#give us more of their backstory I’m writhing in agony
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Give us book 5 I want more screen time of these British skrunklies 😭😭
#infinity train#infinity train book 5#infinity train book 1#amelia hughes#alrick timmens#another old art from February#give us more of their backstory I’m writhing in agony
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Taste
Summary: The blue bard is sickeningly sweet for Astarion's preferences, but he'll never forget her taste.
Author’s Notes: Taste is a collection of retellings of Astarion's scenes with the player character from the Baldur's Gate 3 early access, but with a little more embellishments. Plus, it has glimpses of my tiefling's backstory.
I had horrible, horrible artist's and writer's block and I needed to get this out of my system to get the creative juices flowing again. Please excuse any typos or lack of quality.
Larian give us the bard class pls I am begging of you
I - Blueberry Wine
The time for rest has come.
Bedrolls are strewn on the campgrounds, and most of its inhabitants are already asleep. Nothing can be heard save for the crackle of fire, the chirp of birds in the woods, and soft snoring.
If it wasn’t for their common goal of removing those damned illithid tadpoles from their heads before they undergo ceremorphosis, the members of this party wouldn’t even spend five minutes within each others’ presence. Now, they’re sleeping in one place. It takes some measure of trust for that.
The dreams of the tiefling in their ragtag group aren’t sweet tonight, to say the least.
Brows furrowed as another nightmare wormed into her psyche, the tiefling tosses and turns in her bedroll, a thin film of sweat giving her forehead a slight sheen in the firelight. Eyes shooting open, she choked back a gasp, lest she wake up her companions in the camp. The crackle of the campfire and the smell of burning wood gave her some semblance of comfort, at least, reminding her of distant memories.
A warm hearth, a kind face, the smell of freshly baked blueberry pie; simple comforts from her youth that she missed terribly.
The comfort that accompanied the nostalgia was enough to make her drift back to sleep. Woefully, it didn’t stop the nightmares from coming back, now centered around the tiefling’s early years.
Small, bare feet pitter-pattered on the wet pavement, frantic gasps escaped her dry mouth. Choking back a sob, more people went after her, shouting, hurling words that scraped her heart.
“Stop! Thief!”
“Devil!”
“Slay the demon!”
Lungs burning from exertion, the little tiefling whelp coughs, rasps for air, and slides under a cart. In the dark, she can see a narrow alleyway, which she scurries into. The men run past her hiding spot, cursing and muttering amongst themselves. Relief floods through her as their torchlights grew dim.
Safe, at last.
Her trembling arms had been holding on to precious cargo; a stale loaf of bread, wrapped in linen. It’s not a delectable morsel of steak, or rich bone marrow, but it’s better than the rocks she grinded with her sharp teeth for breakfast.
As she takes it out of the cloth, a stone drops in her stomach and horror twists on her young face. The tiefling isn’t holding a loaf of bread, but a severed head of a drow. A scream threatened to escape her throat and pierce the night air, but the tiefling maiden could only gasp as she felt a presence behind her.
Wine red eyes still heavy with sleep met with alert, ruby ones. She isn’t dreaming any longer.
In the dim firelight, she sees him. Astarion.
Truth be told, she doesn’t quite know what to feel about the posh elf. Astarion’s handsome face and fair curls are easy on the eyes, but it only reminded her of how hellish she looks in comparison due to her infernal ancestry. His sharp, calculating eyes puts her at unease, even when his gaze isn’t directed towards her. He has a way of making people feel beneath him, like vulnerable prey. Serenity is not exempt from that, despite her efforts to be pleasant to him. Not to mention, Astarion’s attitude and mannerisms reminded her of the uppity nobles she had the displeasure of encountering in her colorful past.
In short, he’s a handsome fellow with a revolting attitude, at least to Serenity’s standards. Lust and indignation battles with each other in the tiefling’s psyche.
It doesn’t help at all that the elf is fond of calling her pet names, such as “sweetheart” or “dear”. No one calls her such sweet things with genuine intent, not after she saw the drow’s head on a pike, and to hear them from his condescending mouth stirs something dark in her heart.
It especially inflames her whenever he calls her “darling”.
She wanted to pounce on him. However, she wasn’t sure what she wanted after that.
Tear his pretty face asunder with her nails and watch his handsome features contort in agony, perhaps? Or watch him writhe underneath her in a more… carnal manner as she takes out all of her frustration by mashing her ravenous mouth against his lovely lips?
Maybe both?
“Oh, Serenity. You have no need for that sort of… decadence,” she thinks to herself.
Alas, her body says otherwise.
“Shit,” he says upon meeting eyes with her, distracting the tiefling from her thoughts. Serenity didn’t expect such a vulgar word to come out of his pretty mouth, and she didn’t expect the gleaming fangs inside of it either.
How could she not see it the first few times?
The dead boar they found on the road, the fact that she had never seen him consume any food, and the wolfish way he eyes her neck when he thought she wasn’t looking should’ve given it away.
Astarion is a vampire. Worse, he's a vampire who’s intending to sink his teeth in Serenity’s neck.
Whatever terrible things she secretly wanted to do to him, she had no chance of enacting them in this situation. Hells, if anything, Astarion is the one with the capacity to do terrible things to her. The tiefling will be at his mercy, if she doesn’t act fast. So, why isn’t her body doing anything to move?
Heart racing, she needed to say something, at least.
“Stop,” Serenity warns him, voice low, baring her own sharp teeth. The tiefling had considered smashing her precious lute over his head as a last resort. Before the bard can lash out, he pulls back, alarmed.
“No no, it’s not what it looks like, I swear!” Astarion hastily blurts, panic evident in his voice. “ I wasn’t going to hurt you! I just needed- well, blood.”
The elf’s admission confirms it; Astarion is a vampire, a creature enslaved to sanguine hunger.
At that moment, an expression that Serenity hasn’t seen on the elf before twists his features: guilt. The vampire knew he’s betraying her trust, and it shows.
“How long since you killed someone? Days? Hours?” Serenity asks, on guard now, but still sitting on her bedroll.
Eyes widening, Astarion’s tone becomes defensive. “I’ve never killed anyone!” he exclaims. Then, his expression turns grim. “Well, not for food. I feed on animals. Boars, deer, kobolds! Whatever I can get.”
The lass feels slightly reassured that she’s not dealing with a blood-sucking serial killer, but the possibility of him lying puts her on edge again.
“But it’s not enough,” the pale elf speaks again. Serenity half expected him to say this, he did try to bite her after all. “Not if I have to fight. I feel so… weak.”
And there it was, the last thing she expected from him: vulnerability. His reluctance to show weakness was written all over his face. Perhaps it wounds his pride? Regardless of the doubt she has for him, it changed Serenity’s perception of the vampire ever so slightly.
“If I just had a bit of blood, I could think clearer. Fight better. Please.”
Now this is a pleasant surprise. Astarion saying please? Is this a dream?
Still, the tiefling wanted to dig deeper at the truth. Brows knitting together in concentration, she knew better than to use the tadpole, but the damn thing established a psionic link with other infected individuals.
Serenity pushes into the vampire’s mind to search for the truth.
“I- what’s this? What’s happening?” Astarion blurts, experiencing slight discomfort from the intrusion.
Pushing deep into the elf’s cracked and quivering memories, Serenity strains as she sifts through centuries worth of them, until she has reached its heart. There, she found herself in Astarion’s shoes; quite literally. She sees dark eyes that commanded her to feed, and instinctively, her body follows suit. Serenity, experiencing this through Astarion’s memory, opens her mouth, biting down, but not into a tender, pulsing neck. Though she wanted to recoil in disgust, there was no other choice; she couldn’t physically resist. The choice had been made for her- no, made for Astarion.
Astarion’s fangs pierce the twisting body of a rat - the only thing his master allows him to eat.
In return, Serenity’s own memories leak through the cracks of her psyche, and Astarion finds himself in the body of a wee girl with horns too big for her head. Ravenously, he inhales the sweet, buttery aroma of a freshly-baked pie resting on a windowsill. Astarion’s hands, now small and of bluish color, reach for the baked good with caution. A warm, ash-colored hand presses on his shoulder, and he sees the smiling face of a tall, drow man. Instead of hurting him for attempting to steal, the dark elf ushers him to a table, and offers him a slice with a compassionate smile. Serenity will never forget her first taste of the buttery pie crust, the sweet blueberries, and a hint of lemon and salt.
Now, Astarion will never forget that taste, either.
The connection between them severed, Serenity takes a moment to collect herself.
“You ate animals because you were forced to. Not because you wanted to,” she mumbles, eyebrows knitted together. Is it sympathy? Or perhaps his experiences reminded her of her own relationship with food?
Whatever it was, the tiefling’s perception of Astarion drastically shifted. On the surface, Astarion is a noble who turns up his nose at folks like her, but in truth, he suffered under the hands of a cruel master.
Being a pompous ass is a defense mechanism for him.
“I- yes,” Astarion says with resignation. “Yes, I ate whatever disgusting vermin my master picked. So, you can see why I’m slow to trust you,” he continues, and Serenity swore the expression he wore on his face tugged a few strings in her heart.
“But I do trust you, and you can trust me,” Astarion tells her.
Serenity thinks it might not be fair for her not to. How can she say that she can’t, after she saw his past for herself, and he didn’t show any hostility towards her for intruding upon his darkest, most haunting memories?
“I do. I believe you,” the bard responds, and she can hear his relief when he mutters “Thank you.”
Perhaps Serenity had judged him too harshly in the past. The drow who took her in cultivated compassion in her heart, and it’s beckoning to her.
“Do you need blood?” Serenity asks him, and there is genuine surprise on his face.
“I was about to ask,” he tells her, expression shifting into something more pleasant. “I only need a taste, I swear.”
“As long as you don’t take a drop more than you need,” Serenity replies, loosening her clothing slightly, her smallclothes peeking through.
“Really?” he asks, and he sounds almost eager.
“I- of course. Not one drop more.”
That damn vampire flashes her a smile that sends lightning rippling through her veins.
Astarion’s yearning eyes flicked to her exposed flesh, barely making out the purple tinge on her bluish skin as blood rushed from her chest to her face. Seeing where his eyes are roaming, Serenity feels her heart racing faster, and she swiftly lies down, back turned away from him. The tiefling bard is not about to let her companion see her flustered state.
Face inches away from her head, Astarion catches a whiff of the tiefling’s scent. He quietly thanked the gods that she didn’t smell of sulfur or rotting meat; instead, the bard smells of ash from freshly burned incense, laced with a warm, spiced scent.
The vampire holds her gently, delicately, until he strikes.
Astarion sinks deep, fangs like shards of ice piercing her neck. Serenity lets out a gasp, and her face contorts into an expression of pain and discomfort. Thankfully, the pain is quick and sharp, and as the vampire continues to feed, it fades gently into throbbing numbness. The bard feels her blood coursing through her body, into Astarion’s mouth, who sucked and slurped it hungrily.
He leans forward, one arm almost draping over the bard’s torso to support his weight, while the other still holds her head. Palm running through her short obsidian hair, he stops as they touch one of her horns, hand enclosing into a fist around it. Gently tugging, the elf tilts her head for better access.
Astarion’s lips are wet from his meal’s blood and sweat, and his own saliva. They glided on the sensitive skin ever so slightly as he pursed them and sucked harder. Serenity found her breath catching in her throat from his actions, pulse quickening as her hand flew to grasp Astarion’s arm, filed fingernails turning white at the end.
In a figurative and literal sense, she’s holding on to dear life.
“Ah, Astarion, that’s enough,” she mewls, hand moving to grasp his hair, fingernails running through his scalp. Not enough to hurt, but enough for the vampire to snap out of it due to the sensation it produced.
The vampire moans, almost carnally, then it is followed by a surprised, questioning grunt. Serenity’s pleas, and the scrape of her fingernails took him from his trance-like state. Immediately, he removes himself from her neck, swallowing thickly.
“Oh. Of course.”
Serenity sits up as he pulls back, light-headed from the blood loss. She turns to the pale elf, her breathing ragged as her fingers gingerly pressed on her bite wound. The tiefling felt a blush creep on her face, neck, and pointy ears as she gazes upon Astarion’s face. In the firelight, she can see that his pupils are blown out in ecstasy, and blood is trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“That- that was amazing,” Astarion purrs, wiping off her blood and bringing his fingers to his mouth, savoring it to the last drop. “My mind is finally clear. I feel strong. I feel…”
He pauses, and Serenity stopped breathing for a moment.
“Happy,” he continued, sighing in contentment as he gave her a gentle, genuine smile.
