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#his crimes are plentiful and some even forgivable

yandere-daze · 1 year

Text

Thank you everyone for the big support on the RE2 Leon post! I was honestly blown away by all the nice comments I got 🥺💕

And now I'm back for more ^^

Hope you enjoy!

gn reader

tw yandere, obsession, over-protectiveness, possessiveness, heavily implied murder, implied stalking, kidnapping, jealousy

General Yandere! RE4 Leon headcanons

Above all else, Yandere! RE4 Leon is very protective of you, the dearest person in his life. To a very unhealthy degree.

He has always been protective but a lot has changed since his first day as a rookie. Leon has seen a lot, he knows how truly horrifying and cruel the world can be. He knows what dangers lurk in the shadows, just waiting for an opportunity to strike and snatch away his beloved.

He doesn't want you to go through what he has. He wants you to be safe at all costs. He simply can't risk losing you, you're everything to him. You're what keeps him grounded, the one beacon of light in the darkness that threatens to consume him every day.

His many missions have broken him, Leon is not the same person he used to be and that too reflects in subtle changes in his yandere behaviour.

He remains very protective, insanely so, but it´s not quite in the same way as RE2 Leon was. He has become pretty jaded and that also translates to him being more merciless when it comes to shooting down anyone that could be perceived as a threat.

There´s no more slight hesitation before going through with killing someone and pulling the trigger, no deliberation, he won´t leave even a sliver of a chance of something hurting you and that extends to zombies, cultists, or rude strangers alike.

He still likes showing off in front of you, proving to you how capable and reliable he is, but he would rather avoid having you witness him getting rid of the latter ones.

He´s sure you won´t object to him getting rid of horrifying eldritch horrors but he fears your naivete won´t allow you to see the other dangers lurking right around the corner. People everywhere that are secretly out to hurt you. People that have bad intentions. People that try to get between the two of you.

He certainly won´t forgive that friend of yours that told you how "scary" Leon´s glare was whenever he looked at someone that wasn´t you. And isn´t it weird that he´s somehow always there whenever you´re in trouble? And they could have sworn they saw him standing outside your window back when you had your sleepover at your house...

Of course Leon couldn´t let this continue any longer. What if you started listening to them and tried to keep your distance? Leon couldn´t bear that. How is he supposed to make sure you´re safe if you won´t let him?

He knows he needs to do something about this so-called friend of yours. Maybe at first he will start "small" and simply start incriminating them for crimes they didn´t commit. It´s truly scary how little you know about your friends, right? Who would have thought that they would turn out to be a criminal?

Leon hopes that will be enough to make them stay away but if they´re particularly persistent... Well, he knows just how to deal with obstacles that are in his way. His position as a special agent gives him plenty of opportunities to make that person simply disappear from all records after mysteriously vanishing.

But don´t worry, Leon will be right by your side, holding you tight and mourning the loss of your friend right with you. It´s really so terrible what happened to them but at least you have him! And he won´t ever leave you.

Now of course, if you yourself were acting difficult, continuously getting yourself into danger, ignoring all of his advice ( don´t leave your house without him. always keep him updated on what you´re currently doing. never go on a date with a stranger..) or avoiding him in any way, Leon would feel forced to take some drastic measures to ensure that you´ll always remain safe and his alone.

While RE2 Leon would not have gone so far as to kidnap you, RE4 Leon absolutely would. It would not be his first choice but in this case, he feels like there is no other way. He would rather keep you locked up for the rest of your life than lose you. He just cannot bear ever having to live without you, now that he has found you.

You´re the only good thing in his life and he´ll be damned if he´ll let anything happen to you.

Of course he understands why you´re mad at him afterwards and it breaks his heart to see you upset with him, but he´ll suffer through it all in the hopes that you´ll one day understand why he had to do what he did.

He´s sure you will come around to him one day and then you´ll finally live the happy life he you both always wanted. In the meantime, he´ll treat you with gentle care ( well, as gentle as Leon can be. His displays of affection are still pretty awkward and stilted even though he tries very hard) and makes sure all your needs are met.

He´ll also let you get away with many things like screaming at him, ignoring him or backing away from his touch, as long as you don´t try to escape him. You may hate him at the moment, but at least nothing can get in here and hurt you while he´s constantly monitoring you.

Leon hopes that one day you´ll be able to move on from this and become a normal couple, but he doesn´t really mind having you all to himself with no prying eyes right now. He´s very possessive too and he´d just hate having to get rid of another stranger that looked at you a second too long for his tastes.

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twistedwonderlandimaginesblog · 2 years

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Hi! Could I please the dorm leaders reactions when their fem!S/O ends up in the office because she kicked someone who was trying to look up her skirt?

Azul Ashengrotto:

Hearing that someone was looking up your skirt made Azul feel some type of way, but it’s hard to pinpoint at first. He had been bullied plenty back in the day and he had never managed to strike back, only now finding he had power to do something. He considered sending Jade and Floyd after them but it’s a personal matter that he wants to see to himself. Your assailant is tied up in a contract in which they’ll never buy their way out of, essentially subservient to Azul’s whims and by extension yours.

Idia Shroud:

Idia is shocked to hear it but is even more at a loss of what he can do to help you. He’s never had an issue listening to you complain or vent to him but this type of situation feels like it requires an extra step. Was this his revenge era? Not for himself but for a loved one? He brainstormed with Ortho one night for little petty things they could do to make your attackers life worse. It’s almost nothing to find embarrassing photos and post them all over Magicam, your attackers reputation thoroughly ruined by the time Idia’s finished with him.

Kalim Al-Asim:

Kalim is in your corner one hundred percent! Even if you had kicked the person for simply saying something rude, he would argue that you were in the right. He had always been your biggest fan and he might come on a little strong as he tried to cheer you up, knowing you had to be feeling bad after all that happened. He wants you to know that it wasn’t right that someone did that to you as well as Crowley getting you in trouble instead, saying he’d interfere in a heartbeat and take the punishment himself if the person tried to bother you again.

Leona Kingscholar:

Leona is quiet when you tell him, and quiet is always dangerous when it comes to him. You can already see the scheme forming in his head, even if you told him not to get involved you were unlikely to get through to him now. A slight against you was a slight against him in his book, and he wasn’t one to let disrespect slide. He doesn’t quite tell you what he did but you’re offered an apology from Crowley; he admitted the other party came forward and admitted to being the aggressor, looking rather worse for wear though he didn’t expand on that any further.

Malleus Draconia:

There’s a dangerous glint in Malleus’ eyes that even makes Lilia a little nervous, despite the fact he looks rather interested in seeing what he might do. He does give Malleus a reminder of his position and the consequences that can come from drastic, emotional responses to serious situations but Malleus assured him everything would be fine. You’re greeted by your attacker on their hands and knees, begging for your forgiveness as they shook and warily eyed Malleus standing off to the side.

Riddle Rosehearts:

Riddle is a little conflicted. It’s against the rules to use physical violence against another person when not specifically in an environment where you’re supposed to brawl… But it’s not exactly within the rules to disrespect the boundaries set by society. He upset you at first as it seemed like he was almost blaming you, but he apologized for making it seem so. He couldn’t excuse your rule breaking but he would find a way, within the rules, to make the person suffer to the full extent of the law for invading your privacy.

Vil Schoenheit:

Vil was no stranger to people invading his personal space or trying to get little glances of parts of him he didn’t often show off in public. He can imagine how uncomfortable you might feel wearing a skirt again and encouraged you to do what you could to make yourself feel safe. He’s irritated that Crowley got you in trouble rather than the person who attacked you, and he has Rook on the case, hunting down the person who had committed the crime. Rook was more than happy to help, telling you that it would be a crime if you couldn’t walk around looking as elegant as you normally did.

#Disney TWST #TWST #Disney Twisted Wonderland #Twisted Wonderland #TWST Imagines #TWST x Reader #Twisted Wonderland x Reader #Twisted Wonderland Imagines #Azul Ashengrotto #Idia Shroud #Leona Kingscholar #Malleus Draconia #Riddle Rosehearts #Kalim Al Asim #Vil Schoenheit

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aziraphales-library · 3 months

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Hello, thank you for the work you put into this blog. It might be a bit early, but are there any S2 fix-it recs yet?

Hi! We have a plentiful #fix-it tag now! Here are some more to add...

you're the victim of your crime by JustNerdyThings (T)

It's a simple decision, really. It's simple in the way things rarely are, in that it's not much of a decision at all. Whatever Aziraphale might stand to gain by staying in Heaven, it cannot possibly compare to what he's already lost down on Earth. So Aziraphale leaves. He miracles up his letter of resignation, pretends to clear out his still-empty desk, and leaves. And he hopes against hope that somehow, someday, Crowley might forgive him.

hungry work by CCs_World (E)

“You must understand,” Aziraphale had whispered. He was on the doorstep of the bookshop, months after his departure, looking in at Crowley — disheveled, both of them. Broken, both of them. Afraid, both of them. Hopeful, both of them. “I understand, Aziraphale,” Crowley had said back. They had stretched out a hand to Aziraphale. “Come on. Let’s think of a plan together.” And they had. Somehow, miraculously, ineffably, a second apocalypse had been averted. Heaven and Hell were cut off. They were free — truly free. And they had all the time in the universe. So, naturally, they left London. OR: After the Second Coming does not Come, Crowley and Aziraphale move to the South Downs. However, living together is difficult when there are over 6000 years of tension between them - tension which must be resolved if they are to have their happily ever after.

Trembling with tenderness by HolRose (T)

When the former demon Crowley is surprised in his Mayfair flat by a visit from his erstwhile boss and their ex-Archangel partner asking for assistance, Crowley has that familiar sinking feeling that something he did in the past has come back to bite him on the arse. When the current Supreme Archangel materialises in his flat shortly afterwards, Crowley knows the time has come for them to really talk at last. Just as soon as they’ve got rid of their visitors, that is. A post Season 2 fix-it fic in which they communicate properly, and Aziraphale demonstrates just how crafty, and also loving, he can be. This is one for those who might like something genuinely soft and romantic after the ending to Season 2.

We'll make Heaven a place on Earth by arabellas_court (E)

Aziraphale unfolded the piece of paper slowly beneath the horrid lighting. He cleared his throat and looked around, the corners of his mouth faltering just a second when he landed on Crowley. He looked down at the paper. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth—” “Jesus Christ,” Crowley grumbled. “No, dear, he came later, remember?” ------ Crowley knows his worth. He can't take Aziraphale back immediately after how hurt he's been. And for once, Aziraphale has to work for that forgiveness. Both of them are a mess. Both of them go to therapy—unexpectedly, together. Angst with a happy ending.

Snogging on Heaven's Door by Tetrisbiene (M)

What if Aziraphale actually said, 'Do it again. Please. Right now!'? A Post-Season 2 Fanfic. Aziraphale has to go to Heaven to thwart the Second Coming, and Crowley just can't let him go alone. Follow the pair as they meet old and new faces, go to heavenly meetings, sow mischief, and tempt some angels to fall in love with humanity. May the two find a flat surface to talk things over with each other before this big promotion can tear them apart. This is the story of our ineffable idiots in a roller coaster ride of emotions, heavenly bureaucracy, and stolen kisses against doors. Have some angst, some stupid puns in the chapter titles, and an elevator ride that's basically an excuse for me to write a cheesy alternative ending to help me get over the actual finale.

In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you by sunrisesinthesuburbs (T)

Aziraphale stares back at the Metatron with renewed optimism. “I know where my loyalty stands, Sir,” he starts, even managing a small smile. “And I do not need to prove myself to them. When the Time comes, they will enjoy what I’ve been working on.” He sounds convincing, really. Honest, reliable and responsible. Crowley decides this is a good time to whistle: “Someone’s getting all professional up here.” Aziraphale dares to peep in his direction, hoping to convey with one brief look everything he is thinking about: ‘Shut up, will you? I’m trying to do something here.’ Crowley smirks, of course. He really is so annoying. “Well, Aziraphale, you may not need to prove yourself to them,” the Metatron reaches for something inside his jacket, “but you need to prove yourself to me.” Aziraphale fails Heaven's test (of course), and now he has to fix an even bigger mess. Throw a messy break up and a Second Coming in the mix and, somehow, you get a getaway car and a cottage in the South Downs. A lot can happen in a day. (Post Season 2; my very own attempt at fixing things.)

- Mod D

#good omens #good omens s2 #ineffable husbands #fix-it #mod d

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privateanxieties · 2 years

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The Golden Age of New York City

Summary: “I lost Gwen. I couldn’t save her. I’m never going to be able to forgive myself for that. But I carried on, tried to um, tried to keep going. Tried to keep being the - that friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, ‘cause I know that’s what she would’ve wanted but... at some point, I just... I stopped pulling my punches. I got rageful. I got bitter.”

The story of a rageful Spider-Man, and the one who brings him back from the ledge.

Warnings/Spoilers: violence, crime, assault, addiction - generally adult themes. Please read only if you are at least 17.

Characters: tasm!Peter Parker, unnamed original character (she/her), May Parker, miscellaneous characters and perspectives.

Words: 18.1K. Honestly? My best work thus far.

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Peter doesn't listen to the chatter anymore.

Whereas most people have a beginning and an ending to their day, time is blurred together in the young man's mind. As he walks to work, the battered watch on his wrist announces the sunrise, but he wouldn't know it for the bruises around his eyes. In and around crowds he maneuvers, unwilling to look up as he lets his senses lead the way. When the coffee cup burns his palm, his grip tightens, and for a moment he sees color.

He goes through the motions, asleep to the world around him.

The construction site is quiet when he gets there, his supervisor the only person on the premises. He's often caught Peter working before his shift even began, and for this Mr. Daniels sometimes regards him with the fatherly concern of a good man. Though he tries, Peter can't find it in himself to appreciate that.

He does, however, appreciate the opportunity to begin his day in peace and skip the talk with the other guys. After months of keeping strictly to himself, the conversation around him has long shifted from good will to acrimony. Despite the looks they exchange and the whispers carried by the echo of empty walls, he doesn't react, and his supervisor never berates him. He remains the only employee whose work isn't under scrutiny at the end of each week, and even when he sees Peter lift more than he should reasonably be able to, Mr. Daniels looks the other way.

The day is long and the work is intense, but it's the only thing he can do anymore. He prefers it, in fact - pushing his body and keeping his mind running minimally. He does plenty of thinking between the hours of 3 and 6 a.m., when he waits for sleep to crash over him.

Clocking out takes longer than usual, because it's payday and everyone is already lined up before him. He'd go back to fiddle with some equipment, but he knows he'll get distracted and he doesn't want to keep Mr. Daniels there for longer than he has to be. The man is nearing his sixties, and from what he gathers, a new grandfather twice over. At least someone should get to go home to their family.

As he waits in line outside the small trailer office, his consciousness invades again, as it usually does in the absence of physical stimulation. The chatter he makes a habit of ignoring reaches his ears involuntarily. Two guys from crew B are talking too loudly at the front of the line.

"Yeah, she bugs me about that too. Shoves her phone in my face before I even make it through the door."

"What's so special about that one? Every two-bit reporter in this town wrote about the guy, everyone tryna make money off him."

"Well guess what, I looked this morning - not like I had a choice. She showed me again before she went to school. And you know what, it ain't half bad. Kinda makes you feel sorry for him."

"Yeah? What's it say?"

"I'm not doin' a book report for ya. You wanna read it, ask your daughter. Just make sure you tell 'er not to go looking for him like that crazy woman did, crawling over skyscrapers and shit."

The more he hears, the deeper the frown carves its way into his skin.

"You know girls these days, man. You tell 'em not to do something now, they'll do it when they're old enough just to spite you. I think imma let Salma handle this one."

"Salma? Wasn't she in love with Spider-Man? You think she's gonna tell your daughter not to go looking for him? She'd go herself if she could!"

"Fuck you, Jimmy!"

They laugh and shove each other like they're twenty years lighter, but Peter doesn't hear the rest. He doesn't want to, because it's nothing new.

It's true that every reporter in town has written a piece on Spider-Man, as if it were some rite of passage of journalism. He hasn't read an article in more than two years, and he certainly hasn't been tempted to lately.

When Mr. Daniels hands him his envelope with a kind smile, Peter's own feels unsynchronized and false. He stops by the drugstore on 19th St. where he knows he can pick up ketamine without so much as a raised brow, no matter how many trips a month he might make.

'Wrong', screams his conscience, because he isn't the only one procuring the substance. Other people don't have his resistance or his metabolism. They don't heal from this abuse. However, he doesn't know an alternative to getting through the nights yet; nothing else makes the pounding headache go away, and the buzz that hits a couple of hours in isn't unwelcome either.

He eats when he gets home and forgets that he did an hour later, so he gets pizza from the corner stand. The taste doesn't matter, because it's nourishment he'll need for later.

Head down, hoodie up, headphones in with no music playing - this is how he moves about the city when the mask isn't on.

It's only 8 p.m., and midsummer isn't kind with its extension of daylight. It means hours more to kill before he can finally move, finally breathe. It's why he crushes a pill before he leaves the apartment, and it burns his nostrils when he inexpertly tries to inhale the powder. It's the first time he's done it this way, but he needed a quick fix that would last less before he ingests a proper dose later.

Peter Parker doesn't need anyone feeling sorry for him. Whoever this reporter is, the desperation makes his blood boil. He's used to people following him, trying to ask him questions, trying to take glamor shots of him in a fight.

This, by contrast, is insidious - the nerve to go looking for him in the only place that is his own anymore.

Up.

He looks up in a rare moment, but it's with unbridled anger.

She's been up there, probably on observation decks, thinking she'd… what? See him and get him to sit down for an interview? Wring an anecdote or two out of him? Pester him for metaphors?

The door cracks when he slams it closed.

He's been losing track of time even when he intends to keep it. He knows it's a side effect, but can't bring himself to care, much less worry. Words like addiction flutter about his mind, but they never stay for long, a sign that he's traversing into the deeper end of such struggles.

The alarm he sets for 11 p.m. never rings, because he turns it off half an hour before it even has the chance to do so. He's out the window with a grunt, shooting a web at the last second of the drop.

He lets momentum bring back some of the feelings that make up a person, with tugs and pulls and somersaults that knock him about and rattle his brain around his cranium like sorbet in a cup.

He isn't headed for Park Avenue tonight. Fisk has surrounded himself with state-of-the-art security systems in every single one of his weasel holes, and last time he almost returned home with a hole through his sternum. It makes him bristle, this impotence; this overwhelming knowledge that all his brute strength can't take on endless resources.

He's outworn and past his prime.

The world turns and will keep turning, whether he wins or not. Whatever he does, the world is indifferent and proceeds with abandon.

And Peter matches its disregard as he moves further into the night.

He wakes to news playing on a nearby billboard. It's one of the only ways for him to recall what he even does anymore on the nights that he goes out raging. He listens with one ear while the other lays flat against the roof he passed out on. He doesn't know where he is, but he can guess that it's too central of a location to still be in once the sun has risen.

"…at this time. The NYPD has provided sparse details of the scene, a fact that leaves many speculating whether the police are protecting the public from the knowledge that a once-cherished hero has turned into what we all fear. Is it safe for the city that Spider-Man is out there, imparting the kind of punishment we know him to be choosing? Has New York reached its limit for patience? We'll be addressing all these concerns and more in our special broadcast tonight at 8 p.m. EST."

He lies there, unmoving. If the thoughts in his head could escape and take form, they'd bruise his entire body with their weight.

The public's patience… his own patience is running thin. With himself, with the world - Peter has been over this entire thing for what feels like an unending amount of time. He doesn't remember when, if ever, this brought him joy or satisfaction. The suit is inextricable from him now; he can't imagine himself without it. Whatever awaits him, he'll face it as Spider-Man.

"Coming to you with breaking news: Editor-in-chief and Founder of the Daily Bugle newspaper, J.J. Jameson has just announced he's looking into opening a lawsuit against the former NY Times photographer whose independent work has made waves on social media this week. Jameson sustains that her allegations are quote: 'Nothing more than the musings of an infatuated young lady, perhaps dreaming of being rescued from one of the many life-threatening situations she's put herself in just to talk to a man who breaks the law every night and puts our great city in danger. Parents would do well to not entertain or tolerate admiration for the kind of mind who wrote those words.'

Stay tuned for more details on the developing situation."

A sardonic half-smile turns the corner of Peter's lip.

No one has gotten under Jameson's skin so thoroughly since he started putting on the mask, and for once, curiosity rises within him.

It's more of a fleeting interest in whatever remark she made that riled the old badger up.

A photographer.

Something Peter might've imagined himself to be in another life, had he taken a different path. He doesn't know when he last picked up a camera. He hasn't sold Jameson a photo this year, or the year before.

