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mostlydeadallday · 8 months

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Lost Kin | Chapter XXXVI | So Thin a Thread

Fandom: Hollow Knight Rating: Mature Characters: Hornet, Pure Vessel | Hollow Knight, Quirrel Category: Gen Content Warnings: dissociation, description of injuries, past abuse, flashbacks, unintentional misgendering, panic attacks, referenced child death, intrusive thoughts, unwanted touch AO3: Lost Kin | Chapter XXXVI | So Thin a Thread First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Chronological Notes: Hornet makes a mistake. Hollow suffers the consequences.

Writing has slowed down recently due to receiving some monster edits (nervous laughter) and also due to having a houseguest. I've also encountered a lot of foreshadowing issues that I had previously said "nah, I'll save that for later" about and guess what? now it's later (I'm fine)

○

Quirrel was slipping. Hornet did not know him well, not enough to tell what it was that took up space behind his distant eyes, but she could see that it was something other than the present moment’s concerns.

She did not need this. She needed him here. She needed to know if this would work.

Hollow did not like him. Again, she had not dared to hope for much, but she had thought, perhaps, that they would not find him objectionable. His presence was steady, calming. Respectful in a way she could not quite quantify. Certainly he had a better bedside manner than hers. He had done nothing wrong that she could see—although he handled Hollow as if they were wrought of glass, he spoke to them like any other traveler he might meet along his way.

They might have been on a path toward accepting him; she could not tell. Not now that she had ruined it, though she still did not fully understand how.

Her sibling was locked down as tightly as she had ever seen them, refusing to even shift their gaze to follow her. Their throat crackled with each regimented breath, fist closed, claws tucked away where she could not see them twitch. They refused to react to her voice, to lean into her touch. They refused to do anything at all.

It was no use grasping at why they had reacted so strongly. They could not tell her, and any guesses she made would be pure speculation at best.

The best she could do was sit at their side, stroke their horns, and hope that she was providing something of a distraction, rather than contributing to the strain. They did not object to Quirrel’s touch, exactly, but they did not relax into it, as they often had before, with her. It was gentle, businesslike, carrying no intention of comfort—

But then again, neither had hers, at first.

They were not pulling away, though she’d given them leave to. She tried to content herself with that, as Quirrel slowly shifted from drying their shell to a closer inspection of the wounds she had cleaned, touching lightly, in case they were still tender.

She wasn’t sure how they could fail to be. Soul healing aside, they were still bereft of shell, and she winced as Quirrel ever-so-cautiously probed at the twisted scars and pockmarks in their charcoal-colored skin.

Hollow did not. There was no indication that they were not lost in their own mind somewhere, except that this was exactly how they had been while under her knife, and to take that inaction for apathy had been a grievous mistake.

Slowly, she reached down and pulled their hand into her lap, brushing their knuckles with her thumb, waiting for any indication that they might lash out at Quirrel, as they had attempted to do with her. No matter the guilt they appeared to feel regarding that action, no matter that she had deserved it. She would not risk her ally’s life on so thin a thread as this.

Quirrel looked up and met her eye, one hand keeping contact with her sibling’s side, below the worst of the injury. “This is good work,” he said, and when she glanced aside, he added, “I know you are not proud of it. Nonetheless, there was little else that could be done. And I would be hard-pressed to find anyone alive in this kingdom who could do better.”

She had nothing to say to that. I should have been gentler or I shouldn’t have rushed it or I should’ve noticed that it hurt them—all lodged below the lump in her throat that she knew would squeeze her voice thin if she tried.

He did not comment, although he did clear his throat uncomfortably in a poor attempt to break the stillness before going back to his task.

“These, here.” He indicated one of the empty blisters, the largest of them, looking like nothing more than a burst waterskin, empty and shriveled. Though not quite the right color to match Hollow’s skin, it was close enough that she suspected it had originally been part of them. He lifted the upper corner of it, showing her where it was separating from their shoulder like a dried-out scab. “They’re beginning to detach. I’d advise removing them before you continue.”

She nodded, unsure if she could manage anything more. Thankfully, he accepted her silence and moved on to the active infection in Hollow’s chest. He refrained from touching the swollen growths, only laying his hand down to measure them against the shrunken, half-filled sacs that had reappeared a day or so after her efforts.

“You did well to wait, I think, before attempting more.” He spoke almost absently, peering closer at the dull, diluted color of the looser cysts. “As hostile as the infection is to all forms of life, I recall that it seemed to have an especial antipathy to void.”

“Oh?”

“Well, yes.” He straightened. “The two are diametric opposites. Soul-based life was the primary target. As both are forms of light, the process of infection was simple. Void, however, proved extremely difficult to contaminate. Soul and void can co-exist, even synergize. But void and infection, or, more properly, void and dream, cannot. They are in constant conflict. One will always snuff out the other.”

Hornet had to take a moment before she could speak again. Her hand had tightened on Hollow’s without her knowledge.

When had she grown so attached? She could not point to a single moment. Not the first time they fell asleep under her hands, or the first time they spoke to her, or the moment she awoke sheltered in their arms. But somewhere in between, sometime during the mundane work of keeping her sibling alive, she had begun to see them as more than an obligation, more than a debt she must pay. When she imagined the Old Light extinguishing what life remained within them, it was not only the thought of her work being wasted that made her gut roil with cold, sick anger.

“And yet you say I did well to wait,” she muttered, unable to keep that anger from tainting her voice.

Careful. Hollow did not need to think that she was angry at them again, and it would only confuse Quirrel if assumed her wrath was meant for him instead.

Fortunately, he seemed too taken with his theory to have noticed. “I believe so. The synthesis of void and soul is more resistant to dream than either alone. Hence the creation of vessels.” He paused, glanced at her. “What you have done is given the void a chance to regroup and fight back against the intrusion. As well as forced the infection to concentrate at the surface, rather than raging unchecked as fever through their body.”

Hollow’s breath shuddered briefly. Her attention snapped to them, to the break in the pattern of repression, but they gave her no more—only stared at the ceiling, their fist half-clenched in her lap, their mask lying still beneath her hand.

“That said,” Quirrel continued, oblivious, “I would not wait much longer. Allowing the infection to persist will do more harm than good, now.”

“I know,” she whispered. There was more that she intended to say, but the enormity of the situation rushed over her and she could not breathe.

She would have to hurt them again. She would have to cut them apart and pull poison from their veins, and the worst part was that they trusted her to do it, had trusted her even while she laid them open, and afterward when she left them alone in a dark room with their wounds still bleeding, when she should have been there to console them, to make up in some trivial way for what she had done—

Someone said her name, soft and expectant, and for a blank, thoughtless instant she thought it could have been Hollow, until she shook herself and lifted her head, and it was Quirrel, of course it was Quirrel.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I-I will do it tomorrow.”

Quirrel looked like he might want to say more, but he only bowed his head and removed his hands from her sibling’s shell. “Of course. I think… that would be best.”

○

It did not move.

This was as it had always been. As it always should be. It lay still for examinations. It lay still for the spells to weave over and around and through its body. It lay still when it was alone, when the walls and ceiling shone so brightly and for so long that its eyes burned, when all its joints ached from the chill of the marble and the core-deep scars of blade and soul. And it lay still when the others were there, whether its father’s cold, careful hands were working over it, or the warm, blunt, indifferent touch of the scholars and spellwrights. It lay still.

No one had ever held its hand while it lay there. No one ever saw a need to.

And it never had needed it, before now.

Its sister’s touch was constant, distracted but continuous. A slow rasp of her palm along the inner curves of its horns. A graze of her thumb over the crack through its eye. A warm weight on the back of its hand, with an occasional stroke across its knuckles.

It should feel ashamed of what she knew of it, of how quickly she had picked out its weaknesses and made use of them, turning fault against fault, keeping it calm with just the tangible pressure of her presence.

Or as calm as it could be. Though the warmth of her beside it was more comfort than it had ever dared to ask for, every brush of the scholar’s hands across its shell made the void beneath churn with unease.

He did not call himself a scholar, he had said, but the cadence of his words and the paths of his thoughts were identical to the ones that it had known, enough so that the distinction meant little. His touch, too, was… familiar. In a way that it intimately remembered. It could not stop its own response to that. It could do nothing about that at all. Everything about him was gentle, every word well-measured and softly spoken, and yet it could not stifle the expectation that—

That what? There would be pain? There was always pain, even though its sister had done everything she could to reclaim its body from the light. Every breath, every heartbeat hurt; it could not remember the last time its own existence had been painless.

No, it was not pain that its fragile body feared. What, then?

It was not meant to be examining its own thoughts like this. It was not meant to have thoughts to examine, or a mind to examine them with.

Yet it was already corrupted, far too faulty for its original use. Should it put those faults to use to better serve its wielders? If it could not now be sacrificed again, if its impurity had damned it, what else could it be used for? If that use demanded anything like its former standard of control, it was already doomed to fail.

Perhaps that was irrelevant. It could not stop its cursed mind stirring, any more than it could stop the twist and writhe of void beneath Quirrel’s hand. But it would not crack where he could see, would not let loose the terror that strained to break free, would not—

Was this what it feared? This newcomer becoming aware of its faults? His gaze was as sharp as his mind, piercing it through to its essence. He was certain to find out. There seemed to be only so long it could go without descending into helpless panic. But though that familiar fear pulsed beneath its mask now, it was not alone; there was another joining it. A new fear, too bright to see directly, as sharp and hot as the invading light, and just as damning.

He knew of vessels, its sister had said. He had worked beside the Teacher-Dreamer Monomon. He—

“These marks.” Quirrel’s voice came from near its knees; it could not see him well, not with its head resting stiffly on the pillows placed to keep its horns off the floor. “They’re left by offensive soul-spells, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Mm.” His warm hand skimmed across its shell, then lifted. The pain that woke under his touch was different than the rest, a slow-burning throb that sank down through its shell and into the flesh beneath. “Thankfully, these should heal without intervention. The damage to their legs goes deep, but will right itself with time.”

That word again. Their. A crooked plate, a limb out of joint. Its sister and the scholar spoke over it, as it was familiar with, but they did not do so as they should. As it expected. As it had always heard before.

It… was not to respond in any way. It must remind itself of that. The way its wielder referred to it was none of its concern. It understood that people often grew attached to inanimate things: weapons, tools. That did not make those things deserving of affection, or of respect. It was not deserving of this way that they spoke of it, or the gentleness with which they handled it, or the needless comfort its sister insisted on bestowing.

She had paused as he explained, her hand falling still on its horn. Deserving or not, it could not stop its tension spiraling higher, a painful pressure swelling in its chest, independent of the mass of light that still beat there. This was all its own: its own weakness, its own twisted desire, a desire it had not known it had—a gnawing hunger acknowledged only after it was sated.

She resumed after a moment, and the pressure eased—fortunately before the strain in its tattered lungs could give it away. Its heart settled back into rhythm, pain drumming in its mask with every rapid beat.

It could endure this. This was a test like any other. A test simple enough that, even in its broken state, it would be a disgrace to fail.

Previously, there would have been no question of its ability. Inspections were routine, especially between molts, or after healing from wounds acquired in training. This was unnervingly similar, in fact. The whispering rain, the persistent ache of its missing arm, and the idle touches on its face and hand grounded it in the present, but in many other ways, it could have been laid out upon a marble slab in the Palace while its father’s assistants performed one of their many assessments.

But why would the press of his hands and the weight of his gaze sicken it so? Simply because he was a scholar, like the many others it had known, faces and masks that came and went, voices and words that meant nothing more to it than the motes of drifting soul? Had it feared them then, and merely forgotten, or denied itself the knowledge of that weakness?

It should have no reason to fear a scholar. They were merely the hands of its father, instructed by him to bring it closer to its intended perfection. And yes, their touch had often hurt—but then again, so had his.

Its body was determined to ignore these facts. Its body wanted to shrink away, to press back into the blankets, to cringe from the touch that stirred some urge within it that it did not understand.

The past felt close, closer than it had for an age, as if the vessel could reach out and pierce the membrane with its claws, allowing its former life to bleed through to the present like the insides of an egg.

If only it could summon the clarity and stillness with which it had once been so familiar. If only it did not require the constant stroke of its sister’s hand along its horns to keep it calm.

If only it could pretend to be empty once more.

“What I wouldn’t give for a clock,” the scholar muttered. “And a thermometer.” His hand was on its shell again, just above its hip, and it suffered through a wave of nausea that threatened to sweep it away. Its heartbeat surged.

He could feel none of that, the vessel knew, from his palm against its plating. He did not know of its fear.

“A what?” Hornet asked.

“Thermometer? A device that monitors temperature, using predictable expansion in certain liquids.” His hand moved higher, closer to the infection, and he was silent for a moment before shaking his head. “The Madam sponsored its development. It was, among other things, a much more precise method for detecting fevers, which proved useful in the early stages of infection.” He sighed, stepped back, and raised one hand to his chin. “Unfortunately, the plague progressed too quickly for such things. They never became common, and I would not know where to find one.”

Its sister hummed, politely sympathetic, and it felt the way her voice moved through her body, the ripple of sound transferring to its mask through the weight of her hand. A nameless warmth unfurled over it, a strained, aching sweetness rising to answer the pull of her voice upon it, something inside it reaching up toward her, longing to be seen. She did not seem to notice anything amiss, even as it fought to bury the feeling. “And the clock?”

The silence lasted a beat too long. Quirrel took a long breath. “A clock, or a chronometer, measures the passage of—”

“I know what a clock is,” Hornet interrupted. A tautness had crept into her posture, her hand going stiff before she breathed out, low, faintly hissing, and relaxed. “Why do you need one?”

“Ah. Um.”

The scholar had the sense to be taken aback, at least. Its sister was formidable, whether armed with steel, silk, or nothing at all, and she did not take kindly to insults, even unwitting ones.

She had been the cause of many muttered oaths from its father shortly after her arrival in the Palace. The royals had soon learned that their glancing slights were met with bared fangs and an immediate invitation to duel—and, later, a reprimand from their monarch, scribed into stone with the king’s seal glowing in the corner. The vessel itself had witnessed multiple offenses and as many quick rebukes, as well as its father’s frustration: the tightness in his voice as he dictated the messages, the stiffness in his shoulders as he pushed aside guard reports and City maintenance projects to reach for his notes and missives on Deepnest.

Its sister came from a strange culture, it knew. A place far less refined than the palace, wilder and darker than anywhere within the borders of the kingdom. Its father’s light did not shine there, and his laws held no sway. It was no surprise that such a land’s inhabitants would be fierce and hardy, quick to strike with both their weapons and their words.