Serenity had to blink a few times to confirm that she wasn’t seeing things.
She clears her throat, hoping to dissipate the delicious tension between them. “I look forward to seeing you fight,” the bard says to him, drawing her knees to her chest.
“Shouldn’t take long. So many people need killing,” Astarion responds, bowing ever so slightly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, you’re invigorating, but I need something more… filling.”
The pale elf turns around and just like that, he is back to normal, snobbish self.
Serenity slumps back on her bedroll, exhaling slowly as her heart finally slows down. Her body crashes from the surge of adrenaline and the blood loss. Turning her head, she watches as the elf stalks towards the forest; stronger, more confident, and ready to hunt.
“This is a gift, you know,” Astarion tells her, back still turned from her, looking over his shoulder.
“I won’t forget it.”
Serenity won’t forget it either.
It didn’t take long before Astarion found a deer in the forest. As he drank the beast’s blood, he couldn’t help but compare the taste to Serenity’s blood. The animal is more filling indeed, but now? Nothing compares to the taste of the tiefling’s delicious blood.
She is the first humanoid he ever tasted, after all.
And how will he describe her taste?
The darling tiefling is bubbly, gentle, and sweet, much like her demeanor; almost sickeningly so, for his standards. It’s comparable to the Monastery of the Yellow Rose’s blueberry wine: a fragrant dessert wine he had the pleasure of consuming with delicate cheeses and light cakes back when he didn’t have any fangs.
Or perhaps he had associated her with the fruit due to her memories mingling with his.
Either way, when he said that he won’t forget it, he wasn’t just referring to the favor she did for him. Astarion was referring to Serenity’s taste as well.
Meanwhile, in the camp, Serenity draws her lute to her chest, plucking the strings softly in an attempt to lull herself to sleep. It doesn’t ease her into slumber like it usually does. Sighing, she squeezes her thighs together, heat pooling between them as she recalled the vampire’s lips on her pulsing neck. Perhaps it’s not the lute that she should be plucking at.
Reaching into the waistband of her trousers, the bard gives in to her secret desires.
At least there weren’t any more nightmares for the night.
#baldur's gate#baldur's gate 3#astarion#astarion x mc#oc: serenity | zalia#tiefling#tiefling character#tiefling bard#cw: blood
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Booker and La Campagne de Russie
I just watched The Old Guard and honestly, it was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a VERY long time. Of course, now I’m having all sorts of thoughts about the whole thing and particularly about Booker because his backstory intersects perfectly with my historical interests. I know that all the immortals in The Old Guard have experienced all sorts of terrible trauma, but because I am a history major with an affinity for the Napoleonic period, especially the Russian Campaign (and because Booker is my favorite character), I’d like to give you guys an idea of just what sort of torture he faced even before the pain of losing his family (also for fair warning, I have not read the comics):
Please place yourself in Booker’s shoes. You are one of over 600,000 men mustered to march into Russia. You’re serving in an army you never wanted to join, taking up arms for the glory of an empire that’s never done anything for you. You’ve been separated from your three beloved sons and your wife whom you love more than life itself, and have been sent off to fight in a foreign land that’s nothing like the home you’ve left behind. That much becomes evident immediately.
The invasion starts in the summer of 1812 and it is hot, unseasonably hot. You feel it, laboring as you are under the thick heavy materials of your sweat-soaked uniform. Each step is its own torture in the heat as you struggle through mud left behind by hard summer rains. More than a few men kill themselves at this point and although this is just the beginning, you can hardly blame them. Some of your comrades get the bright idea to start discarding some of their extra layers of clothing—underthings and the like. Perhaps you join them, anything to lighten the load. You can’t be expected to carry all this over the long miles ahead. You’ll live to regret that decision.
The fighting itself is worse than the conditions. You never quite get used to the violence. No matter how many times you’re thrust into battle, your mouth still goes dry, your heart still thunders as loud as the military drums’ tattoo, you still choke on that thick gunpowder smoke. You nearly threw up the first time you killed with a bayonet. You remember sticking the man in between the ribs, a swift stab and he is bleeding out. It is only then that you see his face and realize just how young he is. He is a boy, maybe a few precious years older than your eldest. He cries as he falls. You didn’t speak Russian at the time but you didn’t need to to recognize the word “Мама”.
The only thing that makes it possible to keep putting one foot in front of the other (besides your family, of course) is your comrades-in-arms. Against all odds, you’ve found friendship here, men with whom you can share stories and jokes and drinks. You find a few men of around your own age with families, wives and children that they lovingly speak of, but many of these soldiers are young, young enough to be your sons, far too young to be out here slaughtering and being slaughtered. Over your meager meals you tell stories of home and it is enough to hold off the impending horror, at least for a moment. When that doesn’t work, you turn to drink. You drink an awful lot.
The conditions of this foreign land are mercurial at best and your woes are only compounded by your lack of proper supplies. The Russians have been scorching nearly everything in the wake of their retreat, making it difficult for you to forage for food. Your search parties turn up very little by way of provisions and your food supply continues to fall in tandem with the temperature.
Borodino is hell. You see the man to the right of you receive a cannonball to the chest and fall in a spray of red, you see the man to the left crumple as a shot rips through his handsome, hard-lined face. One of your friends, one of those boys that you’d come to regard as a surrogate son who was barely old enough to grow hair on his chin, catches a bullet in the leg. He dies in agony four days later, one of the thousands of casualties of that damned battle. In your lowest moments, you wish you would have joined him.
You were never a particularly happy man, even before the war. Prone to fits of melancholia, they would have said back then. Your darling wife and your three sons certainly helped to alleviate that heavy, aching emptiness that resided in your chest, but it never went away, not fully. It resurfaces with a vengeance now. Sitting with your gun in your hands and far too much liquor in your belly, you think about ending it all. How easy it would be to put a bullet in your brain and finally die. In the end, it’s your family that saves you again. You may not want to live for yourself, but for them- for them you can keep fighting. Besides, Moscow is only 70 miles away and once you take the ancient capital, Russia will have no choice but to surrender. That’s what everyone is saying and you force yourself to believe that it’s true.
Moscow was a lie. You took the capital but there was no peace. There was no food either. The Russians took it all when they abandoned the place, leaving almost nothing for your starving army. Nothing but liquor, which you are very grateful for at least. Your superiors probably aren’t, you think wryly as you raise the bottle to your lips and drink, drink, drink.
Moscow passes in a drunken haze for you. You drown yourself in Russian booze, drinking yourself absolutely insensate. There are entire days you spend propped up against the wall of some ramshackle Russian establishment, surrounded by empty bottles, too drunk to even stand. You remember bits and pieces, shattered memories drifting in and out of the fog. The looting and the things you took (a fine scarf, a silver flask, maybe more), a ladies’ fur shawl wrapped about your shoulders to keep out the chill, the burning heat of a terrible fire and the screams in French and Russian, the acrid taste of bile in your mouth as you splutter sick all over yourself only to raise the bottle to your lips again for another drink. In the end, you’re forced to leave Moscow as the position becomes untenable, the abandoned city burned to a shell of its former self. You never do learn who first started the fire, even years after the fact.
The retreat is hell on Earth, worse than anything else that came before. La Grande Armée is hardly an army any longer, you’ve lost practically all discipline. By now, you’re just a bunch of exhausted, cold, starving men who want nothing more than to just make it home alive. Most of them won’t. The temperatures have dropped to below freezing at this point and you are wishing more than anything that you still had those infernal layers that caused you so much pain in the summer months. The clothing you and your comrades drunkenly plundered in Moscow—silken scarves stolen from abandoned trunks, heavy furs pilfered from store inventories, ladies’ shoes that hurt your feet but do a better job of keeping out the slush than your tattered boots—help, but not enough. Your fingers stiffen to near icicles in the cold as you try your damnedest to massage even a little warmth back into them, your face is wind-chapped and scabbed. You feel as though your very marrow has frozen, and you are one of the lucky ones. Men freeze to death in their sleep in less than an hour. Fifty men will sit down at a fire and only the twenty or so closest will ever get back up again. You all begin to loot the bodies of the dead and—as you grow more desperate—the dying as well. Corpses are stripped naked and left in the snow as the survivors squabble over their threadbare uniform pieces. Sometimes the corpses still twitch and moan but you try to ignore that.
There’s no food either. In addition to freezing, you’re starving too. The lot of you fight and quarrel over moldy crusts of bread, and in some cases even kill each other for them. The more clever turn to other sources to fill their writhing, empty stomachs. Some eat their boots, but there isn’t much leather left in any case. Some carve their meals off the horses as they walk, tearing bits of bleeding flesh off of the warm, moving flanks in a short-sighted attempt to get even a few morsels of meat in their bellies. Others, in mad desperation as the march (if you can even call it that any longer) wears on, turn to each other.
Perhaps you take part in this, perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you sidle a man out of the way to get closer to the fire, perhaps you take a coat off a corpse that you don’t know for sure is dead yet, perhaps you accept a piece of meat that you do not quite know the origin of. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…
In the end it doesn’t matter. You die anyway. You don’t really remember how it happened the first time. Maybe you were finally picked off by the advancing Russians, maybe it was exposure, exhaustion, starvation, sickness, any of the hundred ways that you could die in this frozen wasteland. All you know is that one moment you were on your feet, shambling mutely forward, the next you were lying on the icy ground, gasping air back into lungs that had fallen completely still. Four faces are burned into your memory and from one you can still hear the gurgling, watery screams.
That’s when the dreams start, after that first death. Though, you wouldn’t classify them as dreams, they’re far more alike to nightmares. You see that screaming, drowning woman often. You feel her fear as she slams her body against her metal coffin. Even awake you can’t get the sound of her choking out of your head. Sometimes there are soft moments interspersed with the horror. You see a woman with short hair (it reminds you of a coiffure à la victime) laughing, you see two men resting in each others’ arms, foreheads pressed together gently, blissfully happy. To be quite honest, these ones hurt worst of all because they make you regret ever waking up.
You die a few more times before you finally decide to desert. You can’t take it anymore. That tyrant Bonaparte has abandoned this army, why can’t you? You take flight under the cold cover of night, trying to get to the Russian border. You don’t make it very far. You are dragged back—aching, tired, and hungry—and are hanged by the road as a deserter. Perhaps there still is a little discipline left in these ranks, at least enough to allow these soldiers to kill their comrades in the name of orders. You have to wait three days for the road to clear before you can finally run. In that time your body is almost entirely picked clean by looters. You continue your desperate trek back home in spite of it all and die many more times in the weeks (or was it months?) that follow. It never gets any easier.
It’s near the border into Prussia that you finally meet one of the figures from your dreams. Perhaps it is the woman with the short hair who offers you a drink and a coat to put around your shoulders, and tells you bluntly but not unkindly that you’re immortal. Perhaps it is the curly-haired man who helps hold you upright when you stumble and is careful and caring with his words as he gently explains the situation. Perhaps it is his lighter-haired lover who catches you when you fold in on yourself from the weight of his words and offers you affirmations and condolences in a voice reminiscent of a priest. Whoever it is, they ask you to come with them and explain that there are others like them- like you out there.
“What about my family?” you stutter out, almost unconscious of the words as the tumble from your mouth “My wife? What about them?”
They favor you with a sad smile and try to explain, but you will hear none of it. They do not stop you when you tell them that you are going home, and you are glad for it.
With the supplies they give to you, you manage to hobble your way back home. You’ve been taken for a dead man, you realize, everyone you pass seems to think you’re a ghost. You don’t care. You only have one person on your mind.
Your wife answers the door dressed in black. She starts to cry when she sees you and throws her arms around your neck. You nearly crumple, weak as you are. “Bastien, Bastien,” she sobs against your shoulder “What happened?”
That question fills you with icy dread. Your stomach drops as you realize you cannot explain to her what you’ve been through, not in a way that she’ll understand. Even if you explain the immortality and she believes you, she won’t understand the horrors you’ve seen. No one will. A soldier’s burden.
You stay silent and instead cradle her closer as your boys appear in the doorway. You have them and, for now, that is enough. You won’t forget, you will never forget, but for now at least you have this.
#there we go#i made myself sad#you see what this poor bastard had to go through#it does not excuse what he did#not in the slightest#but it explains why he wants to die at least#there are very few things that i would want to go through less than the russian campagne#the old guard#tog#sebastien le livre#booker#andromache the scythian#yusef al kaysani#niccolo di genova#quynh
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I have a new hyperfocus so I’m gonna talk about my Vestige. No one can stop me
(aka I re-rolled a character because I know what I’m doing now and won’t accept quests all willy-nilly. I also hate non-linear story telling and doing the Dark Brotherhood concurrently to the AD questline bugged me. Okay, cool.)
