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honeycollectswhump · 10 months

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Warmth

[masterlist]

it doesn't look like it but this is a comfy drabble, i promise!! the inspo (and wish for some comfort) is from @whumpcloud. you've read this already but here <3

CW: dehumanisation, abandonment issues, pet whump, self-loathing

It is still dark outside when Mutt wakes up, drenched in sweat, panting from memories that haunt his brain. A moment later, he realises what woke him up, as the night sky is lit up by a flash of lightning, a growling thunder following only moments later. Mutt can feel the rumbling deep down in his bones, making him shiver.

He had been locked outside once during a thunderstorm, the punishment still fresh in his mind. Bound and gagged, of course, so he couldn’t draw attention to himself with his pathetic whimpering and keening.

There had been rain and hail, soaking him to the bone, making the Mutt even more susceptible to the unforgiving cold seeping into his joints. He had wanted nothing more than a shred of his old Master’s mercy, as the thunder rolled over him.

Mutt shakes his head to rid himself of the memories, his fingers twitching. He won’t be able to fall back asleep, he knows, but he needs to be fit enough to serve his Master in the morning!

Almost on auto-pilot, Mutt gets out of bed. He has to be careful when standing up, his mangled legs still struggling to hold him up. When he walks to his door, he no longer avoids stepping on the rug.

Aimlessly, he wanders onto the dim corridor, the old wood creaking under his irregular and heavy steps. Mutt tries not to be too loud, lest he wakes Master up. Fatigue tugs at his eyelids, making them droop, and his stroll does little to clear his muddy mind. He stumbles around, losing time.

Suddenly, he feels something cold and hard and when his eyes focus again, he is holding the handle to his Master’s bedroom in his ruined hand, the door already opened a crack. Just barely, he can see the sleeping form of his Master, curled up under the covers, her hands loosely clasped together in front of her face and oh–

He is Atlas now, isn’t he?

As if in a trance, Atlas enters her room, still not quite here, not quite there. Something pulls him forwards, a pressure getting stronger with each step, like a moth fluttering towards the light. He forces himself to stop a couple of steps away from her, ignoring how empty it makes him feel.

Hasn’t she given enough for him? Must he now also take her sleep? Her rest?

Atlas forces his mind to blank and himself to stop, to turn around as silently as possible. She needs her rest for all the troubles he’ll inevitably bring her in the morning, when he can’t get a hold of himself, can’t do the things a human is supposed to do. He can’t keep taking and taking and taking from her, but some part of him craves her presence so much and he despises himself for it. Maybe he will never be anything but a Pet but for some reason he can’t place, that seems so intrinsically connected to his very being, he only feels whole when he’s with her.

For a moment, he is outside again, chained and gagged in the freezing rain, thoroughly unwanted. This time, it is Atlas who holds the key, dangling it just out of reach from his desperate self. He understands his old Master now, he thinks, understands why he locked a creature like him out. It is only right.

Before he can take another step, he hears a sleepy groan right behind him, freezing up. Atlas fears looking around, fears seeing Master’s hateful gaze, even though he can’t conjure up a fitting image, no matter how hard he tries. He still does –of course he does– his breath catching in his throat.

With her eyes still closed, Aveline has lifted one arm to hold her blanket up, as if inviting him in. Like a man dying of thirst discovering a miracle oasis, Atlas stumbles closer. It seems too good to be true and if there is one thing he has learned, it’s that no good ever befalls a Pet like him. Still, he wants to hope.

“For me?” Atlas croaks into the dark, as hushed as his damaged vocal cords allow him.

Her response is nothing more than a drowsy mhm and a light, lazy gesture with her hand. Hesitantly, Atlas steps closer. He shouldn’t know how this goes, should be overwhelmed with the very real possibility of doing this wrong and subsequently being thrown out. But he isn’t.

The movements feel like second nature, even as he navigates his bulky frame first onto her bed and then into the embrace of the much smaller woman. Atlas doesn’t have to think, his body moves on its own, which is undoubtedly a good thing because if he allowed himself to process what he was doing, he’d surely panic.