When Quirrel spoke again, it was muted, perhaps in tacit apology. That seemed wise. Perhaps she would not need to challenge him after all. “A clock would be helpful in much the same way a thermometer would. I would very much like to establish a baseline—temperature, duration of sleep, heart rate, respiratory function. Without having precise measurements of time, however, much of that information would be subjective. Guesswork, at best.”

“Guesswork is better than nothing,” Hornet said. “Can we start now?”

The tension was back in her shoulders, in her arm with every stroke, and it felt a similar strain drawing its body tight despite her efforts.

It had known that it would be exposed, but it had hoped—do not—it had thought, perhaps—do not—

No, no, it was broken, defective, it could not help but think, but hope, and it had hoped that this would not come so soon. If he intended to pin it down, to measure and catalog its faults, it had no choice but to submit; its sister wanted this, regardless of how the prospect made the void twist and knot within it.

“We can,” Quirrel mused. His voice was warbling, distant, and the vessel attempted to refocus, to bring the world back into clarity. To control that which it no longer had a grasp of—regardless of how steadily it breathed, how intensely it stared at the ceiling, the beat within its chest sped higher, and a bright haze crept farther and farther into its vision. “It will certainly suffice until we can do better.”

“Then what should I do?”

Hornet stopped petting it, her hand unmoving on its mask, and it nearly pressed its face into her touch, nearly begged for her to have mercy on it. No, it could not do that, it must endure, should not even need this comfort in the first place. Lie still. Lie still.

“Heart rate should be simple to record, if you know of a place to take it.”

“I have an idea.”

Lie still. It had only to lie still. It had only to obey, to push its fears away, to breathe in and out and ignore the sensation of its traitorous, fluttering heart attempting to beat free of its ribs. It could not hide any longer, though it wanted to; it wanted to crawl into the dark and curl into itself and press its face to its knees until the world disappeared.

Why, why was this so difficult, why was its mind a labyrinth of blades and spikes and thorns, hostile at every turn, why was this one thing enough to take it apart when it had experienced the same and worse, much, much worse before—

Its sister tugged on its horn. She was whispering something soft; its own name, the name she had given it, surfaced from beneath the enclosing fog, but it could hear nothing else besides the ringing in its skull. Her grasp was gentle, not enough to truly stir it, but it moved with her, obeying, as it was meant to.

She inched closer, crossing her knees beneath her and guiding it onto its side. As she laid its head in her lap, it felt the warmth of her legs against its cheek through the thick weave of her cloak. Its hand was still trapped beneath hers, it could not pull away, no matter that she had told it that it might; it would not.

This was what she wanted for it. She wished to know of its flaws; it was powerless to hide them from her. She wished for this scholar to record its faults; it must allow him to do so.

Please please please—it would obey, it would be good—

Sister’s claws brushed beneath its chin. Just the barest touch, before she grasped its jaw and tilted its head up, exposing its throat.

No. NO.

Her wrist rested on its mask, holding it still, her fingers draped over its jaw, across its mouth, trusting, trusting it—

She should not. There was a hiss building in its throat, a crawling itch inside in its teeth. It should hold still, it should not move, but its instincts drove a hot current beneath its shell, a crackling charge that set every plate on edge.

It felt the buzz of her voice through its mask. She spoke to the scholar, and he stepped closer, a bluish blur against the shadows in the room—

Four eyes staring down at it. Pale knife in a pale hand.

It felt the thrum of void through its throat, swift and thin, and the pulse of pain through its cracked mask, and—

The press of soul-bands round its wrists.

Wrists not its own, hands too small, claws chipped, cracked, and worn blunt, carving valleys in the marble—

The chill of void-loss in its limbs.

Far more void than it had ever lost, far more cold than it had ever felt, the final chill of a death it had never been granted—

The echo of its breath: panting, panting, panting.

It knew, suddenly, with the swift certainty of lightning and the finality of thunder. It knew what the scholar was here for.

He had come to finish it.

○

Something was wrong.

Perhaps it was only because she was holding Hollow’s face in her lap, but Hornet felt a chill spreading through her. This pose was meant to offer Quirrel a better view as she took their pulse, with their head across her legs to bare their throat. She’d been prepared to reconsider if they seemed hesitant, but they had gone with her almost eagerly, she thought. Now, though, the skin beneath her fingers was drawn taut, and a nervous spasm rippled down their throat, shifting their jaw until she felt the grate of their teeth through her shell.

This was a spectacularly bad idea.

The impression came too quickly for her to do anything more than lift her head and draw breath to speak; Quirrel was already too close, reaching down to steady himself as he knelt in front of her, and an icy certainty pierced her mind—Hollow was going to hurt him, and there was nothing she could do.

Her grip curled tighter on their mask, claws clenching, a helpless reflex that would do no good against their strength, their speed, their terror that she had not sensed until too late—

She nearly shouted as Hollow jerked back. Quick as a wasp, moving far faster than she’d thought them still capable of. She nearly did not have time to let go, nearly hooked and dragged her claws into their throat as they yanked their head away from her.

Blind fear took hold. She scrambled back, shoving Quirrel to the side, bowling him over and out of reach. Soul flooded to her fingers, cold air pouring into her lungs, vision narrowed to the white of Hollow’s mask and the black daggers of their claws. Now, they would strike out, her instincts cried. Now they would lurch up and snap at her, knock her over and pin her down, drive those void-touched talons straight into her heart.

Nothing. Nothing but the slow curl of her sibling’s shoulders into a mortified hunch, and the sudden, rough sawing of their breath through their throat as they began to sob.

Quirrel propped himself on one elbow, his confusion bleeding rapidly into shock. “Stay back,” she hissed, already moving. She did not need him trying to help and making things worse. Whatever had set Hollow off this time, his presence had no doubt contributed. She could have cursed herself for pushing them too far, for not noticing how close they stood to the edge.

To his credit—and Hornet’s relief—he did not test her.

She forced his presence from her mind. She wanted to be alone, to comb over her actions and pick out her own faults, but she could not have that, should not even want it. She could not afford to be so selfish, not now.

Instead, she crept back and knelt at Hollow’s side, ignoring their obvious flinch, though the wretched fear in their eyes cut her to the quick. Their chest was heaving, mouth and vents both gaping open as they gulped breath after quivering breath.

She had frightened them. Despite everything, she had forgotten how terribly afraid they were, how little reason they had to trust her. She had asked of them something she doubted she could do herself, a vulnerability she would find more than difficult to show, and lost sight of the fact that they had as much reason as she to object to it.

As much and more. It would be no small thing, to bare her throat to a stranger. And, despite all her scars, she had still not been hurt as deeply as her sibling had.

She’d miscalculated. She’d taken their obedience for granted, and now here they were once again—breathless and scared and expecting far, far worse than she could ever have the heart do to them.

“Hollow,” she breathed, and the way her voice shook was not important, not important at all. She reached for them, incautiously, hoping against hope that whatever misplaced loyalty they held for her would not fail her now. And when they flinched again, her fragile calm nearly shattered, except that they halted before pulling further away, seeming to hold themselves down against the bed as if bound there.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m sorry,” and she didn’t know why it was so easy now, why it took seeing her sibling shaking and fighting to breathe before she could say it, but she meant it, meant it for all the times she had been too proud to say it before. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t—”

All the rest of her air escaped in a meaningless rush, pushing out of her throat like a sob of her own, but she couldn’t cry now. Quirrel was there, still in the room, and more importantly, Hollow needed her. Needed her to be present, as she had not been before, needed her not to ignore their distress for the sake of easing her own.

They had not taken a full breath since pulling away from her, trapped in the same quick, shallow rhythm that she remembered from the day they had first spoken of their own accord. She wanted nothing more than to take hold of them and drag them free somehow, but they’d already flinched away from her once; she did not think she could take it if they did so again.

Instead, she slowly reached down to touch their hand, giving them time to expect it, although the void behind their eyes still spasmed at her touch.

“Easy,” she said. “Easy, I’m here. You’re—you are safe.”

Something caught in their throat at that, a high, choked-off keen wavering just at the edge of her hearing. Behind her, Quirrel groaned softly, a sound of heart-torn sympathy that she hadn’t the space to think about now.

Turning their hand until she could slip her own into it, she wrapped her fingers around as many of theirs as she could manage, squeezing tight, offering what she could—something to hold onto, an anchor against the encroaching tide. Her own heart was racing still, and she could think of nothing that would fix this.

They trusted her. And her actions had worn that trust thin enough to snap.

She could do nothing now but reach out again, spinning a single thread over empty space and hoping it would hold.

Hornet had to swallow once before she could speak. She would not push forward again, not until she knew they would accept it, not until she could be sure she was not terrifying them. She would have to try something else. She would have to talk them through it.

Could they even hear her? Whatever panic had them lying rigid in its jaws, it was bad enough that their vacant stare went right through her, the movement of the void within their mask erratic and unfocused, as unstable as their breath, as the helpless quiver in their hand, even as she tried to hold it steady.

“Listen. Listen to me,” she said, and try as she might, the words came stilted, distant, nowhere near as strong and sure as they needed her to be.

It would have to be enough.

○

Someone was speaking to it.

It could not answer—would not—could not. Was an answer expected of it? That was not right; it was not meant to answer, surely. It was a test—another test—

Another test that it would fail, another way in which it was broken, another flaw, another crack in its façade—

When would it happen? It should feel the blade at its throat at any moment now. It was damaged, dangerous; it could not be trusted, not even with the smallest of the tasks it had once performed with ease. Not even with the first orders that had been given it.

Lie still.

It could not bear the strain any longer. It could not push back the growing fear. That was plain to see now, when it could not even hold itself together for the simplest examination, when the presence of a single scholar in the room was enough to send it into madness.

Madness it was, truly; the vessel had no cause to act on its own, no grounds to do what it had done. And oh, even thinking of it was enough to make the vessel cower, to make its head go light, to squeeze the air from its aching lungs in a silent cry that none would ever hear.

It had defied its sister’s will. It had pulled away from her, resisted her purpose for it, and it should be punished. It could not be trusted, and she knew that—her instincts served her well, to push away from it. The appalling nature of its actions was proof of its treacherous nature. It no longer knew what it might do.

Its mind was an uproar, a chaotic clamor of panic and pain and things better left forgotten, things it had not even known it could remember anymore.

The scholar had made to approach it, and its sister had stretched its head out upon her lap, and it had thought—

It had almost seen, flickering before his face, another. It had almost felt blunt fingers on its skin. And it had known what would be next. The cold bite of a soul-blade, the numbing bitterness of void. The desperate surge of a thoughtless, maddened shade against its bonds—

A trace of warmth against its hand. It could not see, not truly; what should have been a high, arched room washed in blue was nothing but a blur filled with flickering shadows. And its sister’s voice as she tried to comfort it—to comfort it—quavered like a fading song, its hearing gone as vague and faithless as its sight.

“Easy,” it heard, and then, “I’m here,” and the simple solace in her words crushed its chest tight, wringing another soundless whine from its throat. She was trying, again, to give it what it never should have needed, and it hurt, and the vessel did not know why.

It should have been far beyond asking why it suffered. Far beyond trying to make sense of its pain. But this was something new. Somehow, even after enduring every whim of the goddess, every taunt and torture she could fathom, there were still ways it could be hurt, fresh wounds opening alongside old scars that had long ceased to bleed.

It was a terror to be seen, to be known. It was a long-feared, wrenching horror to be something capable of being known. And yet the fear was not simple, not any longer. There was something else, now, something deeper, something hot and heavy and ready to crush it.

It was no longer only afraid that its sister wished to understand it. It was afraid that she would stop.

What had she done to it?

Between one choking breath and another, her hand wrapped around its own, her grip tighter than she had held it yet, tight enough to startle it—and warm, singing with life against its cold, dead shell. It could not rightly see, or hear, but it could feel this. It could feel her here with it, despite every reason for her to walk away.

Its mind was a broken blade, shards of steel that lay strewn about, still sharp enough to cut a careless hand. This new memory… this thing that it had seen… it was a danger to her, just as the others had been. If it tried to remember, if it tried to forget once more, it made no difference—eventually, it would slip. It would slice itself open on the edge of its own mind, and perhaps this time it would not be the only one to bleed.

She should stay away from it. What was she doing? Why did she not give it what it deserved? It was useless. It kept on disappointing her. It would hurt her, sooner or later. Its frayed control would snap, and she would pay for it.

Why?

“Listen,’’ she said, intent, and her voice sent another tremor through it, another quake through the fractured resolve at its core. “Listen to me.”

Anything. It would do anything for her, as long as it was able.

Her face came into focus before it, beyond the strangling shadows in its vision, beyond the glaring after-images from its past. She was… unsettled, it thought. It heard a quiver in her breath, and her eyes darted over it, again and again, searching with a hunter’s eye for some enemy to seek out and destroy.

There was none, nothing it could offer her, unless she could part it from its terror. It had faith in her; she was quick and strong and clever, but it did not think even she could manage that.

She could not see into its mind—it would not wish her to be witness to the horrors there, all the many ways that the Radiance had warped it, all the dreadful visions that had been forced into its thoughts. Hornet could not see, could not know, all the myriad ways it had found to be afraid, all the traps it had set for itself, its former control turning against it as every step revealed another pitfall.

But this—this was something the Radiance had had no hand in. It was sure of that. The gleam of this new memory was untarnished, untouched by rot; it was one that the goddess had never uncovered or had simply passed by. Whatever terror awaited, it was fully to blame—the grasping tendrils of its past were reaching out to embrace it, to pull it down as soon as it stumbled.

It trembled, briefly, violently, and a soft, hushing chirr left its sister’s throat, a sound that struck it through to its heart.

“You have done well, Hollow,” she said. “You’ve done what I asked. I said that you could pull away from anything you please, as long as I did not tell you otherwise, and that is what you’ve done.”

She did not understand. It would not have done so, had it had any choice—had its fear not seized hold of it, had it not bowed to baser instincts that it thought long worn away. The action was to its shame alone—there was nothing to praise it for.

Whether the phantom it had seen foreshadowed its fate, whether she intended to do away with it or had another use in mind, did not matter. It was created by and for the will of others. Its only purpose was to bow to the whims of those who wielded it, and it had, once again, gone against that, doing something it was never meant to do.

It had stared into the face of its own destruction, and it had flinched.

Foolish, to have ever considered itself a knight. An empty title for an empty being—an empty role, for a thing so filled with faults that it could not live up to any of the names that had been granted to it.