Name: Eilonn “El”
Race: Altmer
Class: Necromancer
Age:
24: Start of Dark Brotherhood DLC, 2E 579
(It is during this time that she first meets Razum-dar in Garlas Agea, albeit she keeps her cowl and mask on the entire time and doesn’t give her name. She would, later in the year, assist him with hunting down the Sweetroll Killer. The Brotherhood already has enough trouble; no need to have a rouge, unaffiliated assassin running around. Bad for business.)
26: Anointed Silencer of the Dark Brotherhood, 2E 581
27: Sacrificed to Molg Bal and revived. Begins the Aldmeri Dominion Quest chain, 2E 582
29: End of the Aldmeri Dominion Questline, 2E 584
30: Defeat of Molag Bal and Reunion with her soul. 2E 585
30-33: Buys property in Skyhaven and settles down into semi-retirement. Although she does still perform her duties as Silencer for the Dark Brotherhood, and travels accordingly to complete contracts. Joins the Antiquarian Circle while visiting Western Skyrim on such a contract. 2E 585- 2E 588
33: Begins the Summerset Questline 2E 588
35: Begins the Elsweyer Questline 2E 590
Late 30s - Early 40s: Gates of Oblivion aka “HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON, LITTLE MO?”
Date of Birth: 21st of First Seed, 2E 555
Birthplace: Vulkhel Guard, Auridon
Height: 6′7 (I made her as tall as possible on the slider, lol)
Associations:
Dark Brotherhood ( 2E 573 - Onwards)
Eye of The Queen ( 2E 582 - Onwards)
Molag Bal (2E 583 - 2E 586)
Meridia (2E 584 -Onwards)
Antiquarian Circle
Backstory:
Atheriil and Gialnden lived simple lives in Vulkhel Guard- a fisherman and librarian at the Mage’s Guild respectfully. They weren’t a wealthy family by any stretch of the imagination, but thought themselves happier than most noble couples, brought together by wealth and mutual gain rather than love. Their marriage was further blessed when Gialnden learned that she was with child. They danced and sang their praises to Auri-El in their homey little cottage by the docks.
Gialden soon learned that she was carrying not one, but two children. Stricken with excitement and horror in equal measures, she and her husband spent several hours debating what they should do.
“I would never force you to be cruel, my love.” Atheriil said in gentle tones, rubbing circles into the back of Gialden’s ring hand. “But giving birth to twins - attempting it- it’s dangerous for Altmer women. I-I couldn’t...” He paused, voice thick with tears. He sighed shakily and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
Undeterred, even as she lay in bed wracked with swollen ankles and muscle pain, Gialden smiled. “Auri-El made this happen for a reason,” she said resolutely. “I have faith that he will see all three of us to safety.” She rubbed her large, swollen stomach with gentle, loving strokes.
Estaire came screaming into the world in the early hours of the morning on the 21st of First Seed. Eilonn came shortly after, red-faced and hiccupping as she clung desperately to her sister and their mother.
Eilonn would spend almost every waking moment with Estair, and would throw an awful tantrum if the two of them were not allowed to sleep in the same cradle. She learned how to crawl by following her lead, and learned to walk by clinging to her hand. They were nigh inseparable, and that continued on into their adolescence.
Estaire became the jewel of Vulkhel Guard; beautiful, smart, and gentle. She moved with the grace and purpose of a queen, despite her humble upbringing. Eilonn, by contrast, had steadily begun to spend more time down by the port with her father, conversing and laughing and drinking with the sailors who had come in from far, far away. (The sex was passible. Some floundered in endearingly awkward ways, while others were... well... Dibella clearly favored them). The two of them couldn’t be any less alike, but the sisters remained as close as they had since the day they were born. Their ability to impersonate each other hadn’t diminished either, and many nights were spent in laughing about how many people had fallen for a simple change of clothes and demeanor.
This idyllic lifestyle wasn’t meant to last. Estaire was found murdered in an alley by the docks, body clumsily half-stuffed in a shipping crate. The culprit was found not too far away, sobbing inconsolably into his hands and babbling about how he hadn’t meant to. The murderer was a young mer named Yaril. A sailor with whom Eilonn had become quite close to, both sexually and emotionally. He was also a recovering skooma addict.
Eilonn could have cared less that all of Vulkhel Guard now knew she spent her time with a skooma addict, occasionally indulging in it herself.. Seeing her sister dressed in her clothes, knowing that the only reason she was dead was because Yaril thought Estaire was Eilonn, hurt more than words could ever properly describe.
But she could bring Estaire back... all she needed was the right components. Her body... a magical sigil from a book she had found... the blood and captured soul of a sacrifice... Eilonn stole into Yaril’s cell, having learned how to pick locks from the other sailors. She soul trapped him, stabbed him in the throat, and took what she needed from him.
The ritual backfired. Magic that Eilonn was too grief-stricken -too inexperienced- to handle lashed out at her, severely burning the left side of her body. The smoldering, writhing corpse that used to be Estaire shrieked and roared in fury and agony. Fury for being denied the release of Aetherius. Agony for being shoved into an empty husk of a body that no longer served a purpose. Half blind from her tears and her burns, Eilonn ran into the night, far away from Vulkhel Guard and her greatest failure.
She was found by Speaker Terenus in Greenwater Cove, waiting for the infection she could feel festering in her burns to end her life. He admonished her for attempted such a complicated necromantic ritual without any prior practice in the dark arts, but praised how ruthlessly she had killed Yaril.
“You can die here, cold and alone as you wallow in your despair. Or you can come with me, and I can give you what you’ve lost: a family.”
His smile was as welcoming as the glint of a hidden blade. A small part of her, as small as it was, didn’t want to die in an unfamiliar, unforgiving town. She took his hand.
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I don't think I'll ever be over the decision to have Luke attempt to kill Ben, regardless of how much of a fleeting feeling it was. Not only did it seem OOC for Luke but in terms of the overall narrative of the new trilogy, it feels neglectful of the potential held in Snoke's character & powers.
We learn in the Aftermath novels that Leia could feel something troubling her unborn child, something dark that was watching him. She explicitly says to Han in TFA that it was Snoke who seduces their son to the dark side.
Rather than having Luke attempt to kill Ben because of the darkness he felt inside of him, what if Luke wanted to help him? Ben tells his uncle of the voice inside of his mind and the darkness that clouds his visions, and all Luke wants to do is help him. He sees Anakin in Ben, lost and alone and vulnerable. Palpatine got to Anakin by using Padmé, by using the fact that Anakin hadn't told Obi-Wan--his mentor and, arguably, his family--about his own darkness. Already, Ben is one step ahead of Anakin because he's confided in someone about his struggles.
And what if Snoke was alerted to the fact that Skywalker now knew of his plot to turn Ben against the light? From afar, Snoke can feel the light returning to Ben, surrounding him like a protective aura and shielding him from Snoke's influence. No, Snoke has come too far to lose his newest apprentice now.
Imagine the scene. Luke in Ben's hut, Ben waking up to find his worried Uncle crouching next to him. Snoke, far away, feels the shift in the balance and uses his power over Ben to cause him pain, feed him terrible lies. Ben writhes, begging his Uncle for help but when Luke does try to intervene, Ben's powers cast him away.
But by this point, when Luke tries to get inside of Ben's mind, it's too late. Snoke's words have already turned Ben, shrouded him in an impenetrable darkness that keeps Luke from evening touching the boy. The pain, he's using it to further Ben's fall, whispering to use it as power against the man who's tried to keep him on a leash. He's not meant to be a Jedi, he's too strong for their peaceful ways; Ben is meant for more. Luke tries calling Ben's name but Ben is screaming in agony, consumed by pain whilst being almost possessed by Snoke and his darkness.
The pain stops, Ben breathes raggedly. Luke, thinking of his nephew before himself, reaches out to touch him, only to find that Ben's eyes--god, Leia's deep brown eyes--have turned yellow, Sith yellow. Ben's voice is dripping with darkness, whispering about how his family have abandon him and how his grandfather's legacy is waiting for him to finish. Luke knows that voice is not his nephew's. There's still light in him, it's not snuffed out yet.
There could have been a duel. The cloudless night sky around the Jedi Temple looking down upon the clashing of green and blue lightsabers. Corrupted nephew vs concerned uncle. Ben is so angry, so filled with the rage and abandonment that Snoke has been fuelling that his body is trembling.
A struggle between Luke and Ben as the latter fights against Snoke inside of his own mind and against Luke, truly conflicted between the light and the dark. Snoke is deep inside of Ben's mind, whispering that he needs to kill his uncle and begin down the path of his destiny.
Ben (Snoke) finally wins. He strikes Luke down in the same way that Vader did on Bespin; by slicing his hand off. Luke is on his knees as Ben stands above him, panting hard like a wild animal. Luke tries to speak to Ben, tries to tell him that it's alright but Ben is too far gone. Kylo Ren is taking over. Snoke is telling him that he needs to kill Luke and begin his destiny.
Kylo Ren is taking over. Snoke is telling him that he needs to kill Luke and begin his destiny. It's then that the padawans come out of their huts, igniting their own lightsabers when they see Ben standing over their wounded mentor.
The scene cuts just as Ben turns to begin to fight them, flashing back to Luke and Rey on Ahk-To as he's telling her how he feels as though he didn't do enough to help his nephew when he needed him most. He's been on Ahk-To ever since, searching for guidance from Anakin and the old ways of the Force for a way to help Ben...and Leia.
Not only would a situation like that mean that Luke wouldn't give up so easily on his sister's son and run away from a problem that he caused, it'd give Snoke more of the 'Big Bad' role that he was seemingly painted as in TFA. Unless IX does something to retcon that, Snoke's death was one of the most disappointing things in TLJ for me, personally.
Plus, I wanted Luke to be the one who Ben didn't feel abandoned by; his mentor, his uncle, the family member who stuck by him and believed him when he talked about a dark voice in his mind but instead, we got OOC Luke and an attempt at a justification for Kylo being the bad guy that he so clearly is.
It didn't seem like a 'fall' to the dark side either. One moment, Ben was fine, sleeping in his hut and then the next, he's tearing it down on his uncle's head. It felt very rushed. Again, whether IX will show us more of Kylo's journey to the dark side is yet to be seen but I'm just thinking, what's the point in creating complex characters with more backstory off-screen than on? At least the prequels & the Clone Wars gave us insight to Anakin, Padme and Obi-Wan's beginnings. Something about the pace of TLJ has made this new trilogy feel very rushed to me.
Thank goodness for fanfiction and choosing to ignore canon. ❤️Sorry this got this long!
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Here! Have some Ex-Aid notes!
So, I started rewatching the last three episodes of Ex-Aid because @aquabluejay and I have gotten to talking about a whole lot of assorted Ex-Aid meta and ideas lately. One of the things we talked about last night was trying to figure out how some of the final battle went down. SO I DID THAT. And went on a WHOLE LOT of tangents!
Summaries, thoughts, speculation, and theorizing for episodes 43, 44, and 45 of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid under the cut. Also includes mentions of the Mighty Action X novel, and some of the backstory involved.
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Episode 43
Oh SHIT the bars on Kuroto’s cell can, in fact, zap him if he tries to reach between them! He was very carefully not touching them when begging to be let out. More fuel for “Parad should NOT be in a good enough state to use his level 99 form after being tied up”!
SO! Seeing everyone who had been hit by the Gemdeus virus before writhing in agony! IS REALLY PAINFUL TO WATCH GUYS! The first person we see this happen to is Kiriya – because here’s the thing.
Bugsters aren’t immune to Gamedeus naturally. … Can… like, could one regular bugster somehow infect another one? Is it just Gamedeus being super OP? Or, like, could there be a mixed strain that fucks up both Bugsters that result from it? Because the only cases we saw where someone had multiple strains were with the Collabos Bugsters, and with Chronicle. So… could two Bugsters get… sort of tangled up in each other’s code?
OH NO THAT WOULD BE MESSED UP. SAMMI WHY WOULD YOU COME UP WITH THIS YOU MONSTER.
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! I should go back through at some point – it might not just be Emu and Parad who insist on calling him Cronus – Taiga just referred to him that way, too.
(skipped back a bit – Kuroto used his father’s full name to refer to him.)
And now I want to know… if you scan a Bugster normally, would their strain show up on the screen – wait, yes! It would! Because they scanned GRAPHITE in his human form, back early on!
Yup, Emu calls him Cronus, too.
FUCK YOU KUROTO “they haven’t earned the right” as if you didn’t make an action replay of your own after Emu made his.