As he lays down on his side, Aveline lowers her arm to cover him with the blanket too, then settles it over the side of his chest. It should be the worst crime a Pet like him could commit, to lay his head on her soft pillow, to curl up against her warm body, to feel her snuggle up against his marred back. But for some reason, it doesn’t feel like a crime. It just feels like home.

Atlas deflates in her arms, sighing. Her touch is tender, not restricting, tethering Atlas to this world, as sobs start to build up in his chest against his will. If he cries now, he will surely ruin the best thing his life has ever allowed him.

Maybe this is a dream and tomorrow he will wake up alone in his own bed but none of that matters in this moment. Unconsciously, his crooked hand searches for hers, clinging to it. Aveline squeezes it back, as a couple of stray silent tears start to escape his eyes.

Her body is warm and she holds him tight. Atlas can feel her resting her head softly against the nape of his neck, whispering that Everything is going to be alright.

Atlas sniffles, his tears soaking into the pillow. They lay like that for a while, Aveline’s thumb stroking soothingly over the back of his hand, careful with the raised scar tissue.

Pets like him aren’t made for this kind of comfort, this all-encompassing warmth; her kindness feels like an unbelievable gift. He’d do anything for her, Atlas decides, as his eyes grow heavy and start to slip close. He can’t hear the harsh thunder anymore, can’t feel the cold rain.

Atlas knows he doesn’t deserve it, even as he falls asleep, but–

He wishes someone had been this kind to him before.

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breezespirit · 1 year

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Warning!!! For abuse, attempted murder, drowning, blood, wounds, and scars.

- Goes by the pronouns they/them

- They are a loner but were once a jewelry maker of Gardenclan. Gardenclan is filled with cats who have bug like traits, such as wings or antenna.

- They have a snail shell and little antenna. They are also a munchkin cat!

- They often make wedding bands for new mates or cats wanting to propose. They still work for Gardenclan as well as Vernalclan and Tidalclan

- They got their prefix from their snail like traits.

- They got their suffix from their markings.

- Their father, named Centipedeclaw, is the deputy of the clan and their mother, named Ladybugswirl, is a loner. They aren't together anymore and did not leave each other on good terms. In fact, Centipede had Ladybug exiled after she wanted to break things off. Snail lives with their mother.

- They were born with two sisters who died young. Their names were Junekit and Milipedekit.

- Centipedeclaw tried to kill them by knocking them into the ocean. Luckily, a she-cat was there to save them. Snail went back to the clans camp and told the clan what their father did. The leader of the clan, a cat named Atlasnectar, exiled Centipedeclaw. Ladybugswirl was allowed back in the clan but chose to stay as a loner and this when Snail decided to leave.

- They have a girlfriend who lives in Tidalclan. Her name is Orcasplash. She is the cat who saved them.

- They absolutely love to make jewelry for others and will make you a charm bracelet after knowing you enough to know the right charms for you.

- They are particularly deaf and have been from birth. They can read lips, which they use for understanding cats around them.

- They speak in signs which is kinda weird to the clans because they don't really know what they are saying but their friends and family think it's adorable. They mostly uses signs to express themselves but they can speak when they get overly emotional. It hurts them a lot to do so though.

- They normal wear rose petals in their fur. They will have yellow rose petals in their fur most times because they are their favorite.

- Their charms on their bracelet mean a few things to them. A moth for the symbol of their clan. An orca for Orcasplash. A mushroom for their favorite food. A snail because they really like bugs and snails are cute.

Ahhhhh!!! They are done! I loved drawing them again. I missed them. Dearly. My sweet little snail. Their family is a mess but I liked writing the lore for them. I really hope you all like them as much as I do! I hope you have a great day! I'll get into the bugs now soooooo.

Snailmottle is obviously a snail. I made them a common garden snail.

Ladybugswirl is a Ladybug. Not too complicated.

Centipedeclaw is a centipede. I had to do research for the antenna, and I gagged. Centipedes and millipedes are the only bugs I don't like.

Junekit is based off of a ten lined June bug.

Milipedekit is a milipede. She looks a lot like her father.

Atlasnectar is an Atlas moth. Nectar is the leader suffix.

Orcasplash is based on an ocra, my favorite animal!