It was not empty. Not as it should have been.

It wheezed again, attempting to lock its breathing down, attempting to do what she wanted, to accomplish one of the few things she had asked of it, pitiful as that effort was now.

In response, she wrapped her other hand around it, too, where its fingers had gone numb, seized by that same terrible, buzzing haze that had invaded its vision. Her voice reached it, pleading, still, trying to calm it. “It’s… it’s all right. Hollow, it’s all right. I’m here.”

Yes, and that was the problem. She should not be. She should leave it behind, for her own good. There was nothing for her here, nothing but disaster.

Its breathing caught up on this snag, a lurching hiccup that it could not quite stifle. Sister’s hand squeezed tighter in return. “I am sorry to have frightened you. You have nothing to fear.”

When she said it, the vessel almost wished it could believe her.

It dared to shift its fingers, to squeeze her hand back, gently, gently, not so much that it would hurt her. The warmth of her grip seemed to thaw it, little by little, sensation reaching back up its arm and toward its frozen heart. And she was whispering to it, still, things that it could barely understand, but with every shift of its fingers in hers she would praise it, stroking its knuckles, offering it little half-heard words of approval, words that made something inside it go as weak as water.

Every breath was lighter than the one before. The fog began to recede, rolling back from its sight like a curtain pulled away from a window. Its sister’s head was tilted, staring intensely into its face, and it recognized the moment she realized that it could see her once more.

“There,” she breathed. “There, that’s it.” Her hands crushed its own, clinging so tightly that it could begin to feel the pricking of her claws into its palm. Nowhere near as large or strong as its own grip, but so warm, so alive—and so fragile.

It could hurt her so easily. It would take so little. A forbidden fear. A misplaced memory. An instinct, long ignored.

But if she did not intend to leave it, it must try. It must learn. To master its own mind, to make itself strong enough to save her. To protect her. To be sparing with its strength, to be soft, as soft as she was with it.

It would try to learn not to fear, if she wished for it to do so. If that was what would keep her safe.

It might be a hopeless cause. The vessel would be afraid forever, it seemed. There was little she could do to change that.

But the faith she placed in it, misguided though that was, almost made it hope it might be wrong.

○

Taglist: @botslayer9000 @moss-tombstone @slimeel Send an ask or reply to this post to be added to (or removed from) the taglist!

#lost kin fic #lost kin chapter #hollow knight #hollow knight fanfic #mywriting #hk the hollow knight #hk hornet #hk quirrel #hk

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swirlmup · 11 months

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RWBY may have its flaws, but at least its not racist to POC, at least it doesn't treat its female MCs as damsels in distress, nor does it make male side characters into white male saviors.

Fixing RWBY v5 took a pedophile bandit, and made him into a father and husband while still having him sexually harass teenagers.

It also glorified racist white men as protagonists in place of the female characters, but let's focus on FRWBY V6.

Where the angry abusive straight white male version of toxic masculinity is now suddenly overpowered, gets sympathetic backstory, can now force women who have never met him before to beg for forgiveness, and the woman he abuses is now forever forced to carry his blade? And he is not allowed to be killed by the women he oppressed?

RWBY is written for people wanting feminism, lgbt rep, and SJW values.

Fixing RWBY is for toxic masculinity and people with conservative values, like libertarians.

To say nothing of how Fixing RWBY treats POC characters like garbage....the sheer racism in your fanfic is atrocious.

I mean there was the whole thing in RWBY where the writers said the White Fang were inspired by American Civil Rights movements, but then the White Fang are also unequivocally portrayed as the bad guys, and then there was Blake needing to be rescued by Sun when she was captured, and then there was ubermensch Jaune activating his healing semblance just in time to save Weiss, but go off I guess.

FRWBY, for the record, also isn't racist, nor treats its heroines as damsels, nor makes white male side characters into white saviors.

Shiloh isn't a pedophile and he isn't Raven's husband. He's just Vernal's baby-daddy. He assumed Yang was a legal adult when he met her, and he was correct in that assumption since Yang is already 18 by the time they meet, so that clears him of that accusation as well.

It did not glorify any white men over the heroines.

Adam is canonically a strong fighter in RWBY, all we did was be more consistent with his strength and didn't depower him at any point, and instead allowed him to also progress in the same way the heroines progressed and got stronger. Adam canonically always had a sympathetic backstory, as evidenced by the brand on his face and additional canon from the short and comics showing that when Adam was younger he was much nicer. All we did was add more meat to his already hinted-at backstory. He didn't force Weiss to apologize, she chose to do that on her own, and I think that that was a very grand moment for Weiss. She's stepping up to take responsibility for her family's actions, she's being the bigger person and extending whatever kindness she has to offer to the person who deserves it the least. Weiss is downright saintly in that moment. Adam didn't want her apology and spat on it. Blake took Adam's sword of her own will. Nobody forced it on her, she could have left it behind. We don't know what will become of the sword in future volumes, if she'll really keep it forever or throw it away. The story hasn't revealed the sword's final fate yet. The entirety of team RWBY worked together to beat Adam up. Blake protected her friends, Yang put Adam in a crater, Weiss said the final words, and Ruby shot the finishing blow. These women were all terrorized by Adam, and they all worked together to end him. This might shock you to hear, but a lot of the artists contributing to FRWBY are also deeply concerned with women's portrayal in media, are lgbt and want rep, and also believe in social justice values. I won't say every single one of the Sketchy Huntsmen are like that, but a good chunk are. Perhaps you just have a different idea of what feminism, lgbt rep, and social justice should look like compared to us?

Still don't know where people get the racism thing from. Like, at no point does FRWBY treat any poc character poorly.

#asks #anonymous #fixing rwby #frwby

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000recover · 4 months

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12.31.23

today, i came to a realization (i do that a lot, these days!) about where some of my problems have been coming from.

so much of the shit i've gone through, from when i was really young to now, especially the things that have formed so much of the kind of person i am now, have been around my choice being taken away-- i've been left in a lot of places where my autonomy has been stripped or violated. and that's a scary thing! that's a terrifying thing, and it's also a thing that's happened enough times that i started letting myself believe that i didn't have a choice in anything happening to me anymore. everything became the fault of something else-- i couldn't help that i have a fucked up body, blame my parents. i can't help the fact that i react like this, blame my father figures, blah blah. i could go on for a while with how embedded in me this idea has become. i think it was part of how i justified still being affected by my trauma -- the idea that irreversible damage had been done to me that i could never come back from. and technically on a scientific level, that probably is true. i have a lot of the diagnoses and problems i do because of how severely it affected my brain and how i process stress.

my cool hippie therapy friend i met last year and i did a lot of work together on the idea of recognizing other people as human and therefore inherently deserving of love; and the one person i couldn't ever really find it in myself to apply it to was my father. which, in my defense, would be a really really hard thing; he did hurt me really profoundly as a very young person, and that creates so much deep hurt. and i knew he was a person-- but he'd caused so much harm to myself and the rest of my family, i considered him irredeemable.

i think another thing i really struggle with still is the idea that people are not their actions, and people can change if their actions do. maybe its because so many things happened when i was so young that i've developed this really one-sided, black and white picture of people. and yea, some things are kind of unforgiveable actions, including a lot of stuff i've gone through both as a child and as an adult. part of understanding who i am as a person is probably going to be figuring out what i feel comfortable forgiving, and what i don't. my father has said for a while that he's sober now and i haven't believed him once, i think partially because i understand now too how much addiction really fucks with what's okay to lie about. but knowing that he's a person, and i'm technically a person too, then that same logic i apply to him and other people i've hurt applies to me too, right?

maybe that's part of what scares me so much about being in trouble. if i've fucked up, if i've hurt someone, if i've caused damage, then that's totally permanent. why should i move on from that? that's who i am as a person, now. and i think this year especially, the stress and the shame and the hurt really started to get to me, and between everything going on in my own life, and being hurt by my ex cheating on me, and the things i might have done to contribute to that situation, i just stopped being willing to face it. i hid from the shame in substances and if i made another mistake, i'd just start drinking again. i'd apologize with my body, because all it's ever been to me is a tool, and then i'd get triggered and hate myself even more, and act out again or just skip straight to drinking over it. i justified hurting with more hurt. and yea, it kinda sucks of a lot of people to accept that apology, but that's not a reason for me to keep doing it over and over again.

so what's my solution, then? well, one step is being willing to actually be accountable for some of the dumb shit i've been up to, i guess, but that's hard when it still feels like me fucking up is death penalty worthy. so i guess the real first step, now that i've figured out where and what the wound is, is to stitch it up. therapy time! unpacking more of my irrational core beliefs! challenging them! understanding where and what my real values lie! and, as previously stated, probably figuring out which hurt in my life i'm ready to forgive and which i need to just acknowledge and move on from. maybe get some closure here and there. which, some of the deep hurt that still comes out is probably going to take a lot longer. i probably won't ever be totally done, especially with how wedged some of my illnesses have become in my brain folds. but that's part of life, i guess.

also with that is going to be accepting that some relationships can't or won't be repaired. which is tough, and has to come from me on some levels, too. that's going to be another thing to figure out. and with that is gonna be accountability too. and here's the real kicker; after that, i get to choose to be different. i kept thinking for so long that if i was really healed, i'd just be able to start doing things. i forget how long it takes to form or kick a habit, but it's probably a lot longer than i've been letting my impatient self have.

yea, i did get pretty shitty again for a while. i've been stuck in a bit of a loop the last few months especially, and this whole year has been rough on the progress i've made. i did a lot of things that remind me of stuff other addicts in my family have done. a lot of it was in response to hurt, but that doesn't justify what i've done. i've become so wrapped up in the person that people hurt that i haven't done any growing from it. i can be sorry for what i've done, but i won't change until i'm willing to move on from it. which means letting other people move on, too (is this what my friend meant by the difference between pain and suffering?)

i think maybe then i can start to have the life i've really wanted. i have a lot of ideas of where this is going to take me. but, more importantly, it's the new year! the best time to set real, tangible goals! so i'm going to make myself a list of resolutions and keep them here, somewhere really visible, for accountability. my friend is coming over tonight so i doubt i'll post again until tomorrow at the earliest. happy new year!

#recovery #sobriety #addiction recovery #substance abuse #alcoholism #mental health #diary #journal

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mareenavee · 11 months

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HONESTY and OPEN-MINDEDNESS for the psychological OC asks!

Hi! This has taken far too many days for me to get to, so thank you so much for your patience!

I do love this set of questions. I'll go ahead and do this for Nyenna, Teldryn and Athis so I can ramble on in a long post (: Very kind to pick these very difficult questions for them LOL

Psychology Asks for my fic The World on Our Shoulders!

Ask Game is here.

HONESTY– What kinds of small lies do they tell others? What lies do they tell themselves? What is the biggest lie they’ve told?

Nyenna's small lies are by omission usually. She does not announce she is the Dragonborn. She truthfully doesn't want the attention so she lets people believe whatever they want about whomsoever the Dragonborn might be. She tries to let her actions speak for themselves.

She tells herself that this because she's used to something of anonymity, but it's more like she's still confused how this could have fallen on her shoulders. Truth be told, she barely accepts it even as more and more of her power manifests and that dragon soul she carries with her gets loud and louder.

The biggest lie she's told, perhaps, is likely the one where she said she ran away from home to protect Athis. It was really about herself, and her unwillingness to face her responsibilities, as enormous as they were. The most frequent lie she's ever told to herself and to others is that she's fine and that everything is okay.

Teldryn isn't a small lie kind of person. He is perfectly fine telling people exactly how he feels about what's going on. If he's going to go through the effort to lie, it's going to be something big. At the very least, something of medium importance. We'll get to that in a moment. Instead of small lies, he'll try and talk his way out of a problem and is, to be perfectly honest, annoyingly successful at this most of the time.

He has, however, spent a long time telling himself he doesn't care anymore about what happens next. If he truly didn't care, there would have been no reason for him to spiral as bad as he did. If he didn't care and was already numb, why try to numb the feelings further? Being purposeless and watching the world burn hurt. And he likes to pretend he's over it. It's impossible to be over that kind of pain. It leaves a scar.

The biggest lie he tells is actually by omission as well. A theme, perhaps. He doesn't like to mention that he's the Nerevarine. It probably ties in tightly with the lies he tells himself, that he's over the entire thing. But his discomfort with people recognizing him who he doesn't know already is another reason his attitude about everything contributes to the lie. I like to think he's trying hard now to heal from this. At least he has his friends and Nyenna to help him out.

Athis is trying extremely hard to be a good person. He is honest almost to a fault about the little things. He's honest when he doesn't understand something Nyenna is talking about. He's honest with how he feels in the beginning. He's honest about how much he knows and what he's not willing to put effort into in regards to training and skills. I suppose he's a lot like Nyenna in that he'll try to keep his negative opinions mostly to himself, unless he's with someone he trusts. Sometimes he can be a bit grouchy, but even then he won't necessarily lie, he'll just grouse and leave the conversation.

Athis keeps a lot inside because of his want to be seen as a good person as much as he wants to believe he is one. He's shoved down his trauma so far, that even when the edges of it are dredged up, he tries to pretend they aren't there at all. Like none of it ever happened.

The biggest lie he told is also one of omission. He doesn't want anyone at all to know about his past. He doesn't want to remember his past. He figures not even Nyenna needs to know. The only person who ever guessed and brought it up is in Sovengarde now. Athis still thanks this person when he pays respects at the Skyforge for holding on to that secret early on when it was still too heavy to handle by himself.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS– How do they deal with disagreement? How do they balance different perspectives?

Nyenna is usually the cause of disagreements she gets into because she assumes herself to be the de facto leader of her party and tends to have the anxiety-driven habit of assuming what she says goes. It's different than being sort of bossy about things and stems more from the goal of keeping everyone alive. She can be a little bit stubborn. Okay. A lot stubborn. Sometimes it's for the best. But it does take her a while to realize when she's not going about things the best way. She'd rather go and do things herself first. She has to be proven wrong. This leads to arguing sometimes, depending on the severity of the situation.

When she's got a second to clear her head, she does listen to reason a good 2/3rds of the time, but not without first making her point of view as front and center in the argument as she can. When she's moving on anxiety and fear alone, she doesn't like to try and see the other side of things. More like she can't see it because what is more important than understanding how dangerous things can be? What is more important than keeping those she cares about in one piece? It takes some doing, but she does eventually calm down enough to see multiple ways to handle a problem, most of the time. Good thing she travels with someone who is good at talking.