Oh… huh. When Taiga – back on his self-sacrificing bullshit again – mentions ‘if only I had stopped the Bugsters in their tracks five years ago, this would never have happened’… Poppy is wringing her hands. And Parad – it’s subtle, and very blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but he looks down, away from everyone else. Just a slight turn of the head, and diverting his gaze, but. That’s guilt right there.
(You feel the weight of your sins crawling down your back)
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Nico – in the Cronus game area – boots up her Chronicle Gashat, and is immediately hit with the pain and static. But she’s still standing. She’s been hit time and time again by the virus, by all the strains, including Gamedeus, and she doesn’t go down.
I still wonder how this fight would have played out if Taiga hadn’t stopped her before she could suit up. She’d have lost, definitely… but I kind of want to see how she would have played it.
She doesn’t drop to her knees until taiga takes her gashat.
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Hiiro explains what he’s finally realized – that Taiga has been fighting so that nobody else has to lose anything. Because he doesn’t have anything left to lose – until Nico. NOW he has something he absolutely has to protect.
Hiiro: “But now, he’s realized… his fate of putting his life on the line to protect something he doesn’t want to lose.”
We see Parad’s reaction to this.
Parad (mid-ground, Hiiro out-of-focus in the foreground): “His life…”
(cut to close up, Parad looking slightly down) “on the line…”
I’ve actually got something related to this in my current draft for ch. 3 of Press Start to Continue. Here, have a look:
“You know...” Parad begins, idly wrapping one of the cords on his jacket around his finger, “I didn’t get it, before – why you went to the lengths you did back then, as Proto-Snipe. Even as you were realizing that it was probably killing you. I still don’t really get how you were able to keep going, really. But now? Having seen you dealing with everyone, with having actually met you?” He smirks, meeting Taiga’s gaze. “You aren’t nearly as much of an asshole as you make yourself out to be, are you?”
When Emu says he doesn’t want to lose anyone… Parad buries his face in his collar, while Poppy looks… not scared, but sad. I think… I think she’d already realized what she and Parad might have to do.
I think she had already come up with the way to cure the patients with Gamedeus’s strain.
…
Oh. She definitely had.
I’d forgotten, I wrote this bit months ago, back in Event Flag XX, but I was so laser focused on Parad for that watch through, I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to Poppy.
“Taiga goes to help. Hiiro goes to help. Emu goes to help.
Parad and Poppy can only watch.”
Parad’s beating himself up, because he can’t help, because he doesn’t know what to do. Poppy hasn’t had The Line yet, but… she knows what the two of them can do to end Chronicle.
-
Oooo. I need to have Taiga give Emu the same speech Emu just gave him at some point down the line in ReUnited. (Emu… is going to have some difficulty coping in the time span after my adaptation of Another Ending and Kiriya’s revival.)
Emu: “You shouldn’t neglect your own health. Doctors have to take care of so many patients lives, after all. You can’t forget that. To save our patients, we doctors have the responsibility to live on.” He holds out Taiga’s coat to him. “Taiga. You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”
(beat)
Taiga: “That’s right.”
The sound effects and framing that Rider usually has signify someone finally taking the hand held out to them, accepting partnership?
Is used here for Taiga taking his white coat.
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When they get the final blow on Cronus, it’s really nice.
The fireball from Hiiro’s ‘Taddle Critical Finish’ hits at the same time as Emu’s ‘Hyper Critical Sparking’ kick. The lag from Emu’s attack, of course, doesn’t set in until a bit after he lands, and it knocks Cronus backward – right into the cannons of ‘Taiga’s Bang Bang Critical Fire’.
TAIGA’S finisher is the one to shut down the Game Area.
Ohhhh man, the way Cronus moves after being knocked down is super unsettling. He’s flat on his back, a-posing on the ground, and when he sits up… he’s sort of just dragging his upper body up. His arms are still limp. Ick.
(Also, I kind of think Emu and Nico will never, ever admit it, but they were super pissed that they forgot about Bosses usually going all One Winged Angel.)
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The design of the bugster mooks kills about half of the drama of them taking over people, but… I’m not okay with seeing all of these people just… almost removed like this. What’s worse is that I think Kiriya could tell what was happening before he went down.
FUCK.
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Episode 44
:chuckles: I’m in danger.
Parad goes to try to fight, to help save the people infected. But Poppy… she grips her hands together.
“Wait!”
“There’s something only us Bugsters can do.”
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When we get to Genm…
“Stop it.” a blue-gloved hand grabs him.
“You’re one bad Rider, aren’t you?” a red boot glows, propelling the two into the air.
“I’ve come to collect a sample from you, Ex-Aid! Now, let’s start the experiment, shall we?”
(ahahaha Katsuragi’s hard-on for Gorillamond)
(wAIT SHIT NO)
“I have three lives left.”
“Wait, are you... not Ex-Aid?”
“No! I’m NOT! People NEED to stop saying that! I am a G-”
“Sorry! My mistake! Bye!”
(Thanks, Katsuragi.)
-
Emu’s exhausted, and realizes he has the Doctor Mighty X Gashat. Poppy stops him before he can trigger it, though. It’s not possible to do this one at a time.
OH. Parad meets them on the roof – Emu was following Poppy, but Parad was already there. “Hey. What are you going to do?”
Poppy didn’t tell Parad her plan.
The thing is… while she’s saying that she’ll insert the gashat into herself, to disperse the cure to all the patients… Poppy doesn’t use the word die. She says she’ll disappear. She says that bugsters are a threat to patient’s lives, that they will need to be completely erased some day. The screen shows both her and Parad at that line. He looks away, as she says that that’s their fate. She hasn’t looked at anyone.
Emu’s breaking down – he doesn’t want to accept a fate where she has to die.
She still doesn’t say she’s going to die.
… I don’t think Poppy thought of herself as truly alive. She’s always acted like she did, but now…
Now I’m not so certain that she wasn’t faking that sureness.
Parad hasn’t said a word since he asked what she was going to do, even when Emu collapses.
“Sorry, Emu. … Thank you.”
-
… huh. She only physically appears to Kuroto. And it looks like… like she knew what she was doing when she did that. That maybe… just maybe, Poppy thought she might be able to ‘back herself up’ in him.
But only maybe.
-
On the roof.
Emu… he’s sitting, almost defeated, talking to Parad about Poppy.
“Bugsters also exist to let us have fun and make us smile, don’t they...?”
EMU is saying this to PARAD. To the Bugster he practically created, however subconsciously. To the Bugster who is the most direct threat to his own, personal, health.
To the Bugster who KNOWS what Poppy just did. And what he, himself, is about to do.
Who knows exactly what that means to Emu.
Once you have the novel backstory, you can never really ‘un’ have it.
So. With Mighty Novel X in mind, and Emu having, at eight years old, considered and attempted suicide…
That’s something Poppy doesn’t know about. The only people who could are Emu… and Parad.
Parad, who is high-key tied to Emu’s memories. Who is about to do the same thing Poppy did.
Who is about to make Emu witness two people committing suicide in one afternoon.
That’s what they did, after all.
-
!!! OOOO!!!
When he’s snapped for the final time, when Cronus is standing in front of the Riders, saying that he will ‘realize his dreams for all to see’, his eyes glow with that tell-tale Bugster light – but differently than usual. One eye is green, the other is white.
Not unlike the green-and-grey tinged veins that appeared on both him and Graphite when they directly infected themselves with Gamedeus’s strain.
-
The roof.
Parad takes the Doctor Mighty X gashat, saying that Poppy fought to the end to save everyone. After he picks it up…
“I am you, and you are me. You know what I’m trying to say, don’t you?”
Parad can’t bring himself to say it – that they both know full well what just happened, and what’s going to happen next.
(Also, y’know, there’s almost no way they could say… well, that ‘he was going to have to kill himself’ on-air, not in so many words. Not in this season, at least, but that didn’t exactly stop them from getting closer in Build, now did it?)
That was just the Excite translation, though. I’m using the OZC-Live encodes, so I have the RTA translation too… so let’s see how they phrased it.
“I’m you, and you’re me. You know already what I’m going to say, right?”
OH NO.
Oh, and INTERESTING.
Excite has Emu’s next few lines in the singular. “I won’t waste Poppy’s sacrifice. I’ll put an end to Rider Chronicle.”
RTA has them as a plural. “We can’t let her sacrifice go to waste. Let’s end Rider Chronicle.”
Either way… Emu leaves the roof first, with Parad still standing, the wind blowing his hair, and a serious expression on his face.
-
Emu goes to face off against Cronus Gamedeus, and transforms with the Mighty Action X gashat.
Into Level One.
Taiga: “You’ll die challenging him at that level!”
Nah, he won’t. He’s just doing what Poppy taught him to do. First phase of the operation: separate the bugster from the patient.
Technically speaking, there’s a person inside there. They just have to defeat the Bugster Union, first.
Kuroto’s the one to catch on and actually explain.
-
okay, the Chibi fight is effectively done…
and looks like @aquabluejay was right, Parad does run in while using Perfect Knockout to grab the sword before it can hit Emu.
Yelling in pain, from the white gashat in his driver, as both he and Cronus-Gamedeus start to glow blue. The same blue as Poppy did.
The thing is, after the 5 Chibi Rider Kicks… when the smoke starts to clear, and everyone lands, detransformed.
When Gamedeus – now a manageable size – is being grappled by Para-DX… and then by Parad, as his transformation breaks, the both of them grunting in pain.
That is when Emu realizes. Parad had had his back to Emu before. But now Emu can see Parad’s driver. And the Doctor Mighty X gashat that’s in it.
Excite translation: “Come die quietly with your fellow Bugster, Gamedeus.”
RTA translation: “We’re both Bugsters, so let’s end this together, Gamedeus.”
Gamedeus dissolves, and Parad falls to his knees, gasping in pain.
Excite: “I hope I’ve made up for what I’ve done, even a little...”
RTA: “I hope this makes up for my deeds, somewhat...”
Emu: “Parad…”
Excite: “It was only for a short time, but I really had the time of my life gaming with you.”
RTA: “It may have been a short time, but playing games with you… it was the best fun I’ve ever had.”
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Episode 45
After Emu tries to take on Cronus, who’s just knocked everyone else out of their transformations, bare-handed…
Well, he didn’t really stand a chance, did he?
“DoReMiFa Beat and Perfect Knockout both died noble deaths, although it was all for naught. They were both lives with no commercial value.”
“You… don’t you dare speak of Poppy and Parad’s lives...”
Oh… OH!
Okay, so. So I figure Emu’s not exactly baseline human by the time the show starts, let alone after what he did to make the Mighty Brothers XX and Maximum Mighty X gashats. But! Here’s the thing!
The only people who could move in pause were those with either the abilities of Cronus, Gamedeus, or Hyper Muteki.
Emu doesn’t have any of those in the Pause here.
But what he does have, however small it may currently be, and even though he doesn’t know it…
Is the remnants of data from a Bugster who had just pumped himself full of the Gamedeus vaccine.
Cronus is back to all green – he’s just Cronus now, not a hybrid of the two. But… well, the vaccine is made from the strain, after all. It stands to reason that enough of it could have a similar effect against Pause, however minor.
And Emu’s been building his own levels for 16 years, same as – ugh, fine, I’ll use his name this time.
Emu and Masamune have been infected for 16 years. That has to have had side effects other than the obvious ‘use the driver or bugvisor without the compatibility surgery.’
Effects like Emu’s Gashat creation abilities, and Masamune’s Reset.
And it’s only for a moment, but Emu is able to move.
He moves, his eyes flashing red, long enough to punch the bugvisor hard enough to break it – but he freezes back up once Cronus goes flying.
Punching far harder than he should be able to under normal circumstances, even. Those devices are made to take a beating.
He’s done something like this before – he essentially force-shoved Kuroto off of himself, one time, before he found out he was infected, with his eyes flashing red, and a visual effect not unlike the waves of ‘force’ that show up sometimes when attacks land in any Rider show.
It was never confirmed whether that was actually Parad at work, because he did show up right after, but… who’s to say it wasn’t Emu himself?
The punch here? Was hard enough to break the bugvisor, and to knock Cronus – who, mind you, is in full armor, while Emu is in street clothes and battered, back through the air for multiple yards, and into the clock he uses to freeze time, shattering it.
There is no way Emu is pure human.
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HAHAHA and then I forgot to write anything else after this through the end of the episode. Whoops~!
Soooo.
This wound up being eight pages long.
I really did just start this to find out what the order of events was in the ‘Parad’s sacrifice’ sequence, but. Uh. It kind of got away from me.
