isolde?”

You nod slowly, suddenly unsure. “Yes. You were a prince before you two met, right? Nobility?” You pick up a random note and gesture at the fancy, curling script there. “You obviously had a lot of calligraphy lessons. Did you enjoy those?”

He stares at the paper as if he's never seen it before, then at you in apprehensive confusion. “I don't remember.”

You sigh, tossing the paper away. “You said you weren't very academic, so I suppose that makes sense.”

“Did I?” He murmurs, touching his mouth. “I don't…it seemed like it was true when I said it, but when I think back, there is nothing.” His hand travels to his cheekbone, and he frowns. “I recall that I look like my father, but I can't even remember his face, or why I know that to be true. Nor my mother, or anything of my childhood, my past…anything. Anything but Isolde.”

You blink. You thought he had just been obsessed with her because of love, but maybe it wasn't just that–if Isolde was all he remembered, all he had left, of course he would become fixated. If she was the last thing on his mind when he died, when he was trapped in that sword…you guess it wasn't a stretch, that she's the thought he would hold onto while everything else fell away over the centuries. “Dying really did a number on you, huh?” You muse.

His hand falls to the ragged hole in his chest. “The mist takes everything from those who are too weak to withstand it. Everything they are, everything they have ever been. I did not think I…” he trails off, and you both watch as plumes of mist roll from his broken heart to the floor, and he laughs bitterly. “But of course. How does one remember that they have forgotten something, when all reminders have been destroyed by their own hand? Why would I be spared the curse I created?” That seems like a rhetorical question, so you don't respond.

A long moment of silence passes, Viego deep in thought. It seems wrong to interrupt him, and you don't exactly have anywhere better to be right now. Eventually, he looks up at you, face creased with concentration. “I think,” he says slowly, “I enjoyed horseback riding, through the forests. I remember I wanted to take Isolde, but she did not know how to ride and horses scared her terribly, and I recall being very disappointed, so…I must have wanted to go. I must have enjoyed it, if I wanted to share it with her.” His voice gains certainty as he speaks, as he reasons out something so basic about himself from what little memories he has.

You make a decision, then and there. “Come with me,” you offer, except it comes out like you're telling him.

He blinks at the non-sequitor. “With you? To where?”

“You can go anywhere your mist goes, right?” He nods, confused, and you hold out your hand. “Gimme your sword, then follow me.”

“My sword?” He repeats, uncomprehending.

You wiggle your fingers at him impatiently. “This place is super depressing, Viego, and I've got a long list of places I'd rather be. So you can either let me borrow your sword, or you can stay here and be miserable. What'll it be?”

For a long moment he just stares at you. Then he gives a disbelieving little laugh, and raises his hand above yours. The blade materializes in it as if he were already holding it, before he drops it into your waiting palm. The moment it touches your skin, a strange flash of sensation travels up your arm, like dousing yourself in cool water. Your arm sinks with the sudden weight of it, but you manage to avoid dropping it. You grin at him, pleased. “Okay, now follow me,” you say, and rewind.

You pick a few months ago, when you were passing through a lush woodland. You pull yourself back to that time, then let the past push your intrusive presence back to the present where it belongs. Teleportation in two easy steps, if only to places you've already been.

For a long moment, you think Viego isn't coming. His sword is cold in your hand, thin sheets of mist dripping from it onto the grass, and by God is it heavy, so you stab it into the dirt. When you look up, Viego is there.

He looks around, brow furrowed. “Where are we?”

You shrug. “Somewhere in Ionia. I wasn't keeping track. I don't have any horses, and I somehow doubt they would tolerate you, but we can walk. See how you feel.”

He gives you a puzzled look. “Why are you doing this?”

You pause, and your voice is soft when you reply. “Because I know what it's like, to lose so much of yourself that a monster is the only thing you can be if you want to survive. And because I'm trying to find my way back to being the kind of person the people I love would want me to be, too.”

There's something unreadable in his eyes when he looks at you. Then, he draws his sword from the ground, and as it disappears into mist he begins to walk. Without a word, you follow. Somehow, leaving him alone seems cruel. For all that he's probably insane, he also strikes you as terribly, unbearably lonely.

He doesn't speak, and the silence begins to wear on you, so you do. You tell him about your world, how different it is, how you relied on machinery instead of magic. It's a dangerous game, feeling out the edges of what you're allowed to say, but it's also somehow freeing. To say you converse would be a stretch, but for all that his expression says that he thinks you might just be delusional, he seems intrigued by the world you describe. His questions are tinged with skepticism, especially when you get into trying to explain the Internet. You even get a laugh out of him as you offhandedly mention that your mystical worldwide library that contained the accumulated knowledge of your entire species was obviously largely used for disseminating pornography.

As night falls, for the first time, Viego comes to a stop and looks at you. His eyes are oddly bright in the dark, and his crown casts a dramatic glow over his face. He's looking at you like he can't quite make sense of you. “I do not know your name,” he finally says.

You guess you hadn't actually introduced yourself. As always, your real name rises to the tip of your tongue before you swallow it back. “You can call me Iso,” you say instead.

His lip quirks, and he gives you a very princely half bow, though his movements are slow as if he's following half-remembered steps. “Viego Santiarul Molach vol Kalah Heigaari, at your service.”

You laugh as he straightens up. “You can remember all that, but not whether you like calligraphy?”

“I did not like calligraphy,” he says decisively. “And my penmanship is middling at best. I suspect your standards are simply low.”

And then he vanishes.

“Bitch?” you say, disbelievingly, to the empty clearing

#x reader #reader fic #viego x reader #league x reader #leauge of legends #league of legends x reader #f!reader #crossposted on ao3 #my fics: tiarw

10 notes · View notes