Teldryn, speaking of, as I mentioned can talk his way out of pretty much any situation with varying degrees of success, but leans toward lucky that way. He does tend to get into disagreements fairly often, because he should be more thoughtful on how he approaches certain situations and...straight up isn't. He will try to get the other person to see where he was coming from in his approach, especially if his actions started the disagreement.

That said, he is relatively fine with hearing other people out if they insist they need to make a plan. Nothing else to do but talk around it anyway. He's gotten himself in trouble for pausing to talk about something and then making the opposite, rash decision anyway.

From chapter 20, which is published:

“There’s about five. Maybe a sixth if they have a scout,” he whispered.

“If I can get a first shot in, we can have them wiped out in no time at all. It’ll make this area safer for other travelers,” Nyenna decided. She took a second to conjure a Bound Bow and crouched as she made her way around the edge of the outcropping.

“Wait! Wait, how about I go in, kill two and draw their full attention, and then you come in after that?” Teldryn offered, feeling a little more uneasy about her just rushing in. He hadn’t even seen her fight yet, and the Reavers were clad in chitin. He wasn’t sure if she even knew the weak spots of that kind of armor.

“You need to stay back,” she said severely. He noticed she’d lowered her scarf, but couldn’t tell why that would matter. He heard her inhale sharply.

“They are armored! A Bound Arrow, no matter how perfectly aimed, isn’t going to do shit except enrage them,” he said angrily. She ignored him. And in turn, he ignored her warning and rushed in. He was just able to draw his sword before something strange indeed happened.

“FUS RO DAH!” Was that Nyenna? He felt like he’d just weathered a blast, eardrums popping, all sound being replaced with a low whine. The thing was, he hadn’t weathered it. He’d been swept up in some kind of energy she’d created with a few short words. Between one breath and the next, Teldryn was hit with a force like a boulder crashing down a mountain. His lungs emptied of air. His feet were thrown out from underneath him, and he flipped tail over teakettle. He screamed in choir with the other Reavers as he started to plummet down toward the earth like so much debris. He couldn’t control the direction he had been tossed – his head struck a rock and his vision went black. He was vaguely aware of the sound of fire searing, and more screeching, but he could see nothing. His head was pounding. He felt another rush of that same force, though not as directly, and consciousness faded from him.

Athis is perhaps a little bit more agreeable than the other two. He has more of a passive personality and doesn't prefer to fight. Occasionally if he's going to disagree about something, he'll do so after putting up with nonsense until he's annoyed enough to make a snide comment, after which he'll walk away. He's fine getting into battles, but not into arguments if it can be helped. He doesn't claim to be the strategic mastermind or anything and is fine following directions.

He holds all kinds of ideals in his head, though, and that can be tough to reconcile with. He has a perspective of how things are supposed to be and how he fit into the world and now he struggles with the change in perspective and change in dynamic. Change in general is more tough for him than he'd like to admit. So balancing other points of view is not his strong suit. But bless him, he is trying, even if slowly.

#AskMareena #MareenaWrites #The World on Our Shoulders #Nyenna #Athis #Teldryn Sero #LDB/Athis #LDB/Teldryn Sero #skyrim #tesblr #elder scrolls #fanficblr #writblr #writeblr

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abyssalzones · 2 years

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Have you seen the amphibia finale?? Your thoughts on the show are so interesting! what did you make of it? :-)

Managed to catch it live! Glad you think my thoughts are interesting, I'm autistic as shit and love to talk about anything people throw at me. That being said, my thoughts on how Amphibia ended are... extensive, I guess. I'll keep this under the cut to spare my followers.

I've honestly had a very mixed experience with Amphibia as a whole? I originally was not interested in the show, then got very interested in it, and then the tail end of season 3 kind of... lost me. Maybe not entirely, but it definitely didn't capture my attention the same way the first two seasons did. A lot of people say that season 1 and a fair bit of season 2 is "filler," but honestly? It felt like it was all (or most of it anyway) important for establishing the cast, the tone, and the overall liveliness of the show. If the majority of the first 2 seasons was episodic adventures with an overarching narrative, then it did an excellent job at delivering on that status quo.

Then, of course, True Colors aimed to change the status quo in a really interesting way. Things were getting more intense, consequences were becoming more tangible- so you'd expect the writing to pick up in the same direction the end of season 2 leaves you on. In some cases, this works. In others, it doesn't.

It's, unfortunately, another example of a show stretching out of its established expectations and then failing to deliver that same new quality consistently. It's trying to be dark and high-stakes and fantastical but it's also trying to be... a TV-Y7 cartoon with episodic antics contained in 20 minute time slots. Namely I don't understand why the finale felt so stretched out when most of it was recruiting different branches of an army that ultimately contributed very little to the final fight.

On that same note... I'm kind of getting really tired of the same formula of "big finale" that a lot of cartoons seem to be following lately. Everything has to end in a big fight with marvel-level theatrics even when it's completely tonally off from the rest of the show. I liked the Darcy fight! I thought Sasha and Anne teaming up to act as co-leaders was a very cool culmination of their dynamic! ...But ultimately it felt like it was all getting away from what was actually important in this show in the first place. Big, dramatic, precure-esque magical girl fights completely take away from the soft fantasy charm that made Amphibia endearing in the first place. It felt like the Plantars suddenly came second to everything else, despite their family unit being so important previously. It felt like Marcy and Sasha existed to fulfill a prophecy rather than as... people? And I enjoyed their development for the most part- but namely, Marcy was almost entirely shelved until she was important for the prophecy.

The Marcy issue could be a totally separate post, actually, thinking about how disappointing the conclusion to her arc was.

Anyway, I'll just make a little list.

Things I enjoyed seeing: -Yunan and Olivia are canon yaaay gay people #Win -darcy's fight with sasha felt like a great conclusion to Sasha's arc specifically -the weird space house with that god taking domino's form was... unexpected... but cool? i mean, it mostly seemed cool as like... a setup for a completely unrelated video game, but it was still cool.

-sasha bi flag <3 we finally did it. sasha finally likes women.

Things I did not enjoy so much:

-The fact that Andrias... lived? and was largely meant to be seen as sympathetic because WAAAAA IVE HURT SO MANY PEOPLE :< SPECIFICALLY MY FRIENDS </3 like man I don't care about you losing your friends because of your own actions. what about all the people who suffered from you Choosing to be a genocidal colonizer. Dude. Marcy destroy this man.

-I think it's boring when characters suffer very intense injuries and there's no repercussions or lasting effects because making a character visibly or noticeably disabled is too confusing of a change for children or whatever but that might just be me being... beyond the age demographic for this cartoon

-the fact that they waited up until the very last episode to even remotely confirm yunan/olivia. was their romance entirely off-screen? when the hell did they realize they like each other? and i actually really Like yulivia so i don't know how they managed to fuck that up so bad

-same principle as before but bi flag on sasha's rearview mirror. you had to wait..? until now........?

-I don't understand how sasha and anne could have possibly drifted apart or why that's supposed to make sense Sorry if that's me not liking a "mature" writing decision i don't think it's realistic though. or even like... lines up with what they established. Weren't we supposed to come to the conclusion at the tail end of season 3 that they were deeply important to each other? yeah, normally people drift apart after middle school, but these are clearly not... normal circumstances. They went to traumaworld together. same thing with marcy like even if you move you have Phones and computers just make a groupchat damn

-I don't understand the moon thing. I know they've been leading up to it since season 1 supposedly but it's just so funny. the final boss is the moon.

-powerpuff calamity trio looked bad. it was cute in like a pretty precure way i guess but my god it was so power of friendship in a show that was supposed to be like... a little less generic.... than that.... i thought....

-the biggest complaint im seeing is the complete saying goodbye to Amphibia thing which.... yeah i'm going to have to agree. I know the show has kind of been leading up to the girls going home and i think THAT is good, they've always been meant to go home, but i don't necessarily think growing up = abandoning all the things that were fantastic or "magical" about your childhood? this is supposed to be the Realistic ending i guess but it's just depressing. very "growing up sucks and you will grow apart from your friends Get used to it." maybe that wasn't the intention but i don't understand how they could just separate everybody like that after All the shit they went through. crazy to me.

anyway that is enough out of me i hope you didn't expect a super glowing review but i think... amphibia may have just not been for me in the way i thought it was. I really enjoyed the writing of this show for the most part so i can appreciate that but it's going to take a while for me to sit with this finale before I can come back to it probably. not the WORST finale i've ever seen but not great either.

... on another note, very excited for the new owl house next week.

#sorry if this is in a weird or incomprehensible format im very tired and was going to go to bed but #had to get all my thoughts out while theyre Fresh #thank you for the ask :] i hope im not disappointing you with what i thought lol #amphibia spoilers #lab notes

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timbrrwolfe · 3 months

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I guess since I reblogged that DS menu post and waxed nostalgic in the tags I can do a little ramble about something related

My weird history with Pokemon. Well, it's not /that/ weird. But. Maybe inconsistent is a better word.

I'm old enough to have started with Gen 1 back in the day. I got Pokemon Blue, my sister got Red (I have to wonder how much of a ripple effect it would be if it had been the other way around. I clung to Blastoise as a favorite Pokemon forever. If I'd had Charizard instead, with how much I already liked dragons...a lot could've changed. Probably most of it inconsequential. But.) I think I did manage to get to the Elite 4 but I'm pretty sure I never beat them as a kid. Honestly even reaching them is kind of impressive in hindsight considering how little I understood the game. I went back and did a solo run with Blastoise to beat the game properly as an adult.

Gen 2 gave me Gold, I think sharing Crystal with my sister? It might've just been mine, I forget. Cyndaquil was probably my first starter though Feraligatr ended up narrowly beating it out for my fave starter of that gen. I know I got to Kanto but I'm not sure how far I got beyond that. Doubt I even made it to Red, let alone beat him.

Gen 3 I had Ruby, then Emerald. I don't think I ever beat the Elite 4 in this one either. Though I played (and restarted) the game enough to contribute to my getting tired of my starter of choice, Blaziken. Gun to my head I'd probably say Sceptile's my favorite Gen 3 starter but I'm not especially connected to any of them.

The first three generations were probably my absolute peak of interest in Pokemon. I was into the games, the anime, /and/ the merchandise. Even a little of the card game though I doubt I understood it well back then. Looking back I can pretty easily remember feeling very intensely positive about the whole thing.

And then Gen 4 happened. I'm not exactly sure what happened. I'm sure my age played a part, given that I was ~14 when Diamond and Pearl dropped. Though it's not like I gave up Pokemon or video games or anything as "too childish". But I stopped watching the anime, and I wasn't engaging in much outside of the games. And then there were the games. Pokemon Diamond absolutely refused to work with my fat DS. I dunno why. I dunno if that was a common problem at the time. It was before I was using the internet regularly (in that way). Eventually I got a DS Lite (the one I mentioned in the tags of that other post). And lo and behold, it could run Pokemon Diamond. Too bad it was SO SLOW that I got SO BORED playing with it I couldn't even make it to the third gym. It probably didn't help that I pretty quickly hooked up the Action Replay, but even if I hadn't I don't think I would've lasted long in that game. No fire types except Ponyta and the starter? In the whole region? Ridiculous. And I cannot overstate how slow the game was. Even just doing the first few games I couldn't keep it up, but I've seen plenty of people discuss it retrospectively as well as a genuine problem. Anyway, I eventually dropped it without finishing it and kind of just moved away from Pokemon entirely.

And then Gen 5 happened. There was a weird celestial alignment situation happening with it. I was pretty well established in a nerdy online community, so I was more aware of games than I maybe ever was before in my life. And I was in general more active online. So when the game started leaking and getting streamed (on the primitive streaming sites of the day), and I hopped into a stream and as much time was spent watching other streams get bopped as playing the game, it was a wild time. Then I got my hands on the game itself. And it was FRESH. I was enjoying myself. I got as far as the third gym before it got stolen out of my DS. My /DS/ didn't get stolen. Just the game. To this day there's basically one (there's two, but the chances of it being the second person are basically 0, so there's one) person who could've and would've done it. But I didn't do anything about it. I just accepted my lot and sulked about it for a while. I /still/ haven't sat down and played through Gen 5 proper. I'm planning to when I do succeed at picking up a 3DS/DSi, but in the meantime, and in all the time that's passed since, I never have. From getting bored of the game to being excited to play and losing the ability to, I was in a bit of a funk when it came to Pokemon. I was pretty well out of it.

And then Gen 6 happened. Brand new console. 3D on the 3DS. An "upgrade" from sprites to models (I think they should've stuck with sprites but that could be a whole post on its own). I loved this game. I did so much with this game. I'm sure the fact that there were a ton of callbacks to Gen 1 was a factor, but I also just enjoyed the game as a whole. Mega Evolution was an interesting mechanic (especially as someone who had enjoyed DIgimon plenty as well). It was the first Pokemon game I beat on my first playthrough, as unimpressive as that sounds. But I was not a child who beat video games. And now I was an adult who did. Sometimes. And this was one of those times. AND I got into competitive battling! In a casual way, just for fun. But I was breeding, and raising and training Pokemon to be used together in a competitive format. Like my team of honestly kind of mediocre Pokemon easily handled a random person challenging me with 6 legendaries. It was a whole new game. I enjoyed the O-Powers, I enjoyed the restaurants for farming money and experience. The TRAINER CUSTOMIZATION? It STILL hasn't ever been as good as when it was introduced in X and Y. And the GLUT of battle formats. Double battles, sure. Triple Battles? Weird, but ok. Multi-battles? Where you brought 3 Pokemon and you had a teammate who brought 3 Pokemon and you played together against 2 other people teaming up? Incredible! Rotation Battles! X and Y were peak in so many ways (and bad in other ways, but I was way too busy enjoying what they were doing right to focus on what was mediocre). I was getting active on twitch as a viewer and chatter, and I ended up battling a lot of Pokemon streamers pretty regularly, testing out my goody little teams against other people who were raising competitive Pokemon. If the first ~3 gens were the peak of my enjoyment of Pokemon as a whole, Gen 6 was a much more narrow but maybe more intense period of enjoyment. I had so many friends and acquaintances who were enjoying the game together and I was digging into it more deeply than I ever had.