Eight pages away.
… I don’t even know what I was doing here anymore, but I just wrote eight pages, and I’m feel like talking about how we don’t really know how Bugsters work.
Like, in the press conference, Emu refers to Bugsters as ‘mostly data’, but in Another Ending, Poppy refers to them as being viruses.
I have so much to fix when ReUnited gets to Another Ending you guys.
And! Are Kiriya and Kuroto wearing actual clothes, or are they doing something like Poppy and her costume changes? Honestly, either one has possibilities.
I… kind of want them to be wearing actual clothes. I figure that if Parad or Poppy were to take off something, and set it aside, it would eventually sort of… phase out of where they left it, and back onto them. But. Say one of the guys took off their jacket, because they do both wear them, shortly after being brought back, and it disappeared. But didn’t show back up.
(And THAT is why Kiriya got the black jacket. The one he died in is very, very gone.)
… I should stop now, I’ve probably rambled enough. Enough for eight. Freaking. Pages.
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Ardyn Hate
What's this about people hating on Ardyn all of a sudden ever since Episode Ardyn was announced??? Is it because of all the acts he has committed (and those he will commit in the DLC)? Is that it?? Am I missing something here??? I defended Sephiroth. Time to defend Ardyn. Hoo boy, what just happened...?
Anyway, Episode Ardyn Prologue raised more questions than answers, and boy did it raise a lot of them. Now I hear the fandom is now divided by Ardyn's backstory and arguing about him, along with siding with either him or Somnus or neither since the DLC won't be released until March 26th. Yes, I know Ardyn committed a lot of terrible acts. Yes, he committed more since the DLC takes place way before the events of the game. But think about all of this.
Noctis, whether some of us like it or not, does have a resemblance to Somnus (because duh, ancestor). Now I'm not saying everything that Ardyn did is justified. Killing others, tormenting the Chocobros, plunging the world into darkness for 10 long years, none of it is justified. He has done so many horrible things, I'm still shaken up by all of it. But can you blame him for going after Noctis and doing everything that he did??? Thanks to Somnus, Ardyn was imprisoned in Angelgard for 2,000 years. YEARS. Might I also add that the scourge proved to be pure agony for him??? Imagine that. Imprisoned with chains pierced into his body for ages while he writhed in pain every single day. Ardyn hated Noctis because he's Somnus' descendant. Yes, it sounds petty when you think about it, but it isn't when you know the story behind his hate. I don't approve of him hurting the cinnamon roll that is Noctis, but it makes sense.
Now I know there's still more to the story. The anime short starts things off where Ardyn was already infected by the Starscourge, and Somnus was already being a jackass. Despite his lack of backstory regarding his actions, I confess that I loathe him. I'm sorry, but I despise him. Somnus, in my eyes, is a coldhearted asshole who's responsible for Ardyn's fate. If there really is more to him, then the DLC has to be damn convincing to make me open my mind about him.
I refuse to give Somnus a chance for these reasons:
1.) He is a heartless asshole.
2.) He murdered Aera, the ONLY person, not just woman, but person who loved and cared about Ardyn when nobody else did.
3.) He imprisoned Ardyn and let him suffer for 2,000 agonizing years and erased him from history.
Yet despite my hatred towards this bastard, I'm still confused by several things regarding Ardyn's past. Did Ardyn know that the scourge would corrupt him and have major consequences??? No, really. Did he know???? Did Somnus know about the consequences of absorbing the scourge and never told Ardyn??? That would be such a dick move if he did.
Nothing is completely black-and-white, I know that, but it doesn't change how I feel about Ardyn and Somnus. Ardyn got screwed over in the worst way possible. He's a tragic hero who lost everything, and I'm definitely on Ardyn's side. Yes, he's still a villain. He's always been a villain. All of his actions connect to the fact that he's a villain, although I see him as a tragic hero who was betrayed by his own brother.
Let's not forget he did all of this not just to get back at Somnus by going against his descendant but because he wanted to end his suffering. He was suffering because of the Starscourge, remember? Hence why he lost his mind? He didn't just go after Noctis because he looks a lot like his brother. The scourge pretty much messed with his head for ages, and he grew tired of it. Now I'm not sure about his memories, but his mind has been affected. Being immortal wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for Ardyn, it brought him nothing but darkness and pain. Ardyn planned all of this from the start which included Noctis becoming King. If he didn't need him, Ardyn would have killed Noctis sooner. Though the moment in Episode Ignis makes me think otherwise...I don't know. But no. He needed him to become the True King, which is something that he knew. It has to be true. Somnus didn't end the darkness. Noctis did. He was the True King, and only he was able to free Ardyn from his immortal, agonizing life.
Now I'm asking for everyone to be civil about my thoughts on this because there were a few times where I shared my opinions on something, and I got shit for it. I can't stand that. If you disagree with anything I say, either be calm and polite about it, or simply ignore my posts. I'm saying this because I've been called names once because of a post, and I hate those people for it. Now I support Ardyn, but I'm not justifying his actions. I sympathize with him, I always have. Like I said, if there's more to Somnus, the DLC has to be damn convincing to make me see from his perspective. I'm not against anyone who likes Somnus or wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't care if you want to, I won't bash you for that. Even if there's more to him, I still won't like him, but if you do, that's fine. I'm not a bad guy just because I'm on Ardyn's side and despise Somnus. People like Hojo from FF7, yet I loathe him, and I'm not going after those who like him because it's stupid, and it's none of my business. Whether or not Ardyn's memories are skewered or he twisted the truth about Somnus, I'll still side with him nonetheless because the likelihood of him lying about this is pretty low to me. Heck, I doubt he twisted anything or else it would decrease his credibility as a villain. Unless we go by the idea of Somnus being more than what we were shown now that I'm pondering more on this. Maybe there is more to him and Ardyn doesn't know some of it, which could have led to him...misunderstanding things. Somnus did sound remorseful before the final boss in FF15. I accidentally spoiled that for myself, so that's how I knew about him before, and I remember back then that I wanted to give him a chance. Well the possibility of that is close to nonexistent after watching the anime short. However, Ardyn knows more than we do, and SE definitely knows more than we do, so my opinions may be challenged by the upcoming DLC. We won't get any more answers until Episode Ardyn arrives, so let's not ruin the hype for the final FF15 DLC. We shouldn't even be fighting about this, in my opinion. Let's just have our varied opinions in peace. Personally, I find the hate ridiculous, but I won't stop those who hate Ardyn. As long as they don't come attacking others, then it's fine by me.
#ardyn izunia#ardyn lucis caelum#episode ardyn#ardyn ffxv#ffxv#ff15#final fantasy 15#final fantasy xv#somnus lucis caelum
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It’s Just the Strangest Thing, I’ve Seen Your Face Somewhere
(A/N) It didn't take me as long as I thought to get this up, so hooray! I may be able to get back on schedule by tomorrow~
Title of this story comes from the song "Do You Know Me" by John Mayer
The first time Ronan met Adam, Adam saved him from drowning.
It had been one of those nightmares that had been occurring more and more often the more Ronan came to terms with the fact that his father was dead. The kind where Ronan dreamed he was dying in some painful, gruesome way—like he was sure his father had—and he didn’t really want it to stop. Most of the time, he was alright with it happening. Sometimes, he wished it would work in real life as well.
In this particular variation, he had been running from night horrors, their claws scraping at the air inches from his back, when he’d stumbled over a cliff that he hadn’t been able to see until it was right under his feet. He’d fallen into a pool of water which had immediately turned into acid as soon as he’d felt relieved that it was only water.
The acid had burned his lungs, his eyes, his skin until everything felt hot and painful. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t scream. He attempted to swim, but he couldn’t tell which way was up through the pain, and he doubted his dream would let him reach the surface, anyway.
But then, vines curled around his body and he was suddenly hoisted out of the pool.
He flew through the air for a couple of seconds before he landed on the shore with a painful thud that took all of what little remaining air there was from his lungs. For a while he just laid there on his back, gasping and writhing from the pain that still assaulted his body.
What…what the hell just happened?
“Are you okay?” someone shouted and Ronan spooked so badly he nearly fell back into the acid pool.
Glancing wildly around, his eyes caught on a figure picking their way carefully down the cliff Ronan had fallen off of. On closer inspection, he was a boy, probably somewhere around Ronan’s age, with dirt-blonde hair and freckles that Ronan could see all the way from where he was still lying on the ground.
Ronan noticed him immediately, but he shelved the thought away before he could linger on it.
Sitting up, Ronan spat out a mouthful of acid. He glared as the strange boy came to a stop on the opposite side of the pool. He didn’t seem like a night horror in disguise, but… “Who the fuck are you?!”
The boy looked appalled. “’Who the fuck am I’? Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Ronan,” he said, tilting his head up. When he said Ronan, he meant venomous snake.
“…I didn’t expect you to actually give me your name,” the boy admitted, something of a smirk on his face. “I’m Adam.”
Adam.
“What are you doing here?” Ronan demanded. “I’ve never seen anyone else in this forest.”
Adam rose an eyebrow. “I didn’t know dreams came with predetermined backstories, but alright. This is my first time here. And I’m apparently saving dream-boys from dying.”
“I’m not a dream,” Ronan snarled. “You’re the dream.”
Adam scoffed. “Right, because I definitely didn’t come to this forest in real life and then dream about it—and you—later.”
Ronan stood and stalked around the pool; he needed to intimidate Adam with his height. Adam was actually fairly tall himself when Ronan made his way over, but Ronan still had a couple of inches on him and knew how to use them. He towered over Adam and growled, “I’m not sure if my message was reaching you from all the way across the acid-pool, but I’m accusing you of being a dream. Dreams don’t usually accuse the dreamers of being dreams.”
“Then by that logic, doesn’t that mean we’re both dreamers?” Adam argued. “Because I’m also accusing you of being a dream.”
Ronan considered this. He hated that he was failing to intimidate Adam, but he was also intrigued by it. “No, because I refuse to share my title.”
“Why do you get the title?” Adam demanded.
“Because I was here first, as demonstrated by my act earlier.” Ronan gestured at the acid-pool. “I call it ‘Dying in Acid’.”
“How poetic,” Adam snorted before he frowned slightly. “But seriously, if we really are both real, we can’t just be dreaming the same dream.”
“Maybe you can’t, but I don’t follow the rules,” Ronan retorted. Something convulsed in his chest when Adam actually laughed at this.
In some ways, Adam the dream might be worse than the night horrors.
“Alright then ‘Mr. Dreamer’,” Adam taunted, a grin on his face as he threw himself down onto the grass and rested back on his elbows. “Convince me that you’re real. Tell me about your life.”
And since it was really only a dream anyway, Ronan did. He told him about his mom and his brothers and how his father had died recently. He told him about Gansey and Noah and the extremely old industrial building that they all called home. He told him about Aglionby and how much he hated it and how he wanted nothing more than to go home. It was more than he’d ever opened up to anyone before.
But it was all just inside his head, so it didn’t really count.
“I go to Aglionby too,” Adam said when Ronan was done. “I don’t remember seeing you around, though.”
“That sounds like something a dream would say,” Ronan accused. The thing in his chest convulsed again as Adam laughed. He was worried this was becoming a reoccurring thing. “How do I know you didn’t just hear me say Aglionby and decide it was where you went, too?”
“Because I’m real and I really do go there!” Adam insisted. “I bike to school and go to classes, and then I go to work, do homework—”
Ronan reared back. “You do homework?”
“So not the point, Ronan,” Adam said but he was laughing again, and that was all Ronan needed, really. “Look, I have Latin with Whelk, history with Greenmantle, math with—”
“Okay, okay, we don’t need to talk about math,” Ronan grumbled, waving him off. Adam’s smirk was incriminating. “I also have Latin and history with those bozos.”
“Now, that sounds like something a dream would say,” Adam said and laughed yet again when Ronan pushed him playfully.
He feared he was dangerously starting to like Adam.
When Ronan woke that morning, he had a smile on his face. He couldn’t really remember what the dream had been about, but it must not have been about him dying for once. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good dream. Gansey would be ecstatic.
…If only he could remember what the dream had been about.
--
Adam’s entire life changed the day he’d wandered into the forest.
It hadn’t been anything purposeful, which often seemed to be the case when it came to major life-altering events. Adam had just been trying to get away: away from his father, away from the trailer park, away from the blood and ache all over his body, away from the fury and dust that rested in his bones.
It had been a horrible night. His father had won a big bonus at his job but, characteristically, instead of saving it or using it to buy groceries, he’d gambled it. Had boasted that he would win the lottery with it, could feel it in the tips of his fingers.