#breezycharacters #breezyocs #breezydesigns #Snailmottle

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bonesofapoet · 4 years

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Blood of the Holy

[matt murdock x you]

author’s note: hey hi hello, if some of you recognize this format + writing style but not the blog, i used to share my work on my main @ladyofstardvst and caved on making a writing blog. yall dont need to sift through my non-writing shit just to find my work. i’ve never written for this nerd before but here we are with a study of a sort! be kind! i take requests now! tw for blood, implied violence, swearing

word count: 1894

ao3: here

Most people couldn’t stand the neon in the dark.

It was garishly bright, it was harsh, it was annoying at best. The sign would blink and linger behind your eyelids, stain the shadows in the dark like sunspots, make an impression that washed out the relaxing calm, the blanket of the night.

It keeps most people awake, Matt Murdock explained on that very first night. It doesn’t bother me, obviously. Take the bed. It’s not as noticeable in the bedroom.

But it didn’t bother you either. The contrast caught your eye on the second night; the colors would paint the monochromatic neutral tones of the apartment, how they would mix and melt into the chipped brick walls, the trim, the beams of the ceiling. How if you were in the right place – the right cushion on the couch, far enough back into the kitchen – it looked like a painting come alive right before your eyes. Something that would go on to live in a local indie gallery, something inspired by vaporwave, or whatever they were calling neon nostalgia these days.

Still. Silent. Chiaroscuro. Art in the wild.

It was like clockwork, the blinking. The colors coming and going at the first peek of evening shadow, only to blink right off at the first knock of the sun’s rays on the horizon.

After the third, fourth, tenth, twentieth nights it had become a comfort of sorts, namely for the days Matt Murdock wasn’t there to press you into the wall and kiss you senseless, or weave each other stories under the moonlight with a nest of blankets and concrete beneath you. When he wasn’t there to ghost his fingertips over your skin as you drifted off to sleep, so painfully content that you always wondered if this beautiful man with a devastating secret would be the end of you.

You never knew, but he often asked himself the same thing.

Then there were days that damned neon was the only constant about Matt Murdock, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Daredevil.

Moments of lovesick peace would only last so long.

Your skin would crawl on the nights sleep wouldn’t come. Mug of tea, coffee, something stronger cradled in your hands while your mind wandered, your feet wandered, your eyes drifted around this space of his, this little hideaway of yours. You would always hear him before you saw him, adrenaline spiked and oh so weary. Some nights he was covered in so much blood you didn’t know where it ended and his own crimson suit began.

“You’re still awake,” he would say, scowl tugging his mouth down, always sounding surprised. As if it was unusual, for you to be restless on the nights he donned devil horns to go hunting.

And you’re still alive, would be your reply.

He would stay close until dawn. You would gravitate toward him just the same, moths to flame, flowers to the sun. Conversations were hazy and hushed in the early morning-late night blur. They walked that fine fragile line between this is not okay, Matt, and you know you can’t shove me away as easily as everyone else, you stubborn ass.

Unspoken vs spoken. Horror vs love.

Clockwork, nonetheless.

Until one day, the clock shattered.

Matt Murdock doesn’t come home.

Then it’s days. Weeks slipped into months. Months slipped into a blend of minutes, moments, denial casually catching hold within as you found yourself still in his apartment – your little hideaway - watching the steady blink blink blink of the neon sign through the dirty, frosted window panes of the kitchen. Then the living room, then the kitchen counter. Cold tea, day old bitter coffee, something stronger untouched and unloved in the mug that hung loosely in your hands.

Those feelings of heartache and unease and an angry I fucking told you so lingered at the back of your mind, the tip of your tongue. The last time you saw him had been reenacted so many times, it began to feel like a dream. A nightmare. The flesh made into ghosts. Phantom lips brushed yours in such a gentle, such an urgent way that your pulse began to spike at the memory. The loss. The longing.

You thought about how you had gotten here, of all places, here – this apartment, this man’s life, both of you entwined with secrets and lies that could end both of you forever-

Everything was safer in the dark. What Matt Murdock hadn’t known – well. That wasn’t how he had met his end, after all.

It was almost too much to think about, on some occasions.

Until one day, when the clock began to tick once more.

You heard him before you saw him, the familiar cadence of his footsteps descended from above. The quiet slide of the roof access door snicked open and closed in the unholy hours of the night, the unholy hours of the morning.