But then after X, Y, and especially after ORAS, it all kind of fell apart. Virtually all the streamers I watched and battled with or against just kinda...stopped, after ORAS, if not during it. Sun and Moon came out, and I played them, and I enjoyed them, for the most part. But the magic was gone. And I was becoming more aware of the cracks in Game Freaks' development of the games. And if I was seeing cracks in Gen 7, Gen 8 with Sword and Shield just put it on full display. Despite being part of a group of people actually making content (podcast episodes and youtube videos) and being hype for Sword and Shield....once it was out? It just wasn't good. At one point in the story there's a big explosion and you get told to go to the next town to continue your League Challenge and let the adults handle it. Like ?????? We used to take down entire crime syndicates as a 10 year old! What is this "let the adults handle it" nonsense?" So Sword and Shield blew it wide open for me.

I ended up not picking up Legends: Arceus, not because it seemed bad (the opposite, really), but I just didn't have the spare money. Maybe I'll play it someday. Maybe I'll rent it from my library. Regardless, I skipped it. And if I skipped a reasonably good game, you /know/ I skipped what turned out to be a buggy, empty mess of a game in Scarlet and Violet. I very nearly rented it from my library but canceled my request for it. I might get to it someday but at this point I'm very content to just let it be and not get any more Pokemon games unless it's proven that they're good, and that Game Freak is doing something right with them. I'm not paying Game Freak to put out subpar garbage. Plenty of people are, but I'm not one of them.

#Timbrr plays Pokemon #Timbrr rambles #Timbrr rants #kind of a weak ending I know #but like. So's the mainline series at this point so #Honestly I didn't even get into spin-offs and all that. This was long enough as it was #But yeah from the unbridled enjoyment of a kid #to being so bored I don't even want to finish it #to being excited and having it snatched away #to being back IN FORCE. And having that fade away shortly after #and then realizing how bad things have gotten with the series and vowing not to get the new ones until something changes #It's been a roller coaster and I can't /not/ be aware of Pokemon or yeet the knowledge I've picked up over the years #but I am putting it down for the time being until it gets better

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sasquatchboobs · 8 months

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I can't really remember whether I'm "clean" or "messy" naturally. According to my mom's standard, I am very messy. But as I look around at this apartment, it is much messier than the spaces I had when I lived on my own. Maybe I don't clean as much as I should (doesn't everyone feel that way?) But it got to a point when I realized that keeping up with it is just so exhausting. It wasn't like this when I lived alone. Not everything was pristine, but things were put back where they should be. I didn't feel like my space was ruled by chaos.

I'm trying to remain introspective and not blame my partner, but the longer I think about it, the more I can't ignore his contributions to the mess, and his lack of contribution to cleaning. The more I count the number of items he has left out that I had previously put away for him. The more resentment grows when he won't even bring his dirty dishes to the kitchen, but leaves them in the living room to attract ants.

When he knocks an empty soda bottle off the coffee table on his way to the kitchen, looks at it on the ground, then leaves it there and continues walking. Obviously my first instinct is to pick up after him. But I didn't once, I left it to see how long it would stay in that spot on the floor. It was more than a week before he picked it up.

If I ever even insinuate that he doesn't clean up enough, he gets really mad, yells that he actually cleans WAY more than I do, and I'm actually the problem and should be cleaning more. I, of course, cannot produce hard evidence to support my position, and he doesn't back down from his defensive positions. I often end up acquiescing just to end the argument and restore peace. I know I shouldn't but I can't get my anxiety to go away until the fight is over.

He only ever washes the dishes (very occasionally even wipes down the counters) and takes out the trash. He seems to resent these tasks and hold it against me that he already does ~so much~ "for me" without acknowledging all of the cleaning and tidying I do. To be honest, I don't think he even notices. We have two bathrooms, and I can count on one hand the number of times he has cleaned either of them in the 5 years we've lived here. I remember his college house bathroom... An absolute horror show, but there were other 2 guys who lived there so I excused it at the time, but it should've demonstrated the conditions he's willing to live in.

He also just... Takes advantage of my things. I literally bought him nail clippers and a nail file so he didn't have to use mine all the time (he would never put them back, or just ya know BUY HIS OWN), but he misplaces those too so just goes to look for mine (which are conveniently always in the same spot!), uses them, then puts them back in a different spot, like in his desk drawer! I can't tell whether he forgets he's not using his or whether he's just decided to claim my items for himself, or whether he just truly put no thought into the action at all like he claims. And then what do I find as a present on the coffee table? A pile of toe nail clippings. Despite there being a trash can less than 2 feet away. Fucking gross.

I want to keep a cleaner space. But we've had so many "couples conversations" about how we're going to do that, together. No accusations or comparisons, I'm very careful to not put him on the defense. But guess who actually follows through, and then eventually loses steam as her partner doesn't really do any more than start vacuuming one room every other month. I mean, just the simplest things won't stick for him and I don't get it; I bought a "dirty/clean" sign for the dishwasher so we could stop having the "did you run the dishwasher?" conversation. I use the sign every time I run & empty the dishwasher. I don't think he's used it once, and will never fail to ask me "did these dishes get washed?" since he doesn't use it he assumes I don't either, and doesn't even bother to look.

To be totally gross, I'll relay a recent event that I think caused a turning point in my mind. He had expressed that we weren't having enough sex for his liking, so I was trying to make the effort to initiate more when I felt attracted or aroused. We had a nice time cuddling on the couch and I went to the bathroom to clean up a bit first. I opened the toilet lid to find he hadn't flushed his big nasty shit (which he often doesn't) and just lost any momentum and attraction I had. Fucking gross, dude.

I need to be financially independent somehow so my options open up, but that's really tough when I'm going to school, and I know I don't have the capacity to work full time and finish my degree in a reasonable amount of time. And I know that this dirty chaotic environment isn't helping my mental state or my executive functioning ability. But I also don't have the energy or desire to clean up after this man anymore.

#personal #journal

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absveria · 2 years

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The best decision I made this year was quitting service industry and considered a new career path.

I studied 4 years of hospitality, graduated with latin honor, and yes, I do love being a service to others. I love how faces lit up when you contributed something that makes their day. I love making other people special and important. ( i guess people-pleasing is a skill too lol )

But as much as I love it, my introverted, hypersensitive self can’t handle the simulation of everyday. I remember rushing in to the bathroom almost everyday just to throw up cause my anxiety is up to the roof. I feel like my belly being turned upside down and I have to go back out there, talk to people like I’m fine cause that’s what I’m paid for. Just the thought at night that I’m coming in to work already drained the hell out of me. I conserve my energy by avoiding talking to people as much as I can, and yet somehow, at the end of the day, I go home empty. Also, my panic attacks which I only experienced once or twice in college, became too frequent it became normal.

Trust me, I tried. I don’t want to throw away my 4 years worth of sacrifice. I tried to make it work. Be it in the kitchen, cafes and even sushi bars. There’s no spark.

One night, I prayed to God if He could give me a sign (i’m a sucker for signs judge me).

Next day, I saw on Pinterest a japanese kanji that says, “you know, the things you don’t want to do, you don’t have to do after all…” and I snapped.

I remembered I have total control in my life but I was not brave enough.

I did it scared.

I moved out of Nashville.

My first love city. I had two friends with me and that was more than enough ( we all need therapy btw ). I started breaking my own rules. In fact, I got rid of them. I ruined the routine I boxed myself in. I finally had the courage to leave people in their place. I realized I can’t take everything/everyone with me. I dropped the dead weights and moved on. It’s insane how I just started seeing my potential when all this time, I just felt I don’t mount to much. I am, indeed, capable and lovable. When you feel bad, most likely is, you are surrounded by bad things.

So to people like me; ( or will be soon, purya layo lol )

We’re young and we have time. Stop believing that you don’t. Live slowly and head to warm life. Enough with being cool. You’ll be one when you’re dead. For now, bask a lil more under the sunlight. Nurture your relationships whether familial, romantic or platonic. It’s okay if you don’t have all three. Never rush when it comes to love :)

- Jeremiah 17:9

Trust your gut cause that’s probably your guardian angel. Learn a new skill and don’t be frustrated if you suck at it first ( or that’s just me? lol )

Always go. Travel expands your space. You will be humbled with experiences. That’s your teacher.

Meet new people. You never know the power of connections. When taking the risk, especially financially, always test the water with one foot ( learned it the hard way.) Don’t invest your time and energy on people that doesn’t align with your values. It’s a waste and impractical like seriously.

Read!!! I can’t emphasize this enough. In our generation, the access to education is one google away. Learning is a lifelong goal. Don’t miss out!

Let people judge you!

It’s funny how we, humans, naturally judge others for sinning differently. I personally knew people who post bible verses online and goes to church every Sunday yet, their actions tell otherwise.

Let others give you stink eye or cringe to death. When you do you, right people goes out all the way from the other side of the globe, to be with you. You are that special.

Keep being a rockstar!

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daggerfall · 3 years

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Did a random under level 50 battleground with friends and our 4th teammate from the queue ended up being none other than popular build/guide creator HackTheMinotaur, who did almost nothing to help us win the game of Crazy King and just farmed kills the entire match. Never meet your heroes kids

#m plays eso #im mostly joking i dont Really care that much considering how easily we won #and how much they did i guess contribute to keeping the action away from the objectives #it was just funny to be like STAMPLAR SALLY WHAT ARE YOU DOING OVER THERE #or oh hi stamplar sally good to see you again and youre gone #was a good fun match and a neat encounter #m speaks #eso

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tyonfs · 4 years

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game on.

❝ you play your games, and i’ll play mine. ❞

PAIRING ▸ liu yangyang x fem!reader

GENRES ▸ smut, friends to lovers, some fluff and crack

WARNINGS ▸ profanity, hendery being oblivious as fuck, dirty talk, smut, oral sex, some aftercare

SUMMARY ▸ the lines have always been blurred between you and yangyang. you, fed up with your best friend being an absolute boy and gaming away his problems, decided to take matters into your own hands.

WORD COUNT ▸ 3238 words

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ hello! i impulsively wrote this so consider this my contribution for yangyang day ♡ i hope you guys enjoy !!

YOU WERE PISSED.

It wasn’t like you were expecting much. You just wanted to spend the evening with your best friend on the one day you both had time to hang out, but he clearly had other plans. YangYang had been playing video games all day while you were just sitting on his bed and watching him like an idiot. You rolled your eyes, going through your phone for about the umpteenth time as you listened to him yell commands at Hendery.

“Go mid, go mid!” he shouted into his mic, furiously clicking his mouse and tapping keys in tune with his command.

You finally gave up and walked over to him, tapping his shoulder to get his attention. “YangYang,” you called with a frown. “We were supposed to watch a movie tonight.”

YangYang, startled, took off his headphones for a moment to peer up at you. “What did you say? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”

You despised the gentleness of his tone. YangYang was definitely sweet by nature and had good intentions (save for his wild streak), but sometimes he was simply insensitive and ignorant of his actions. You wondered if he knew how annoying it was for you to have to sit on his bed for over an hour just to be ignored. It didn’t exactly help that you had the biggest crush on him and overanalyzed every single word and action.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Fine, YangYang. Keep playing your silly game,” you snapped and went back to his bed with a scowl. “I’ll just sit here and do nothing.”

YangYang seemed to realize that he had been neglecting you, so he mumbled a curt apology to Hendery into his mic and paused his game. It sounded as if Hendery was whining, but YangYang turned off his mic and put his headset down. He got up and walked over to you, sitting at the edge of his bed where you were curled up.

He raised a brow at you. “Happy?”

That tone of his just pissed you off even more.

“You can go back to playing your game if that’s what you want,” you mumbled, clearly jealous that he was prioritizing his game over you.

“I want to spend time with you.” YangYang slid his hand over yours, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry for gaming while you were over.”

You let yourself be vulnerable and crumble for a moment, but then you ducked your head so he couldn’t see, mumbling, “I’ve been waiting here like an idiot.”

“Hug?” he offered, hoping it would make up for his wrongdoings.

You pursed your lips. You refused to give in so easily, especially when it came to Liu YangYang. He had a knack for getting what he wanted with a simple flash of that dazzling grin. In short, you were tired of having to wait for him.

You weren’t sure if that meant wait for him to hang out with you or notice your feelings for him, but both answers seemed to align well.

The lines had always been blurred between you two. It had gotten to the point where even his friends didn’t believe him when he would say he wasn’t dating you. Maybe what gave it away was the way you both would hug for a little too long, or the lingering stares, or maybe even the way he’d hold your hand when he didn’t have to.

However, whenever the topic of dating arose, you’d either shy away from the conversation or change the topic quickly.

“No.” You stood up, dragging him up by the arm and over to his gaming setup. You sat him down in his chair and slung a leg around his thigh, sliding onto his lap. “You keep playing.”

YangYang seemed to stiffen up as you straddled him, tucking your head into his shoulder. He kept you close to him, though, and placed a hesitant hand on the small of your back. You could hear him swallow thickly as he put his headphones back on and rejoined his game. He didn’t question your command, but you could tell he was much more jittery.

You turned your head a little. You could see the blush on his face and the tension in his jaw.

You scooted up further into his lap, noting how he froze as you did. Your arms wrapped around his neck, and although the two of you were practically cuddling, it felt odd with Hendery’s voice coming from YangYang’s headphones.

“Dude, where were you?” Hendery asked. “The enemy team nearly got your turret.”

“Sorry about that,” YangYang apologized, looking like a bundle of nerves, which was something you hadn’t seen before. You shifted slightly and YangYang quickly turned off his mic before cursing under his breath. “D-don’t do that.”

You stilled. YangYang just stammered, and you swore you could hear his breath hitch. A devious part of you wanted to take this further and see where it would go.

“Don’t do what?” you asked innocently, adjusting your position subtly.

There it was.

YangYang’s hard-on pressing into your thigh. The bulge from his grey sweatpants was so obvious, and it sent butterflies to your stomach. You couldn’t stop yourself from exhaling sharply into YangYang’s neck, making his erection grow and your head spin.

“That,” he grunted out, hand coming back from the keyboard to hold your lower back again.

“You seem to be enjoying it,” you observed, biting your lip as you felt him twitch under you.

Your best friend clearly didn’t want to push you, but he was enticed, and it made your heart race. “You mean… you want to?” he asked slowly.

“Yeah,” you said, hiding your face so you didn’t have to meet his eyes. This was all you’ve ever wanted, of course, but you still wanted pay-back for being neglected. “Keep playing your game.”

YangYang continued playing, although you noticed the slight shift. There was a tremor in his hands and he was very unsure about his hand placement every time he came back to hold your back. Although, you underestimated his confidence because when you were least expecting it, he bucked his hips up against yours.

You bit back a mewl, one hand gripping his shoulder tightly as his movements became repetitive. You weren’t looking at him but you knew YangYang was smug, trying to get a response out of you. You arched your hips off of his lap and he grabbed your waist, pushing you back down, right onto his rock-hard boner.