To no one’s surprise but Robert Parrish’s, he’d lost it. Majorly. And he’d come home drunk and furious about it. He’d beaten out his frustrations on his son, throwing things and swinging punches and kicks until it felt like there wasn’t a single part of Adam’s body that didn’t hurt. He hadn’t expected it to be so bad, but after a full ten minutes of it with no sign of reprieve he’d known that staying in the double-wide would be suicide. Leaving the double-wide was also suicide, but at least then Adam had a chance of slipping back in when his father was passed out and avoiding the rest of the storm.
So he’d ran. He’d reached for the doorknob and sprinted out the door, racing for his bike and pedaling as furiously as he could away from his father’s bellows. Robert was drunk enough that he probably wouldn’t remember Adam’s panicked flight response in the morning, but Adam still felt terrified as he biked along, too scared to look behind him, too scared of how much trouble he would be in tomorrow.
He’d been so scared he hadn’t been able to pay attention to where he was going. He hadn’t even noticed the shift from pavement to dirt roads as he somehow strayed from the main road and entered the forest.
He only noticed when his front tire ran solidly into a log in the path and his bike flipped up and over, him along with it.
He landed hard on his back, all of the breath leaving him as even more pain pulsed through his body. It was agonizing; it didn’t seem possible that he could tolerate it all. The fall jarred his body so much that his wounds from yesterday reopened, spilling over his hands and the ancient gauze he had wrapped it with earlier. He laid there, bleeding and in pain, and, because there was no one around to care, let himself cry, begging for the agony to stop. He wanted to stop being punished for things he didn’t do. He wanted to stop being in pain, and being afraid of being in pain.
He would give anything.
And suddenly, the world shifted. The pain left his body. Mad whispers spoke into the ear he thought he’d never hear from again. Vines trailed up and along his body, probing and caressing, and his wounds healed before his eyes. He heard leaves rustling and saw visions of trails of energy, blackened and dark in some places, blocked by something.
He didn’t fully understand what his side of the bargain was, but as he laid there, communicating with the forest for the first time, he knew he had made a bargain.
He just wasn’t sure with what.
That night, once he’d gathered the courage to go back, he’d had a wonderful dream, though the next morning he couldn’t remember a thing about it—just that it, for once, wasn’t about his dad’s fists. This happened every day for a week, and didn’t seem close to stopping. He was glad, because he no longer went to bed afraid. He felt less rested though, probably because now he had the forest tapping into his energy, trying to communicate with him, asking for help. Now, immediately after school and a shift at Boyd’s he had to bike over to the forest and move rocks, tree logs, or whatever else the forest deemed out of place. He still didn’t understand what he was doing or why, but the forest seemed to be keeping its end of the bargain; the next time his father tried to hit him, thorns embedded themselves into his fist and he withdrew, staring wide-eyed at his son like he didn’t know who he was.
Unknowable.
So during the day Adam moved rocks and at night he entered the forest in his dreams and hung out with Ronan. He could never remember Ronan until he was asleep, a fact which he found annoying every time he dreamt.
“I wanted to look for you at school, but I never remember you until I’m back in a dream,” Adam told him. They were sitting by a river that flowed gold, skipping rocks that were as dark blue as cobalt and clumsily attempting to catch rainbow fish with their bare hands.
“I never remember you, either,” Ronan replied, on his hands and knees as he attempted to snap for a fish with his teeth.
They’d more or less gotten to the point where they accepted, sort of, that the other person was real. Or at least that they would never be able to prove they weren’t real so it didn’t matter. Adam was still skeptical, though – he couldn’t prove that Ronan wasn’t just another byproduct of the deal he’d made with Cabeswater. Because after all, having a friend did ease his pain. Going to sleep with warm dreams ahead made him less afraid.
And he honestly doubted anyone like Ronan could exist in the real world anyway. Devilishly handsome but soft as a puppy on the inside, fiercely loyal, and outrageously funny. He could get Adam sprawled on his back, gasping for breath through his laughter, in a matter of seconds. Adam hardly even smiled around other people.
He was worried he was becoming way too attached to someone who may or may not be real.
“What if we tried to leave a note for our awake selves?” Adam suggested as he sat down on the bank of the river and stuck his feet in the water, having given up on fishing for now. “It could say, ‘look for Ronan Lynch at Aglionby – you know him’.”
“Seriously? That would freak me the fuck out if I woke up and saw a note like that,” Ronan said. He nearly toppled into the river as he leaned too far forward and Adam had to reach out to grab his arm to steady him. Ronan’s skin was warm under his palm, incredibly warm. “And how are we supposed to leave the note? You going to tattoo the words on my body?”
Adam made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “Well we should at least try something.”
Ronan plopped down onto the bank next to him. “I don’t know man, does it really matter?”
Pain stabbed Adam’s chest. “…Do you not want to know me in real life?”
“No, I mean yes fuck, of course I do, I just…” Ronan glanced to the side, the back of his neck pink. “…You wouldn’t like me in real life.”
“Why not?”
“Because, I can’t express myself well and I don’t usually want to. You’d probably think I was an asshole.”
“Don’t worry, Ronan, I already think you’re an asshole.” Adam grinned as Ronan reached behind him without looking and smacked him in the arm. Ronan’s whole body was turned away from him now, embarrassed and defensive. Adam knew Ronan found conversations like this difficult, even in dreams, so he said, “But seriously, you probably wouldn’t like me either, then. I’d never tell you anything about me but get angry that you didn’t know and swear at you or something.”
Ronan snorted before glancing over his shoulder. The way he did it was almost shy. “Honestly, we sound like a perfect match.”
Adam smiled and moved closer, drawing his knees up to his chest. “You’re the only person who knows anything about me, and that’s why I want to know you when we’re awake too, no matter how much of an asshole you are.”
He’d even told Ronan about his dad because there was no reason not to – even if Ronan was real, he probably couldn’t remember Adam when he woke up either. Even knowing it was safe, though, it had been terrifying opening up. He’d suspected it had been that way for Ronan too, when he’d talked about his own father and his brutal death. But they’d done it, and had grown closer because of it.
He didn’t want that to all be in their heads.
Ronan considered what Adam had said before he finally turned back around. “Okay. But I still don’t know how we’re going to leave a note without fucking carving words into our bodies. And I’ve already carved enough shit into my body.”
He meant his attempted suicide a few years before, and possibly his tattoo. Not wanting to think about how he’d almost lost the person he’d come to care for so much before he even knew him—and not knowing what to do about the whole message thing—Adam asked, “Speaking of which, can I see your tattoo again?”
“You really have an obsession with it, don’t you?” Ronan teased, but yanked off his tank and let Adam look, as he always did.
Adam stared at the ink carved into his skin, getting lost in it as he always did. It was beautiful and complicated; vines and thorns and ravens chased each other and melded together in an intricate dance that Adam never got tired of watching. He had a feeling he could stare at this tattoo every day for the rest of his life and still never see all of it.
He loved it, and something inside of him ached.
He reached out to touch it, against all better judgement, and woke up.
--
Ronan had known for some time now that he was gay, he’d just never acknowledged it until recently.
It had taken a long time for him to get over the ingrained belief that it was wrong, bred into him from going to church his whole life and the general views of society. He remembered distinctly a conversation he’d had with Declan when they were younger—when Declan was going through puberty and Ronan was not—where Declan had gone on and on about how great and pretty girls were. 8-year-old Ronan had said, “I don’t like girls”, probably to get his brother to shut up more than anything, and Declan had said “you will soon.”
Of course, Ronan never did grow to like girls in that way, but he didn’t admit to himself that maybe he was different until he nearly got a boner watching Thor with Gansey. After that point, it was impossible to hide it from himself.
So yeah, he was gay.
He still didn’t quite believe it wasn’t wrong to be that way.
He figured Adam was God’s punishment because he was witty and attractive and Ronan loved everything about him, which was pretty messed up considering that Adam was only a dream, no matter how real he insisted he was. His sole purpose was to torture Ronan with his beautiful hands and his beautiful eyes and remind him that he couldn’t have anything like this in real life.
At least he couldn’t remember him when he woke up, though of course that also brought its own agonies. He ached for him at night in his sleep, but when he woke he was always confused, disoriented, and sometimes painfully aroused, and he could never remember why until he went to sleep again the next night.
It was agony, but no part of him wanted to stop.
Hanging out with Adam had become routine. He was always there now, in his dream forest, and Ronan couldn’t avoid him even if he wanted to, so they wandered around until they found a nice place to hang out and then just sat and…talked. It was strange, because Ronan didn’t just sit down and talk with people, but he always wanted to with Adam.
The other weird thing was that he had, for the most part, stopped having nightmares. He was sure, though, that the nightmares would return as soon as he told Adam how he felt about him.
Because this was his punishment and his torture, Ronan had no doubts that Adam would fail to reciprocate his feelings or disappear altogether once Ronan confessed. But the truly stupid thing was that he still wanted to tell him – he was hooked on the small things, like when Adam laughed at his jokes or shoved at his shoulder. Every accidental touch seared through his skin like wildfire and he wanted more of it; he wanted Adam’s hands and lips everywhere on his body, and if he wasn’t already dreaming about Adam, he would probably be dreaming about Adam touching him.
He wanted it so much it physically hurt.
“You’re staring again,” Adam said, drawing Ronan from his thoughts.
He was indeed staring at Adam, as he so often was, and Adam was staring back, as he so often was. Ronan couldn’t remember when they’d started this game, looking and looking and not looking away when the other noticed.
They were stretched out in a mossy clearing of the forest, weak sunlight filtering through small gaps in the canopy. Large, antient trees circled the clearing, stretching so high that Ronan couldn’t see their crowns even when he craned his neck all the way back. He and Adam always managed to find a new place to relax in the forest—due to the never-ending possibilities of dreams, he supposed—and they had taken to throwing out names for the new places they discovered. Ronan had jokingly called this place ‘Old Man’s Grove’ and Adam had laughed, walked up to the thickest tree, and wrapped his arms around its trunk. His arms didn’t even reach a quarter of the way around.
“When I’m old, I want to be this thick,” Adam had said, and Ronan had snorted so hard he’d nearly choked.
Ronan had joined him at the tree and wrapped his arms around the trunk as well. His fingers were tantalizing inches from Adam’s. “When I’m old, I want to be this hard.”
Adam barked out a shrill laugh. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
When he’d pulled away, his fingers had brushed Ronan’s.
Ronan had thought, fuck it. He could live with this only being a dream.
So as they laid there in the moss, instead of answering Adam, Ronan rolled over and kissed him.
For a terrifying moment, Adam didn’t respond. Before Ronan could lose his nerve and pull back, however, Adam reached for him, tugging their bodies closer together, and kissed him back with a fire that burned down to Ronan’s bones. The kiss had started out gentle and tentative but was now something more, something greater. It was every mile Ronan had ever gone over the speed limit. It was every good thought he’d had about himself after his father died. It was Adam making small little gasping noises when Ronan pressed into him in just the right way. It was their noses bumping together and them breaking apart to laugh about it before ducking in again.
It was perfect.
It was Ronan’s first kiss.
“I’ve been waiting forever for you to do that,” Adam sighed as they pulled apart to breathe.
Ronan couldn’t stop staring at the splash of freckles across his nose. “Then why didn’t you do it, asshole?”
“I don’t know, I thought…” Adam broke off to roll onto his back and stare up at the canopy. “I guess I thought I made the whole thing up.”
Ronan hesitated before reaching out and brushing Adam’s cheek with his finger. Adam turned to meet his gaze and Ronan’s throat felt dry, his heart pumping erratically in his chest. As Adam’s hand came up to gently squeeze Ronan’s, Ronan whispered, “You are real, aren’t you?”
Because he had been wrong – before hadn’t been his punishment. This was. For nothing could be more punishing than this: falling in love, being loved back, but with someone that you may or may not have made up in your own head.
Adam leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together. “I’m real, I promise.”
--
Adam was coming home from doing work for the forest one night when he came across a bright orange Camaro broken down on the side of the highway.
He recognized the car, because who wouldn’t? Everyone who went to Aglionby—and most people who didn’t—knew of Richard Campbell Gansey III, or at least knew of his family. The Gansey Clan was one of the richest families in the nation, and Gansey III’s mother was currently running for Congress. It was hard not to know them. Plus, Gansey III’s car was so distinctive it could be seen from miles away. It could be heard from miles away.
It was also renown for constantly breaking down.