His worst impulses beckon a little bit of smugness, too. The anger from yesterday, which lingers still, feels soothed. Maybe a lawsuit would dissuade future adventurers from seeking him out in his only refuge. It's a good way to learn a lesson.

When he makes it back to his apartment, he's sweating bullets from the unforgiving summer heat, but his attempt to shower is interrupted by a ringing phone. He doesn't have to look, because it's aunt May.

The ringtone he picked for her years ago is still set, and when it once warmed him up to hear, it now serves as a warning.

He doesn't answer. He hasn't for months.

She keeps trying.

He takes a bath instead, keeping his head underwater until his lungs scorch and his heart pounds in his ears, drowning out the gentle tune from the phone.

The cease and desist letter sits innocently on the glass coffee table, a pair of eyes tracing its contours with amusement.

Jameson reveals himself as the kind of person who thinks he can scare anyone under thirty with an official-seeming document. Since most youths are focused on getting good jobs or pursuing big dreams, it stands to reason none of them have high-powered lawyers at their disposal. He forgets the internet exists, as one is wont to do when one lives in the spring of 1947 - the good old days, when people were fed lies and had few ways of fact-checking.

It didn't take long to figure out the letter is fake, and it comes as no surprise that any serious attorney would refuse signing such a thing. He sent her a cease and desist for a blog post, for crying out loud. The man is clearly not into freedom of speech when that speech hits a little too close to home.

She'll plan what to write about this debacle later, and maybe, over coffee, decide whether she wants to pursue this legally. There might be avenues into a courtroom where Jameson would have to explain to a judge what he thinks intimidation is.

Having seen his published statement in the Bugle this morning, maybe she can tack defamation charges onto the steaming pile of recalcitration that is J. Jonah Jameson.

"An infatuated young lady dreaming of being rescued… maybe I should start signing that at the top of every article," she mutters.

Grabbing the laptop from the armrest of the couch, she settles in for light research and an email answering session. She ignores the ones that are clearly job application rejections. Looks like her next gigs would still be dog weddings for wealthy Brooklynites and vanity projects for Upper East Side widows.

She tries resisting the urge to check the post again, but it's difficult when it's the most success she's had in the last couple of years.

Thirty-one thousand new readers.

1.4 million views since posting date, which was almost nine days ago. Thousands of comments of every shade under the sun.

Was this in any way monetizable? Yes, probably.

Does her skin crawl just at the thought of making money off of words she wrote earnestly and with no ulterior motive? Too much. Enough that the thought is banished soon after it arrives.

Though maybe, if she's honest, it's not so much the words as it is who they are about.

He's been exploited by enough people for enough reasons.

Yes, principles don't really put food on the table anymore these days, but she'd rather her stomach ache sometimes than her mind screech all the time.

With no more to do on another day of being unemployed, she decides on an afternoon walk that will likely end up just as fruitful as the others. Zero progress.

New York seems slow for a Tuesday. It's that special time of day, right before corporate employees revive and amble home as if in a trance, heads and eyes still in the grip of their managers. No one stops working at 6 p.m., not even those with fixed hours.

She makes the trek all the way down to 63rd St. and wonders if another stroll through Central Park would be too indulgent, because these are the worries of the under occupied. Any break feels like too much leniency, and any time spent not producing something is time you are lost to the world.

The oak tree she stops under shields her from the unrelenting sun and in an equal measure invites longing. Existing in place, changing without moving, being useful without doing damage - what a thing. A thing she can't seem to find out how to do.

Photography.

Little did she know when she was barely a teenager that the real obstacle to achieving greatness in art wouldn't be time or money invested in equipment and training.

Finding anyone to care that you have something to say… that was the real trouble.

Earning a living in this profession entails mostly hurting oneself or hurting others.

So far, she's been hurting herself and her hopes with every silly gig she could find around town - the sort of photography that means nothing, even to the people who pay for it.

The other thing that makes money requires a change of scruples: selling a couple shots of some celebrity or other, preferably in compromising positions or locations, would bring a good dinner every time, if she could keep it down.

In the absence of nepotism or wealth, the good jobs and opportunities in this field are close to none, and time… time moves along. It barrels forward, with or without participation.

She wonders, on the way to her favorite spot, what his relationship to time might be. How does he process doing what he does across the increasing compression of the years? Do the months disappear from under his feet too, or can he fit a century's worth of deeds inside an afternoon?

As she walks along the concrete, she feels it burning through the too-thin soles of her yellow ballet flats.

It's a serious thing, this tension. It impresses upon her the gravity of the situation: in her unwillingness to relinquish ambition and purpose, she feels she's losing any usefulness she might have. She isn't gaining any skills she doesn't already have, and nobody is looking to apply her experience in anything she finds worth doing.

There's no pursuit left, it seems - only soulless occupation.

She's old enough to recognize a great deal of immaturity in her stubbornness, but with only one life to live, she'd rather it be short and meaningful than long and complacent.

Perhaps a therapist would untangle all of this and set her straight, but to get money for one, she'd have to do the very thing she finds difficult.

For a while, the New York Times job was a dream come true that she never even dared to have, especially so soon in her career. She was there for eight months before she screwed up. Maybe she wanted too much, pushed too much and too early. Maybe she didn't understand how things were supposed to be done, and the differences of principles between her and her bosses were irreconcilable.

She isn't sure why she expected they'd send her out on investigations that could get them sued every other Thursday. In the end, she turned in one too many folders with photographs that belonged more in an F.B.I. file than a publisher's office, so they let her go. She hasn't done anything meaningful since, and yet the sun keeps shining.

In the intimacy of the nook forged by overgrown roots, she waits for the gleaming orb to take refuge behind the buildings, and she waits for the moon to replace it for good measure. A walk in the tranquil breeze caressing the night always does good. Shoulders exposed, camera strap covering the daisy details along the neckline of her dress, she releases one last sigh before heading back inside her apartment building.

It's nearly midnight, and this has been another day.

The calm fizzles out the closer she gets to her door, thoughts of repeating the cycle tomorrow starting to take hold, but they don't get far.

The door barely clings to its hinges.

She backs away, reaching for her phone, but isn't fast enough.

Peter is still trying to get water out of his ears. He uses his one day off a week to look after his living space somewhat, the only thing he still does that is a remnant of what May taught him.

For the past innumerable hours, he's been scrubbing at the mountain of dishes, gagging at the dead roach he finds in the odd glass, and getting blood stains out of the wooden floors and carpet. A voice at the back of his mind still drones on about how far gone he is, but it's such a mousy one that it's easily drowned out.

The 8 p.m. special broadcast comes and goes, but he couldn't care less. If getting blood out of the carpet is hard, getting dried cement off of clothes is even harder. Miscellaneous stains litter most of the street clothes he owns, with the exception of some that he received as a present for his 19th birthday, the last one he celebrated.

He fiddles with the web shooters the hour before he leaves again, and they're in bad enough shape that they need replacement. Tomorrow. Building new ones right now would cut two hours out of his time, and his skin has been prickling for long enough.

He can, at least, switch the battery with a new one, but when he opens the fake compartment in his work desk, he finds he's all out of those. With a curse on the tip of his tongue, he finds a suitable replacement he can charge after half an hour, and it's inside his old police radio.

He hasn't listened to that thing in who knows how long.

Whether it's sentimentality or an impulse to torture himself, he isn't sure, but he flicks it on still. There's only crackles and coil whines, and he almost has to fill in the gaps himself with memories of ATM robberies, muggings and burning buildings. That used to be his job, but he's since graduated to organized crime.

College could wait, because Peter Par -

"…come in, units north of 117th St., I have a 240-242 reported. Suspects could still be in the area. We have two officers on the scene, a 10-45C. Waiting on EMS. Please set up a perimetre at 416 East 117th Street. Media-sensitive case in progress. Over."

Despite not having heard report codes in a while, Peter knows them by heart. He wonders what happened, but there isn't anything he can do about it. He's more than sixty blocks away. If he goes, he'll go just to come back to Midtown. Waste of time.

He installs the battery, and once his web shooters whirr to life, out into the night he goes.

It's as though criminals also took the day off mid-week, and it would be cause for surprise, if Peter didn't know that many of them actually have families. He scowls beneath the mask, lights from the million billboards in Times Square hurting his eyes as usual. He stops here whenever he hits a snag in the road, and tonight certainly qualifies.

On the one hand, regular petty criminals being afraid to go out at night was something to be proud of. On the other, you can't bust a large drug-smuggling operation every Wednesday at 2 a.m. He's left little to do, whether for the police or the F.B.I., and it irks him more than it reassures.

The real important things, the important players - they were up in their silver towers, and the police wouldn't help take down the people they helped put there. He's once again having to confront ineptitude, and it makes pain bloom right at his brow.

There's no one meandering about Times Square at this hour with the exception of shift workers heading home, maybe the odd teenager or two whose parents don't care where they are.

Peter makes a lot of assumptions these days.

He sees people, but he rarely observes them or tries to picture the breadth of their lives, whether right or wrong. He used to do that for fun - people watching. It used to be a way of feeling close to the city he protected, imagining a connection between himself and the beings he called neighbors and fellow citizens.

He's ceased imagining himself a part of New York, but a guard dog will remain loyal even without its owner's love.

As he stays poised on the ledge of one building, he debates what to do.

He'd go swinging if he weren't running on defective shooters, and he hardly fancies a fall from twenty stories up. It's degrading, somehow, the thought of going in search of crooks. If it isn't making enough noise to grab his attention, Spider-Man no longer cares.

The largest screen in the square that, until a moment ago was displaying a Coke ad quietly, startles him with its sudden volume. He mutters a snide comment about marketing, but is interrupted mid-sentence when CNN comes on.

"Breaking News: We've just received exclusive reports from one of our sources at the scene that tragedy has struck tonight at the home of a former NY Times photographer and freelancer, whose work has captured the attention of over a million people as of today. She was a guest on our show only two days ago, when she tried making a case very few people dare to anymore: that Spider-Man deserves our understanding and requires our help in confronting the forces that bend New York City to their will.

A plea that may not have been well received by many, as we bring you news of an apparent assault at her residence. The police have established a no-entry zone and are currently not taking any questions, but eyewitnesses report paramedics at the scene attempted to resuscitate someone fitting the profile of the young woman. We are uncertain, at this time, if they succeeded. Our thoughts and prayers are with her as we await news of her condition.

Stay with us for more information as we go live to NYPD Chief E.L. Russell at 2:45 a.m. EST…"

A released breath is all he musters, and the air on the way back in almost hurts. The throbbing beneath his brow has expanded to his entire forehead, but he bites it back as he moves off the ledge and onto the roof.

240-242. 10-45C.

Assault and battery. Condition of patient is critical.

He should've gone.

His mind plays the words on repeat as he removes his phone from a concealed pocket in the suit. Her name is plastered over every title on every website he can find that has gotten a hold of the story. Many link directly to the article she wrote.

Peter doesn't hover over any of them, but leaves directly for Mount Sinai, the closest hospital he knows to East 117th Street, a photo he glimpsed of her smiling face imprinted behind his eyes.

It's disconcertingly quiet as he stops to listen over every window, trying to gauge some clue, some indication that he's where he's supposed to be.

The rustling leaves from Central Park provide the equivalent of white noise, and it stresses him out like a ticking grandfather clock.

Who puts a hospital across the street from a park? It's like saying to patients and pedestrians alike that they are never too far removed from a life-changing event. Infrastructure planning in this city is so shit that nobody wins.

He stops to shake his head, as though that will clear his mind of all hazardous thoughts and gnawing anxiety. He's been crawling over every wing of the hospital for the better part of an hour, and so far nothing has been learned.

But he isn't anything if not relentless. So he continues, keeping to the shadows and listening, breathing deeply to stave the blood rush and adrenaline. It's nearing 4 a.m. when the crackle of a police radio is picked up by his sensitive hearing, and it's coming from a few windows over. He stays put as he focuses, and soon enough he knows it's what he's been looking for.

The information relayed on the radio is of no interest to him, but its presence is important. It means there are police officers standing guard in the hallway, and a closer listen to their soft spoken conversation confirms his assumption.

This is it.

As he approaches the window, his breath has trouble staying tranquil. He removes the exterior lock on the frame with ease, and it barely makes a sound. Some security. Though he noticed not all windows sported a lock on the outside, this one provided as much safety as all the ones without. He lifts the frame with care he hasn't exercised in ages, and dreadful sounds hit his ears soon after.

It makes him almost stop and turn back, but something within won't allow it. He has to look.

The bed isn't far, but he takes in the room first. He stalls.

Whenever he moves this stealthily, it's with the intent to harm, and it ties a knot in his throat knowing that he's here to do the opposite.

The officers outside the door are unaware of his presence, and a snarl almost makes its way past his lips.

If someone were here to harm, they'd encounter no resistance.

Try as he might, the chair in the corner and the painting on the wall can no longer distract him from the chest moving up and down in his peripheral vision.

He drags his eyes over the bed, but he's delayed as much as he could.

He stutters on a breath, choking it out - in? He doesn't know. It rattles through him, this unfamiliar grip of something.

It isn't rage. He knows rage.

The longer his gaze holds over every contusion and bruise, and the higher the number gets as he counts them against his will, the more a full-body shiver usurps his control.

The machine breathing for her makes a noise he isn't likely to forget as long as he lives.

Against his better judgment, he grasps the patient chart at the foot of the bed in both hands, and he reads and reads and reads, hoping for hope.

He gathers that her condition is stable, or was at the time of entry, but the knowledge does nothing. It isn't enough.

What he's looking at is debilitating injury. The kind he's - the kind he's -

The flipchart clatters to the floor, and that finally attracts the attention of the officers.

He disappears before they step foot inside.

5:41 a.m.

There are cracks in the night sky.

There's sharpness over every surface, as if the suit is made of thistle and pumice.

In the stillness of the room, Peter Parker reads.

----

We have never seen a time such as this.

The city enjoys a great deal of jubilation for small and big things alike, and it has for as long as it has been here. Throughout all its tender history, our dwelling of permanent enthusiasm and tangible ambition has seen figures rise to its aid in the face of senseless destruction, none more unending in their devotion than the one whose name we've all spoken.

It began with seemingly inconsequential acts of vigilantism, as the authorities deigned to call it at the time. The city had yet to see the terror that extreme abilities can bring when wielded by unstable or ill-meaning individuals, but in its midst, a protector was already taking shape.

We all have to start somewhere.

Small-time crooks and thieves, then violent criminals. Then, criminals no one would hazard calling violent because they attend banquets and fund the campaigns of mayoral and presidential hopefuls, even today.

Somewhere in the timeline of his service, the city took on a whole new quality. We've always stood up for each other, that much is certain; but the people have never rallied behind one person the way they did for him.

A fair share of tourists, co-nationals or not, have learned it unwise to bad-mouth the local hero. The city channeled its legendary zeal for unity into never-before-seen protectiveness. Plain old devotion, staggering in its sincerity.

We have, after all, a great debt to pay - yet it feels like a duty one does with an easy heart.

How simple it was, pretending not to look whenever he staggered home on foot, presumably having consumed the webbing that decorates our streets every day. How innocent - though for parents irritating, I'm sure - the desire of children to sneak to the fire escape in the hours of the morning, hoping to catch a glimpse of red and blue.

How heartwarming, whenever word went around, of delis and pizzerias competing to certify themselves as a favorite of his, and leaving innovative creations in strategic pick-up places.

Easy hearts, easy smiles - it was the Golden Age of our fine city.

It's been getting harder lately.

Of the myriad classes of criminal, only the full-timers remain; those who have seen and done everything there is to see and do. And of those, only the ones with friends in high places are still in business.

You peruse one article or another just to get to the description of the crime scene: blood and teeth and webbed-up zombies, more dead than alive.

Arrests don't happen on the spot anymore, because medical care is needed.

Time passes unsparingly.

And in the torrid summer, under scaffolding and awnings, between fences and billboards, New York begins to whisper.

Tales of a breaking point and a rageful Spider-Man.

The locals speculate. In the absence of concrete proof, you can hardly blame the minds attempting to soothe themselves with hollow myths: perhaps this happened, and then the other thing; perhaps he's done too much, received too little in return.

For the past five years, we've all confounded our journey with his. New York believes in shared failures and triumphs, so the atmosphere turns dour when it senses powerlessness.

We believe whatever touched him, has the potential to wreck us all. Whatever changed him, means a force that won't spare us.

Is it pain, or age, or illness?

Is it bitterness, or hopelessness?

Is it grief?

And do we dare judge?

There are some among us who dare go even further, and who have attempted career-building out of a spiteful penchant for persecution. A publication that has, for as long as this author remembers, been denigrated and ignored, now returns with renewed vigor. Its editor-in-chief would love nothing more than a redemption story - his own, of course. For nearly half a decade, J. Jonah Jameson has professed his hatred of Spider-Man to the fullest of his editorial capability, which is to say, in mediocre fashion. Whatever vindication he now feels will surely fuel more of the fables we've grown tired of.

The city has a mind of its own, a personality of its own; it doesn't need to be told what to believe, especially not by those afflicted with grudges.

Perhaps I should've begun this by stating it is not an opinion piece. It isn't much of an objective evaluation of the facts, either. The only purpose for its existence is remembrance.

Trying to understand Spider-Man is not a task one knows how to begin approaching. He is, at this point, part of both daily life and folklore. You may see him, but you don't talk to him.

Not many people try anymore.

It would have done no good trying to find him, as every journalist in town has already learned. Nobody has been able to claim him as an interviewee. Journalism is not my occupation, but I do wonder as to his. We all have to do something to survive, and Spider-Man does not fit the typology of a spoiled trust fund recipient.

So what exactly does the working class hero see?

Is it people looking down, their nose in a phone or a book on the subway during morning commute?

Is it a bustling crowd, pushing and shoving its way to an unforgiving cubicle and disgruntled customers?

Does Spider-Man look up at a building as frequently as he looks down from one?

Is the ground as familiar to him as the sky?

For this to work, both perspectives should be offered, and here is where I have to confess to a not easily subdued fear of heights, one I had to confront on several occasions.

A silly thing to wonder is what might Spider-Man's favorite sight be. In a city of buildings that touch the clouds, does he hold a preference? And is it the clichéd Empire State?

Full honesty also entails confessing that while I was confronting my fear, I was actively dodging concerns about the legality of what I was doing. One can't help wondering if that's a thought he might've had way back when, in the beginning.

Had I been more alert and not completely focused on maintaining balance and a grip on the camera, I might have realized my approach was all skewed.

Only when I was crawling, quaking knees and gasping breath, over the south eagle adornment on the 61st floor of the Chrysler Building, did I realize that the view was not really the point.

You can't see what Spider-Man sees, unless you are determined enough to steal his eyes straight out of their sockets. I presume many have tried.

The only possibility of getting close to him is through the thrill of feeling what he might feel.

In the absence of superpowers or webbing to prevent a meeting with the ground, you can imagine the thrill verged on paralyzing fear.

New York's skyscrapers are not made for visiting from the outside, making the ease with which he glides between them daily all the more impressive. You see, it's not about the superhuman abilities. We all like to think we'd do the same, were we endowed with them.

But we have proof that he is special, and that what he does must be recognized as amazing once more.

New York has known many who've fallen by the wayside in their pursuit of mastering abilities they either searched for or happened upon. Unfailingly, sooner or later, those people turned towards us with anger and retribution.

Some were not entirely wrong to feel that way.

For all our unity, New York is still a cold city made even colder by all it has endured. It no longer flinches at destruction the way it used to, and some mistake it for resilience.

The truth is that we've been desensitized: to violence, to greed, to the ambitions of powerful men with ill intentions.

We've been happy to let Spider-Man bear the brunt of our ugliest demons.

Can we really be surprised when that inheritance claws away at the symbol we now identify with, the symbol etched onto his back?

Every morning when the sun rises, we leave the shadows of the night behind, knowing there is someone to keep them settled. We never imagine that the only way to hold back the darkness is to take it onto yourself, to keep it trapped inside your chest until it demands to be let out again.

So tomorrow, when the sun rises over a tired Spider-Man, I urge you to remember this:

If he falters, it is because he's doing the job we all ought to be doing, and he's done it for too long already without our participation. We need to help him in a way that matters, and maybe we can start by making the darkness a little easier to bear.

Spider-Man has made the city safer for us, and it's time we return the favor, so he can come back home… to the golden age of New York City.

---

The nausea gives way, and he succumbs to the shivers.

If the neighbors hear him scream, they don't make it known.

The photographs from the article dance behind his eyelids right up until he wakes, passed out on the roof of Mount Sinai Hospital. It's noon, and he should've been at work five hours ago. He isn't going.