YangYang bit your earlobe as his hot breath fanned the side of your neck. You bit the inside of your cheek to keep quiet, but it was impossible when he was rolling hips up against yours. You could almost picture the smirk on his face.

You whimpered out softly, dangerously close to his mic. Initially, you didn’t mind, only thinking about his reaction to your sounds, until you realized the worst had happened. Fear shot down your spine as you straightened up quickly.

His mic was on.

“What was that?” you heard Hendery ask.

“Louis,” YangYang replied smoothly.

“Louis? He’s at my place.”

“Um…” YangYang trailed off. “Anyways, let’s push bot since we’re at their base.” He turned off his mic again and pulled you back to him, nibbling at the base of your neck. “Panties off,” he murmured, sliding his sweats and boxers down just enough for his cock to spring free.

YangYang had, once again, gotten his way.

Your breath hitched at the sight of his throbbing cock. Desire coiled in your gut, making your entire body flush. You got off of his lap to do as he said, looping your fingers in your belt loops to tease your shorts down.

YangYang did a double take, finding it hard to focus on the game and on you at the same time. His eyes briefly met yours before they trained on your lower body, lust clouding them. Before you could take off your panties, however, YangYang was slain in the game, and had to turn on his mic as Hendery started complaining.

“That jungler is a pain in the ass!” Hendery whined. “But, dude, you’ve only got five kills so far. You good?”

“Yeah, um, I’m not doing so hot this game,” YangYang replied, shooting you a glance and leaning back in his chair as he waited out the cooldown. “The heat’s getting to me, I guess.”

“YangYang, it’s winter,” Hendery replied. YangYang closed his eyes for a moment, opening his mouth to retort, but Hendery continued, “Shit, okay, come mid with me.”

YangYang hummed in agreement and turned his mic off, a darker look in his eyes when he turned to you. “Suck me off, baby,” he said in a low voice, adding, “please.”

“But we were supposed to—”

You stopped yourself as a flush of heat crept up your neck. YangYang looked amused as you bit your lip and got to your knees, crawling toward him so that you were between his legs. When you looked up at him, he looked as if he was at his limit.

YangYang ran his thumb along your lower lip, hand cradling your chin. “I’ll make you feel good after this game, baby,” he reassured.

You nodded, pouting at how flustered he was making you feel. Getting distracted again, YangYang moved his attention to his game again, tapping keys repeatedly. You narrowed your eyes, displeased at the lack of attention.

You play your games, and I’ll play mine, you thought bitterly.

This was an unpredictable jump in your relationship with him, and you were just realizing it as you took ahold of his cock, loving how it twitched in your grip. Your lips grazed the soft skin, causing him to hiss through his teeth, squirming a bit in his seat.

YangYang’s breathing was growing ragged and uneven.

You closed your eyes and took the head of his cock into your mouth, hesitating before sucking lightly on it. You looked up at him through your lashes and smiled at how a vein appeared on his neck. YangYang unmuted his mic to reply to Hendery’s commands, removing his hand from the keyboard to grab your hair in a fistful and push you down on his cock.

A loud whimper escaped you as the head of his cock hit the back of your throat. Finding a balance between teasing and careful, you bobbed your head, relishing how the thick veins along his length pulsated against your tongue. YangYang had to mute again, letting out a low and guttural groan when you started building up a faster rhythm.

He died again in the game.

Loser, you thought childishly.

But now, YangYang could focus on you while he was on cooldown. He tugged at your hair, whining when you pulled off of him. You met his eyes and lapped at his slit that was leaking with precum. YangYang’s eyes darkened and he thrusted back into your mouth, making you whimper as you suddenly took him in your throat. You moaned against his cock and let him fuck your throat, digging your nails into his thighs.

You were startled when he seized up, grunting as his hot seed shot down your throat. You swallowed it and pulled off of him, wiping your mouth with a proud glint dancing in your eyes.

YangYang let out a pleased little sigh. “Sit on my lap, baby.”

His cooldown was over.

You got up from your spot on the floor and straddled his lap again, but YangYang was wrecked. He saw your eager expression and chuckled, bemused. He unmuted his mic to speak to Hendery but let his fingers dip into your panties, rubbing his slender fingers against your clit in slow circles.

“P-please,” you breathed out, hands gripping his shoulders for leverage.

“Patience, baby,” YangYang cooed in your ear.

“What did you just call me?” Hendery’s dumbfounded voice resounded from the speakers. “Did you say baby?”

“You’re hearing things,” YangYang brushed off while you wanted to die of embarrassment.

“Yo, we did it!” Hendery cheered a minute later while YangYang was still working on your clit. The words victory flashed across the screen in bright blue. “Dude, you wanna play TFT to celebrate?”

“Yeah, no,” YangYang said bluntly, ending the call and tossing his headphones onto his desk so he could turn his attention to you. He ghosted his hands along your sides. “I have my prize right here.”

“YangYang,” you whined out since he left your clit alone before you could finish.

“I’m sorry for ignoring you,” he mumbled, kissing down the column of your neck. “Let me make it up to you.”

YangYang rubbed your hips in slow circles before removing your shirt carefully, examining your body with hungry eyes. He leaned forward to press kisses from your stomach to your chest, making your heart thunder in your chest. When he reached your chest, his hands slid to the back to unhook your bra. With an easy snap, he unhooked the undergarment and slid the straps down, biting his lip at the sight of you in full glory.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, peppering kisses around your nipple and then sucking lightly on the bud.

“YangYang,” you cried out softly.

Your best friend broke away for a moment to open his drawer behind you pulling out a little silver packet. You watched him tear it open and slide the latex around his throbbing cock. How he managed to get it up again was beyond your understanding. After all, horny boys will be horny boys.

He leaned back in his seat, smirking up at you. “Go ahead, baby, fuck yourself on my cock,” he instructed, grabbing his shirt by the nape so he could slide it off, revealing his v-cut abs.

You swallowed hard.

First of all, YangYang was absolutely hung.

Second of all, you had no experience in this field of sexual activity. This was feeling more like paranormal activity because you had no idea how his massive cock was going to fit inside you without rearranging your guts.

“But you’re so… big,” you whispered, looking at his length as he gave it a few pumps.

A soft look crossed YangYang’s face. He picked you up easily, hands gripping your thighs as he laid you on his bed. There was so much care and softness to his touch as he got over you and lined himself with your entrance. The way he looked down at you was full of pure adoration and it made your breath get caught in your throat.

“Ready?” he asked, moving your hair out of your face.

You bit your lip and nodded, bracing yourself by holding onto his shoulders.

You thought he would start, but to your surprise, he pressed his lips to yours, one hand gently cupping your face. You kissed him back fervently, wrapping your arms around his neck. Lost in the taste of his lips, YangYang slowly pushed himself into you, a strangled groan tearing past his lips at how tight you were. You broke from the kiss to tuck your face into his shoulder, crying out as you were stuck in the crossroads of pain and pleasure.

YangYang’s grip on your waist tightened. “Fuck, babygirl.”

“You’re so big,” you replied with a pleased sigh, your hand sliding up the nape of his neck to curl into his hair. Your hips shifted a little as your walls adjusted around him.

“Damn right I am,” YangYang replied smugly, starting to thrust in you at a leisurely pace. He slid a hand into your hair and groaned as your walls squeezed around him. “God, your cunt’s so fucking tight.”

“Oh, shut up,” you huffed, flustered by his comment. A moan escaped your lips when he hit a certain spot in you that set you on fire. “R-right there!”

“Nice and vocal,” he cooed, slowing down his pace in favor of deeper thrusts, “just how I like it.” A groan tore past his lips as he fucked you into the mattress. “I want to feel this,” he growled. “I want to feel you.”

Waves of pleasure hit you with each thrust, overwhelming you to the point of tears streaming down your face. He was so big and you could feel him in your lower abdomen, but the pain eased away and you could only feel yourself on the edge of euphoria.

“Shit, YangYang, it feels so good,” you mewled out weakly. “H-harder.”

YangYang grabbed ahold of your legs and moved them over his shoulders while he pinned your hips down. He let out a shaky breath and slammed into you harder, making sure to linger whenever he went as deep as he could. You were a moaning mess by now, holding onto him for dear life as he pounded inside of you.

You were already so close, pre-stimulated from him fingering your clit earlier, and his powerful thrusts were making you lose your grip.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

You nodded weakly, meeting his intense gaze. “I think I’m close,” you told him in a breath.

“Cum for me, angel,” YangYang urged, moving his hand down to rub your clit again as he quickened his pace. “I want to hear you say my name. Who’s making you cum?”

“Y-you, YangYang,” you sobbed, digging your nails into his back. “F-fuck—”

You couldn’t even finish what you were saying, nor did you remember what you were going to say because you fell off the edge first. You broke apart in front of him, crying out in pure bliss as you released against his cock. The pleasure in your gut that was building up had now flooded your body, but YangYang still fucked you through your orgasm until he, too, fell apart.

Sweat beaded your flushed skin, but you only noticed it when YangYang’s forehead was against yours, his breathing slow and heavy. He pulled out of you, using up the little energy he had to toss the used condom in the trash before he trudged back to his bed. He got in next to you and pulled you to his body, enveloping you into his warmth.

“I’m sorry if I was too rough,” he mumbled against your skin.

You were still catching your breath, still winded from your orgasm. Now, YangYang was so tender, so gentle, that you were at a loss for words. It was almost laughable compared to the filthy words that were coming from his mouth early.

You cuddled close to him, wrapping a leg around his hip. “Don’t be,” you said with a smile. “It felt really good.”

YangYang grinned and kissed your forehead, your cheeks, then pressed a chaste kiss to your lips. You scrunched up your nose at the contact but he just kissed all over your face.

“I’m glad you felt the same way,” he murmured. “I was starting to get scared that we would just have perpetual tension between us forever.”

“Of course not,” you said with a laugh. “Xiaojun would’ve beat you up if you kept denying anything between us.”

“Well, now I can stop denying it, at least,” he mused, holding up your hand to his lips so he could kiss your knuckles.

“I still can’t believe we did that.”

“I mean,” YangYang started, plastering an easy smile on his face, “I’m always good to go again.”

Needless to say, you ended up taking him up on that offer for a few more rounds.

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iliveiloveiwrite · 3 years

Text

make me be true, make me be blue // Anthony Bridgerton

A/N: As much as I love Benedict, I also love Anthony. The last part of this is extremely inspired by a scene from The Crown - let’s see if you can guess which one! Title: Harry Connick jr - It Had To Be You

Pairing: Anthony Bridgerton x Fem!Reader

Warnings: arguing, an argument, lots of love and fluff, caring, established relationship, married couple, suggestiveness, female pronouns, use of word ‘wife’.

Word count: 2.8k

As the season in London drew to a close, it could be seen on every face that they were tired of the dancing and the music and the lukewarm lemonade. It was never a comment on the talent of the musicians unless, perhaps, it was a Smythe-Smith musical. Their seasonal musical was never welcomed with much excitement, but very few could say no to the quartet of young women.

Nevertheless, whomever the artist may be, many were glad for the season to draw to a close. Sighing tiredly, you bid your goodbyes to the latest lady to draw you into conversation. Your lavender skirts swish gently under foot as you wander around the lavishly decorated ballroom, in search for your dear husband.

You spy his hair first; the dark brown hair standing a head taller than the rest of the men he currently spoke with. Repressing another tired sigh, you note that the elderly white-haired men Anthony was standing with were of large importance in society.

“The Revolution was over two decades ago, and it seems France traded in one monarch for another,” is what you hear as you sidle up to Anthony. He smiles down at you, hooking his arm through yours, before turning his attention back to the conversation.

Anthony nods along; his interest piqued but not to the point where he would happily contribute to the debate. Instead, he simply offers, “True, a king for an emperor.”

“Surely Napoleon is still in exile,” You comment lightly, eyebrows furrowing at the topic of conversation between the men. They would never see a day of war between them; having enough money between them meaning they would not have dress in a uniform. As such, there was no need for the conversation.

“Dear girl, Napoleon left Elba and landed back in Paris last week. Do you read the papers?” Lord Hugo states, a dismissive look on his face as if questioning your very presence in the conversation. He frowns at your comfortable stance next to your husband, wondering why you aren’t socialising with the other wives.

A flush heats your body; rising anger. Turning to Anthony, you squeeze the hand that rests on his forearm, a silent plea for help but your husband remains silent.

Ducking your head, you state through clenched teeth, “Pardon me, Lord Hugo. I must be making a round of the room; I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was neglecting my womanly duties.”

“As you should,” The Lord replies as you turn your back to him. You bristle from the comment, back straightening despite the corset designed to do such an action. It wouldn’t be long now until Anthony wrapped up the conversation; seeking you out through the crowd. For you however, the ball was over – nothing left to be said.

------------

Stalking through the large house, you ignore the increasing calls of your husband. Having left the carriage in a hurry of skirts, silks and ribbons, Anthony had begun immediately calling your name – wanting you to stop and wait, to stop and listen.

Even the Butler remains silent as he catches a glimpse of your face and the thunderous expression it currently holds. Silently, the Butler offers a prayer for the wellbeing of Viscount Anthony Bridgerton.

“You’re really going to remain silent?” Anthony calls from the bottom of the staircase, one foot poised on the bottom step, ready to launch himself upstairs at a moment’s call.

Pausing in your retreat, you throw a glare at your husband. A look that definitely shows you were not up for talking on the stairs.

Anthony nods, seemingly understanding this. “So it’s the silent treatment until we’re in our room,” He pauses, beginning the ascent to the bedroom he has shared with you since the first night of your marriage, “Understandable.”

You roll your eyes, walking away from the man that had managed to vex you so thoroughly.

Shoving open the door to your shared bedroom does little to siphon off some of the anger you feel. In fact, it only increases when you try to work the laces of your dress free by yourself, frustrated tears brewing in the corner of your eyes as you manoeuvre yourself into every position possible to try and free yourself.

Slumping at your dressing table, you come to realise that it was more humiliation that you felt.

Your husband was a marvellous man; intelligent, funny, respectful and incredibly handsome. Yet, he had moments where he could so fantastically obtuse.

The moment played in your mind on a constant loop; the words of disdain from the Lord, Anthony’s silence. A constant loop in your mind; it would be a while before your mind rested enough to let you have some peace.

Brushing your hands through your hair, you loosen the pins that keep in place, beginning the painstaking process of removing them. All the while thinking that if the night had gone better, Anthony would be the one removing them, offering you a kiss for each pin removed.