The silence was new, however, and your eyes drifted up to see a shadow at the top of the staircase, frozen and tense and so very familiar.

“You’re still awake,” he said, and the tears were suddenly there; the ones that could never come, the ones that never seemed to leave. They were present, and the noise that left your throat wasn’t coherent, wasn’t normal, but a strangled laugh escaped your lips anyway.

“You’re still alive,” you replied. If not for the routine, your answer wouldn’t have been so intelligible. “You’re alive.” came the raspy whisper.

His silhouette nodded, began to limp down the stairs into the apartment proper. Began to finish his long journey back to you, back to everything, really. The mug in your hands was no more – placed safely, if not hastily – on the table, and you met him halfway.

“Yeah,” he said, voice quiet and so very hesitant as he clawed off the scarf covering his eyes. “I’m alive.”

There’s the hint of a smile that catches in the neon blink, one that you dreamt of sometimes, on the long nights. Shared breaths, lovesick grins, stray tears being gently brushed away followed in a fog, in a rush, in slow motion that threatened to dismantle so many things about his time away.

And then -

“Where the fuck have you been?”

He’s holding your waist, fingertips splayed, grip firm if only to convince himself that finally – finally, he’s here, you’re here, you're together. Your own hands slid to his shoulders, but you stepped back to keep him a few inches away.

Your gaze was hot and strong and analytical – Matt could feel your eyes as they saw bruised skin, torn clothes, battered, bloody knuckles. He’s been in worse shape, both you and he knew that, but he also knew he was no drawing, no painting, nothing close to a work of art worthy of a museum either. There were bloody, violent masterpieces under guard at the Louvre more worthy than he.

Had he asked you, you would have disagreed.

He can’t see the sorrow drowning the color of your eyes or the way softness carved a home on your expression, carefully melting away the tension, the anger, the fear. He can’t see you, but he does and even after all this time he still knew how to read the air around your mood shifts and the lilt of your voice. Still knew that after all he’s put you through – he felt a weight lift off his shoulders, Atlas freed at last.

He may have lost touch with many things, many people, but not once had he ever lost you.

“I’m sorry,” he began, emotion becoming thicker in his voice with every breath, every word that tumbled past his lips. It had always unsettled him, how you could unearth what he tried to hide, tried to bury.

Moths to flame, flowers to the sun.

He condensed the happenings since the building collapse after his stint with the Defenders, his words spilling out quick and quiet, rushed and worried.

But if he hadn’t finished what he started, what was he doing here? What was he doing with you? Why now?

“Let me – let me get this straight. Were you going to let us think you died, until – when? You got your shit together? Killed Fisk?” his fingers tightened where they held you, unseeing eyes wandered anywhere and everywhere except right in front of him, right on you. You knew that look. Your voice softened. “Or were you just going to disappear? Like this meant nothing – like this means nothing? And as grateful as I am that you are – why are you here, Matt?”

He shook his head, ignored the cracks that broke open his heart like dropped glass. Your name spilled from his lips like a holy hymn that golden haloed angels could never hope to sing. No one could recreate the most divine sound in all of creation. Matt Murdock would always swear you were a goddess incarnate, no matter how sinfully blasphemous it was. “You mean everything.” he pulled you into him, moved so his face was close to yours.

“It’s not that simple,” he said after, and you deflated in an instant. The amount of times a variation of this conversation had been voiced between you – you would never know. It was like a renegade wildfire: possible to lessen, impossible to tame.

It was as quick as the changing of the seasons, how he took on the urgency you’ve only witnessed a handful of times - when he allowed you in the presence of Daredevil himself. You remembered what he asked of you lifetimes ago, between hushed words and bloody gauze, hands slick with red and a needle poised between your fingertips. How if danger ever came to your door, you would listen and you would trust, and you would let him do whatever it took to keep you safe.

To keep you both safe, you tried to correct. He would nod, and you would ignore that he never agreed to such a thing.

“We need to go,” was all he said, but you knew. You remembered.

The strongest jolt of fear slammed into you, bleeding a black and white, us and them mentality. It threatened to smother the blinking neon, the bright washes of blue and white felt muted, felt so very distant when you realized that someone was coming here, someone figured it out, figured it all out.