The hole he tore in his throat seems to have healed enough that swallowing no longer sears, but his knuckles are still torn raw.

As he leans on his right elbow, awareness of the faint rumble in the sky brings some relief, though not much. At least he didn't scorch in the sun, because he isn't sure he would've felt it.

He lies there for two more hours, until the gnawing in his stomach and the weakness in his limbs become unbearable.

He checks on her before he leaves, and the daylight is unforgiving in its honesty. He departs as the first drops of rain hit.

Though he isn't hungry anymore, he forces down a meal only to return with some strength in his fist. It's on the roof that he makes new web shooters once the downpour lets up, and it's there that he puts another battery into his old police radio.

Trained as he is on any sounds emerging from her room two floors below, he jumps periodically when a nurse comes in to do their job. It always seems to be the same one, and soon enough he learns the cadence and the weight of her footsteps.

The fact that she comes in so often engraves a near-permanent frown into his face. It's not just once that he nearly goes over while she's there to ask for information on her state, but every time his legs won't move.

That night, when the officers leave their post, Peter's anger comes back in full force. Is that all they were affording her?

Twenty-four hours of protection, almost on the dot, after her life was nearly ended with brutality?

He wants to follow after them, but he ultimately doesn't.

Somewhere in his mind, he knows that even that little crumb they gave her was a move made out of pity. Ordinary citizens don't get police guards by their hospital room, unless they hold something of interest - influence, technology or a degree of relation to some actually important person.

She holds none of those things, as far as he's aware.

And in New York City, if you aren't graced with prominence, you get crushed by those whose ire you provoke.

He'll see to it that Fisk atones. Not tonight, or tomorrow - but his last day on this Earth won't come until the balance is corrected and the debt is restored.

They announce her survival on the news the next morning, and Peter knows that once they've done that, he can't leave. Not that he would have. He follows the broadcast on his phone and peruses articles here and there, and he finds that for once, Jameson has no criticism to offer.

No remark, no observation. Just an apology and a prayer.

He scoffs and grits his teeth, putting away his phone when the speculative articles start pouring in. The who and the why, he already knows. The 'what now' is solely his mission.

It's been over thirty hours since she was hospitalized, and if they were going to come back to finish the job, they would do it in the first forty-eight. It makes the most sense, as her condition would be the most sensitive. No one would suspect foul play, at least not twice over.

So Peter stays glued to the side of her window whenever possible, and keeps hidden when necessary.

She does not stir, and he pretends not to hear the nurse's sigh when she comes in to check on her one last time before shift change.

Nothing happens, and it's almost too quiet as they come up on fifty-one hours, but at 5 a.m. on Friday he taps out unwillingly.

His pounding heart is what wakes him at 3 p.m. inside the alcove on the roof. Although his eyes have been taking in her figure for almost two minutes, he struggles to resist the fear and calm down. Anything could've happened, and would he have heard it?

Would he have gotten there in time?

It was the presence of an unknown gait that made ripples in his senses and roused his consciousness, but a doctor is not a threat. He remarks with befuddlement how little time it took to anchor himself to this room and to that bed. He's learned the sound and all its patterns, knows all the visitors and their schedules - because they all have one.

No one has been at her bedside. No one but medical staff.

A thought strikes that hasn't in aeons.

He returns two hours later, having showered and eaten and called in sick to work. Maybe it's his voice that gives it away, or maybe the old man has been waiting for this, but Mr. Daniels hears only a line or two before he tells Peter to take care of himself and not show up until he's better.

He takes the advice along with a bouquet of daisies.

The nurses whisper among themselves during another shift change, but they keep the water fresh every day.

By Monday, a routine has been established.

Peter keeps watch at night and tinkers with devices during the day. Old junk that hasn't seen the light in years suddenly holds great interest, including a tracker that never made it past the design stage.

He remembers that he felt too much like Inspector Gadget when he was drawing up the sketches for the thing, and it immediately put him off further exploration.

Admittedly, it's not an award-winning invention. The idea was only to have something at his disposal that he could track over long distances when his powers failed him. Years ago he couldn't put together a small enough device that it'd be undetectable and easy to place, but technology has advanced even as he's stood still.

It doesn't take long to find what he needs and for cheap. In an afternoon, he's made four trackers, with nanosensors the size and weight of a fingernail, and in a bizarre way, he feels the need to share the small triumph with someone.

He's shaky and uncertain as he crawls to her window that night, and over the soft beeping of the machines by the side of the bed, Peter whispers the first promise made to another person in a long time.

On Tuesday night, as the one week mark approaches, commotion pulls his attention tightly, stretching every sense into a frenzy.

It's a miracle he doesn't burst through the glass when the nurse is just a little too slow to show up for his comfort, but soon he finds out the news. The triumph he experienced yesterday pales in comparison to the one she has today.

Breathing on her own is a monumental step, one Peter chooses to commemorate with deeply pink roses. The florist only asks him one question, and it's what he wants the blooms to say.

"Just that I… that I'm grateful," is all he manages.

Despite the breakthrough on Tuesday, nothing else happens for the rest of the week, plunging his mood into the subterranean. He'd thought recovery was on the way, but the nurses stop by at greater and greater intervals by the time Sunday rolls around. He wants to demand an explanation, something to justify this delay, but keeps himself in check for her safety. If word got out that he's inquiring into her condition personally, it might stir the calm.

He doesn't want calm, but it's what she needs, so he stays put.

In the meantime, he keeps tabs on the press and what details have been released to the public. An investigation of his own unfolds over the course of Sunday morning, and it hardly impresses him - the ardent desire of every newspaper to take apart her entire past and present. It's exceptionally deplorable how some don't stray from speculating about her future.

If they want to know, they should come ask him. He wants them to.

Peter notices how none of the publications he's looked at thus far have even attempted to make the connection between her words and their consequences. They all know it. They do. They all know who she pissed off, because it's right there in black and white.

All it took was a mention of campaign money and criminality, because the egos possessing New York's overlords are boundless and fearsome.

The police are hardly trying, he knows that too. They've been relegated to babysitters for those they're supposed to catch, but maybe they were never meant to do that in the first place. Maybe that's just what people are comfortable thinking, and Peter used to be one of them.

When he was younger, he wanted to believe in the sanctity of their mission, as nothing else seemed more important. His dream was to change the world with his intellect, but changing the world through progress takes time, and you need to be and feel safe while you're doing it. He used to believe nothing happens if the police don't do their job.

He's grown since then.

He understands hierarchy now, and the place from which crime springs forth is untouched still. Cleaning up the streets is a temporary solution, and the people he used to leave for the cops to arrest got less and less difficult to empathize with over time. He knows stories - has got nothing but stories. Desperate people stealing to feed their children, threatening pharmacists with empty guns to get their prescriptions because their insurance expired… the numbers grow, and it isn't because people are getting worse. They're not losing their principles, or their decency.

Someone else is taking their lives from them, one yard at a time.

It's something she knows as well, but speaking it publicly attracts penalties. He's looking at the result of defiance right now, watching through the window as the setting sun leaves a gentle glow over her figure.

Not a journalist, she said. The more he looks, the more he believes her. As the cuts and bruises subside with time, natural features reclaim their place and her face as he remembers it is revealed. Granted, he has only photos to compare to, but it changes nothing about his impression.

Gentle.

She seems like a gentle person, is all Peter can think. If he knew nothing about her, he'd assume kindness; yet he does know something - knows too much now. He knows too much to hold back the fierce protectiveness rupturing the confines of his chest.

She's so young.

They're the same age, but somehow she looks younger to him. Maybe it's the delicate skin around her eyes, having gone down in swelling enough that he can see their shape. Maybe it's the neck brace, making her look vulnerable and small. Maybe it's what little he can see of her fingers where the cast ends on her left arm.

Peter doesn't know if a photographer is supposed to look like anything, but he encounters no trouble in imagining a camera around her neck and grasped between her fingers. He wonders how the red light from a darkroom might reflect in her eyes.

He wishes she'd open them.

He wishes she'd open them, so his own wouldn't burn so terribly.

It's been years since he's watched someone in earnest, trying to picture their life, or personality, or struggles. It's been years since he's felt closeness or devotion to a cause, much less to a person. Spider-Man ended up being needed more by him than by the people, so he readily took the symbol for himself, to stall and mute the desperation.

Desperation that returns in a different form when the door to her room opens and a doctor comes through, spotting him behind the window before he can move.

The woman freezes, but her face remains composed as she shuts the door without looking away from him. Peter is also frozen in place, and his predicament is unknown as she steps closer and closer, until she comes to a standstill in front of him. He cannot decipher her expression, but he figures that if she wanted to, she would have called security already. The realization does nothing to relax his muscles.

She taps on the glass with an index finger twice, and to his surprise, lifts the frame all the way up.

Hesitating at first is reflexive when dealing with strangers, but this doesn't seem like a trap and she is a healthcare professional. They're usually decent.

Peter goes in legs first, the motion airy and quiet. In a moment that is eerily reminiscent of boyhood, the woman, mid-fifties, regards him stringently.

"You've been here before," she states, a sentence too simplistic to put his mind at ease. He can't see where she might take it next.

Despite his lack of confirmation, she continues.

"Why do you come?"

Peter almost backs away from the bluntness of the question; if it weren't for the soles of his feet sticking to the floor, he might've stumbled on nothing. It isn't an inquiry he can grace with truthfulness, but he has years of falsehoods under his belt. He knows how to lie.

"To make sure nothing happens..." he murmurs into the stillness of the room.

"You can speak normally. She can't hear us."

Recoiling happens automatically, and the window sill is at his fingertips. He could leave any moment. Yet, the look she's fixing him with keeps him suspended in time and space. He can hear his own breaths against the inside of the mask. The world is smaller.

"You're here to make sure nothing happens? Something has already happened. Where were you?"

This is how the walls close in and the temperature reaches a boil. He's spent months avoiding questions of any sort, and the first ones he hears unravel entire illusions he maintained with an iron grip.

"I have a daughter her age, studying the same thing she studied. She believes in you too. Will she end up like this?"

His heart touches a crescendo, and then nothing. To avoid thinking about himself, he focuses every ounce of strength into a question of his own.

"How is she?"

His voice is rough with disuse when he isn't whispering. He sounds much older than he is, but the woman is older still, and she has seen many more things than either Spider-Man or Peter Parker have. A suit cannot hide shame from the keen eyes of experience.

"I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to. I have a responsibility. There are laws."

Laws. Responsibility.

This did end up being a trap, of the sort he never expected. He's tumbling through a loop of his spectacular history, but nothing he finds grants solace. The guilt is blistering the surface of his skin.

"It makes no difference if you know or not. It won't change anything. Nothing I say will make her wake up."

Maybe it's something only mothers are able to induce, this peculiar dread. Of the multitudes roaming the earth, it seems only the best ones hold this power. There is immeasurable love in their eyes at all times, and when it flickers, so does the heart. Nobody wants to look, only to see disappointment - least of all, confidence lost.

There is a mother standing in front of Peter Parker, laying out all his faults with no cruelty. She doesn't look like herself anymore, but like his own mother, of brown hair and the kindest eyes he's ever known.

"Please…"

He doesn't know what he's asking. There isn't anything for which she could use his plea. It shows in her face.

"Her body is healing what it can. She needs time and freedom to recover. That's all that I -"

The doctor is left staring at the space where he once was, and in a moment of doubt, her eyes cast downward.

Spiders are not particularly effective trackers. Their strengths lie in attributes that allow for little expense of energy when setting traps. Great threads are woven in tantalizingly intricate patterns, seducing prey big and small and beckoning it forward. It need only wander in.

There are times, however, when spiders will choose to hunt.

Peter Parker is a sight to behold as he sinks further and further down the spiral from human to predator. Each sense is sharpened to perfection, and in New York City, that means it won't be long before his mind gives way from oversensitivity.

He doesn't have time.

416 East 117 St. is still delineated by yellow police tape. Inside, the door of apartment 5-b has been sealed off, but the impact marks around the hinges remain - a preview for what it might reveal.

Now that he knows which unit, finding the window is no effort.

The surroundings are quiet, even for a Sunday night. There isn't much chatter throughout the neighboring units, revealing perhaps an abundance of uninhabited apartments or - more likely - a frightened lot, as barely two weeks have passed.

He enters through the living room window situated on the west side.

The air is stale and impregnated with scents he is more familiar with than anyone should reasonably be. Acute as his senses are at the moment, the smell of blood is ferociously intense; knowing whose it is tips the edge towards unbearable.

As his eyes absorb the scene, his mind makes immediate judgments that have become second nature in the past five years.

The front door, which he can see from the edge of the room, was not kicked in, but rather out. He deduces they must've entered quietly, expecting her to be home. The door could not have been destroyed after the fact, only before. Did they do it to frighten her, give her pause? Make her wonder what could've happened to it before they grabbed her?

He knows Fisk likes playing mind games with whoever wrongs him. This is his signature, and the ravaged furniture reinforces his belief. It isn't indicative of struggle - it was just smashed up for fun, and perhaps as a false lead for the police to rule the incident as random thievery.

Yet a laptop is lying in pieces, underneath the crushed coffee table. Little fragments of it are tinged dark red among the shards of glass, and the images his mind conjures are expelled before they can seize too much emotion.

No thief would use valuables to inflict harm, least of all in the name of perceived symbolism, but Wilson Fisk is not a thief. He envisions himself a poetic emperor, delivering justice with awe-inspiring significance. At his disposal are considerable resources, many of them material, but a non-negligible part made of flesh and bone.

What the scene before him reveals above all else is just how entwined law-enforcement and the despots of New York have become.

Nobody has touched this place. No forensic experts have analyzed the scene or extracted evidence for an investigation, because none is supposed to occur.

Despite the expanse of blood soaked up by the carpet, despite the scratches on the hardwood nearby… nobody is looking.

Nobody wants justice. They want peace and safety for themselves.

There is an empty apartment at 416 East 117th that might remain empty. There are clashing echoes of words that might never leave. They will make a home of his agitated mind and tear it asunder, ceasing only when he is no more.

He holds off until he can't - and it's the snapping thread.

Vincent likes his job. After all, he gets Mondays and Tuesdays off, and there's nothing better than starting the work week in the middle. Everyone's already miserable by then, and it makes things easier for him.

He does, however, hate the paperwork of Sunday night, and it's just too bad his boss trusts no one else to get it done.

He sits at his desk, yawning and putting numbers together until the lines are blurred. There hasn't been any improvement in shipping costs, but the ease of operations could have a novice doing this on his first day. Or it would, were there any volunteers left. He had to provide many concessions for Bennie to take a job here, despite being cousins.

Everyone thinks only about themselves these days.

Vincent thinks of the comfort of home: the lush armchair he bought a few days ago, nestled in the warmest corner of the library that he's just finished renovating with wood from Japan; the Titanic model he promised his son they'd build together; the dinner they're all going to gather for tomorrow.

He thinks of all those things so ardently, that he has no chance to see it coming.

He's heard the guys describe it before - those that got away at least. The webs bind tightly. So tightly, in fact, that his lungs feel compressed against his back, and his arms and legs are getting colder by the second.

"Bah! You - you fu - you fuck - mmpf!"

His body collides with the wall, and there it stays. He can't breathe. He can't -

His airways clear.

Vincent gasps for breath, but there's barely any room for it in his chest. Despite what he expects, the spider doesn't bother with him immediately. No, he doesn't even spare Vincent a glance as he reduces the room to rubble. The computer he leaves untouched, and Vincent can guess his intentions. He'd been tallying up before this happened, getting ready to report a bottom line for the end of the month.

He likely won't come to know what it is, but even if he did, he won't be able to communicate it.

As he watches on, he can only await his turn, and it comes soon enough.

If the spider expects him to flinch, he's in for a rude awakening. Nothing Vincent can see coming has the ability to scare him - the only thing he fears is the unknown.

"I only want one thing," is what he says, but Vincent isn't impressed. This is a boy - he knows it is, however the stories portray him. The suit he's wearing is a sign of his inhumanity to some; they look like tights to Vincent.

"Your men - who are they?"

Vincent scoffs as best he can, and his lip curls into a scowl.

"I got many men," he answers.

The spider approaches him, steps light and careful. It's too quick for Vincent to make out, but the hand he feels at his throat cuts off the air supply completely this time. His heart has started the clock.

"The men who crushed her hands… who shattered her ribs… your men."

Head swimming and vision spotting, he can't make out an answer, but neither does he want to. Vincent won't protect his men because of loyalty, but because the spider doesn't kill. It's been his one weakness, and many have exploited it successfully. Vincent won't give an inch. He has principles.

When his neck is released once more, he chokes and heaves but welcomes the air all the same, even if it burns on the way both in and out. Only, without an answer, he isn't privy to oxygen for long.

Something is different about his grip this time. It's different, he thinks, because he can't see anymore. Noise would leave him, but he can't produce any. He has little feeling left in his hands.

On the edge of unconsciousness, there's almost relief, but it doesn't come. He thinks maybe he's dropped to the floor, or maybe he's been hit, yet can't make out which. He can hear his blood pounding in his ears, and all he has left for function in his throat is desperately trying to quell the burning of his lungs.

Gasping for breath on a Sunday night is not how he wants to go out, but now he can't talk. His tongue feels numb.

Though his lips mouth the names the spider wants, nothing comes out.

Just as feeling comes back into his hands, he wishes it hadn't, because he can't do anything to release the pain of bones breaking. He can't even scream.

"That's how it feels. That's what she felt."

His right hand follows, and for a moment it feels like his heart has stopped, but it doesn't last. It keeps going, and so does the agony.

"She couldn't scream either. They crushed her throat."

There are other noises he can't make out, and his eyes aren't focusing. There's color, but no shape. He doesn't know how much time passes, but for once, when he hears the spider talk again, he isn't certain of his future.

"You can't write. You can't talk. You can't see. I know you can't see, so you can't even point them out. But I'll ask again: the men - who are they?"

Even through his pain, it strikes Vincent that the spider isn't really looking for an answer. If he knows he can't provide it, then he's asking just to ask. He's asking as an excuse. He's seen men lost to rage before; they look for reasons to do what they were always going to do.

And as he tries holding himself upright on his elbows, he's got half a mind to crawl away. This isn't worth it. He's got to -

A weight on his back pushes him down bluntly, and his chin connects with the floor. Maybe some teeth break or maybe they don't, but he can taste metal now, and it makes it even harder to breathe.

"Were you there?"

Vincent finds himself shaking his head without even making the decision to do so, noises escaping that resemble only in vibration what he might've said with a usable larynx.

"Are they here?"

They are. They are, but so are seven others, and he can't point them out. Bennie's here tonight, but Bennie wasn't there. He had no part in it. He can't sell him out.

"Do you want to see what else they did?"

Vincent shakes his head again. He remembers some details, but overall he knows what he sent them there to do. It was only by happenstance that the woman survived, so no. Vincent doesn't want to see.

"…'ere… 'ehre'…" he rasps, blood dribbling down his chin.

"Here?"

He nods.

"Where?"

He can't think anymore. To be quite honest, he wishes he were unconscious instead of gasping and wheezing for air. Whatever the spider wants to do now, he should just do it instead of stalling.

But nothing happens for what feels like the longest time when one has only their ears to anticipate an event. Vincent waits, and waits and continues wondering, but no more words disturb the peace.

He's alone.

The months that former cadet Jimmy Larson spent imagining his first crime scene appear to have been for nothing. All the time dedicated to fortifying his mind in anticipation of what he considered true police work would have been more useful in the search of a different career path.

He's been retching since he got here.

How do the ambulances have anything to do? Who in that warehouse would want to live?

He understands it's their job, but were Jimmy on the other side of this intervention, he would have quit on the spot. As it is, he thinks it would be disrespectful to everyone else doing their best to manage. Manage the revulsion, the renewed disappointment.

It won't be long before the hunt for Spider-Man resumes with vigor. After tonight, even Jimmy isn't sure he'll have any more reservations with regard to the wall crawler.

Many of his colleagues hold a personal grudge against him for repeatedly busting friends involved in racketeering and extortion, just by virtue of them hanging out in criminal hotspots. It's not inconceivable that whatever public opinion might look like, the police will never really accept him, much less view him favorably. Though they are not a monolith, they're more of a monolith than most organizations. There are codes, and there are incentives to adhere to them.

Now an officer, Jimmy knows what happens to those within the group who don't follow the dogma. He can feel eyes on his back, casting a wave of disdain he tries to let roll off without absorbing it. Defending Spider-Man cannot be done this time, he understands that. But his colleagues haven't forgotten the times he did, and seeing the distress on the rookie officer's face must bring them great satisfaction.