--------

Anthony had taken his time walking to the bedroom, running through the events of the evening, thinking where he might have gone wrong – said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing. He found the moment; realised what he had said or rather, what he hadn’t said, and how it had come across. Lord Hugo was an incredibly influential man, and whilst Anthony outranked him in his peerage, his youth made him all but an inexperienced whelp in Hugo’s eyes.

Hindsight was truly an excellent gift to possess. He should have said something; Hugo’s influence be damned. He should have spoken up; should have defended you.

Gently, he rests his forehead against the closed door of the bedroom. He takes a deep breath and places a hand on the wooden panel; desperate to reach through to you, but he knows that there is far more on your mind than comfort at this point.

Anthony enters the bedroom slowly, closing the door softly behind him. “Are you ready to talk me now, darling?” Anthony asks, voice soft but tone wary as he takes in your defeated state.

“You humiliated me in front of that odious man by staying silent.”

His eyes widen; truly unaware of such a misdeed taking place. “I didn’t know, truly.”

“That’s what hurts most, Anthony. This is not a marriage of equals, darling. I know you love me as much as I love you, but I have brought nothing to this marriage. I did not get the pleasure to go to university despite doing so well in my studies. I cannot travel freely, and I cannot speak my mind whenever I damn well please. There are going to be some topics that I am not going to be an expert on, but you can try your best not to defend me when I get things wrong.”

“Darling, I didn’t mean any harm.”

You sniffle, wiping away the few tears that have dared to fall. “I know you didn’t, yet it still happened.”

Anthony opens and closes his mouth, searching for something – anything – to say that could make this better, but nothing comes to mind, so nothing leaves his mouth.

A pained noise leaves your lips as you turn away from your husband, reaching for your face cream, your hairbrush – anything to keep your hands busy and the tears at bay.

Finally, a sigh is all you hear, and you figure that the conversation is done for the evening. A lingering kiss is placed to the top of your head before Anthony leaves the bedroom, presumably retiring to his study.

Once free of the confines your dress, you dress for bed, crawling under the covers. Running a hand down your face, you couldn’t help but hope Anthony would join you soon. Despite the anger you felt at the man, you couldn’t fall asleep without him next to you.

---------

You wake alone. Anthony’s side of the bed is ruffled; he had joined you an hour after you had slide under the covers. He hadn’t said anything; he had simply gathered you in his arms, holding you tightly, pressing apologetic kiss after apologetic kiss to whatever piece of bare skin he could reach.

Stretching a hand to his side of the bed, the sheets are cold. Reaching for his pillow, you hold it to your face, inhaling the spiciness of whatever cologne he used last night. Keeping the pillow close, you turn onto your back, thinking over the events of last night.

You had every right to be annoyed; you had every right to feel the way you did. If this was a different society, you would not rely on Anthony to defend you – you would have spoken your mind to Lord Hugo. But this was not a different society, and its trappings were stifling. For the hope of future generations, you couldn’t help but pray things would soon change.

------------

The day moves slowly. Tea with Anthony’s mother and sisters followed by a visit to the modiste. No sign of Anthony with every visit home and your mood drops with every shake of the Butler’s head.

Eventually, you find refuge in the library, searching through the books and the papers there. It had been so long since you had read something that was not a romance. Pride and Prejudice had been published just two years ago and you had read it countless times; enjoying the author’s way with words and her creation of Mr. Darcy. However, instead of picking up the latest romance, you chose to return to the books you had so adored in your education – historical accounts of past monarchs and their reigns, accounts of wars.

It was not for the sake of Lord Hugo who sneered at you with such derision; it was for your benefit. Knowledge was free and you owned the library through marriage, why shouldn’t you take a look?

-----------

The Butler clearing his throat is what brings your attention back to the present. Having lost yourself so freely in an account of the witch hunts that had plagued the north of England; the book had caught your eye, tucked away and gathering dust. The subject had immediately caught your interest, and you soon found yourself searching for all the books you could on the subject.

Smiling sheepishly at the Butler, you ask, “Have some guests arrived? I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

He shakes his head, smiling fondly at you, “I thought you would like to know that the Viscount has returned home. He is currently in his study.”

Standing from your chair, you deposit your book on a table before thanking the Butler and rushing up the stairs to Anthony’s study. You pause just outside the door, gathering yourself, tidying your appearance and slowing your breathing to an acceptable rate.

Knocking on the door, your heart begins to pound in your chest as you hear his warm voice giving you permission to enter.

Anthony freezes in his chair when he sees you enter his study. Your eyes are bright and there’s a faint flush to your skin that has Anthony’s eyes raking over your body, curious to know what’s caused such a reaction in you.

“Darling,” He greets, voice kind and warm.

“Darling,” You reply, watching the smile grow across his face when he hears the fondness in your voice.

“How has your day been?” Anthony asks, drawing out the inevitable conversation.

You smile widely, “I spent most of it in the library, reading.”

“A new romance novel?”

You shake your head, smoothing down the skirts of your sage green dress, “The trials of the Berwick and Pendle witches.”

Anthony’s eyes widen almost comically. “I didn’t even know we had books on the topic.”

“Neither did I, but I’ve been reading through the accounts all day. It truly is fascinating. Did you know History was my strongest subject when I was in education?”

Again, Anthony shakes his head. He didn’t know; he hadn’t asked. You shrug, “Arithmetic, Geography, Latin… They never grasped me as much as History did. I would read for hours about whatever I could find: the Tudors, the Saxons, military strategy…” At the further widening of Anthony’s eyes, you continue, “I suppose as I grew older and I was then out as a debutante, I lost the habit.”

“Perhaps,” Anthony murmurs before saying, “You can always find the habit again.”

You smile widely; the grin brightening your face as it stretches to your eyes. “I was hoping you’d say that darling,” You begin, “I want to be more involved, Anthony. I don’t want to be a silent partner; I want to be there; I want to comment. I want to know what is happening with foreign affairs whether it is Napoleon or the price of tea. I want to know because I want to be on a more equal footing with you. I refuse to be humiliated that way again; it was awful, to be dismissed in that manner by that loathsome man.”

You stand before your husband, chest heaving in your restrictive dress. The words lay loud in the room; your plea for Anthony to speak up for you, your demand for further equality in your marriage.

“I called on Lord Hugo this afternoon,” Anthony states rather plainly after you fall silent, as if the meeting had been in his date book for months.

“You did?” You frown at him; wondering whether he had heard a single word that you had flung into the great expanse.

He nods. “He was rather surprised to see me. I’ll admit I didn’t plan on calling on him, but I kept thinking of last night and how destroyed you looked. I don’t ever want to see that look on your face again for as long as I shall live. So,” He shrugs, “I paid the Lord a visit.”

“How did it go?”

Anthony holds his right up and it is then that you see the dark purple now beginning to bruise his knuckles. “I may have lost my temper when I remembered how he spoke to you and how you felt afterwards,” Anthony pauses and then laughs loudly, “And I may have punched him in the face.”

“Anthony!” You berate, repressing the urge to roll your eyes at your ever vexing husband. “Is anything broken?”

He shakes his head, smiling widely, “Only Hugo’s nose.”

“My hero,” You drawl, heart racing as you take in the man that you married. The smart, brilliant and hot-headed man that you promised your forever to who had defended your honour against the man who had rudely spoken to you last night. He grins cheekily at your words, wiggling his fingers to show you that there was nothing broken – he was fine.

“You can read whatever you’d like,” He states firmly, “You can study whatever you like. Humiliate the man if there’s a next time.”

“Thank you,” You reply, holding your head high as you smile gratefully at the love of your life.

Anthony stands from his chair, having now recovered from the shock of your speech and the ease of which he can accept your demands. He had never been the easiest man to get along with; stubborn and set in his ways long before he ought to have been, but you had taken him in your stride, loving him just as fiercely as he loved you.

He rounds the desk. All the while his gaze does not leave yours. A sensual smile spreads across his face as he watches you wring your hands together – a nervous tic if there ever was any.

Leaning against the desk, Anthony crosses his ankles, resting hands upon the lip of his desk. He remains happy in the knowledge that even after the honeymoon period of your marriage was over, you would still track his every move. Your eyes dancing over his figure as he rests his weight upon the desk.

“There’s something different about you,” He finally says, breaking the silence of the room.

“Oh?” You whisper, your shoulders rolling back as you try to think about what could have changed – a new dress? A new attitude?

“You’re surer of yourself. It makes you look taller.”

“I don’t particularly think I’ve gained any height.”

“Perhaps not,” Anthony allows; a seductive smile on his face as he tilts his head to one side, regarding you. “But it presents me with two options.”

“And they are?”

“Well,” He begins, running a hand through his thick hair, “I could go and find a ladder to reach the new height of my tall wife or…”

Anthony trails off, leaving you in suspense as you find yourself taking those first few steps closer to him. Desperate to be in his arms, to be touched by the man you love - body and soul.

“Or…” You breathe; voice raspy with growing need.

“Or” Anthony beams, “She can get on her knees.”

***********

Bridgerton taglist: @heloisedaphnebrightmore @dreaming-about-fanfictions @now-its-time-for-a-breakdown @janelongxox @aspiringsloth20 @wallwriterstuff

#anthony bridgerton #anthony bridgerton x reader #anthony x reader #bridgerton fanfiction #bridgerton #anthony bridgerton fanfic #anthony bridgerton fanfiction #anthony bridgerton imagines

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

There was a comment a while back about NMJ having capybara energy. So have a cracky prompt of some strategists in the Sunshot Campaign deciding how this could be weaponized, or used as an interrogation technique. If they give cooperate and give information, they can be in a cuddle pile with NMJ.

ao3

The worst part about war was, unquestionably, the war itself.

The loss of life, the injuries, the stress – the agonizing terror of knowing that each moment might be your last, the painful boredom of waiting for something to happen, the shaking anxiety of never knowing which one the day would bring. Watching your friends and family suffer, watching innocent people suffer…it was grotesquely awful in ways Lan Xichen had never even dreamed of it being.

And yet, as if war wasn’t bad enough by itself, it also had – side effects.

Evil creatures thrived on resentful energy, their own or others’, gathered at sites of death or violence, and there was nothing that they liked better than the wasted spiritual energy that accompanied the untimely death of cultivators. This war, sect against sect, was a breeding ground for all the creatures that they ought to be night-hunting, not encouraging.

Led by Nie Mingjue, who never forgot his obligations, their side – the Four Great Sects, that was – took care of the innocent people who were being harmed by their war, protecting them from the immediate aftereffects, settling them in new places if their homes were damaged, making sure they weren’t caught in the middle of ongoing battle. Sects that skimped on their duties to the common people were mercilessly cut off in turn, where necessary, and Nie Mingjue had even demanded that Lanling Jin personally recompense an entire village that had lost their homes due to their negligence or else face the next Wen attack without his aid – the cost of doing so was negligible for them, but the humiliating loss of face among the rest of the sects that he had even had felt the need to make the threat, coupled with the fact that they really did need his help, served as an extremely potent reminder for everyone else.

When possible, the sects devoted some resources to night-hunting, trying to restrain the effects of their war, but it was like trying to hold back an avalanche that had already started: they could mitigate some of the damage, but until the war was over, it would only get worse and worse.

It didn’t help, naturally, that the Wen sect’s leaders didn’t care one whit about the effects of their actions.

Wen Ruohan loudly blamed the other Great Sects for it, claiming that they were ‘rebelling’ against him – as if they hadn’t all been equal just before – and that the heavens were punishing them for their violation of the natural order; his commanders followed suit, disdaining even the distraction of night-hunting and making dismissive promises that it would all be resolved when the war was won.

Still, however Wen Ruohan felt, however his generals and commanders felt, even they couldn’t ignore all the effects.

Especially not the ones that hit everyone equally.

“More nightmares?” Lan Xichen asked Jiang Cheng as he came into the command tent, rubbing his red eyes and looking awful. They all looked awful, but the recent affliction of dream-eaters that had swept through their camp and the enemy’s was especially vicious - particularly on those like Jiang Cheng, who had already existing trauma and were already burdened by nightmares. They were killing the creatures that generated the nightmares as quickly as possible, but there was only so much they could do with the encampment of the Wen sect not far away, waiting for a display of weakness that would give them the opportunity to attack.

The Wen sect were afflicted by the dream-eaters, too, and under any other circumstances Lan Xichen would propose that they raise the flag of truce long enough to eradicate the menace. Unfortunately, the Wen sect had proved themselves fundamentally untrustworthy – Jiang Cheng’s own family situation told the story quite vividly, even if Lan Xichen didn’t have to only close his eyes to see the burning of the Cloud Recesses – and so they all just suffered, instead.

“Bad ones,” Jiang Cheng said grimly, and nodded at Wei Wuxian, who had followed him into the tent looking, somehow, even worse. Not a great surprise, given that he’d been trapped in the Burial Mounds and now utilized resentful energy as a weapon – he had to be even more susceptible to the nightmares than the rest of them, but there was nothing to be done about it; his new cultivation style was too valuable for him to stop now. If Lan Xichen had to guess, Wei Wuxian was working himself to the bone and collapsing into nightmares, never getting any rest; his eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard, his waist too thin.

When Lan Wangji entered the tent next and saw Wei Wuxian there, looking half-dead, his face immediately twisted in what Lan Xichen recognized as clear concern. Poor Lan Wangji was suffering, too, although perhaps Lan Xichen was the only one who could tell.

Lan Xichen felt a stab of pain on all their behalf, all of them, and handed out tea to strengthen their spirits. He’d selected the most energizing blend he could find in preparation for this meeting, their first in several weeks – they were all fighting their own fronts, Lanling Jin in Langya, Qinghe Nie in Hejian, so on and so forth, but they needed to coordinate, and these in-person meetings were the best option for it.

And they really needed to discuss what to do about this new nightmare scourge.

“I think it’s like this for everyone,” Jiang Cheng said, accepting the tea, and Lan Xichen was just in the middle of nodding when he heard a strange sound – laughter, of all things.

They all turned to stare at the door, where Nie Huaisang was walking in, followed by an exhausted-looking Jin Zixuan as his father’s representative. It had been Lan Xichen who had asked for Nie Huaisang to be brought here from his refuge at the Cloud Recesses, thinking that this highly protected meeting was as close to safety on the battlefield as they could get and that it would be good for Nie Mingjue to see his little brother safe and sound.