Oh.

That wasn’t the answer you hoped for.

Us vs them.

“So it’s finally happening.”

Matt’s hands fell away from you, one slid to twine your hands together and squeezed. He was solid, he was grounding. You looked into his eyes. “You know I won’t let anything happen to you,” he took his free hand, lifted it to brush your cheek with tattered knuckles, bruises blossomed like night blooming flowers. He left a trail of soft burning flames when he traced a path down to your jaw where he stopped and cupped your face ever so gently. “That’s the one promise I knew I’d never break.”

Fear melted away when you closed the distance to kiss him, felt that heavy soul twine with yours; all was suddenly right with the world for the first time in a long time, even if the anguish of this city was about to come crashing down on your shoulders all over again. It tore at your heart, this kiss, because it was so very reminiscent of the first time he ever kissed you. Bright eyes, flushed faces, the thrill of something new ignited all around you. The future painted with vivid neon instead of muted pastels. It felt bittersweet, and you knew down in the marrow of your bones that this could very well be the last thing you would ever share with Matt Murdock, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Daredevil.

“I know,” you whispered against his lips. “I trust you.”

Once those words were in the open, there was no going back.

Your secret could wait.

#matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x you #matt murdock imagine #daredevil imagine #matt murdock oneshot #daredevil oneshot #matt murdock #daredevil #charlie cox #kas writes #marvel imagine #marvel one shot

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musicollage · 3 years

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Atlas Sound. Logos, 2009. Kranky (USA) / 4AD (UK). ( Lyrics & Music – Bradford Cox ) ~ [ Album Review | 1) Pitchfork + 2) Pop Matters + 3) Drowned In Sound + 4) NME + 5) Prefix Magazine ]

1) As we've gotten to know Bradford Cox over the last couple of years through shows, interviews, and blog posts, one of the Deerhunter frontman's most appealing qualities is his deep and nuanced appreciation of the music of others. Some musicians listen to records to see how they work, check out the competition, or trawl for ideas; by all available evidence, Cox feels records, deeply. If he was born without musical gifts and couldn't sing or play an instrument, one can imagine him working at a record store, amassing an enviable collection while driving people on a message board crazy with the sureness of his detailed opinions. Whatever you think of his exploits as an indie rock media figure, Cox's music fandom is easy to identify with and also offers a portal into his own work.

Atlas Sound, Cox's solo alias, in one sense serves as a sort of laboratory for figuring out what makes some his favorite music tick, away from the expectations of his main band. Two collaborations on Logos, the second Atlas Sound full-length, are excellent examples of how music listening can be absorbed into original work. First is "Walkabout", a track Cox wrote and recorded with Noah Lennox from Animal Collective, whom Cox got to know during a European tour. Though Cox's music shades dark and Lennox's is often flecked with uncertainty and doubt, "Walkabout" is the sunniest pop tune of either of their careers. Coasting on a buoyant, twinkling keyboard sample, it is a starkly catchy and irresistible, a clattery post-millennial Archies tune that straddles perfectly the border between simple and simplistic. Interestingly, it also sounds very much like a Panda Bear tune.

Then there is Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab, who wrote the lyrics and sings lead on Logos' "Quick Canal". The song opens with some gorgeously textured organ chords and soon a steady-state beat and drums rise up in the mix, setting the kind of relaxed-but-propulsive neo-krautrock scene that Stereolab perfected very early on. Here Cox gets to play the part of the late Mary Hansen, adding "la-di-da" trills behind Sadier as she intones phrases in her unfailingly lovely, for-the-ages voice. He even throws in a "Jenny Ondioline"-style rupture about halfway through, sending the track into a breathtaking shoegaze section for its final four minutes, wherein it floats magisterially on a pillow of shifting guitar feedback. "Quick Canal" is almost nine minutes long and it doesn't waste a second.

On these tracks, the confidence Cox shows in melting his aesthetic into the soundworld of other musicians is striking-- both are unqualified successes, very different from each other but among the best things Cox has ever done. But they also sound a lot like the music his collaborators are known for. Cox's sympathetic support and sense of how to construct songs with others suggests a desire to expand the parameters of what Atlas Sound can be. And given his willingness to let others take the microphone on an Atlas Sound project on these cuts, I can't help but go back to Cox's words on Logos before the album was released, which suggested that this was to be less introverted and that was "not about me."