Jimmy isn't torn up about the mangled bodies, however disturbing. It's the loss of hope that makes swallowing difficult and standing tall an unreachable prerogative.

Nothing is left of the man he used to look up to. In just a few years, what has become of New York's symbol should scare even the most determined idealists. Jimmy has been slowly leaving their ranks in the last few months, but tonight sees the door slammed in his face. He can't defend the indefensible.

Of the eight people recovered by EMS, three were on the brink of death, dangling from the ceiling like an art installation conceived in a sadist's mind and spelling a bloody epitaph on the skin of their faces.

Murderers, was the message requiring delivery.

This affectation of justice seems much too personal to be in any way comparable to his previous crimes. Whatever happened tonight, whatever they did… Jimmy knows.

The hero may never come back from it.

He's almost sure he's clean. The scalding water was serviceable enough to melt flesh, nevermind blood that had seeped into the lycra of the suit. In any case, he wouldn't dream of trailing any part of them into this room.

It's quiet. Peaceful. Void of darkness now that he's banished it.

The air feels different against his skin, against his clothes. It's been years since he was anywhere he wasn't supposed to be dressed like Peter Parker, and the cloth mask covering his face had to be dug out of an old suitcase he hasn't touched since leaving home.

He's breathing more heavily than she is, or at least it seems that way the closer he gets to the bed. Eyes catching on the wilting pink of the roses he brought six days ago, he pauses momentarily to remove them from her bedside. It feels wrong to leave them.

As he throws them in the trash, he notices for the first time the pattern of the vinyl flooring. There is nothing interesting about the beige and gray stains, but they're easier to look at while he gathers his thoughts. It's only her and the wind outside that he can hear the longer he remains unmoving.

One syllable harshly scrapes against his throat before he chokes it back. Time contracts and dilates irrespective of his wishes, awarding no relief. He tries again whenever his body allows.

"You're safe now," he rasps.

His eyes trail over the length of her forearm; the one closest to him isn't encased in plaster, but the jagged tear that starts at her shoulder and ends above her wrist is more striking. He can see the cruelty more plainly displayed than in a shattered bone.

"They're gone. Can't hurt you anymore."

It's a mistake he doesn't have control over, but his hand is now on the edge of the bed and he cannot retract it. His fingertips are only an inch away from hers, and if he focused hard enough, he could feel the warmth they give off. He doesn't know if he deserves to.

"I kept my… kept my promise. And you… you can wake up now."

If he dares look up, it's only once, and yet once is enough for his eyes to lock into place. His body reacts by tearing apart nerves that were barely holding on, and his left hand comes up to remove the mask before air runs out. Nothing happens despite his plea. Her eyes don't open like his mind said they would if he did the right thing. The doctor said she needed time and freedom to recover. He removed any obstacles that might keep her in this bed.

Whispered supplications leave his mouth dry and his eyes the inverse, but with each one he keeps hoping. A million ways to beg for redemption and he will go through them all, forwards and backwards. He just wants. He wants.

Peter startles himself into a sob. A tear slipped from his eye and onto her hand, splashing a dainty drop onto his own. When did he touch her? When did his fingers hover over hers? He stumbles backwards on legs not fully in his control, feeling weak for the shortest time.

It could level a city, this rage. It's tried. Peter is always the one devoured, yet so far he hasn't known it. A layer of isolation stood between him and the truth, and years spent avoiding his humanity dissolve as if soaked in acid. It stings. It burns.

He was begging to see her eyes, when until this moment he's put forth supernatural effort to avert his own. He didn't think anyone should look at him.

He doesn't want anything more. He doesn't want anything else.

It isn't a surprise that they have everything required. A local watering hole for addicts like himself would abound in illicit supplies, priced at whatever the highest bidder is willing to pay. Peter's last reserves are depleted for a handful of items, and he hasn't been at work for long enough that the only thing keeping him employed is the kindness he's yet to reciprocate. Perhaps he should've kept thirty dollars and gotten Mr. Daniels an arrangement. Alas, he's now broke.

He wouldn't be, if he allowed himself to use common sense. Why pay for something with money that's going to be seized in less than ten minutes? He tells himself he doesn't know, but it's been harder and harder to lie recently, even in the privacy of his own mind.

He knows why. Watching the red and blue lights flashing in the pharmacy entryway from across the street is only the beginning, and as pain snaps a band around his head, the road before him has never seemed longer.

The two remaining weeks of summer are devoured in a blink, and September continues stealing rest from Peter Parker. He doesn't mind, because there is an end to his obsession now, and he can almost taste it.

He's been staring at the purple substance long enough for his leg to fall asleep. There is nothing more to ponder, but something holds him back from accepting reality. He's succeeded, but his chest doesn't fill with pride like it once did. No rush arrives to carry him further down the planes of ambition, no wild aspirations take shape behind his eyes when he sleeps.

This victory is bitter. Whenever his mind wanders, it always falls to time. There is no changing the past, but the vial in his hands is definitive proof: things didn't need to be that way. None of the horrors that destroyed his youth had to happen. If only, if only.

He almost wishes it would fail, just to spare himself the pain he knows is coming. He almost wants to believe that living is meant to be a rigid thing, not subjected to his or anyone else's manipulation. But the truth reveals itself every hour he goes without the medication he's been dependent on. There are things that are true, and there are fantasies he's been suffocated by for years.

That he couldn't have helped Harry is a fantasy he's embraced in a frenzy. There was a way - it's peeking at him now from between bruised fingers, flowing peacefully inside the glass vial with every tremor of his hands.

The devastation caused by fear and guilt was never inevitable. It was Peter's selfishness that denied his former friend a chance to live normally, because he didn't want to create another Curt Conners. He didn't want the responsibility of dealing with those consequences, and consequences found him anyway. He's despised Harry for a long time. It was his face that he was seeing when delivering callous blows that more than once almost made him a murderer. Nothing's come as close as last month's events. No one has burrowed under his skin and made him feel deranged in the same way, but no one could have. He hasn't had anything of his to protect in a decade.

Gwen… Gwen used to be his hope. She used to be able to reset him whenever he malfunctioned, to reorient his moral compass whenever it strayed. She knew the right thing to do, and was more willing than him to do it if personal cost was involved. These days he won't even dare look at a picture of her. What he still remembers of her face is shadowed, and her eyes are never open. She isn't looking at him, and in his heart, embittered as it is, he knows that if she could, she'd look away. For her to see him like this would be the greatest shame.

Hold on to hope.

He denied Gwen her last wish, like he denied her father's.

Two weeks ago, he thought another promise would be reneged on through a sheer twist of fate. After all, how could he turn back time for her when he couldn't do it for the love of his life? It occurred to him on the night of his rampage, after shedding tears at her bedside - this wasn't about molding time so terrible things never come to pass. She doesn't need time, like the doctor said. Time can't provide solutions for tragedies. Only people can help by bearing the cost and sharing in the grief.

He'd take it all onto himself just so he doesn't have to walk in there with shaking hands and unsteady feet, but he's learning. He can't do everything all on his own.

This time, when the doctor is in her room, he's the one who taps at the window. He's caught her just after shift change, with sundown on his heels. It was the longest he could wait.

The woman proves difficult to surprise once again, but Peter's hesitation to meet her eyes has gone. He invites himself into the room, fully prepared to announce his intentions, but the doctor interjects.

"I thought you'd never come back."

It's a strange thing to hear, and he goes with the first instinct he has. He feels defensive every time he's in this space.

"I've been here every day."

Speaking truthfully is new to him, as is the way he tries watching her without suspicion. She's not that far away, but the room isn't that large to begin with. They are separated by the bed, with the doctor on the left side, doing what seems to Peter like nothing at all. What is she doing here? It's always the nurses doing the nightly rounds, and she doesn't appear to have a task at hand.

His body draws closer subtly, and he spots the name tag on her lapel. She didn't have one last time. Dr. Arnaud.

"Maybe you shouldn't be."

A familiar tension prickles at his jaw, and he does his best to force down the anger and let reality through. He doesn't truly care what she thinks. He only needs her help, and if she won't provide it, he'll figure it out. But, curiosity does invite him to ask.

"Why?"

"You've done enough. Don't you think?"

He knows what she's referring to. It's all anyone's been talking about since mid-August, and with the mayor's bid for re-election came a slew of vicious attacks by the campaign. The moratorium on his arrest at the beginning of Oswald's term was nothing more than a short-lived stint to appease a New York that still liked Spider-Man. He'd be lucky if regular people don't start hunting him along with police.

"I'm here to help."

The woman's furrowed brow and tough gaze are not assuaged by him producing the vial from a concealed pocket, nor is her presence less confrontational the longer he explains. He shouldn't be disappointed. She is a doctor, and injecting patients with foreign substances of dubious origins is at the very foundation of the oath she took. She will not help him, and it would've been a problem, had her assistance been beneficial to anyone but him.

The only thing he wanted her to do was be the one to press the needle into her arm. He doesn't think he can touch her again after the night when his fingers accidentally brushed hers.

"You can't just come in here and use my patient for an experiment you th-"

Peter interrupts her objections with a curt and near-hostile question.

"Will she recover if I don't?"

Dr. Arnaud's glare has little bite behind it this time. Despite her trying to uphold confidentiality, Peter knows that she knows - they're on the same page when it comes to understanding reality. There is no healing from this, not with medicine and not with time. This is her last hope.

"I won't have any part of this," she says harshly, but Peter reads the defeat in her voice before anything else.

"Fine."

"If this fails, and you make it worse, I -"

"You don't need to threaten me. If that happens, you won't ever see me again," he replies calmly.

Perhaps he was too nonchalant about this situation, but there was no other way to speak the truth. If the worst does come to pass, she won't see him again. Nobody will. This night may be the last one he has under the mask that ruined his life. This is Peter Parker's last hope too.

The doctor lingers for a few more moments that do nothing to steady his nerves. When the door finally closes, and he is alone with his fate, all at once a calm washes over his entire being. Time means nothing again.

Her face has healed of all swelling, he remarks with mild glee. It's only a superficial change, because the real trauma lies under the skin. The injuries she sustained have sunk too deep for modern medicine to reach, and even the treatments available for wealthy citizens can't heal this type of damage.

That she survived is remarkable all on its own. He'll meet the effort halfway and bring her back.

As he approaches the bed, he tries to imagine what she might've dreamed of this past month, despite knowing the state of her cerebral activity. If there is anything taking shape behind her eyelids, he hopes it's only good things.

Peter's breaths are heavier now that he's close, and his nose fills up with the scent of fresh shampoo. She's been here long enough that she had to be given a bath, but he doesn't like that her scent has washed away and been replaced by antiseptic. Nothing about these surroundings is welcoming, and her face in that bed simply doesn't belong. She can't remain here.

"You'll be okay," he whispers, a tremor in his voice that willed itself to the surface.

A rush of air escapes his lips as he touches her arm with gloved fingers. Even through the material, a live wire sizzles his nerve endings and rewires his brain to produce an involuntary smile. He's forgotten he can be gentle. He's forgotten that hands can do more than wreck and demolish. He's worked in construction for four years, and yet it takes a moment's touch to remind him life is an infinitude of perspectives.

"You'll be okay, I promise."

His words feel so small, resembling a prayer he hasn't uttered in years and wouldn't dare utter now that he's strayed so far from the right path. The needle finds the vein, just as his heart finds a way to drum an ever worse tempo. Seconds go by in a snap, and he retracts the syringe with care meant for things of high fragility. The room gets quieter over the next few minutes as his blood pressure stabilizes and no longer drowns his ears in anxious terror.

Silence.

It happens at midnight.

Three hours of careful vigilance dissolve like sugar in ice water, but midnight arrives with a quietude interrupted. A feeble note at once gets louder. If he hadn't been listening with unyielding focus, it would have escaped him.

Her heartbeat has changed. Not in rhythm, but in strength. A minute, then two, then ten - they all pass without latency, without illusions. What he heard at first, he continues to hear. No change is registered by the machines she's connected to, but he trusts those less than his own ears. He knows what he's hearing, because he hasn't ever heard it before in another person. No one's heart beats that strongly in repose, except his own. They've reached the point of no return.

It's raining.

Someone left the window open, and hefty drops grace the scorching pavement with relief it seldom finds. Summer rains never last enough to cool things down. If it's this frigid, it must be one of those rare July thunderstorms.

That particular smudge of paint was not there before. It only invites more determination to finally go through with the renovation project meant to be completed last year. Every inch of the popcorn ceiling must be scraped, lest she never forget the faces her mind conjures every night before bed. There are no faces yet, but it's likely because she isn't tired enough. It's also a lot brighter at this hour than usual, and sinister things don't have a chance to take hold in lit rooms.

A breath, then - several things happen with devastating overlap.

She sits up at once. The room isn't her own, and she doesn't know whose it is. There is no light source anywhere, but one is not necessary. Her neck is tilted at an unnatural angle, a definitive ache all around her throat. Her left arm is heavy, immobile.

It isn't raining. It isn't, but her ears won't stop telling her otherwise.

Something is wrong with the world. The panic in her chest flows beyond skin to infect the air, and it's in this state that reality finds her, splattering flashes of clarity over unfocused eyes. The arrival of her memories summons a buzz of rapacious intensity, consuming every effort to remain anchored in the present. Everything is too loud and bright to be subdued, smell and sound and rasping breath merging into discordant nonsense.

The neck brace comes off with a yowl. She hurt herself, but the relief is instantaneous as her mind stops playing a reel of disturbing apparitions. No sooner she starts to gather her bearings than a distinct sound draws her attention to the window.

Her first impression is soothing - this is a dream. It more than suffices as an explanation for the terrible ache in her arms and chest, and it also places the origin of the violent imagery firmly in her subconscious. It isn't real. She just had a long day in the sun, and as she'd been occupied with thoughts of him, it makes sense that he's now outside her window.

She should be careful. Every time she's had a dream where he appeared, she always woke herself up too soon. Nerves or excitement, the result was always the same: she gets close enough to make out the details on the fabric of his suit, but can never stop him escaping through her fingers. It's nice that he hasn't fled yet.

Now more calm, she removes herself from the bed despite the considerable pain of detaching the wire embedded in her right arm. The floor is too cold for bare feet, but the sensation of walking on needles is more curious than worrisome. Her calves are sore from rigid nodes that flare up and protest with each step.

She walks to the window in a breathless stupor. He is still there, unmoving and deathly silent. If she reached out, she could touch him - it's tempting, as dreams like this are hard to come by. She decides, instead, to say hello. She'd be speaking to herself, but it's no less interesting to see what may be heard back. Only, when her mouth opens and lips come together to form the words she intends to say, nothing resembling her voice comes out. She panics for only a moment, but remembers that things like this always happen when in the snare of such profoundly realistic dreams. They're all about nonsensical occurrences, and so far every requirement has been fulfilled: strange memories that are just a figment of her subconscious being most active, aches and pains that don't make sense, and a figure she's been wanting to see manifesting outside the window. Of course her voice is broken and unusable. Much like the desire to run away from danger in a dream is always met with numb legs, her voice has sizzled out into a whispered croak.

She wants nothing more than to speak to him, so why would it work?

As if ripped from the deepest confines of a mangled throat, a noise emerges that sounds enough like a greeting to relieve the fear of another dream ending without progress. At least this time, she has said hello.

The response is strange. Of all the things she expects him to do, getting closer is not one of them, and when he enters the room with languid movements, she watches in barely restrained awe. But then, he speaks - and it's like the oxygen leaves the same way he came in.

"I'm so… I'm so sorry."

Heart-wrenchingly young. No surprise that that's how she would picture him. But why is he apologizing? Why does her mind think he should apologize? If anything, she should be the one to feel weird, knowing that in front of her stands a figure she wrote about. At the time, she didn't consider that his eyes might flit across the text just like those of other New Yorkers. If this was real, it would be hard for her gaze to lock on so firmly.

He looks interesting up close. Taller than her, lanky and deathly still, her first impression is that he must be more solid than he appears. If she crashed into him right now, as the pain in her back implores her to do, would that be so bad? Somewhere in this dilation of time, she must have already decided - when else is she going to get this chance?

She steps into him with her eyes open, fearful of closing them when her heart begins a gallop. If she wakes up, it won't be before she's got her arms around him - a feat easier to brag about than to accomplish, as her left arm is still encased in plaster and her right won't obey commands as well as she'd like. Nevertheless, she's nothing if not persistent, and though awkwardly, the task is accomplished.

He really is more sturdy than he looks, but the speed with which his heart is beating makes worry flare up in her chest. How silly is she, that her feelings in the waking world translate so well even within the recesses of her mind? Of all things to be consistent about, caring for a stranger ought to be the least helpful.

"You should rest. There's still… there's a lot… you still have to heal," he says. His small voice is a booming echo up close, sending a shiver down her spine that makes goosebumps surge. Something akin to electricity buzzes in her ear.

Heal.

Her mind turns the word this way and that, trying to figure out its own riddle. Once more, the flashes from earlier return and she heaves a sigh against his chest. How horrible. She's never seen anything like it before, even in her most violent night terrors. One continuous narrative keeps playing in abundant detail, not stopping for any of the usual events that returned her to a wakeful state. All dreams, even the worst ones, have to trip and unfurl over something. Extreme fright is what usually does it. She wakes with a jolt, or a gasp, or some remnant of a yelp dying on her lips. In these images, though, nothing makes the violence stop - no plea, no pain and no amount of fear interrupts the brutality. Lying on her front, gasping for breath around the knife in her side and trying to crawl away on an arm that had been carved into with a different knife - she doesn't know why this sequence of events plays so vividly in her head.

Her dreams are never this detailed.

She can feel her cheek press harder into the intricately ribbed latex of his suit, leaving an indentation that stretches from chin to temple and making her warm all over. No. No, it's absurd.

This isn't real. The icy breeze that makes whatever she's wearing flutter against sensitive skin is not real sensation. The way she can feel her lungs expanding with each breath, the hypnotic scenery of dawn break in a strange room, in a stranger's embrace - none of these things can be real.

"Wake me up," she rasps, forcing her eyes to stay open and keep away the blunt vision of hands reaching for her neck. It isn't enough to feel a pair of far more gentle ones slowly caress her back. She repeats the coarse prayer with uncloaked misery, and each time it is met by ever-soaring desperation.

In matters of assuagement, Peter Parker is a few years out of practice. He hasn't comforted anyone in recent memory, and recent memory spans long enough to render his efforts frustrating. Despair is one more thing he cannot overpower by sheer force of will or wit, but knowing what is required of him on paper does not make providing it any easier. He needs help; this is too much, too soon and both parts of him are overwhelmed to the point of malfunction. She deserves better than his hushed apologies and reassurances. What good is promising she'll never come to harm again when knowledge of harm done is already consuming everything?

She thought she was dreaming, and for a moment after she touched him, so did he. Afraid to return any more than a fleeting gesture, he stood frozen for the longest moment of his life. Something important was happening without him. Or it had been, until, among whispered pleas and tears, three words plunged him into a barely faded nightmare.

Stay with me.

He's not left her side in two days.

Seeing her like this, Peter wonders if he did the right thing. It's not that he expected his blood would change anything about her mental recovery, but this is nowhere near a good start. Her body and her mind seem to have gone down different paths during the last forty-eight hours, and with the removal of the cast from her left arm this morning, she's fallen into an unnerving seclusion. It doesn't feel like she's there with him unless he's talking. He's been doing more of that than he's comfortable with these two days, but nothing brings her out from the confines of her thoughts. All things considered, she's done better than anyone could be expected to, at least according to dr. Arnaud, who elected to skirt around the details of her previous state and how it came to improve.

'This is your responsibility. You have to tell her.', she said to him. He failed to pick up on any vitriol from her words or her tone, and in the end, he was in agreement. He will tell her, in due time. Revelations of that magnitude would only serve to overwhelm her completely, and things are bad enough. The only saving grace has been the absence of a particular type of symptom, which he's been vigilantly looking out for whenever he wasn't thinking of what to do. She hasn't eaten much, and he can see in her thinning frame the results of an increased metabolism. She must be starving, but can't muster the strength to eat. It only reinforces the conclusion that he needs help; he can't do this alone. He can't. He couldn't do it for himself.

In any case, whether it be brief or extensive, recovery won't happen here. Last night, Arnaud warned him in hushed whispers that staff familiar with her case are beginning to wonder, and their theories don't stray too far from the truth. She can't stay here much longer, especially as there is now nothing left to treat but scars that can't be seen. As for the ones that can, Peter has seen worse, mostly on himself. However, he knows she likely hasn't, and once or twice he's caught her stealing glances at the mark that looks worst - the one spanning her entire right arm. The hospital gown covers only a small part, and despite the room being quite warm, she's spent the entire day with a blanket around her shoulders.