So Adam wasn’t surprised to see it, really, he just wasn’t sure if he should do something about it. Gansey wasn’t someone he particularly wanted to associate with, as he was Aglionby and Adam tended to hate all things Aglionby. He was a politer Aglionby than most Aglionbys, but it didn’t really improve Adam’s opinion of him that much.
But something compelled him to stop his bike next to where Gansey was bent over the hood and ask, “Do you need help?”
Gansey startled so badly that he banged his head on the lid of the hood. Clutching the sore spot, he turned and squinted at Adam. “…Adam Parrish, right? In fact, you may be just the one to help me.”
The way he said it irritated Adam – he resented the implication that his sole purpose of existing was to help Gansey. It was a miracle he didn’t just bike away right then and there. He almost snapped something unkind, but then Gansey said, “Will you teach me how to fix this?”
They easily became friends after that. Gansey was good at sticking his foot in his mouth and Adam was good at getting offended by it, but they both had similar scholarly interests and a sense of adventure. The more Adam spent time with Gansey, the more he realized that Gansey wasn’t as Aglionby as he’d originally thought: Gansey was considerate (to the best of his ability), intellectual, and excited to discover things. He enjoyed solving puzzles and the research and journey it took to find things. He read more books than anyone else in their age class.
Adam adored him when he wasn’t mad at him, and their friendship progressed smoothly.
Now he was sitting in Latin and Gansey was sitting next to him. One of Gansey’s friends—Ronan Lynch, as he’d been introduced—was sitting diagonal from Adam, behind Gansey. There was something about him that bothered Adam, but he couldn’t place it. Almost like…he knew him from somewhere.
“And Ronan, this is Adam Parrish,” Gansey finished, gesturing with his hand.
Adam nodded at Ronan, but Ronan didn’t even look at him as he addressed Gansey, “Another pet project, Dick?”
Adam’s blood boiled. Who did this guy think he was to walk all over him like that? Somehow, though, he could sense that getting angry was exactly what this guy wanted him to do. So he forced the anger down, like he’d been doing for years, and said coolly, “That’s strange, I thought you were Gansey’s dog?”
Ronan snarled and Gansey shifted, as if to intervene, but just then Whelk walked in and started the class, ending the conversation for now. When he turned to face the board, Adam could still feel the heat of Ronan’s glare against the back of his neck.
The day didn’t improve their interactions much. Ronan was irritable and snappy almost the entire time Adam had to interact with him and it was starting to put Adam in a foul mood. He was tired of being pointlessly insulted; he was tired of arguing; he was tired of proving that he belonged here.
He considered telling Gansey that he would be more than happy to be friends with him just as long as he didn’t have to interact with Ronan, but decided to let it go for the day. Maybe tomorrow would be better.
That night, after hours of work and homework and more work, Adam woke in the forest and a thrill shot through his fingertips.
Ronan was real. He existed and Adam had met him and been in proximity to him and, best of all, Adam hadn’t made up the person who he was starting to love so much. But then he remembered how Ronan had treated him all day, how different he’d been from the Ronan he’d come to know. Was he just supposed to forgive that because they were something more than friends in their dreams? Just because he didn’t remember didn’t mean he could treat Adam like shit.
Standing up, Adam made his way through the forest, wandering aimlessly. He always bumped into Ronan eventually, so he didn’t try very hard and just trusted his feet as he walked.
Soon enough, he came across Ronan sitting at a pool, his feet in the water and his pants rolled up to his knees. Other than the fact that the pool obviously wasn’t acid this time, it was very reminiscent of how they’d first met.
For the first time, Adam dreaded walking over to him.
He almost considered turning around, but Ronan had already spotted him. He scrambled to stand and started making his way over to Adam, something close to a grin on his face. “Adam, you are real…!”
Adam stood there stiffly and let Ronan approach. When he got closer, Ronan reached for him and pushed strands of his hair back behind his ear. The touch made Adam shiver, though he wished that it didn’t. “Are you seriously fucking telling me I could’ve been kissing you all day today instead of just thinking about it?”
Adam pushed his hand away, irritation searing through him. How could Ronan talk like that after what had happened today? “Why were you so rude to me? You literally couldn’t open your mouth today without insulting me.”
Ronan looked surprised. “I wasn’t—” Stopping, he sighed and scrubbed the back of his head. “Look, I don’t—” But those words didn’t work either. Making a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, something in Ronan’s gaze darkened and he looked away. “…I told you you wouldn’t like me in real life.”
Something stung deep in Adam’s chest seeing this vulnerability that Ronan almost never showed, even around him. He took a deep breath. He of all people knew what had happened to Ronan; he knew that lashing out and possessive jealousy happened when you were used to losing the people you cared about. Not that he could’ve remembered, but he struggled to rein his temper in, to understand.
“I know you wouldn’t have said that if you’d remembered,” Adam said eventually. “But it was still a shitty thing to say.”
“I know.” Ronan looked miserably down at his feet. “Shitty things are all I know how to say anymore.”
Ronan sighed and kicked at the ground. “The worst thing is I’m not going to remember this and be fucking rude to you again tomorrow. I don’t know why I’m so fucking—”
“Hey,” Adam interrupted. He stepped forward and cupped Ronan’s cheeks in his hands, forcing his head up to look at him. “You’re healing. I get that. It’s just…I’m trying to heal too, you know?”
“Yeah.” Ronan closed his eyes and pressed their foreheads together. “…Is it too soon to say that I love you?”
Adam startled, though he tried hard to hide it. But of course, they were standing so close together it was impossible to hide it. Ronan blinked his eyes open and gave him a strained smile. “Too soon then.”
“No, I just…” Words died on Adam’s tongue. He didn’t know how he felt; he didn’t even know if he was capable of love. What if he was too broken? What if… “What if we never remember each other when we’re awake?”
“Then we’ll just have to fucking do it again,” Ronan said harshly. Adam opened his mouth but Ronan plowed on, “It’ll fucking suck, but Parrish, there is literally no universe where I don’t love you. It’ll happen again.”
Adam was frozen. Ronan had now told him he loved him twice. How was he supposed to respond? He knew he cared deeply for Ronan, and was probably in love with him, but…how did he know for sure? How was he supposed to say it, if he was?
“…Maybe we should carve messages into our bodies,” Adam said, even though the conversation wasn’t really about that.
Ronan laughed, let him change the subject. Right then, Adam was unreasonably grateful for it. “Hell Parrish, you can carve every word on my body. I’m sure I’ll understand when I wake up with the name of someone I don’t think I like permanently marked on my body.”
Adam laughed too, a weak one that barely left his ribcage. “This is so fucked up. We’re so fucked up.”
“I’ll toast to that,” Ronan said and kissed him.
Adam kissed him back before he pulled away slightly. He rested their foreheads together and, because it was a dream, said, “I really like you, Ronan. I don’t want to do it again; I don’t trust myself not to fuck it up.”
“I’ll fuck up way before you will – you saw how I handled today,” Ronan replied. He was blushing as he kissed the bridge of Adam’s nose.
“I didn’t handle it well either,” Adam admitted. He could feel his consciousness tugging him away so he reached up to grip Ronan’s shoulders. “At least we have Gansey to stop us from killing each other.”
Adam woke with the echo of Ronan’s laughter in his ear.
--
Ronan kind of hated Parrish.
He was good friends with Gansey, knew how to hold his own, and was not intimidated easily. Ronan both admired and despised these traits about him, and it confused him. It would be one thing if Parrish was just an asshole, but he was also incredibly smart, stubborn, and attractive as hell. And he had those stupid adorable freckles splattered across his nose…
Ronan hated how Parrish made him feel; he felt dangerous, explosive, close to opening the box he’d sealed shut for so long, close to destroying all of the fragile strands of self-care he had left. He hated that he wanted to like Parrish, that he knew he could willingly turn his back on God for someone like him.
It made him feel dirty, wrong.
And he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d met him somewhere before.
“So let me get this straight,” Gansey was saying as the three of them sat at a table for lunch. It was always the three of them now: Parrish was with them everywhere they went. He shared all of their classes, Gansey invited him to sit with them for lunch, he hung out at Monmouth until he had to work or whatever it was Parrishes did in the evenings. There was no escape from Ronan’s feelings and it was slowly driving him crazy. “You wandered into a forest a couple of months ago and…made a bargain with it?”
“Yes,” Parrish said as he took out a measly sandwich from his backpack and nothing else. “I know it sounds crazy, but that forest is sentient, Gansey. I think you would love it.”
Gansey had his thumb to his lip and he was faintly shaking, which meant he certainly did love it but was trying not to show it. Ronan rolled his eyes, exasperated but fond. Gansey would chase any breadcrumb trail, no matter how small, and Ronan would follow him, no matter how stupid.
He just hadn’t expected Parrish to also be as crazy as them.
“We should go check it out!” Gansey declared after some thought. “Adam, can you communicate with it?”
“Sort of,” Adam rubbed the back of his neck in a self-conscious way. “I can hear it talking to me, but…I can’t really understand it. And I haven’t tried communicating with it.”
“But you know how to get there?”
“Yeah. I go there all the time to move rocks and stuff for it.”
Ronan snorted. The other two glared at him.
“Let’s go today!” Gansey suggested. “You don’t have work, right, Adam?”
“Nope. I just have to be back before dark.”
“Will you be okay with that, Ronan?” Gansey asked.
Ronan snorted again. Now he cared about his opinion. “Why the fuck wouldn’t I be?”
“Don’t your nightmares usually involve running through forests? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s fine, it’s not really the forest that’s the scary part. Besides, I don’t really have those types of dreams anymore.”
Gansey looked bewildered, but also delighted. “You don’t? Ronan, that’s great! When did they stop?”
Ronan opened his mouth but then closed it again. He blinked. He couldn’t remember when he’d stopped having nightmares.
Parrish was watching him carefully and Ronan suddenly felt too exposed. Too open. Curling his shoulders in, he crossed his arms and glared. “I don’t know Dick, I don’t keep a fucking diary.”
Parrish snorted back a laugh. Ronan felt oddly pleased with himself.
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard today,” Gansey said and, like the dad that he was, sounded like he meant it. “Then, with this good fortune on our side, let’s journey to this sentient forest! Excelsior!”
--
They went immediately after school, piling into the Pig. Ronan made Parrish sit in the back because if he was willing to give up his heart and his pride to him, then at least he was keeping his fucking seat in the car.
The Pig started on the first try with a happy growl, something that made Gansey unbearably pleased.
“It’s a good omen,” he said, and grinned the entire drive to the forest.
As Parrish directed them, Ronan slouched in his seat and put his feet up on the dash, ignoring Gansey’s protests. Despite what he’d told them, going to the forest did make him a little uneasy. In his dreams, the forest was always sentient too, and it felt too close to home to be journeying to one while he was awake. Forests held magic—he believed that—and who knew if this one was going to be friendly or not.
Maybe this one wanted him dead too.
“This is it,” Parrish said after a few minutes of driving on a dirt road. Ronan glanced warily at the trees as Gansey pulled over as much as possible. The place gave him the same feeling he got when he met Parrish the first time, and it unnerved him.
He’d been here before.
But it was too late to turn back now; Gansey had already gotten out of the car and was digging around in the back for his equipment, which meant the adventure had officially started. Ronan took a deep breath, sent a short prayer to God, and stepped out of the car.
The memories struck him like a tsunami. He remembered almost drowning, and he remembered Adam saving him. He remembered showing him his tattoo for the first time; he remembered when Adam had opened up to him about his dad in the dark shadow of the moon; he remembered kissing him in Old Man’s Grove; he remembered the first time they’d done more than that in the shelter of a cave.
He remembered everything, and it was such a relief that he almost cried.
He glanced at Adam and knew that he’d remembered, too.
“Ronan,” Adam sighed, and the smile on his face could melt glaciers.
They fell into each other, Adam kissing him desperately and Ronan wrapping his arms around him for dear life. He was afraid that if he let go he would forget him again. They kissed again and again and again and it felt bigger than life; the love Ronan felt in his chest for him was enough to choke him. Kissing Adam was a thousand times better now that they were awake.
“Uh,” a voice said, startling them. They’d forgotten Gansey was there. When they turned to their friend, he was gaping at them. “Has this…? When did this happen? I thought you guys didn’t like each other…??”
“Fuck, man, this happened forever ago,” Ronan said and grinned at Adam. He couldn’t stop running his hands up underneath his shirt and touching his skin; he was warm and so very real.
Adam grinned back and kissed him again before turning to Gansey. “Shit Gans, have we got the story to tell you!”