Of all of them, they needed Nie Mingjue to remain strong. He was the Great Sects’ most effective general, their most terrifying war god; he was as viciously effective a general as he was a frontline fighter, designing many of the strategies they all used and providing many of their sects with critical assistance even though his Nie sect and its affiliated sects were the least numerous of the Great Sects, excluding only the significantly diminished forces of the Jiang sect.

More than his personal contribution, though, he’d become something of a lucky talisman for the rest of them. Lan Xichen had heard all sorts of stories about each and every one of them - Jiang Cheng as the resurrected phoenix, unkillable; Wei Wuxian as a demon barely leashed and used for their own purposes; Lan Xichen himself as a beacon of light bringing hope to those who needed it most - but that was nothing compared to what was said and believed about Nie Mingjue: that as long as Chifeng-zun was there, inexorable and inviolable, the unquestioned king of Hejian, the Wen sect’s eventual defeat was inevitable.

Even Lan Xichen found himself thinking it, reassuring himself late at night that all their efforts were not for nothing, that it would all end well in the end.

It wasn’t a healthy way of thinking, not for them and least of all for Nie Mingjue himself, who had to live up to that terrible reputation, but it was what was getting them through each day of this terrible war. So if there was something within Lan Xichen’s power to help Nie Mingjue keep himself together, he would do it, no matter the risk.

Nie Huaisang had arrived at their encampment the day before, with Nie Mingjue himself arriving even later, coming very late at night, and now it was morning and Nie Huaisang was laughing.

Laughing free and easy as if he didn’t have a care in the world, no less, and probably at one of his own jokes; Jin Zixuan was looking at him as if he’d never seen such a strange and wonderous thing in his life, and Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian and…well, everyone, really, were all following suit. They’d all laughed in recent days, of course, war lending itself to black humor, but Nie Huaisang looked so light-hearted.

So…well-rested.

“Huaisang,” Lan Xichen said, blinking owlishly at him. “You look…good.” No, that wasn’t the word he was looking for. “Healthy.”

Not in need of sleep, he meant.

“Oh, well, you know,” Nie Huaisang demurred, hiding his face behind his fan. “I’m happy to see da-ge, that’s all. I get to comfort myself that he’s well and get a good night’s sleep for once; why wouldn’t I be well? Nothing much to it.”

“Good night’s sleep?” Jiang Cheng echoed, looking disbelieving – as well he should, too. Their current encampent was right next to one of the worst collections of nightmare afflicting creatures, the vicious dream-eaters that confused the mind and injured the spirit. “You got a good night’s sleep?”

“Better here than in the Cloud Recesses?” Wei Wuxian asked, rubbing his eyes. “Really?”

“Uh, yes?” Nie Huaisang said, and now it was his turn to blink at them. “My da-ge is here. I slept well and untroubled for the first time in ages.”

“That sounds...nice,” Jin Zixuan said, rubbing his eyes as well – probably inspired by Wei Wuxian. Such things were communicative. “You must have been worried about him.”

“Oh, da-ge will be fine, I’m sure,” Nie Huaisang said blithely, and Lan Xichen suppressed the abrupt and overwhelming desire to punch him. “But I have nightmares sometimes, you know, and there’s no reason not to use medicine if it’s available, right?”

“Medicine?” Lan Wangji asked, voice intent, and Lan Xichen went from mild irritation to sadness at once: for Lan Wangji to ask such a thing, to show such weakness, the nightmares must be very bad indeed.

“Yes, my da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said. “He’s nightmare-proof.”

“I’m glad that that works for you,” Jiang Cheng said snippily. “Pity about the rest of us.”

Nie Huaisang frowned at him. “It’s not just me,” he said. “It’s just how he is. Don’t you know?”

Lan Xichen was going to intervene and settle them down – their tempers were all unduly short, given the nightmare situation, and he really didn’t want to have to deal with that before having to cope with the same from Nie Mingjue, whose temper was extremely short at the best of times – but then just as he was opening his mouth to say something he was suddenly hit by an overwhelming feeling of sudden calm, the same sort of pleasant languor that came in the early morning of a calm rest day where you didn’t need to get out of bed, or perhaps in a warm and lazy afternoon when you had nothing to do and were considering a nap.

It was amazing.

Lan Xichen could see the same effect taking hold of the others, too: Jin Zixuan let out a little sigh, Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji both rocked back a little on their heels, eyes sliding closed in pleasure, Wei Wuxian actually let out a near-audible whimper of relief –

And then Nie Mingjue walked into the command tent.

“Good morning,” he said. He looked as steady as always, a tall and unshakable mountain; his brow was creased in his usual expression of neutral ill-humor and one could arguably feel the heat of his always simmering temper, but at the moment it just felt like warmth. “It’s good to see you all.”

They all murmured greetings in return, watching as Nie Mingjue – and the aura of calm relaxation that, apparently, accompanied him – passed them by and went towards the table where they had laid out all their plans. Unconsciously, they followed after him, drifting in his wake, each of them edging closer to him without ever having made a decision on it; as the other sect leaders who were leading the war showed up, they did the same, and by the time the usual pleasantries had concluded and the meeting was about to start, Nie Mingjue could barely turn around without nearly bumping into someone who had drifted too close.

Lan Xichen really ought to tell them to stop – he was the courier, the connection between the sects, familiar with each and every one of them – but he found himself instead abusing his position and his history as Nie Mingjue’s old friend to finagle a place at his right side, just behind his shoulder, and just stood there, his eyes half-lidded as he basked in the feeling. It was a little like really good meditation, he thought, the type that centered you and grounded you, let you be steady and hold your ground, come what may.

As the general, Nie Mingjue opened the meeting, running through the usual updates – he was short and to the point as always, which invariably made these meetings run significantly better because after a start like that even the most long-winded and shameless of old men felt a bit constrained to keep their words within the realm of the reasonable. After he finished detailing their current positions, the Wen sect’s latest moves and his predictions on their next, certain counters he planned to use – all at a very high level of generality, of course, in the event of spies – Nie Mingjue looked around, frowning a little: they had been all listening with surprising quietude, not a single objection or comment among them the way there usually was.

“Is there any other business?” he asked.

One of the leaders of a smaller sect – Sect Leader Ouyang – visibly shook himself and coughed. “The…scourge?”

“Scourge?” Nie Mingjue scowled. “What scourge? Has there been a greater than usual resurgence of evil creatures? What type? Why was I not informed?”

Lan Xichen looked at his old friend as though seeing him for the first time, as though abruptly realizing that your old familiar pillow was in fact a wonderous treasured pearl to be held carefully in one’s hand.

“It’s dream-eaters,” Jiang Cheng said, sounding blank and surprised. “The sort that cause nightmares...you know the type, surely? Common enough and usually fairly harmless, but there’s a whole lot of them and they’re breeding faster than we can kill them – not unless we devote ourselves just to the task, which we can’t do. Has - has the Nie sect not suffered from this affliction?”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said, frowning, and he seemed oddly discomforted, the reason for which he immediately revealed: “In fact, I’ve never seen a dream-eater. They’re not common in Qinghe, I think.”

That was impossible, of course – dream-eaters were notorious for being a pest that could be found anywhere, no matter what the climate or terrain; it was a little like saying that your household had never known a rat.

Although, Lan Xichen supposed, one could see such a statement being made by the single household in the village possessed of a cat…

“That was one of the main reasons I wanted to have this meeting,” he said, clearing his throat. He had told most of the sect leaders that it would be on the agenda, but he hadn’t had time to meet with Nie Mingjue, nor had he needed to – as the general, Nie Mingjue’s presence was a necessity, and so Lan Xichen had known that he would be there and had assumed (incorrectly, it seemed) that he would obviously want to devote some time to the issue. “It has been a rise in the number of such creatures, and yet we cannot divert attention from our frontline. Surely there must be some solution?”

“If it’s so severe, then we could strike a balance,” Nie Mingjue said, looking relieved at the possibility of turning the discussion onto the practical. “Those sects in regions with less ongoing strife could send teams to other fronts specifically to aid in eliminating the dream-eaters –”

“How has Qinghe Nie not suffered from the affliction?” The person interrupting was one of the sect leaders affiliated with Lanling Jin, even though Jin Zixuan turned and glared death at him. “Whatever can be said about dream-eaters in Qinghe, Hejian certainly doesn’t lack them, or at least it never has before. If there is some means of resisting them, it ought to be shared.”

That particular sect leader had arrived late and was seated relatively far back; perhaps he was out of range of Nie Mingjue, and hadn’t noticed – or perhaps, and more likely, he was simply being obnoxious and looking for an opportunity to snatch up whatever talisman Nie Mingjue was using to relieve the effects of the dream-eaters for Lanling Jin’s benefit. As if they had some greater claim to it, when they were doing the least of the fighting..!

“I haven’t seen them,” Nie Mingjue said, his face black with annoyance that Lan Xichen knew was merely a cover for embarrassment. “Not even in Hejian.”

Nie Huaisang giggled behind his fan. “That’s not your fault, da-ge,” he said. “They run away when they see you coming. Isn’t that right, Xiaochun-shushu?”

Eyes turned to the man standing by Nie Mingjue’s side – one of the Nie sect commanders – who looked a little awkward to be put on the spot, shifting his weight and clearing his throat. “To the extent it has been an issue at any of our outposts, we usually ask the Sect Leader to check in on morale, which generally resolves the issue,” he said circumspectly, and Nie Mingjue looked minorly outraged at the suggestion that his entire sect apparently used him as a way to ward off a creature usually classified as a minor pest. Without telling him, no less.

“So the effect is not caused by a talisman or spiritual instrument?” Sect Leader Yao asked, looking disappointed. “Nothing that can be duplicated?”

“What effect?” Nie Mingjue asked.

“Perhaps we could ask Sect Leader Nie to visit some of the other territories?” another sect leader suggested.

“And risk Hejian? Don’t be ridiculous,” Jiang Cheng said, though he looked sorely tempted.

“What effect?” Nie Mingjue asked again.

“I wonder if the Wen sect is suffering to the extent we are,” Wei Wuxian said thoughtfully, spinning his flute in his hand. “We have some prisoners of war, don’t we? They might be inclined to share more information if they were a little more relaxed. Don’t you think?”

“Especially following a state of heightened distress,” Jin Zixuan said, nodding. “The relief will be much more pronounced, which could lower their defenses –”

“Maybe we could even get –”

“Xichen,” Nie Mingjue hissed in his ear as the debate began in earnest, each sect leader rushing forward to add in their views. “What are they talking about?”

Lan Xichen looked helplessly at Nie Huaisang who scuttled over. “It’s the dream-eaters, da-ge,” he said in an undertone. “Sustained exposure. People get tired, cranky, irritable; their cultivation is weakened, their focus impaired…they become simultaneously less sensitive to certain things, like social niceties, and more sensitive to other things. Like a feeling of steadiness and reliability.”

“…so?” Nie Mingjue said.

“So a lot of people are noticing for the first time that you’re very – uh – grounding.”

“Grounding,” Nie Mingjue said skeptically. “Like…a lightning rod?”

It wasn’t quite the metaphor Lan Xichen would have gone with.

“It’s always like this?” he asked Nie Huaisang, fascinated, and Nie Huaisang nodded. “Why didn’t I notice?”

“You probably noticed subconsciously?” Nie Huaisang guessed. “People like being around da-ge, even when they don’t like him. Anyway, you’re usually very steady yourself, Xichen-gege –” Nie Mingjue sighed at his brother’s rudeness. “– so you probably didn’t notice that you were feeling even more so. In our sect, you’ll find parents coming by to drop off their kids next to da-ge; they follow him like a flock of ducklings, it’s the only thing that keeps them quiet…”

“I thought they just liked watching me train?”

“I mean, they like that, too, da-ge, I’m sure. But mostly people just feel safe when you’re around.”

Safe. Yes, that was what it felt like, calm and safe and secure, like there was a rock-solid foundation to the world that nothing could tear down; like even if Nie Mingjue were at the end of his rope, he would still do everything he could not to let you down.

“It’s very nice,” Lan Xichen said.

Nie Mingjue was pinching the bridge of his nose. “Huaisang,” he said. “If this is such a common phenomenon, why didn’t anyone tell me about it?”

“To be honest, we were a little worried that it’d go away if anyone pointed it out to you,” Nie Huaisang said. “Apparently not. Good!”

“This is ridiculous. I’m a sect leader, a front-line fighter, a general…I can’t go traipsing around fighting dream-eaters. We have a war to fight!”

“People fight better if they can sleep,” Nie Huaisang said wisely, and Lan Xichen nodded in firm support. Lan Wanji had drifted over at some point and looked to now be sleeping standing up, which was practically an endorsement as well. “Anyway, I think the idea of gathering people up to go deal with the problem is a good one, and anyone who’s really desperate for a good night’s rest can trade over to fight in Hejian for a while. That’ll keep your forces fresh, encourage the circulation of people and the development of relationships between the various sects, and you’ll have the chance to get a good look at who’s actually competent or not while they fight directly under you.”

“Hmm, true,” Nie Mingjue said, and Lan Xichen had to agree – it wasn’t a bad idea at all. Maybe it was the fact that Nie Huaisang was the only one of them who’d gotten any sleep that had allowed him to be the one to suggest it.

“And of course, best of all, as long as our side is getting relief and the Wen sect isn’t…”

“Oh, all right,” Nie Mingjue said. “I still think this is ridiculous, and I’m having some difficulty believing that I really give off some sort of – sleep field, or whatever.”

“You do,” Lan Xichen said. “In fact, I may propose that we break up the meeting temporarily to allow everyone to take a brief nap.”

“We are not doing that,” Nie Mingjue said. “We’re not toddlers.”

“We should do that,” Lan Wangji said, opening his eyes.

Wei Wuxian’s head turned at the sound of Lan Wangji’s voice. “Do what?”

“Break up the meeting for everyone to take a nap and return with steadied nerves and calmer minds,” Nie Huaisang said.

“We should definitely do that,” Wei Wuxian said, and nudged Jiang Cheng. “Hey, Jiang Cheng, how do you feel about everyone in the room taking a nap before we continue discussing the war?”

“That is the best idea I’ve ever heard,” Jiang Cheng said.

“You’re not serious,” Nie Mingjue said. “You cannot be serious right now.”

“Oh, we are very serious,” Lan Xichen said, and cleared his throat, waving for people’s attention. “Everyone, in light of the scourge of dream-eaters we’ve all been struggling with over the past few weeks, I have a suggestion…”

#mdzs #nie mingjue #lan xichen #lan wangji #nie huaisang #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #dream-eaters #ebonykain

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