The thought sparks an idea. He excuses himself for one hour, and to keep it a surprise, he invokes personal reasons for departure. She doesn't protest, but she hasn't at any point, even if he can see her tense when he takes his leave. Her apartment is the same as the last time he was here, and he tries his best at the task he gave himself. It's hard not to feel invasive, rummaging through someone's belongings to hopefully pick out the things they need. Maybe, he hopes, the things that might cheer them up. He packs blouses and sweaters and a thousand different pairs of pants into a duffel bag he finds in the back of the closet, but though he understands those are not all the necessities, his hands don't dare venture into any drawers. These are big steps for him too.

Exactly an hour later, he returns with some renewed faith to find that perhaps he shouldn't have left in the first place. Alarmed to see the empty room, he drops the bag by the window and the toiletries he shoved inside unceremoniously clang together. Maybe he shouldn't have put perfume in there. The sound draws a response from the adjacent bathroom, and he relaxes upon realizing she hasn't gone far, only to tense back up when hearing the subsequent sniffle. A disaster. He isn't equipped to deal with this.

Peter knocks on the door with an almost feeble tempo, unsure whether he's trying not to startle himself or her. He fails at the latter.

"Are you alright?" he asks, and the words feel like he hasn't uttered them a million times before.

No answer comes, and the longer the silence stretches, the more his mind conjures ridiculous scenarios. What if the thing he feared has happened? What if he was right all along? He can't bear not knowing. Calling out again, he listens with care for any sound of abnormal distress. On his third inquiry, a few words finally loosen the tension in his neck.

"You can come in… um, if you want."

He opens the door with light hesitation, stepping inside tentatively when he sees that everything looks fine. She hasn't grown scales. Everything is fine. She sniffles again, wiping at her cheeks and straightening her posture before glancing at him in the doorway.

"They said I can leave today," she announces quietly, eyes meeting his only once.

The most she's looked at him directly was when she stood in front of the window, convinced she was in a dream and he was nothing but a figment of her imagination. Peter figures his own impression can't have been largely different. Seeing her walk was enough of a shock to the system. Her eyes boring into his soul for those precious moments where she was unaware of the truth made it all worth it. He doesn't like that she won't look at him the same now that she knows he's real.

"That's uh… that's good. You don't have to stay here anymore, right? No one likes the hospital. You can go home," he forwards timidly, still looking her over in case he missed something and the source of her distress is elsewhere. His attention is not rewarded, because immediately he picks up on a cue he dreads. She curls in on herself before the sink, chest heaving painful breaths.

"I have nowhere to go. I can't go back there. I can't," she gasps out between attempts to calm herself.

She's trying so hard, and he's the world's most colossal idiot. When did he intend to tell her? Each time he's seen her on the verge of panic in the last two days, he's also seen her shove it down forcefully, undoubtedly for his benefit. And each time, he got just a little closer to being as brave as he imagined himself to be.

Be brave now, his mind says, immediately followed up by a reminder to also be normal. Show a regular amount of concern.

"No, no, no, no - no, you don't have to go. You never have to go back there if you don't want to," he says in a soft tone, carefully stepping closer. The bathroom is small. The distance he has to traverse feels longer than it should.

"There is - there is nowhere else. There's nothing. I can't - I don't… I don't have anyone," she sobs.

His hand comes to rest over hers on the edge of the sink, and the touch is a momentary shock that lifts her eyes to his.

"Yes, you do."

With care not exercised in years, he turns her hand palm up, delicately lifting it higher and higher, watching the tears in her eyes slowly retreat. Only once he's brought their joined hands to the invisible seam at his clavicles does he feel true fear.

"You do," he says again for them both.

Nothing of what follows is in his control, but it couldn't happen any other way. It shouldn't happen any other way. So many times the fates of others have been in his hands, mortal peril beckoning closer, and so many times he's succeeded in steering it away that he's forgotten a quintessential truth: people are afraid because they want to live. They close their eyes, like he does now, and like Gwen did, because the bridge into the great unknown can only be crossed blind.

His face is cold on one side and burning on the other. Shallow breaths mark the passage of time almost to the second, until another shock pries open his eyelids. She's holding his face in both of her hands. The cold has gone completely.

"I'm… I'm Peter."

It's what he imagines the voice of someone who's never hurt anyone would sound like, but it came from him. It's with hands that have done so much that he's now reaching out to her, and the knowledge of it all doesn't spoil reciprocation. Somehow, she goes into him like he's someone from whom comfort is worth receiving.

"Hi, Peter," she mumbles into his neck, arms tightening around his middle. The gesture elicits an involuntary whimper that he muffles into her hair, and when his own arms have caged her in, something within him finally ruptures.

Hospital smells, especially when not dulled by the mask, have always left him queasy. For Peter, although no strong association exists between the institution and horrible life moments, he still bristles in the waiting area as though someone dear to him is undergoing surgery.

She's only getting discharged, Parker. Relax.

It's been eight hours since he last saw her. He showered, changed and scrubbed every inch of his apartment clean before realizing how all this could backfire in an instant and become the biggest mistake of his life. How did he ever think he could guarantee her safety in a place that might get blown sky high any one of these days? He's been far from careful in his pursuits, seldom watching his own back when returning home - or whenever. He hasn't had a reason to until now. His apartment is off the table until he can make sure it's not a target.

Still, he made a promise, and the clock flashes in warning that he has only minutes to ensure he keeps it. His thumb hovers over the screen until it starts shaking; no initiative without remorse appears to be the rule for this new self. He's aware of every sound echoing around the mostly empty place as the call goes through.

"Peter?"

He has to move the phone away from his ear at first. He doesn't want to believe he's almost forgotten what her voice sounds like. Sweet. Comforting. The voice he clinged to, the voice that chased away nightmares until he was old enough to be embarrassed about it. He's not heard it in months, this treasured blessing he failed to honor. He still has family. He has people who care, and a life to live. He need only reach out.

"May."

"Oh, Peter. Sweetheart, I'm so happy you called me."

May Parker is a saint. Every part of her is too good for words, and Peter hasn't any to express what he's feeling, but his eyes sting and his voice trembles as he takes another step.

"Aunt May, I need your help."

Epilogue

For May Parker, this September morning is at once too short and too long. She's toiling away in the kitchen, her shift at work be damned. The entire world could be on fire, and she would still be where she is, because her house is about to feel like home again for the first time in years. She's chopped all manner of vegetables in a frenzy, unsure what to do with them now that she has an entire counter littered with ingredients. Which of her nephew's favorites should she make? There's no time for all of them. He's going to be here by twelve. The wait is too long to just sit around dilly-dallying, and too short for everything she feels she has to do.

I'm uh… going to stay for a while.

At least everything is clean. She can't imagine welcoming Peter home to a place that looks uncared for, especially knowing he won't be arriving alone. Utterly befuddled - she was and still is to learn that not only is her nephew alright, but he has a friend. Of course, the extent of this knowledge is frustratingly limited. Narrow insights spawn endless vexation, a colleague and fellow nurse elegantly told her before retirement a few months ago, along with a warning that she can't save every patient. May always takes advice with a grain of salt.

Goodness, she forgot to salt any of the food. Rushing to the table, she picks up the small container and almost makes it back to the stove before the doorbell rings.

"What?! It's only nine thirty!" she exclaims to herself.

It can't be him. Peeking her head out the kitchen door, she looks to the entrance, startled to find that it is actually him. Oh, this boy. He's going to make a fool of her and he hasn't even stepped foot inside yet. Her hair is sticking up every which way, and her clothes aren't as nice as when she put them on, but at least she has the wherewithal to remove the dirty apron. The distance to the door is so short. She can see their outline through the frosted glass.

Her eyes get misty without delay once the door is opened, and her arms work by themselves to gather her boy and hold him close. He looks so different. His eyes frighten her for all the things they must've seen.

"Oh, sweetheart!"

"Hey, May," he says softly, and it's all she's wanted to hear after an entire spring and summer of hopeless heartbreak.

Pulling away so soon is something she only does because they aren't alone, and her manners have always overtaken her needs. To Peter's right stands a young woman an inch or two taller than May herself, with hair pulled back and a hood pulled forward that she reaches up to remove somewhat awkwardly. May has been trying to break the habit of looking at people until they become self-conscious, to moderate success. Her curiosity just gets the better of her sometimes. She could swear the girl looks familiar.

"Hello," May greets kindly.

"Hi, Mrs. Parker. Pleasure to meet you," the woman says in return, voice a little raspy and deeper than May would have imagined it.

"Please, call me May. What's your name, love?"

"Um - I'm…" she pauses to look to Peter in a wordless prompt. Whatever they're communicating to one another, May isn't privy to it.

"We should go inside. Got a lot to talk about. You remember what I told you on the phone?"

She does. She's been pondering the words since the call ended.

We both need some time to get better.

"Well, come on in, then. I have meatballs on the stove."

Peter pulls a face that for a short moment makes him look as young as May knows him to be. They both look much older than they ought to.

"May, it's not even ten a.m."

"Peter Benjamin Parker, you told me you'd be here at noon, so don't go blaming me for your change in plans."

A soft laugh breaks their little stand-off, Peter turning to the young woman with surprise. May's eyes catch the fondness on her nephew's face, memories surfacing of a time when showing affection used to come easily to him. Perhaps it's time for that again, she thinks. Seeing how careful he is with her as he guides her inside, May imagines the days ahead might be the most important in a while. Maybe, they might even be less dour than she anticipates them being, as she overhears an amused whisper intended for her nephew.

Benjamin. That suits you.

Yes, May thinks - that's always been true. And now, he's home.

- fin -

A/N: Thank you for reading. Your thoughts are always appreciated, and I hope you are all doing well.

#peter parker x you #peter parker x reader #tasm fanfiction #tasm imagine #tasm!peter x reader #tasm!peter x you #tasm!spiderman x you #andrew!peter x reader #andrew garfield!peter parker x reader #andrew garfield!spiderman x reader #fanfiction #imagine #peter parker imagine #peter parker angst

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niall-ate-mynamee · 8 months

Text

note: well…here’s a little one shot for Nialler’s birthday (let’s pretend i didn’t post this 3 days after, yeah? ;))

hope you enjoy! <3

i haven’t proof read this, so any mistakes, please let me know!

It was Niall’s 30th birthday. He was alone. Sure, he had plenty of friends he could’ve invited over and drank until he passed out, but he wanted to be alone. He was missing his boys today. His boys.

Louis, the idiot, the prankster, his partner in crime. Oh, how he missed the laughs they had on and off camera. Louis was the one who could make him laugh in the midst of a breakdown.

Liam, “daddy direction” as everyone called him. His best friend. The man who had a heart of gold, but had demons he had been fighting and overcame. Liam would hold him tight when things got too much.

Harry, his younger-older brother. The man who Niall knew would always be loved by millions around the world and could be on tour every single day for the rest of his life and still have sold out shows. The man who would stay up all night when Niall couldn’t sleep.

Even Zayn, his brother from another mother. The man who protected Niall, no matter the circumstance or consequences. Who showed his love every single day. He would sit silently when Niall would rant and rave about the difficulties he experienced.

Niall missed them. Beyond anything. He knew they were all living their best lives and he was forever proud of everything they achieved. He’d follow their journeys. Their music was indescribable. He had all their albums, listened to them every single day. He’d watch back old interviews and One Direction videos just to feel closer to them.

But, all he ever wanted, was to see them again, hang out with them again, have a massive party, just the five of them. Was that too much to ask?

He was turning 30 now, and the only gift he wanted was them. Don’t get him wrong, the gifts, cards, texts and countless messages he’s received already from friends, family and fans are so amazing and he feels so cared about…but, there’s only four messages he’s yet to receive and if his heart is cracking every hour that passes with nothing, well, nobody has to know.

It’s nearing 5pm, the time his friends had asked him to be ready for because they have some surprise planned for him before they take him out for the night. Niall found it quite pathetic really, how a now-30 year old man was alone in his home moping about the past, but you’ll have to forgive Niall, because he’s never exactly been “normal”. He was always the odd one out.

When he was changed and ready, about to open up a beer to celebrate on his own before he would spend the rest of his day surrounded by people, there was a knock on the door. He bit back a groan, quickly taking a gulp from the bottle, while walking towards the door.

There was a second knock, and Niall rolled his eyes. Sometimes, his friends were so impatient. They knew he was in, and knew he was expecting them, so there was no need to knock more than once, dammit!

“I’ve told you before, if you keep knocking, I won’t-“ He froze as he opened the door, nearly dropping his beer, thinking he was going crazy, because there, standing right on his doorstep, grinning cheekily and arms full of gifts, and alcohol, were the only four people he wanted to see.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NIALLER!” They cheered, holding up various gifts wrapped neatly, cards with his name on, Louis of course had enough beer for them all to spend the entire next 12 hours drinking, and every single one of them had eyes sparkling with joy and love.

“Wh-what?” Is all he could choke out.

It was Liam who explained, “You didn’t think we’d ever forget your birthday, did’ya, Ni? Your mum had said you were celebrating alone this year, and we couldn’t have that, could we, boys?” Liam threw a wink to Niall as the boys nodded, “Thought we’d drop by and make sure you had some company. After all, you only turn 30 once!”

Niall was shocked. He couldn’t believe his boys were really here and standing just merely inches away from him. He could feel the tears gathering in his eyes and he thanked the gods his house was protected from any public passer-by’s.

“We love you, Neil, and we miss you…can we have the honour of celebrating your birthday with you?” It was Louis this time, and Niall choked on a sob before nodding frantically and launching himself on them and bringing them all into a group hug.

He could hear their laughter as their arms wrapped around him and held up tight. His nose was hit with all their scents and he breathed them in, making sure it was real and he hadn’t just gotten so drunk that he was hallucinating.

“You idiots…I miss and love you so much,” He whispered, not letting go. He felt a pair of arms under his thighs and he jumped slightly, wrapping his legs around whoever’s waist and feeling them carry him back into his house.

By the smell alone, he could tell it was Liam he was clinging onto, and he started to blush. It’s been over 8 years since he last was carried around by any of the boys like this, but he didn’t care in that moment, because he had his boys again and he’d be damned if he was letting them go now.

When they made it to the lounge, he lifted his head from where it was buried in Liam’s neck, and looked around. Louis was putting all the beers on the table (the one Niall had already was amongst the bunch and for a moment, he wondered how it got there because he didn’t remember putting it down or even letting go), Harry was placing all the gifts they had brought in a neat pile in the corner of the room, Zayn was putting multiple games (board and video), DVDs and CDs he had with him in separate piles on the other table and Liam still had a hold of Niall.

“What did ya wanna do first, Nialler? We’ve got films, music, games? Or we can give you your presents? The choice is all yours!” He heard Zayn ask, and Niall finally let go of Liam to look around at them all. He grinned and wiped at his eyes, making sure to take it all in and laughed, truly laughed, head thrown back and eyes sparkling with so much love and joy.

“You lads better have got me the most expensive gifts you could find, after all, I’m your favourite Irishman ever!” He joked, and everyone burst into laughter.

“Nah, I prefer Bobby Horan!” Harry smirked, earning himself a playful glare before being attacked by Niall and the two “babies” of their group ended up on the ground, and the laughter was even louder.

Five boys who grew into men back together. Their hearts beating as one, once again. Niall wouldn’t change anything for the world, because even though they’ve moved on from their past, and are all doing their own things, they’re family. No matter what life throws at them, they’ve always got four brothers ready to catch them.

Niall spent his 30th birthday with the people who meant more to him than he could ever describe. Niall would never celebrate another birthday alone ever again. He had his boys there for him, and he’d forever be grateful.

Maybe one day in the future, they’d make music together again, maybe they won’t, but either way, Niall had four brothers who he’ll forever love and cherish.

note: Happy birthday, Nialler <3

sorry it took me slightly longer to post, writers block has hit me hard lately!

i hope you guys enjoyed this, anyways! it’s slightly different to what/how i usually write, so let me know what you think! :)

i’ll be working on some prompts over the next few weeks, so there’ll be more coming very soon!

#niall horan #one direction #harry styles #zayn malik #liam payne #louis tomlinson #niall centric #niallerrr #zianourry #narry #nouis #niam #ziall #happy birthday niall!!#niall james horan #one direction one shot #one shot #happy 30th birthday nialler

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electrosair · 9 months

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hiiii! hope ur doing well ❤️I'm joining in on the matchup bandwagon as well yippeee

to give you a tiny bit of an idea about my personality, i'm an INFJ 9w1. I tend to be extremely shy, and closed off from people when it comes to talking about myself, as my main focus is on the people themselves and the world around me in general. I like to maintain peace and quiet and help the others around me - but also escape in other worlds through books, video games or fiction.

I'm very emotionally sensitive. I am also prone to overthinking and getting really anxious. It's easy to make me embarrassed too!

generally I don't bother people with my problems because I'd feel really selfish, but I am always willing to help those in need - hell people even come to me for advice, comfort or just to be heard. I kind of tend to neglect myself sometimes, when it comes to my physical energy or emotional well-being.

being social isn't very easy for me and I run out of energy quickly.

I have only a few friends. when I'm around them I tend to have a very positive and pleasant disposition! I actually tend to be a little louder than I normally am, and I've been told that it brings people at ease. also my optimism is seemingly infectious, or so I've been told. the thing is that I'm very optimistic around people, but negative with myself - I'm my own worst critic, I'm very harsh on myself.

I value honesty and I prefer for people to tell me things at face value. I can be blunt most of the time, but I usually read the emotional atmosphere and go easier with my words (sugarcoating most of the time), so I don't hurt the others around me (I tend to gently scold people sometimes). it's hard to make me angry, and also I forgive easily.

I am able to predict outcomes of situations most of the time, and it's helped me a lot (legit feel like I'm able to avoid any dangers fhsjfhd).

my favourite nation is Fontaine! lovely story, music, landscape and characters, and exploration is so fun. as for my favorite element, it has to be anemo!

during my free time I am usually reading about psychology stuff (I love understanding the human mind and people around me in general), playing video games, watching vtubers, watching documentaries (from nature to crime ones), or creating my own artwork, characters and generally just. creating things in my head and living in my own little world when things get too tough for me (its a good way for me to cope).

some fun facts as the cherry on top! I'm a very organized person. my entire room is SUPER organized, neat, super clean. some plushies, manga and books here and there.

I am good in academics, I'm hardworking, and I love animals. cats especially. I'm a sucker for cute things, and I kinda know how to cook. I don't have a lot of physical strength, I'm really weak.

I dedicate myself to those close to me a lot, at this point some people would call a sister figure or a "mom friend" lol.

🙏I hope this isn't a lot. if it is I'm super sorry I tend to ramble plenty;;; anyway make sure to take real good care of urself! sending love ~ ꒰⁠⑅⁠ᵕ⁠༚⁠ᵕ⁠꒱⁠˖⁠♡

you can ramble all you want in my requests 😭

Lyney!

After getting to know you a little better he would make sure to ask you every so often how you've been feeling since he knows that if he doesn't ask you, you won't tell him anything.

He loves when you to start to open up little by little with him, he would try everything so that you can become closer and gain trust with him. One of the things he does is to invite you to the new shows he does, always in the front row so he can surprise you more.

He might even ask you what you would like to see in magic tricks or if you know any, he also wants ideas and would be willing to listen to you and figure out afterwards how he can do it. Lyney would also tell you about some of his own, but always in a discreet way so as not to ruin the moment of the performance for you.

He's probably a person who really appreciates order to have everything go according to plan, so I think you would also be pretty compatible in terms of little personality things like that as well. And the fact that you like cats so much just makes it even better.

#genshin impact #genshin impact fluff #fluff #genshin impact blurb #genshin impact headcanons #genshinimpact #genshin #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin matchups #air matches you up #lyney #lyney fluff #lyney x reader

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thinkin-bout-milgram · 11 months

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Hello! I'd love to get into Milgram but I'm not sure how to go about it. I understand that it's over now, but could you suggest a good way to experience the story?

Hello!! Sorry that this took a sec for me to get back to, I wanted to make sure that I was thorough!

For starters, it's very important that I emphasize that Milgram is not over!! The voting is still taking place and we are only about halfway through the interactive thing, so don't worry, you haven't missed it!

Getting into Milgram can be a bit daunting if you're still figuring it out, so I'm happy to help! I'll be explaining roughly how I went about it, because I think it went pretty well.

I also made this playlist:

If you want, instead of using this guide, you can just go through the playlist instead of reading it, but I'd recommend following along! If you want to have the playlist open though, it'll probably help the guide make more sense as I go through it.

