I'm really interested in whatever the fuck a Gulfie, Bryce, and Walt dynamic could be, because in all likeliness Gulfie and Bryce Will Not Get Along and Walt will probably be caught in the crossfire or pick a side.
And then there's Rose and Glyphie, actually caught in the crossfire.
walt would have absolutely no idea how to act, because on one hand bryce wasn't a very good mother, but on the other hand, he wasn't... bad?? so it entirely depends on how bryce acts apon meeting his son for the first time in centuries
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C'mon now he's just a little birthday girl come on you wouldn't lock someone in the radiation city on his birthday right?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY @keralises !!!!!
[ ID: A full body drawing of Bryce Kent. He's a young woman digging at a brick wall. He's twisted to face it, holding a large shovel up. He's wearing an ankle length dress over a puffy button up shirt, dark socks, a pair of short boots, and a pair of glasses. He also has a hearing aid and gauge earrings. He has shoulder length hair in a mullet style. He's facing away from the viewer. There is a pile of rubble next to the hole he's digging. End ID ]
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stained blind and bloody
or, the haircut scene from @tangodyke‘s empires oc lore (which i wrote like a week ago but am just getting around to posting bc life do be kinda happening)
tw for possession and panic? idk if theres anything else i really Can tag for? but yeah enjoy me getting sucked into somebody else’s brainrot
Because, in hindsight, he’s been ignoring things for weeks. Dropped spoons when he’d been sure his grip was steady. The fasten of his skirt moving from his right side to his left even though it’s a little more fiddly to do with his other hand. Tasks that he’d planned to get around to being done before he knows it, or seemingly sabotaged by a hand that can’t be anyone other than his own’s. Acamar has been around lately, sure, but it hasn’t been that around.
-
It comes to a head on the night of the new moon.
He’s been chalking it up to a poor memory, because what else are you supposed to do in a situation like this - jump straight to ghosts as your first option? Rose isn’t that stupid. (Or maybe he is, but in all the wrong ways.) So he’s picked up a new obsession these past few months, and it’s been bringing him back to his old habits, filling up all the cracks in his brain where these sorts of memories were supposed to slot like bricks. Bryce is a particularly unhelpful mortar in the cavities of his mind - but, hey, at least he’s doing something these days, instead of wandering around the empire mindlessly like he used to when his brain felt like pins and needles from the sheer lack of stimulation.
Bryce is an obsession. And he’s being forgetful. Nothing more.
(The feeling that someone’s following him, trailing just behind his shoulder, will not go away.)
But it’s on the night of the new moon that something more manifests itself - evidence that Rose cannot ignore.
He’s just finished eating dinner and retired for the evening, leaving the dishes for the next day, because honestly he counts even making himself a meal as a win when he gets into moods like these. He’s sitting in his room, pulling off his boots, thinking about having a bath.
And then he feels the prickle at the back of his head that he’s been telling himself means nothing.
But it means nothing, he knows, lets the words wash through each corner of his consciousness like a mantra, and so he trusts his body to bring him through the motions that he means to. The rest of the boot works off his foot smoothly, and then the other laces, and then the slip of the heel around his sock, and with those off too Rose flexes his toes in a carpet he’s stood on a hundred times before, but it’s… there’s something foreign about it, now. Like a part of him has really never felt this wool beneath its feet, never known such softness, such luxury.
It means nothing.
Rose prickles back. He was not named for his nature - but he is a thorn of a woman, if he dares give himself the compliment, and he will not bow.
And then he stands, and he hadn’t meant to - okay, so he’s standing because it’s… easier to get his skirt off this way, that has to be it, because he’s making his own decisions and he wouldn’t do a thing like this for no reason, so he’s aiming for mobility, and what will happen next is he’ll find the fasten on whatever damn side it’s on and then he can sit back down to deal with his corset in more comfort and -
and he crosses the room to the vanity. Which… is because… he wants a surface to stabilise himself against. Sure. That’ll work. It means nothing. He is acting of his own free will, and everything he does is for good reason and he’s pulling something from the drawer, now, cold metal under overheating fingers, which is fine, because it means nothing and he wouldn’t -
The first lock of hair has hit the floor before he gives up on looking for an explanation.
(Burrs prick up the inside of his throat. Tears prick in his eyes.)
This is constricting. Rose’s hands move of their own accord, slicing wave after wave of his hair from the ends of his curls, hair he’s worked hard to grow in the last few years, and he is forced to watch it happen through the flat-shine mirror of the vanity he’s leaning up against with one hip, unstable, unsteady, like he’s been floating for years and only just received another chance to use his legs again, and wouldn’t that be oh so convenient of a revelation to have before he’s staring down the undeniable proof of his haunting? Rose can look the thief, self-stealer, hair-killer directly in the eyes from here - can see the spark of intangible vitriol behind them. It feels too close to comfort, like he’s witnessing something he’s really not supposed to be. The red of his irises, rose-red, radiant, looks radioactive in this light, under these anger-drawn eyebrows.
He cannot stay his hands. He cannot pluck the scissors from his assailant’s fingers, because they are his fingers, and he’s lost enough tonight without losing a hand as well. He can only watch and burn from anger, fury, fear as shoulder-length becomes chin-length becomes choppy and uneven around the ears and flush with the back of his neck. Gone.
Bryce does not release him, still. He thinks he gets it, for one fission-bright second - something you cannot ignore, something you cannot forget - but that does not erase the pain and the rage and the desperate clawing at the inside of a brain that’s been clogged up with drips of mortar where the windows were meant to sit. This means something to you. I mean something. I am something.
Rose pushes off the vanity, stumbles for the bed, loses control of his legs and is left sprawling on the floor. An ugly sob escapes his lips.
This is when Acamar - finally, blessedly - walks in.
It’s quiet. That’s okay - it doesn’t need to speak, not when Rose is making more than enough noise for the two of them. He struggles and retches and slams himself against the confines of a body that just won’t comply, and though he cannot explain himself to Acamar, not now, he thinks it can probably get the gist of the situation from where it’s standing.
The scissors brush too close to the back of his head, and Rose feels the sharp pinch of the join catching on his scalp. It must startle Bryce (or maybe Bryce is just afraid of drawing blood, of doing something that cuts too fine a division with dangerous), because all at once the prickling shoots through him like a flame drawn up his back and then he stills.
He is still.
He is alone.
Trembling fingers move a pair of silver scissors through the air towards the space before his eyes. His good fabric scissors, too. Somehow this feels like a worse offense than anything else.
“... Rosie?”
He looks up at Acamar, and he can feel it in that moment, the sickening layer of dread and compulsion that’s settled across the room, broken only by a single line of frantic footprints that lead directly to his wretched, curling form. They regard each other in darkness - the new moon sheds no light, no hope on this.
“What happened?”
Rose does not reply, only lets himself be led away to be cleaned up. The answer echoes through his mind with every step, though. Vitriolic. Victorious.
Bryce Kent.
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