#pynch week 2018#pynch week#trc#pynch#day 4#amnesia#ronan lynch#adam parrish#gansey#dreams#mentions of abuse#my writing
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Dark’s addiction
Another story from the RP server, this time featuring an angsty turn of events. Quick backstory: Darkiplier has gotten addicted to a substance from the chaos realm, which has since been removed from his immediate access.
Triggers: substance addiction & withdrawal, descriptions of pain
Taglist: @the-asexual-reaper @pleaseletthisjimbetaken @cosmiplier @true-channel-star-jim @softbludemon @snowelfxx @hawkeye221b
Darkiplier hurried through the night, hidden in the blackness. He was disguised in a casual outfit and confident that anyone who saw him wouldn’t recognize him as the respected and sometimes feared mayor of the town. The gnawing was coming back, he could feel it. Soon it would be a thousand knives plunging into him, and then a fire in his muscles, his veins, his bones, and then…..’and then you would give in again.’
No. No, that wouldn’t happen, he wouldn’t let it happen.
‘You can’t fight it. Not alone.’
The damned entity again. It was always looking for a chance to get back in the driver’s seat, always hungering for more power, more control, more pawns. It had an addiction of its own, and Dark wasn’t sure which one was worse.
‘Better the demon you know…’ it let the sentence trail off.
“Than the one I don’t. But do I really know you?” He’d been living with the Nothing for decades now, he should know it, but that didn’t mean he did. Who knew how long the Nothing had ‘lived’ before Markiplier or his friends had set foot in the manor?
‘Perhaps not. But I know you, Darkiplier. Remember, I am you. You owe your life to me. All of you owe me your continued existence.’
That was true; it had kept them from dying that night. But at what price? And was it a price they were supposed to continue paying forever?
‘You pledged yourselves to me, both of you. And you, ‘Darkiplier,’ would have no existence if not for me,’ it sneered.
Dark groaned, the gnawing distracting him from his thoughts.
‘Oh no, you don’t get to ignore me so easily,’ the Nothing spoke in a ringing tone that drove away the pain. ‘You are mine, Darkiplier, and I will remind you why.’
“I’m sorry. I just need answers to all this. I already lost one friend today; I don’t want to lose another.” That was….Damien’s voice?
“Fine, but...I need to stay here.” Celine. Of course. It was reminding him of that night.
They walked into the room the Seer had claimed as her own. She was obviously in charge here, despite the mayor’s badge the man wore.
“Have a seat,” she ordered and the man sat obediently.
“What were you doing in here with Y/N, Celine?” he asked curiously.
“Quiet. I need to concentrate on Mark. There are dark forces surrounding this manor, and I fear he may be caught up in them.”
Damien sat quietly, fidgeting slightly. Across from him, Celine stared into a clear globe on the table between them.
‘You’ve come to me at last,’ a voice whispered to her. It had been waiting a long time for this moment.
“Mark, is that you?” she responded, her spirit drifting closer to its realm, its portion of the void, within the house.
‘I’m here, but you have to let me in,’ it reached out to her, trying to pull her into its void for a true conversation. The connection snapped, and Celine’s spirit sprang back into her body when Damien spoke.
“Celine, who are you talking to?”
“Be quiet!” she snapped. “I almost had a connection with him.”
Celine took a deep breath and threw herself toward the voice, her spirit slipping from her and into the void. The Nothing wrapped itself around her eagerly, feeling her strength glowing in the void like the sun itself.
‘Mark, is that you?’ Even her mental voice rang through the void with force.
‘Mark isn’t here,’ it answered. ‘He left as soon as you arrived.’
It showed her the house, and they watched as Damien’s body gave a large jerk and slid from the chair. It rolled and writhed on the floor, mouth open in a grimace of agony. They saw Damien’s spirit battered and bruised, then shoved into the void with them as Mark took the body. He stood and walked behind Celine’s body and grabbed her by the throat. They continued to watch, Damien and Celine horrified as Mark, using Damien’s body, finished strangling Celine and left the room without a backwards glance.
As Celine’s body crumpled, the Nothing flooded in, dragging her spirit along. It would need her help in order to keep her body alive. It settled in comfortably, pulling Celine and the tattered remnants of Damien’s spirit around it like a cloak.
It reached for Celine’s abilities and ‘pushed’ at the manor’s confines. There was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. Light spilled from the windows and it felt its new face smile in satisfaction. It had made a wonderful choice in this vessel. So much power, and twin souls with additional abilities to sweeten the deal.
Celine’s body laughed. Mark had no idea what he’d given up in that house. At the thought, they felt their eyes narrow in anger. The Nothing paused to think. Had it done that?
‘No,’ replied Celine’s spirit. ‘I did. He really did this to me?’
“You saw it happen. I didn’t make him do that; I don’t make anyone do anything,” it replied.
Their face twisted in a snarl of anger. ‘I’ll kill him!’
Oh, her rage was delightful, sending a pulse of energy through the house and destroying the barrier holding them here.
There was a commotion in the hall as they opened the door. The groundskeeper filled the hallway, blocking their escape. They tried to force their way past, but the man was physically stronger and immune to their influence. He pushed them back into the room and locked the door.
They shoved with everything they had, trying to force the groundskeeper to let them out, to no avail.They heard voices in the hall arguing and reached for them. The groundskeeper was a waste of effort, but maybe one of the others would hear them and respond. The detective had a decent amount of instability, and so did the colonel. The district attorney….could prove useful. They had no use for the others and pushed them to leave quickly.
They moved away from the door, glancing down when their steps became unsteady. Their body was disintegrating and one of their feet had come off at the ankle. They’d used too much energy and the body couldn’t handle the strain. Staying in it would require energy they couldn’t waste. Nothing mattered now but getting out of here.
They quickly abandoned the body, letting it thump to the floor. Celine felt a pang of regret, but quickly pushed it away. Nothing mattered now except escape from this manor….and revenge against Mark. She would take great satisfaction at tearing him limb from - she stopped.
‘Damien,’ Celine said. ‘He stole your body.’ She was horrified at what Mark had done to both of them.
‘I know,’ he responded bitterly.
‘We’ll make him pay. We’ll get out of here somehow, and we’ll make him pay for this,’ she seethed.
‘Follow me,’ the Nothing spoke up. ‘I may be able to help.’
They made their way through the upside down, reaching out to snag Y/N and lead them to the appropriate room. No one but the Detective had been able to find this place; Mark had wanted a secret room for him to work and the Nothing had provided one. They watched as Y/N stumbled around and the colonel found them.
‘William,’ Celine reached out, her hand passing through the man’s shoulder.
‘Old friend, what have you done?’ Damien was aghast at the evidence before them.
‘Nothing he wasn’t driven to by Mark’s jealousy and plotting. The things here are misleading,’ the Nothing brought their attention to a newspaper article with a photograph that looked suspiciously like William. It pointed to a date, and they could see it was before any of them had been born.
‘Why would the detective do this? Unless,’ Celine stared at the Nothing.
‘Unless he was hired to. Yes,’ it answered.
‘But why would Mark do that?’ Damien watched in horror as William interrupted Y/N.
All three of them followed him through the house as he rampaged in search of the detective. They stared as the two argued, the detective was shot, Y/N and William struggled for the gun, and Y/N fell.
The Nothing reached out and grabbed Y/N’s spirit, pulling them into the void as William’s words hung in the air, ‘It was an accident, I swear,’ ringing through the house.
‘We can use this; all of us can share that body. We just have to be more careful with our use of power until it can withstand it,’ the Nothing spoke quickly as Y/N gradually adjusted to their surroundings. ‘They know you, go speak to them.’
The Nothing watched as they convinced Y/N to let -it- them in. They had learned their lesson and moved slowly into the body, allowing their power to trickle through it gradually. Damien’s small bit of healing was useful for repairing the worst of the damage, and the Nothing was able to pull on Y/N’s charisma to convince the body to accept them.
As they worked, the Nothing laid out its -trap- bargain very carefully.
‘I can give you the revenge you want so strongly, but there’s a price,’ it began.
‘There always is,’ remarked Damien.
‘Hush, let’s at least hear what it is,’ Celine retorted.
‘It will take all of us working together to accomplish the task. With the mayor’s appearance and influence, Markiplier can quite easily ensure that your friend, William, is sent to jail for a very long time for “his murder.” In addition, he can throw suspicion upon the district attorney and their presence at the manor during the events.’
Damien and Celine were silent for a moment, processing this. The Nothing waited patiently, continuing to usher their energies to the appropriate places.
‘Very well,’ Celine began.
‘What do we have to do?’ Damien finished.
Y/N looked apprehensive. This sounded like a trap.
The Nothing smiled warmly -coldly- at them all and told them its plan. The process took hours, but when it was finally done, they had a decently solid body around them.
They stood, and Celine and Damien watched in horror as the love of their lives went mad at seeing Y/N’s body come back to life before his eyes. He’d taken his coat off and sat cradling Damien’s cane. The Nothing idly wondered if he’d sat there all night.
“It was all a joke! I didn’t kill anyone!�� They watched him stumble away, calling for the friends he couldn’t see in front of him.
They picked up Damien’s cane from where William had left it and stared at it for a moment; the last tie to a man who only wanted to protect his friends and family. They looked up at the mirror in front of them and all they could see was Damien’s stolen body; the one that Markiplier had used to kill Damien’s own sister, and the one they had molded Y/N’s body to resemble. They felt Y/N stir in unease at the thirst for revenge coursing through them. The three stared into the mirror and adjusted their broken neck, shoving Y/N out and into the portion of the void that the Nothing had recently vacated. There was no room for second-guessing here.
‘And?’ the Nothing asked.
‘We agree to the plan,’ Celine spoke for both of them.
The Nothing smiled in triumph and went to work. It had already chosen the pieces of their souls that suited its purposes best and it wasted no time in ripping them to shreds and stitching them together with thread of it’s own power. Celine’s temper, her ability to manipulate people, Damien’s charisma, his slow burning anger, and most of all, their hunger for more: more power, more experiences, more.
It took no more than an instant, and when it was done, Darkiplier studied himself in the mirror. He saw someone hovering next to him, pity on their face, and his own expression twisted in loathing and contempt. He turned and left the figure there. He had work to do.
“So I owe you my life, and now you want….what? What is it you want? We gave up our quest for revenge a long time ago, what is it you’re after now?” Dark genuinely didn’t know. Even after all this time, the Nothing was able to hide its intent from them.
‘If you must know, I am seeking power. You were most helpful in obtaining some from the Author, but you’ve been rather...distracted lately. What is it you are after?’
Dark shook his head. There was no way he was answering that, but the Nothing plucked it from his mind easily in his current state.
‘This again? I thought you had given up on that dream longer ago than your quest for vengeance,’ its voice sneered.
“It could happen,” Dark muttered.
‘Not now. Not after what happened earlier. He’s terrified of you now, and you know it, don’t you? This addiction is ruining everything you’ve worked to build. I can help, you just have to let me in again.’
“No. I’ll deal with it myself,” Dark insisted.
‘Will you? Have at it, then.’ The ringing from his aura stopped, and all the sensations it had been holding back flooded into him.
Dark slowly collapsed to his knees. He was on fire, burning from his bones to his skin. There was a gnawing in his stomach like thousands of the sharpest fangs were eating him from the inside out. His head swam, and he could no longer see clearly. The light from his aura faded as he lost the ability to control it, and blackness surrounded him.
“No, please no! -Don’t leave me in the void- I can’t...please, not the darkness again!” Dark cried in terror.
‘You know what you have to do,’ the Nothing’s voice was the essence of cold.
“N-no,” Dark wasn’t going to give in quite that easily.
‘I can make all this stop, I can take away that fear, that pain, all of it. Just let me in again,’ its voice was insidious, but it was pushing back the pain.
“I can’t...I can’t leave them -him-”
‘Then stay here, and let it consume you.’
Dark reached for Damien and Celine, trying to bring back their light. His head pounded and throbbed, making it impossible for him to move within it to find them. He felt the blackness all around him and shuddered in terror. The entity silently held out its hand, hazed with a dimly glowing light.
Dark sighed in defeat and took it. The numbness felt wonderful at first, flooding through his body and staving off the pain, and then it felt like the icy prison it really was. He dimly felt his body going through all the stages of withdrawal, and it was writhing on the ground as if it hurt, but he felt….nothing. He was nothing, useless, unneeded, and he retreated into a corner of their mind. As the Nothing spread through them, nearly all the light was extinguished, until Celine and Damien came to sit with him. They all watched, powerless to do anything, as Darkiplier made his way back to Ego Alley.
#darkiplier#bitten's creations#RP backstory#Wilford Warfstache#mayor damien#celine#wkm story#substance addiction#addiction withdrawal
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