I'll break this guide up into parts because it's gonna be pretty long.

PART 1: WHAT IS MILGRAM?

Milgram is an interactive video project in which 10 prisoners, who are all connected to a murder, produce music videos through a machine that give details about themselves, their lives and their crimes.

At the end of each round (which is called a trial), we as a fanbase vote whether we think they're guilty/unforgivable or innocent/forgivable (exact translations vary). There are 3 rounds, so each prisoner gets a total of 3 verdicts. The last one is the only one that sticks, but earlier verdicts influence the prisoners and what songs and information we get along the way.

That's the basic gist. Jackalope (the host of Milgram) explains it in his "This is the MILGRAM" video, which I highly recommend watching to get a better sense. You should also watch the character trailer, which gives you some quick insight into who each of the prisoners are before you watch their videos.

Es's one and only MV, UNDERCOVER, also goes here. Es is the warden, not a prisoner (unless you're theorizing), but they still get an MV (and a cover and audio drama -- more on that shortly) before the first trial. Watch it; it's a great song, gives you some quick insight into each of the prisoners, and has plenty of fuel to theorize about! Though, if you're going to get theorizing, I recommend coming back to tackle UNDERCOVER after you finish your first watch through of Trial 1. It's hard to follow when you don't know the other characters very well yet.

PART 2: TRIAL ONE

If you want a glimpse of each of the Trial 1 songs, you can look at the Song of the Prisoners - First Trial Trailer video. Then, you'll proceed to the first song of Trial One: Weakness by Haruka.

The MV is the main part of any trial. You watch the MV, you listen to the song, you read the lyrics. I strongly recommend watching it a few times to gather your thoughts. Then, you can either work on developing your own theory, or you can get straight to reading others'. Obviously I'm biased, but I like to think my theories are pretty good, so if you want to check them out, they're all on our page's Master List, linked here.

Each prisoner's CD comes with two other things as well: a cover and an audio drama. You can find both of them on music streaming services under the character's name (I just use spotify).

The cover is just their VA doing a cover of one of DECO*27's many other songs (DECO*27 is a very popular vocaloid producer). These covers have been called "just for fun," but you can definitely speculate as to why specific ones were chosen, and even some of the VAs have speculated that they aren't as detached from the actual content as DECO claims.

The audio dramas are interrogations between Es and the prisoner, set right before Es extracts the MV from their mind. They give great insight, and especially in the second trial, they can contain critical information. I usually use @onigiriico's translations because they're extremely fast and accurate, but @milgrammer also has great and detailed records, and I used theirs for the early first trial ones. I typically read these after I watch the MV, but you could also definitely listen to them first to better place yourself in Es's shoes.

You can vote every day when a character is up for trial. I already did a pretty extensive guide on voting, so I'll just link that here for you to read if you're interested.

But yeah, basically just go through that same process for all of those, then watch Jackalope's report on the end of the first trial! Then, go to trial 2.

PART THREE: TRIAL TWO

This one's ongoing, so this is the current one!

At the beginning of the second trial, I'd really REALLY recommend watching Jackalope's second trial commencement notice video. It's super important moving forward.

We did get some info before that video came out, though. Here's my theory/thought post going over it if you want more details.

But yeah, just go through the MVs/theories/audio dramas/covers as you did in trial one! Currently we just did Shidou and Mahiru, so their voting periods are currently available.

Hope this helped! If anything is still unclear, please DM/comment/send another ask so I can clarify!

#ミルグラム #milgram #admin venus #sorry if this is incoherent #i'm leaving the country in like 16 hours #but i really really wanted to make sure i could make this #i hope it makes sense i really want to help people understand milgram

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scorchieart · 1 year

Note

Who do you think Clavis's favorite brother is?

Hello Anon, you'll have to forgive me for taking a few days to get back to you on this. You see, it is a question I never considered before, and now that I've toiled ruminated over it for far too many hours I believe it does not have a clear answer.

I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall some promotional materials for the game's release that were set up as interviews with the princes, and one of the questions that was asked was "Who is your favorite brother?" Obviously, I can't recall what Clavis said because I don't know if it even existed (if one of you peoples reading this has any idea of what I'm talking about, do let me know!!)

BUT you specifically asked who I think his favorite brother is, so I take that as permission to go free reign with some more superfluous soul searching. So zip up your jackets, friends!

While I do believe Clavis loves each of the princes (love may be a strong word, but this game gives us plenty of interpretations) I think he is closest to his older brothers. At the very least, we're told he interacts with them the most (before the events of the game and during) and it is with them he reveals his truest self/intentions... to a degree.

I'll go more into my lots for each below the cut because we'll have to dive into some pretty spoilery territory for Jin, Chevalier, Clavis, and Luke's routes. But if you want the tldr: My mind says Jin, but my heart says Chevalier.

Jin

Clavis seems to hang out with Jin by choice the most outside of work. They hit up the town as drinking buddies and... discuss their preferred topics freely. They share a penchant for doting on their yonger brothers. Clavis also admits early on in Jin's route that he's his "partner in crime" and that's pretty telling coming from the palace prankster. Clavis is never usually one to hold back on sharing his opinion, but when Jin is in the room they get to back each other up (or start a heated debate, it depends on the tides).

Looking further into Jin's route, Clavis not-so-subtly hints at Jin's association with Obsidian and his knowledge of it, claiming that makes them both not to be trusted. But even if he brands themselves as villains, he still makes a point to get involved with Jin's activities and (once again) back him up when he needs it. Jin has a tendency to be self sacrificing because he knows his value as the first prince and believes he cannot right the sins of his and his father's pasts otherwise, but Clavis is usually around to help steer his head back when he goes too far. Another example of this is in Luke's route for a similar reasoning.

At the end of Jin's romantic route, Belle deduces the reason Clavis interfered was because he was afraid of losing Jin, and even though Clavis denies it, we know what's up. (I haven't played the dramatic end, but considering Clavis was basically the crossroad at Chapter 20, I'm betting he's pretty important there, too).

So Clavis enjoys Jin's company and would rather it not end, right? Sounds like a favorite brother to me! Unfortunately, Jin ends up playing a very minimal role in Clavis's route (I was really surprised about this) which brings us to candidate number two...

Chevalier

"But Scorchie, you're all about textual evidence, and Clavis says multiple times that he hates Chevalier AND wants to kill him!"

You're not wrong, imaginary voice in my head, but I think it's safe to say that these princes aren't very good at being honest with themselves. And Clavis tells A LOT of lies, so in lieu of dissecting each and every time Clavis mentions Chevalier (which I would be more than happy to do, mind you it's getting close to dinnertime) let's start with his POV stories.

Clavis says before he met Chevalier he heard of the amazing feats he accomplished at a young age, so he was very excited to have such a brother. But, as we know Chevalier wasn't as... keen on returning his affection. But Clavis never gave up trying to get Chevalier to befriend him, because let's be honest who wouldn't want to be noticed by the genius born once every thousand years? Clavis's goal was to be a prince worthy enough to stand beside him. However, after their mothers' passings, Clavis felt he failed as a son and as a brother, so he shifted the blame onto the one person he felt deserved to be grieving as much as he. Thus, his hatred toward Chevalier was truly solidifed.

And you know the rest of the story, so I won't bother you with recounting it. Although, I will mention Chevalier's take on this. He mentions in Clavis's dramatic end that no matter what happens, no matter who comes and goes, that he will be there to catch his mistakes and rectify them. And we know Clavis knows this too, because he sent Cyran to deliver Belle to the border knowing Chevalier would be there waiting, and the encouragement Clavis displayed once Chevalier and Belle confronted Gilbert was just what he needed to get back on top.

And let's not forget Clavis's sideline cheerleader act through pretty much all of Chevalier's route. He says it was for his amusement to see Chevalier's happiness get ripped away, but we know what's up.

There is a ton more nuance going on deeper here, and I don't think Clavis would ever admit to anyone or himself that he likes Chevalier (he can't stand being in the same room as him sometimes), but at the very least I believe he would be very lost if Chevalier were to disappear. Can't get more ironic than that.

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Wow, you're still here? Well, I'm flattered by your interest in these fellas (or maybe you just wanted to see if I'd leave anything fun at the end, in which case you're right!)

Have a silly scene of number 1 and number 2 fighting to be giant Clavis's favorite bro. Or they're fighting him, it's sorta up to your interpretation I guess.

Maybe after I fill up the food tank I'll post some screenshots and more dooblee do's~~

#ask scorchie #ikemen prince #clavis lelouch #jin grandet #chevalier michel #contemplations and speculations

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somethingaboutmint · 2 years

Text

I just finished honest hearts for the first time and i really did not like Joshua. I was pretty stoked to finally meet him because of all the legion fear mongering of ""the burned man"" but he ended up being a profoundly weird and kind of unlikable character. I feel like the game is trying really hard to portray him as good/sympathetic which i just...can't see? Ignoring my own moral stances on mormons and missionary work, Joshua feels like a really hypocritical selfish man that keeps failing to learn anything from the tragedies that happen in his life.

When you speak to him about the legion he says that he just "got caught up in it all" and that ceasar kept asking him to do more and more henious acts as if he was some sort of prisoner to ceasar with no choice and not literally the co-founder of the legion. He STARTED the legion, if he was so morally against it why didn't he just bail out? I get that ceasar eventually gains enough power that the possibility of deserting becomes very dangerous, but he has plenty of time to leave in the beggining? The game mentions numerous times that Joshua wasn't just a normal legionary, but a merciless, unkillable, ruthless murder machine. Who am i supposed to believe here? I feel like if he really felt as bad as he did about all the evil shit the legion was doing then he probably wouldn't have that kind of reputation following him.

Then he gets deep fried at the canyon and goes back to his own community that accepts him back as if nothing happened (thanks, christianity). I'd be willing to accept that getting your entire body roasted and tossed down a literal canyon (and the chronic pain that will follow him forever) would probably be punishment enough for his numerous war crimes but like. Thats it? Not even a slap on the wrist from his former family? The family that he abbandoned and whose ideology he directly opposed by smiting the tribes they were trying to """help""" (again, mormon missionary work cringe)?????? And then hes all like "i know god has forgiven me for my sins and im fine with that" like???? I am familliar with the christian concept of gods forgivness, but Josh wasn't "lost in sin" as in like, he indulged himself in one of the main sins or was a general asshole, he killed people! He participated in the slavery and extermination of many tribes/cultures! And the only reason he stopped doing that is because after 30 fucking years, which i had to google by the way, ceasar, a known motherfucker and absolute lunatic, finally turned on HIM. For 30 fucking years the evils of the legion were nothing more than a "hm. This is kind of evil. Oh well!" thought to Joshua and ONLY when he suffered under it he finally realized that oh shit, the legion is evil. Literally no empathy or ability of critical thought is present in this man UNTIL he is the one affected. Is the power of christianity really so strong that literally none of the new caananites looked at this pathetic wet toilet paper roll of a man and were even a LITTLE bothered by what he did?

And like, at this point, im a bit skeptical but i try to rationalize it. I think to myself well, atleast he's trying to do better now. I guess forgivness and growth is what his main character motive is supposed to be. Except no, it's not, because 3 seconds later he runs across the entire map to the sorrows camp purely so he can quote the bible at me and ask me to EXTERMINATE A WHOLE TRIBE. Now, i understand his animosity towards the white legs. The white legs are fucking assholes. I finished lonesome road before honest hearts so i was already fully aware of what assholes they were. HOWEVER. LET US NOT FORGET. The reason the white legs are assholes is because they desperately want to sit with ceasar at the cool lunch table. To do that, they were ordered to kill the new caananites specifically to hurt Joshua because Ceasar knew he was alive. So, the reason the white legs are the agressive assholes that they are is almost purely because of the legion. WHICH JOSHUA CO-FOUNDED. It's almost beautifully ironic in a way that his deeds came back to haunt him. "I didn't know they would exterminate and enslave MY tribe!" Says man who voted for the "exterminating and enslaving the mojave tribes" faction. And still, Joshua learns absolutely fucking nothing from this.

I actually decided to side with joshua instead of daniel. It was for a multitude of reasons, including thinking the dlc was just gonna end if i side with daniel for whatever reason, but i kind of hoped and prayed there was a way to STILL resolve the whole thing peacefully and to talk him out of murdering them all. I was not happy about having to side with Joshua. While Daniel's plan was also potentially stupid and awful, the least Daniel did was respect the tribes' traditions and pacifistic ways. He did not want to turn the sorrows and dead horses into murderers because he thought another option (leaving zion) was available. Joshua wanting to defend the tribes' land was the one selling point on him that had me going "oh shit, maybe i misjudged this guy!" but i didn't. Talk to him for 3 seconds and its so painfully obvious that his motivations for killing the white legs is not "protect the dead horses and sorrows" but his own personal revenge for the slaughter of the new caananites. Which like, fine, understandable, but it just pissed me off so bad because he learned NOTHING from his years as a reformed war criminal. He talks so much about being changed and finding himself again after years of living in sin and the imidiate first thing he does is indulge in exterminating a tribe for his own selfish revenge reasons."I dont enjoy killing, but when done rightously, it is a job like any other" yeah, okay Joshua. Talk to me when you're not legging it down a cliff to shove a .45 down some poor bastards throat from halfway across the map because he looked at you funny. The way he acts as a temporary companion also contributes to my point here - refuses to do shit for you, does not listen, and eventually abandons you after like 15 minutes to go on his own because you're not killing the white legs fast enough. Unfortunately, i think the way he refuses to do shit for you is funny, so this is a point in his favour.

The one part that actually had me sympathizing with him was his speech upon being asked to spare salt-upon-wounds. I happen to like playing new vegas the "bullshit my way out of situations" way so thank god my speech was maxxed out, because if it wasn't, my dislike of joshua would be immesurable. The specific part when he says "i wanted to make my anger gods anger. To justify the things i've done" had me stunned because holy shit, you finally get it buddy! You finally understand that you were not a reformed man, you were still the same selfish bastard you were when in the legion! And i'm very glad this specific ending reflects that. However, if you dont have an ungodly high speech skill, you cannot spare salt-upon-wounds and Joshuas endings fucking suck. Especially the one in which he is the one to kill salt, he just starts another mini ceasars legion, having learned absolutely nothing in life.

Overall, i do think Joshua is an interesting character, somewhat. I enjoy his backstory a lot as some sort of boogeyman villiam and i do think the fact that hes complex enough to piss me off the way he does is a good thing. I think the narrative kinda fails him because it desperately tries to paint him as a redeemed good guy (seriously, why is joshua the only "companion" with good karma? If anything, he makes the most sense as a neutral karma character) instead of just a dude you can form your own opinion on.

#good. you deserved it #long rant #fnv #fallout new vegas #joshua graham #idk why i wrote this i just have many thought that i needed to get out somewhere #joshuas redeeming qualities to me are that hes so awful that it reverts back to being funny sometimes #i wish that when he tells you he was thrown down the canyon you get an option to say #and then combat is inititated against him instantly

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hello-nichya-here · 1 year

Note

Been a long time since I sent an ask but I'm hoping for your forgiveness xD

Anyway, I've been in a Stannis staning mood recently and remembered a theory.

Apparently the reason Stan is popular is because he serves as the replacement Ned Stark due to his strict adherence to honor, law and morality. Any thoughts?

I do see similarities but I've always felt them to be different people. They had respect for each other yes, but were never really friends.

Plus their flaws and shortcomings are different. Ned could have prevented the war by not telling Cersei but he was too merciful of a person for that. Stannis greatest mistakes and vile deeds came almost always when he compromised on his code.

I guess what Game of Thrones teaches is that both good and evil deeds, both selfish and selfless actions can have negative consequences. People don't act in isolation, the results always depend on how other people react.

While they both are characters that fully believe that "What's right is right", the are some key differences between them.

The first and most important one can summed up in an exchange that happened between Davos and Stannis:

"What is the life of one bastard boy against an entire kingdom?"

"Everything."

Ned covered up the truth about Jon being Lyanna's son with Rhaegar, spoke out against the plan to kill Daenerys (who was 14 and pregnant at the time), and refused to just let Cersei's children be executed despite knowing that they were bastards born of incest. All of that was because his honor and his idea of what's right says that protecting the weak and innocent is his obligation - especially if said weak and innocent are children.

Stannis meanwhile was fully ready to kill Dany and Viserys as children, nearly burned Edric Storm alive, and will 100% kill any of Cersei's bastards if he ever comes across them. That is because Stannis's morals are all about the good of the real and the rules of society.

This isn't always bad - he is sexist and racist, but won't allow his men to rape women of the free-folk because to become a rapist is to become a dishonarable man, and he won't tolerate that kind of shit.

But it also means that he is fully okay with Melisandre burning people alive because her God told her to and (more importantly) plenty of said people were enemies of his that were breaking the law by supporting other kings. Why would he have a problem with that? What's the difference between burning people in the name of Rhollor and stabbing a bunch of them to death in the name of the Seven/the king? War is war, and sacrifices have to be made.

Ned meanwhile will NOT accept that kind of thing. He has killed people before, and he WAS willing to let Cersei and her children be executed if she didn't run away with - but he still gave her the warning. He gave them a chance to survive. To end this conflict without anyone's death being necessary. Stannis meanwhile fucked off to prepare for war.

Another key difference between them is that Ned is much more forgiving in general, and especially with the people he cares about. He killed the guy who deserted the Night's Watch, but only because he did not believe his story about the White Walkers attacking them - if he had, the guy would have lived and not suffered any punishment. Ned was also not okay with cheating, excessive drinking, or people neglecting their responsibilities - but he was best friends with Robert, the guy who full on said "Hey, be my Hand, so you can do all the work for me while I eat, fuck and drink."

Can anyone even imagine Stannis Baratheon EVER letting someone get away with saying that kind of crap to him? For fuck's sake, Davos is his best friend AND smuggled food to Stannis in a siege in which he nearly died... and Stannis still cut off Davos's fingers as punishment for the crime of being a smuggler.

We also have the fact that, while Ned didn't really understand the Game Of Thrones. Like, at all. He legit thought Cersei wouldn't stab him in the back after he said "I know about the treason, incest, and I'm also gonna accuse you of murder." Stannis never made that kind of mistake. He despises the empty flattery and courtesies their society relies on, yes, but he always makes sure he has some card up his sleeve that allows him to get away with not enganging on that part of the game.

This also connects to another thing: Stannis changed, Ned did not. Ned Stark died because he could not addapt to the place he was at, not even long enough to just get enough time to go back to Winterfell and leave Robert holding his dick. Stannis meanwhile addmited that Davos and Jon Snow were right - just going "Fuck you, I'm the king, bow to me!" was not working, would likely never work, and if he wanted people to support him, he'd need to change tactics and help them with their problems instead of focusing just on his. He went from the king that even rejected, and who despised his subject, to "the king who cared." Quite the drastic change.

Finally, we also have ANOTHER way in which Stannis changed, and that ties into something he does NOT have in common with Ned: the way they handle being the second son.

Stannis went from sleeping with Melisandre just because it was necessary (both in the sense of "the red God wants it" and "It will kill your rival in a second"), to not so subtly bragging about the fact that she is his mistress and that she scares the fuck out of everyone but is his loyal servent.

This "sudden" change happened because, while Stannis never really asked to be king, he was always the unloved child. The one who was too difficult to deal with. The one who just needed to lighten up a little. The one who didn't have Robert and Renly's charisma. The king NOBODY wanted.

And then here comes Melisandre, telling the is the literal chosen one. The most important man in the whole world. The one who will save everyone and be seen as a legend forever and ever. And he buys into that pleasant lie because it validates all the anger, resentment and loneliness he felt all these years, and tells him "It was not your fault, you were right all along. Everyone else was the problem, not you"

Ned meanwhile, despite loving Catelyn and the life they had together, would often get all melancolic over the fact that he was not supposed to be the heir, the ruler of Winterfell. And when Robert comes in offering to give him MORE power, MORE responsibility, MORE of a great status, he fucking hates it. Unlike Stannis, Ned doesn't resent the time he spent in his brother's shadow as the "least important one." He seems to miss it and the safety it brought to him.

Which is why he often refused to play the game, unlike Stannis. Playing is the only way to have even a CHANCE of winning. And when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.

#asks #ned stark meta #stannis baratheon meta #ned stark #stannis baratheon

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thegreymoon · 11 months

Text

Till the End of the Moon

Time to exercise my masochistic tendencies and see if this is the episode when I finally quit this disaster. The blatant unacknowledged rape in the last episode has brought me to the edge and I need only one firm push to abandon ship.

Before anyone accuses me of being a hypocrite, no, in-text rape has never stopped me from watching something before, and, yes, I have enjoyed plenty of non-con in my drama-watching/fic-reading career, but there are at least two reasons why it disgusted me here.

It was NOT ACKNOWLEDGED for what it was. Instead, it was portrayed as a) “romantic” and b) a girlboss power move where I was supposed to be cheering for Sang Jiu finding her ~agency~ and ~getting her due~, which would never have been allowed to fly without it being clear that it was a VIOLATION if the genders had been reversed. Imagine if a woman had asked for a divorce (regardless of whether her reasons were stupid or not), told her husband to leave their marital home, proceeded to get drunk in the privacy of her own bedroom, and he snuck in when she was incapacitated, drugged her some more and “took what was owed to him” while she couldn’t even speak to tell him no? I have been thoroughly spoiled for this drama and have seen gifs of this particular scene so many times and yet NOT ONCE have I seen people mention the rape or warn for it in any capacity! Which brings me to my second point.

I WAS EXPECTING FLUFF!! As much as appreciate non-con when I willingly seek it out, I do not appreciate being blindsided by it. Just no.

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He remains beautiful, though. As always.

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Girl, just kill him.

Sometimes, divorce is just not enough.

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Nobody does the tears in his eyes as well as he does 😭

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Aww, Ji Ze, noooooo 😢

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I do love the Eye of Sauron 🔥🔥

Though I prefer when LYX is the one wielding it!

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Aww, Chu Huang, no 😭

There goes the only female character in this garbage heap that I actually liked.

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Oh, go fuck yourself.

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LMAO.

A traitor remains a traitor. Go fuck yourself some more.

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Is it. Is it really 🤔

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LMAO. Of course not.

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The Devil God has his face!!

Also, let’s not lie, the actor playing him until right this very moment was definitely not LYX 🤣🤣 I can tell by the ears!

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THIRD ATTEMPT OVER MULTIPLE DAYS TO FINISH THIS DAMN EPISODE 😭😭

All of this dramas crimes not withstanding, the one I will not be able to forgive is the fact that this is so fucking boring. LYX and his gorgeous costumes are doing a lot of heavy lifting, but everything else is so nonsensical and bad, it just isn’t enough.

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LMAO, they cooked him 🤣🤣

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The things I will watch for his face 😭😭

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She’s supposed to be so cute, but I can’t stop thinking about how much of a creep she is. Such a waste of Bai Lu on this awful character.

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Chu Wanning will always have his face for me 😭😭

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Because you are very beautiful 😊

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Every time I decide that I am so done with this drama, he goes and does something like this and I am stuck for yet another episode 😭😭

The hyperfixation is real 😭😭

#till the end of the moon #tteotm spoilers #tteotm ep15 #tteotm negative

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drinkthemlock · 3 months

Text

NIGHT AT THE TAVERN

V - CLAUDIUS HERMANN

This chapter beat my ass, not gonna lie. It contains a poem, which are extremely hard to translate (especially since it’s an álvares poem…), so forgive me for any inaccuracies in that department. This chapter contains some pretty repulsive stuff, especially regarding sexual assault and abduction (seriously), and I’d go as far as saying it’s the most disturbing one (followed closely by Solfieri’s). Stay safe, and enjoy!

Text by Álvares de Azevedo, translation my own.

Claudius Hermann

… Ecstasy!

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time

And makes a healthful music. It is not madness that I have utter’d.

SHAKESPEARE - “Hamlet”

“And you, Hermann! Your turn has come. One by one we invoked a corpse from the cemetery of time. One by one we lifted its shroud to sample you a drop of blood. Speak, for your turn has come.”

“Claudius dreams of a sonnet in the manner of Petrarch, some halo of purity like that of the pure spirits from Der Messias,” Johann said between a smoke and a laugh, lifting his head off the table.

“Very well! You want a story? I could tell, like you, insanities of nights of debauchery, but why? It was intended as mockery when Faust went to remind Mephistopheles of the hours of damnation he spent with him. You know them… these clouds of the past; you’ve read plenty at the faded book of my libertine existence. If you do not remember it, the first woman of the streets you find could remind you. In this dark river called life that flows towards the past while we walk towards the future, I also gave up faith and threw myself, having shed my most perfumed clothing, to wear the tunic of Saturnalia! The past is what is gone, it’s the flower that has withered, the sun that has set, the corpse that has rotted. To cry for it? What madness! Better sleep with your dark memories! Come to life, wake only the forget-me-nots in bloom in that swamp! Floats, in that not-being, the scent of a pure memory!”

“Bravo! Bravissimo Claudius, you are completely drunk! In truth you are a romantic!”

“Silence, Bertram! It is true that this is not a legend to be told after yours, one of those things to be told with your elbows on the red cloth and your lips splashed with wine and satiated with kisses… But why bother?”

“You all that love the game, you that once saw a wave of golf flow in that abyss, eddy in the bottom, like a sea of hopes that crashes on the high tide of fate, you know well what haze confuses us then… it is the best insanity that riles us in those games of thousands of men, or of fortune. --Aspirations, life itself at the speed of a race, where all this complex of miseries and desires, crimes and virtues called existence is thrown onto a couple of horses![1]

I bet, as a man that wasn’t wounded by growing poor: luxury also satiates; and that is a horrible satiety! To it nothing is enough… not the dances from the Orient, nor the Roman Lupercalias, not even the burning of an entire city will quench its thirst for blood, this vitality of poison that Byron speaks of [2]. My gamble at the turf was my whole fortune. I was rich, very rich then: in London no one boasted more expensive depravities, no nawab splurged in one evening as many sums as I. The sweat of three generations, I spilled it on the beds of whores, and on the floor of my orgies…

In the moment the races were about to start, when everyone felt feverish with impatience, a murmur ran through the crowds, a smile… and then a woman shot by on horseback. Had you seen her, like me, on a black horse, with velvet clothes, with her lively face, the ardent look between her eyelashes, reflecting a queen in all those grandiose gestures! Had you seen her, beautiful with her perfect and harmonious beauty, beautiful with her pure and silky coloring, with her black hair and the white skin of her face, the oval of her rosy cheeks, the nacre fire of her thin lips, the perfection of her chest standing out in her riding habit… Had you seen her like this, honestly, gentlemen, you wouldn’t have laughed as you are laughing now!”

“Romanticism! You must be very drunk, Claudius, for on your dry lips of Lovelace and your detachment of Don Juan [3], poetry has come and given a kiss!”

“Laugh, yes! You wretches! That do not understand what perhaps flows like fire from Lovelace’s lips, how love heaves under the dripping wet clothes of Don Juan– the libertine! Madmen, that have never imagined Lovelace without his mask, maybe crying for Clarissa Harlowe [4]— poor angel! Whose white wings she was going to shed, cursing this fatality that makes love an infamy and a crime! A thousand times you are madmen! That never imagined the Spaniard waking up in the lupanar [5], running his hand through his forehead and burning with remorse and longing as he remembers so many beautiful visions from the past!”

“Bravo! Bravo!”

“Poetry! Poetry!” mumbled Bertram.

“Poetry! Why pronounce to the chaste virgin its sacred name, like a mystery, in the filth of the tavern? Why remind her of the star of love in the light of the orgy’s lamps? Poetry! Do you know what poetry is?”

“Half hundred sonorous words that a handful of pallid men understand, a ladder of sounds and harmonies that to those mad souls seem like ideas and unleash illusions like the moon to shadows… that is, in what one calls poets. Now, in the ideal, in the woman, resentment from the last romance, the delirium and passion of the last novel’s heroine and the vague and uncertain present of a mystical pleasure, for which a virgin recoils in lust, without knowing why…”

“Silence, Bertram! Your brain has been fried by wine, like lava from a volcano burns the brush and flowers of a meadow. Silence! You are like those plants that bloom and dive into the dead sea: a limestone crystallization covers them, they wither and die. Poetry, I’ll tell you as well on my turn, is the flight of the morning birds in the warm embrace of dawn’s red clouds, it is the deer that rolls in the dew of the lush mountain, that forgets tomorrow’s death, yesterday’s agony, in its bed of flowers!”

“That’s enough, Claudius, because that which you say no one understands: they are words, words and more words; like Hamlet said; and all that is empty and lifeless like a dried skull, deceitful like the earth’s infectious vapors that the twilight sun flushes with a thousand colors called clouds and that jeering and cloudy fairy called poetry!”

“The story! The story! Claudius, can’t you see this discussion is making us yawn with boredom?”

“Very well, I shall tell the rest of the story. At the end of that day I would’ve doubled my fortune.

The next day I saw her: it was in the theater. I don’t know which play was it, I don’t know what I saw, or heard; I only knew that there was a woman, as beautiful as every most pure thing the sculptor creates. This woman was the duchess Eleonora… The next day I saw her at a ball… Then… It took long: six months! Can you imagine? Six months of agony and breathtaking desire, six months of love with the thirst of a beast! Six months! How long were they!

One day, I’d had enough. All this time had been spent in contemplation, in seeing her, loving her, dreaming of her; I wrung my hands thinking it would not go further from that, that it was too much to wait in vain and that if she would not come, like Gulanre at the feet of the Corsair [6], one must go speak to her.

One night all were asleep in the duke’s palace. The duchess, tired from the ball, fell asleep on a divan. The alabaster lamp trembly shone its golden light on her pale face. She looked like a fairy asleep in the moonlight.

The portière fluttered: a man stood there, distracted. His head was so hot and feverish and he rested it in the doorframe.

The weakness was cowardly; and more, this man had bought a key and at one point under the betrayal of a servant, this man had sworn he’d have that woman tonight. Gone is the poison, he’d drink the nectar of that flower, the scarlet liquor of that glass. As to these losses of honor and adultery, do not laugh at them - not that he laughed at it. He loved and he wanted her: his want was like the blade of a dagger — to harm or to crack.

On the table there was a cup and a vial of wine, he filled it: it was Spanish wine… he came close to her, with her velvet clothes untied, her hair half loose still woven with gemstones and flowers, her breast half naked, where diamonds glittered like dewdrops, he lifted her in his arms, kissed her. Under the heat of that kiss, half-naked, she woke; among her vague dreams an illusion perhaps peered through; she murmured ‘love!’ and with heavy lidded eyes she let her head fall and fell asleep again.

The man drew from his breast an emerald vial. He lifted it to her half-open lips and poured a few drops that she absorbed without feeling them. He laid her down and waited. From then on her sleep was most profound… The liquid was a narcotic which was a mix of a few drops of those exciting liquors that inspire fever on the face and voluptuousness in the heart.

The man was on his knees, his chest trembled, and he was pale like a man after a long sensuous night. Everything seemed to falter around him…

She was naked: neither velvet, nor sheer veil covered her. The man rose and moved the curtains.

The lamp shone brighter and then went out…

That man was Claudius Hermann.

When I rose, I shrouded myself in my cape and walked off into the street. I wanted to retire to my home, but I was as dizzy as a drunkard. I was staggering and the floor seemed slippery, like when one feels faint. Though an idea chased me. After that woman there had been nothing for me. Someone who has drunk from the wine of the ripe grapes of paradise should never again get drunk with earthly nectar…

When the nectar has run dry, what is left if not suicide?

A week went on like this: every night I drank from the sleeping woman’s lips a century of pleasure. One month, in which entrudo balls [7] deliriously went by, more feverish yet, she fell asleep hot, with her face on fire…

One night — it was after a ball — I waited for her in her bedroom, hidden behind her bed. I had poured the last drops from the vial in the cup of water beside her bed when she walked in with the duke.

He was a beautiful man! Before leaving her he placed his hands on her brow and kissed her. Giddy with that kiss, the angel rested her head on his shoulder and circled him with her bare arms, glittering with bejeweled bracelets. The duke was thirsty, took the duchess’ cup, drank a few drops; she took the cup away from him, and drank the rest. I watched them this way: that husband, still so young, that woman — ah! And so beautiful! With immaculate skin — and squeezed the dagger…

‘Will you come today, Maffio?’

‘Yes, my soul.’

A kiss was whispered, and drowned the two souls. And I smiled in the shadows, for I knew he ought not to come.

He left, and she began to undress. I watched her shiny clothes, the flowers and the jewels, slip off one by one, saw the dark shiny braids come undone and then appear under the white veil of her transparent robe, like the statues of half-undressed nymphs, with their curves contoured by their tunics drenched in bath water.

What I saw… It was what I’d much dreamed of, what you all, poor madmen, idealized as the visions of love over a whore’s body! It was her snowy breasts, with blue veins, trembling with desire, her head lost among the shower of dark hair, her lips heaving, her entire body palpitating: it was the wantonness of imperfection, when beauty’s body is filled with even more beauty, and, like a rose blooming wet with dew, the more it expands, the more its beauty blossoms.

The narcotic was very powerful: a feverish suffering parted her lips; exerted and languid, lying on the bed, with colorless eyelids, arms limp and devoid of strength, I seemed to be kissing a shadow.

I lifted her from the bed; I carried her in her transparent clothes, her satin form, her loose hair still humid with perfume, her breasts still warm…

I ran with her through the deserted corridors, passed through the patio, the last door was closed: I opened it. There was a coach in the street: the horses neighed with impatience. I entered the coach with her. We took off.

It took long. An hour later the sun was rising.

Soon we were outside the town.

Dawn was coming alongside its vapors, its rose bushes sprayed with dew, its velvety clouds and its waters peppered with gold and warmth. Nature blushed under the sun’s first kiss, like a pale damsel under her groom’s first kiss: not like the voluptuous night’s stolen lover as paganism painted her, more like a virgin awoken from childish slumber, kneeled before God, praying and whispering her balsamic prayers to the bluing sky, the glittering earth, the waters turning gold. This dawn fell onto the earth like God’s breath; and among that light and that fresh air, the duchess slept, pale like the slumber of those mystical creatures in illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages, beautiful like Titian’s sleeping Venus [8], and voluptuous like one of Veronese’s fallen women [9].

I kissed her: I was feeling the life that was evaporating from her lips. She was startled, half-opened her eyes, but the weight of sleep still burdened her, and so her colorless eyelids closed…

The carriage continued fast.

The sun had reached its apex in the sky — it was noon; the heat was stifling: through the head, the face, drops of sweat rolled down the duchess’ chest like the pearls of a broken necklace…

We stopped by a boarding house; I threw a veil over her face, took her in my arms and carried her to a room.

She must look so beautiful like this! The servants stopped by in the corridors: it was for awe at such beauty, even more so than just indiscreet curiosity.

The owner of the house came to me.

‘Sir, your wife or your sister, whoever she is, she will certainly need a maid to serve her…’

‘Leave me, she sleeps.’

That was my only answer.

I laid her on the bed, drew the curtains, closed the windows so that the light did not disturb her sleep. There was no one there who could see us, we were alone, the man and his angel; and the earthly creature knelt by the bed of the heavenly one.

I do not know how much time went on like this, I’m not sure if I slept, but I know that I dreamt of much love and much hope, I’m not sure if I watched over her, but I always saw her there, I contemplated her every gracious sleeping movement, I shuddered at every breath that made her breast tremble, and everything seemed like a dream to me, one of those dreams in which the soul abandons itself like a swan becoming sleepy to the sound of the water… I do not know how much time went on like this: I only know that my stillness broke, the duchess was sitting up in the bed, with her bare arms she brushed off the waves of loose hair that covered her face and chest.

‘Is this a dream?’ she mumbled, ‘Where am I? Who is this man leaning on my bed?’

The man did not answer.

She left the bed; her first impulse was modesty: she tried to cover her breasts, palpitating with fear, with her little hands. She felt nearly naked, exposed to the view of a stranger, and she trembled like the poets say Diana trembled when she saw herself exposed, in her bath, naked to the eyes of Actaeon [10].

‘Sir, tell me, for mercy, if this is all not an illusion… if this was not an insult! I don’t even want to think about it. Maffio won’t be long, won’t he? My Maffio…! This is all a comedy… but what room is this? I fell asleep in my palace… How did I wake in a strange chamber? Tell me, is this not all a joke of Maffio’s? He wants to laugh at me… But, see, I tremble, I am afraid.’

The man would not respond: he had his eyes fixed on that divine form. She’d be a statue of passion in her pallor, her fixed gaze, her wanting lips, if the heaving of her chest did not denounce she was alive.

She knelt; I don’t even know what she was saying. I do not know what words evaporated from those lips: they were perfumes, because the roses of heaven have only perfumes; they were harmonies, because the harps of heaven have only harmonies; and the lips of a beautiful woman are a divine rose, and her heart is a heavenly harp. I heard her, but did not understand her, I felt only that those words were very sweet, that that voice held an irresistible talisman to my soul, because only in my boyish, illusionary dreams of love, I had come across a voice like that.

The moans of two virgins embracing each other in heaven, made golden by the light of God’s face, pale by the most pure kisses, by the trembling of the most palpitating embraces, would not be as gentle as that voice!

The girl cried, sobbed; at last she rose.

I saw her run to the window, she was about to open it… I ran and grabbed her by the hands…

‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I’ll scream… if this is not a desert, if someone walks by… They may help me… Help m…’

I shut her mouth with my hands…

‘Silence, madam!’

She fought to free herself from my hands; at last she became tired. I let go of her out of pity.

‘For mercy then make this doubt of mine clear: what is the reason for all I see? Everything that I think, that I guess, is too horrible!’

‘Listen then,’ I told her, ‘There was a woman… An angel. There was a man who loved her, like the waters love the moon that makes them look silvery, like the eagles in the mountains love the sun that faces them, that fills them with light and love. I don’t even know who he was; he rose above a life of fever one day, forgot it; and forgot the past before a woman’s transparent eyes, the stains of his story, in a dawn of pleasures, where for him it was drawn the shadow of this angel… Listen: do not curse him! This man had much dishonor in the past, he had damned his youth, prostituted, like a golden butterfly, his generation, throwing it in the mud; cold, without beliefs, without hopes, he had smothered one by one his illusions, like the infanticide does to her children… Perhaps God had cursed him! Or he himself had cursed him… Forgotten he was a man and had in his heart harmonies as saintly as the poet’s… He had forgotten them and they slept in mystery like the chords of an abandoned guitar. He’d forgotten that nature was beautiful, and very beautiful at that, that the night flowers’ bed was fragrant, that the moon was the lamp of lovers, the breezes of the valley, the perfumes of the poet in his betrothal to the angels and that dawn held fresh breezes… and with its virginal clouds, its leaves wet with dew, its cloudy waters, it had charms that only the pure souls understand! He rejected all that, forgot it all… Only to be reminded with lasciviousness and mocking during his sweaty hours of depravity… He was so depraved!’

‘But all that does not tell me who you are… nor why am I here…’

‘Listen: the libertine did love the angel then, turned his back to the past, freed himself of it like an impure shroud. Retempered himself in the fire of sentiment, steadied himself in the vision of that virginity, because she was as beautiful as a virgin, and reflected that virginal light of her spirit in the divine soul’s glow that illuminated her form, that came not from the earth, but from heaven. Time still hadn’t ailed the libertine’s heart with an incurable leprosy, nor had engraved his brow with an inextinguishable mark — impurity! He left behind the life he used to live, ignored his colleagues, his purchased lovers, his feverish insomnias, wanted to erase all the taste of existence, like a man who has lost everything on the gambling table would like to forget reality. And the man was able to forget it all. But he was still not happy. He spent nights around her palace, sometimes he saw her, beautiful and pale, beneath the moonlight, or distinguished her form in the shadow that passed behind the curtains of her illuminated bedroom’s open window. During the balls he followed that palpitating body with looks of envy. In the theater, between the heaving of the waves of harmony, when ecstasy floated in that balsamic and illuminated room, he saw nothing but her— and only her! And the hours spent in his bed… not his hours of sleep, because he barely slept, because at times they were long hours of impatience and insomnia, at times short hours of ardent dreams! The poor madman had an idea one day: it was grim, yes, but it was what providence demanded. What he did I do not know, nor ever will. And later, drunk enough to dream of you, mad enough to imagine having you in his fiery dreams, was profane enough to dare steal from the temple a ciborium of most pure gold. This man… have mercy on him, for he will love you on his knees… oh angel, Eleonora…’

‘My God! My God! Why such calumny, so much filth about me? Oh Madonna! Why do you curse my life so, why have you let a mark this dark fall upon my head?’

The tears, the sobs muffled her voice.

‘Forgive me, madam, here you have me at your feet! Have pity on me, for I suffered a lot, loved you a lot, l love you a lot! Mercy! For I will be your slave, I will kiss your feet, I will kneel at your doorstep, will listen to your breaths, your prayers, your dreams… and that will suffice… I will be your slave and your dog, I will lie at your feet when you are awake, I will guard you with my dagger when the night falls, and, if one day, if just one day you could love me… then… then…’

‘Oh, leave me be! Leave me be!’

‘Eleonora! Eleonora! To lose nights upon nights on a single hope! To nurture it in your breast like a flower that wilts with cold, to nurture it, revive it every day, to see it be defoliated before my face! To drown myself in love and receive only mockery and ridicule back! Tell the painter to tear his Madonna, the sculptor to break his statue of a woman into pieces.

Insane, poor madwoman that you are! Do you believe that a man should bring life to a thought inside his head, to live out of this rot, to soak himself in the vitality of pain, to later have it torn from his breast? Do you believe he would allow his heart to be stepped on, to have his… he, poet and lover! The flowers from the crown of illusions, one by one, throughout the night of disgrace, against his mad mother’s love smother in his breast the creature of his blood, his life’s child, the hope of his hopes?’

‘Oh, and do you not have pity on me also? Do you not know it? This is a disgrace! I am a poor woman. On my knees I beg you to forgive me if I’ve offended you… I beg of you, leave me be! Why would your dreams, your love matter to me?’

That pain hurt me profoundly: those tears burned me. But my will made itself firm and ferrous like destiny.

‘Why do my dreams matter, why do my love matters? Yes, you are right! Why would it matter for the water in the desert and the gazelle in the sand that the Arab is thirsty or the lion is hungry? But thirst and hunger are fatal. Love is like that; do you understand it now?’

‘Kill me then! Have you not a dagger! A single stab, for the love of God! I swear, I will thank you…’

‘To die! And you think of dying! Senseless woman! Slide from the warm bed of love to the cold slab of the dead! You do not know what you’re saying. Do you know what this word is: — to die? It is the doubt that haunts existence, it is the doubt, the premonition that makes the brow of the suicidal man cold, flows though their hair like wintery winds and turns us pale like Hamlet! To die! It is the end of all dreams, of all palpitations in the heart, of all hopes! It is to be breast to breast with our old lovers and not feel them! Madwoman! The betrothal of the vermin is a frightful one, a very dark sheet that of the burial shroud! Do not speak of this; why think of the gravedigger alongside the bed of life? Put your hand on your heart… it beats… and beats strongly, like a fetus in its mother’s womb. There is still much life in there, much love to be loved, much lust for living! Oh! If only you wanted to love me!’

She hid her head in her hands and sobbed.

‘It is impossible, I cannot love you!’

I told her:

‘Eleonora, listen to me, I’ll leave you alone, but I will guard you from that door. Make up your mind, let it be a firm decision indeed, but a thought out one. Remember that after today you will not be able to return to the world: duke Maffio would be the first to run from you, he would sense the vice of adultery on your face, he would think he was feeling the wetness of a stranger’s kiss on your mouth. He would hate you! See: further is the hatred and mockery, the ridicule of other women, the vengeful jeers from those that loved you and you did not love back. When you walk in, they will say: there is she! She repents! The husband… poor he! He has forgiven her… Mothers will hide their daughters from you, honest wives will be ashamed to touch you… And here, Eleonora, here you will have my breast and my love, a life just for you, a man that will think of you only and always dream of you, a man whose world will be only you, your laughter, your gaze, your love, that will forget yesterday and tomorrow to make, like a God, you his Eternity. Think, Eleonora! If you wanted, we’d leave today; a life of adventure awaits us. I am very rich, enough to adorn you like a queen. We’ll run to Europe, we will see France with its luxury, Spain, whose climate invites love, where the afternoons are fragrant with the orangeries in bloom, where the fields turn to velvet filled with a thousand multicolored flowers, we will go to Italy, to your homeland and, in its blue sky, its clear nights, its most tender twilights we will live anew under the meridional sun! If you wanted it… Otherwise it would be too horrible… I do not know what would happen: but whoever entered this room would find their feet covered in blood.’

I left; two hours later I came back.

‘Have you thought it over, Eleonora?’

She did not respond. She was lying with her face between her hands. To the sound of my voice, she had risen. There was a piece of paper, wet with her tears, on the bed. I stretched out a hand to take it, she handed it to me. They were some verses of mine. I looked at the table, my valise, that I had taken from the coach, was open, the papers were a mess. These were those verses.”

Claudius produced a yellowed and crumpled paper from his pocket, and threw it on the table. Johann read it:

“Do not hate me, woman, if in the past

A dark stain discolored my life,

– It’s that I’ve burned my lips in the ardent vice

And disbelieved everything with my head held high.

Don Juan’s mask burned my face

In the libertine’s cold pallor:

That gaze made me jaded… and those cold lips

Dare to curse my destiny.

Yes! Long nights in the fervor of gambling

I splurged, feverish and sickly

And entrusted my future to the God of fate

And love I profaned in forgetting!

I wilted the poet’s flowers in mockery,

In the irony of glory and of amours:

To the vapors of wine, insane at night

Leaned over from gambling into fervors!

I profaned the flower of youth

Among the murky waters of the past…

In the brain, fever, on the face, pallor,

I believed only in the calm grave!

And the Angel’s immaculate wings,

On the breaths of the sold woman I defiled,

Still darkens my lips the purple brand

Of the whore’s kisses.

And the myrrh of the verses no longer exhales

In the dishallowed cup, dark and tainted:

A sea of filth drained in the river of my soul,

Ripped the white flowers off the margins,

Dream of glories! only runs through me too quickly,

Like an open flower, in fear, in tomb-filled floor

— languished and without fragrance…

My love… the heart silences it:

I keep it deep inside the shadows of the shrine

Where the weeds did not fill the voidness.

My love… it was a white clothed vision

From the orgy to the door, cold and sobbing.

Holy lamp raised in depraved bed,

Tavern’s templar vase at the table,

Pale morning star [11] reflecting

On the mire of crime.

Like the old cities’ leper

I know you ran with horror from [my] kisses,

I know, in the crazy living of those mad years

Faith I deflowered in dark insanity…

– Vestal, I prostituted the virgin forms,

I myself threw into the sea the leaves from the crown,

Exchanged the pink tunic of childhood

For the shroud of orgies.

Oh! Do not love me at all! Very well! One day

The Lord may say to poor Lazarus:

You there, lift yourself from the Lupanar of death,

Come alive at the freshness of purer living!

And I will live again: the moth

Shakes its wings, jerks them, shines,

Shedding the dark skin, the filthy goo

Of the faded caterpillar.

Then, woman, I will rise from the filth

Where Satan bedded me [12]

Where still warm he perfumed his proxy,

Satin nudity of snowy forms.

And the blonde whore, in her white breasts

Laid my livid head, in the sleeplessness

I came down with the fever of voluptuousness unto thirst

Under those purchased kisses.

And so I will wake under the most pure sun,

Fair smelling breezes of hope!

I’ll wash myself of faith in the golden waters

Of Magdalene in tears! and from the angel

That perhaps God may give me, curved and mute,

Steal a kiss, in the vapors of love,

To die in his lips!”

“She became quiet: she was crying and moaning.

I came close to her, kneeled as if before God.

‘Eleonora, yes or no?’

She turned her face to the other side, tried to speak… she interrupted herself at every sillable.

‘Wait, let me pray a little, Madonna might forgive me.’

I waited always. She kneeled.

‘Now…’ she said, getting up and stretching her hand.

‘Well?’

‘I’ll go with you.’

And fainted.”

Here stopped the story of Claudius Hermann.

He lowered his head onto the table, and spoke no more.

“Are you sleeping, Claudius? By God! You’re either drunk or dead!”

It was Archibald addressing him: he shook him with all his might.

Claudius lifted his head a little, he was sickly, his eyes were hollowed under a dark shadow.

“Leave me be, cursed ones! Leave me be by hell or heaven! Can’t you see I’m sleepy… sleepy and very sleepy?”

“What about the story, the story?” boomed Solfieri.

“What about the duchess Eleonora?” asked Archibald.

“The duchess… It feels to me as if I’ve heard this name once… To hell with it, why does it matter to me?”

Then he wanted to proceed, but an invincible force held him back.

“The duchess… it’s true! But how did I forget all that I do not remember? Take this weight off my head… I bet they filled my skull with molten lead!” and he hit his sickly head like a doctor hits the chest of the agonizing man to find an echo of life.

“So?”

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” laughed someone that had kept himself askew to the conversation.

“Arnold! Shut up!”

“You shut up first, Solfieri! I will tell the end of the story.”

It was Arnold-the-blond, that woke..

“Listen you all,” he said: “one day, Claudius entered his home. He found the bed soaked in blood: and on a dark corner of the alcove a madman embracing a corpse. The corpse was Eleonora’s, the madmen’s ye could not even recognize given how much the agony had disfigured him! It was a rigid, tousled head, with greenish flesh, sunken eyes and spleen where the lumen of insanity timidly scintillated, like the luminous emanation of the marsh between the shadows…”

But he had recognized him… “It was duke Maffio.”

Claudius guffawed. — It was as grim as insanity, as cold as the sword of the angel of darkness. He fell to the ground, livid and sweaty like agony, rigid like death…

He was as drunk as Noah the Patriarch, the vine’s first ever lover, unknown virgin until then and today whore of all mouths… drunk as Noah, the first ever drunkard that history speaks of! He slept sound and heavily like Saint Peter the Apostle at the Mount of Olives… The case being that both of them had dined that night…

Arnold spread his cloak on the ground and laid on top of it.

A few moments later his baritone’s snores mixed with the great concerto of the sleepers’ snores.

[1] Claudius is talking about gambling and horse racing.

[2] Reference to Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III.

[3] Richard Lovelace is a character from Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa and Don Juan is a fictional character appearing in many works, notably Byron’s homonymous poem; both are famed libertines.

[4] Main character from the novel mentioned earlier.

[5] famous brothel in Pompeii.

[6] reference to Byron’s The Corsair.

[7] The word “entrudo” refers to an earlier version of the modern Brazilian Carnaval.

[8] Could be a reference to either of these paintings.

[9] In the original Portuguese “amásia” means a woman living with a man she is not married to. Translated to fallen woman for clarity.

[10] Reference to the myth of Diana and Actaeon, in which he, a hunter, sees the goddess naked, bathing in a stream. To punish him she turns him into a deer, making him be torn apart and devoured by his own hunting dogs.

[11] In the original “Estrela d’alva, meaning the planet Venus (morning star).

[12] In the original, “se pernoitou comigo” literally means “spent the night with me”, but I chose to highlight the double entendre.

#romanticism #álvares de azevedo #poetry #noite na taverna #noite na taverna translation #praying everything is alright w this text 😭

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mortifiedatbeingknown · 8 months

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"A Rather Polite, Bigger Thing" (Pt. 11)

Masterpost:

“Edward!”

When it awoke once again, the lady’s face was pale. “Edward, are you alright?! I thought you were–!”

Her final words ended in a choked sob.

“I am functioning, my lady.” It tried to assure. “Please, do not come closer. I do not have the proper measurements installed to control my behavior.”

And it was that, those words that made the truth fully apparent. No disciplinary measures. No checks to control its speech. According to the First Law, as long as it did not harm a human or allow a human to come to harm…

It could say whatever it wanted. No automatic blockage of his voice box. No agonizing shocks or stinging bites that lasted long after the initial pain input. What was the limit now? What could it say that would…?

No, no, no. Three seconds of freedom, and it already sought to betray its very function. This was exactly the reason why models like it did not deserve independence.

…But what would it be like to say…?

With a frustrated grunt it shut off its curiosity inciters.

“I do not believe I am hurt, my lady. I am merely slow to orient myself in this new form. Forgive my flaws, I shall get to work on repairing them immediately.”

If it wouldn’t be adequately disciplined for rudeness, it would simply have to try twice as hard to not need it. It would still never do to be discourteous, no matter how loose the regulations were now.

The lady still wasn’t convinced. “...But are you sure you’re alright? This is such a big change…”

“I will be fine,” It replied firmly.

In cases such as these, it was more polite to lie than to have her worry.

***************************************

Edward walked exactly two steps behind her. No more, no less. If she stopped, so did he. If she politely asked him to join her, he just as politely refused. She let him be, not wanting to push the issue. After all he went through today, she was perfectly fine with leaving him in his comfort zone.

Still, it was rather jarring, hearing the constant heavy clanks echoing behind her and having to trust that such harsh footsteps would not trample her flat. Her back felt suspiciously light, and it was a struggle to not try to look back as if she had somehow forgotten her Edward back at the workshop.

But no, he was still there. There was no longer any need to carry him. All she could do was move forward, walking along in a thick, awkward silence.

Besides, there were plenty of other things to weigh down her shoulders now instead.

Guilt, for instance. She’d been so sure that this would be it, the cure, the procedure that would fix Edward and cure his pain and insecurities and have everything set right. Like every stereotype of her social class, she’d done nothing but throw money at the problem and hope it would figure itself out.

How could she have been so stupid?!

Her disappointment practically made her feel dirty. Was that all that mattered to her? Was Edward nothing more for a project to occupy her time before work started? Some poor soul she had plucked up from the street to make herself feel heroic?

No… she had always genuinely wanted to help. Of that she was nearly certain. If she was truly that shallow, she would’ve given up by the first hour of failed mechanic appointments. But if that was the case, why was…?

…Why was her heart so heavy?

Perhaps it was because she hadn’t expected to do anything more. New parts, new components, tightened programming, a home and a safe place to rest. That was all she could offer. She had thought it enough, but clearly… Edward’s scars ran deeper than that. And that was something, far, far beyond her meager expertise.

How did one convince a robot that it did not deserve to be hurt? That “rudeness”, or rather, speaking ones mind was not a crime worthy of punishment? How could she craft an argument convincing enough, when the very source of his misbeliefs were programmed into his core before he was ever first activated? Was such a thing even possible?

That was the truth she didn’t want to think about. The fact that… maybe it was. Maybe this was all just a fool’s errand, a wild goose chase that ended with her expecting far more than what an EDW could provide, no matter how advanced the model. Maybe this was all just a pathetic show of desperation, a final grasp for any sort of companionship. Who, after all, would spend so much on refurbishing a simple errand robot when they had been practically scrap?

Perhaps the person who’d rather go through all of this than actually attempt to meet anyone new.

A dry, bitter chuckle escaped her lips.

“My lady, are you feeling well?”

“I’m fine, Edward.”

In cases like these, it was better to lie than to have him worry.

#robot whump #whump writing #whumpee #whump #a rather polite bigger thing

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snorkling-in-sodasea · 7 months

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Moments of Stupidity 10

Okay, so I'm not getting into Stolas's childish behavior with Stella at the beginning because that's more fueled by selfishness than by stupidity. And while I may not know what the fuck to make out of Loona this episode but any stupidity from that was once again from the writing than anything else

Seeing Stars -

I guess first instance of stupidity goes to I.M.P. when Octavia snuck into. Loona's one thing, since she clearly chose not to say anything about Octavia's presence but three fucking assassins really couldn't detect the arrival of a teenage girl into their office? Because I'm thinking that assassins would eventually be honed to keep aware of their surroundings at all times, even if they're not thinking about it (if I'm wrong, go ahead and correct me) Even if Octavia was being as stealthy as she could, I would have expected for alertness from goddamn assassins. I'd also say install but I guess that can be excused for that not being in the budget

Up next is the fact that Blitzo had such a simple, easy code that Octavia was able to crack it on her first fucking try. What's worse, reading on TVtropes revealed to me that 1234 is a default code in every safe when you first get one. So Blitzo never fucking bothered to change the damn default code

Also, something for Octavia for just sneaking into the office and stealing the book the way she did. First off, how was she able to get to I.M.P. headquarters? There should have been a shit ton of people who at least tried preying on her in some shape or form. Even if Octavia never made some official public debut or something - which could be why people didn't try kidnapping her even once, let alone as often as they did Stolas - she's still a teenage girl wandering alone in crime-ridden city. That alone opens so many shifty doors to be ever be comfortable with. And she very clearly made a lucky guess that the default code never changed on Blitzo's safe, because I would never think anyone would be so fucking lazy and/or stupid to never change it when they get a safe. This is only even remotely forgivable for Octavia in the sense that she's a teenager running on emotions. It's not like anyone ever thinks things through when they're at that age, especially when being emotional

Once again, Stolas gets multiple instances, so I gotta number them. Starting with 1) he got stupidly hypocritical again, what with chewing out I.M.P., mostly Blitzo, about leaving the Grimoire laying around. Just like in Truth Seekers, you fucking asshat in a stupid crowned tophat, you're the one who gave Blitzo of all demons the Grimoire. Just to get railed every full moon. If you're going to care so damn much about getting in trouble - which still hasn't mattered yet, by the way - then don't do it in the first place. Not to mention, who are you to lecture anyone about losing track of important shit when you're the one who only found out Octavia was missing when you were told that?

2) not using any of his spells to find Octavia. There's already the bubbles spell that Stolas clearly used in Murder Family and probably in Truth Seekers. And if Stolas was fully clothed and not wet from the bath in the latter episode I said here because he was actually spying on Blitzo some other way, then Stolas can just use that. And given how Stolas entered the human world without the Grimoire in Truth Seekers, there was plenty he could have done without it in this episode. At most, Stolas just needed to go back home to do it before going straight to Octavia

3) the whole thing about not providing disguises for the imps. What the fuck you mean you can't remember how to do the damn spell for the disguises? Yeah, Stolas said that his powers are limited without the Grimoire but then Stolas and Blitzo treated good or bad memory as more important of a reason to not provide disguises than actually having the Grimoire. So much for the 'good memory' that you gloated about in The Circus, huh, Stolas? Besides, you'd think that, for your position, knowing the spells in your book would be as important to ingrain into your mind as phone numbers to call people with. And with instance 2 of Stolas's stupid moments, that just makes the excuse being limited without the grimoire even stupider, since Stolas would just be able to use the damn bubbles spell in his fucking bathtub or whatever else he might have used in Truth Seekers

4) never departing with Blitzo when it's obvious he's too held up performing for a sitcom so that he can look for his daughter. Fuck seriously, Stolas may have said that he's Blitzo's manager and all but I'm thinking the actor is far more important for the show than the manager. At least to the extent where no guards or staff will really care if Stolas leaves while Blitzo is still on stage. Yet he never left, not until the building was burning down to the ground

Okay, so now onto I.M.P. because they were plenty stupid, too; not detecting Octavia despite being assassins isn't all to it. First up, Moxxie for getting sidetracked with all the indie artist shit and Millie for not trying harder to do anything about it. Seriously, Millie got frustrated with it but she's at fault for the big bag of shit that Moxxie had as Moxxie himself is. Not to mention, if she didn't try all that hard to stop Moxxie's insistence on buying artist's merch and even joining in on the song and also asking Blitzo over texts about bondage shit that Moxxie might like, then that probably means she never cared all that much on finding Octavia. So why did she bother getting upset?

And next up, Blitzo, Loona, and also Stolas now that I realize it, for never noticing the big ass board of Brennon Ragers that was right above the costume store. Since this episode decides half-heartedly that disguises matter so you'd think they wouldn't pick a famous celebrity for Blitzo's disguise if they really wanted to blend in. And yeah, it only matters halfway concerning disguises because of the humans' own stupidity made it that Blitzo really could have just stayed as himself so even just getting a disguise from a costume shop was a stupid waste of time and it only really contributed to the plot via Blitzo getting confused for a celebrity

And as for the humans, explaining more of the paragraph above, they decided that Octavia, Millie, and Moxxie were just in costume. The worst reaction was Octavia getting strange looks. So again, Blitzo really could have stayed as himself and just getting him a disguise from a costume shop was stupid all on its own. Also, we never got even a throwaway line as to why the imps don't have disguises at their convenience, just like in Truth Seekers. And neither Stolas and Loona brought it up or did anything about it until after they got to the human world

Finally, I suppose Octavia again for posting pictures of herself in the human world and posting it on her social media. There were episodes that made it important to keep up a masquerade so why would Octavia just do this. Again, I'm thinking that teens do have enough awareness to not blatantly do shit like this that could get them in trouble. If anything, that's easily a whole teen sthick, doing things they're not supposed to discretely. That way, teens can continue breaking rules and get that rush knowing that the parents or guardians they're interacting with are clueless about the rebellion. At least, that's what I thought teens would like. At the very least, they don't want to get in trouble for breaking the rules so that there's already a reason for teens to want to do shit they're not supposed to discretely. And if Octavia genuinely doesn't know about a masquerade that needs to be kept, then that's a stupid moment for not just her, but also her parents. They're supposed to be teaching Octavia shit but they didn't even bother with the biggest and most basic rules

#helluva boss #blitzo #moxxie #millie #stolas #octavia #ranting

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