And then I remember that the cover of the album consists of a photo of Cox with his shirt off and the lyrics in the first two songs start with the word "I", which suggests that we probably shouldn't take these statements very seriously. While the songs may or may not be "about" Cox in the strictest sense, the overall vibe is at least as introverted as 2008's Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, and every note bears the same signature. With its strummed guitars, hushed double-tracked vocals, and tunes more reliant on ambiance and feel than melody or rhythm, Logos feels every bit as diaristic and personal, but with Cox, that's a plus. At this point, we're not looking to this guy for commentary on the outside world; we want to hear him wrestle with private demons in the sanctuary of his bedroom, bathing every sound in reverb to give the illusion of space and as a sonic balm against loneliness and figuring out how to make music as affecting as the stuff he loves to listen to.

So tracks like "The Light That Failed", "An Orchid", and "My Halo" (the latter two, though different in tone, are further entries in Cox's growing line of melancholy waltz-time shuffles) function primarily as the kind of eerie, blown-out mood music he has become very good at. They are amorphous sketches that still manage to convey feeling, capturing the sort of sad, exhausted, and fragile emotional state that is Cox's area of expertise. "Shelia", a taut pop song with a great chorus hook, is a change-up, though the repeating refrain "No one wants to die alone" fits with the rest of the record's themes. And "Washington School", with its dissonant chime of metallic percussion that sound like gamelan or evilly out-of-tune steel drums, contains the record's most interesting production, with thick drones reminiscent of Tim Hecker and menacing rhythm track.

So some things are different, some are the same, but all of it works well together. It's true that every time Cox ventures out of his comfort zone on Logos, you wish that he'd go even further and embrace extremes-- of tunefulness, tradition, noise-- that don't necessarily come to him naturally. He may yet take a big leap with Atlas Sound, but here the steps away, though rewarding, are tentative. For the rest of the record, Logos feels familiar and assuring, another affecting dispatch from a corner of indie music that is increasingly starting to seem like one Cox pretty much owns.

2) Take a quick gander at Deerhunter's discography and you'll notice a clear stylistic trajectory. From the confrontational noise of "Turn It Up Faggot" to the ambient preoccupations of Cryptograms to the straight-up indie-pop of Microcastle/Weird Era Cont., it's plain to see that as the band has evolved over time, its songwriting has increasingly tended toward the more accessible end of the spectrum. Unsurprisingly, it appears that Bradford Cox's other songwriting vehicle, Atlas Sound, is following a similar arc. On Logos, his second album under the Atlas Sound moniker, Cox provides us with 11 songs that are far less insular, though no less dreamy, than those he has penned in the past. While his fractured compositions still evoke the myth of the bedroom pop auteur, the songs on Logos sound considerably more refined than the lo-fi sketches being churned out by many of his peers. This, as it turns out, is a very good thing.

To wit: "Walkabout", the track that had the blogosphere buzzing with anticipation for the better part of the summer. Built around a squelchy organ sample lifted from the Dovers "What Am I Going to Do", the song simultaneously recalls both the acid-tinged psychedelia of Black Moth Super Rainbow and the technicolor pop of Brian Wilson. Of course, it's impossible to mention "Walkabout" without acknowledging its co-creator, Noah Lennox, a.k.a. Panda Bear. In many ways, "Walkabout" bears Lennox's fingerprints more than it does Cox's, with Lennox's wistful vocal harmonies echoing throughout the track's four-minute runtime. It's easy to see why Cox chose to leak "Walkabout" well in advance of the release of Logos; bright, bubbly and infinitely catchy, the song perfectly captures the mood of a fleeting summer afternoon and stands as one of the year's best singles.

"Walkabout" is obviously a standout, though it's also an outlier when approached within the context of Logos. While some may feel as if they've been misled, the good news is that the rest of the album is no less rewarding, if not quite as instantly gratifying. Take, for example, the opening suite that leads up to "Walkabout". Pitting disjointed acoustic guitar strums and distant, reverb-soaked vocals against a backdrop of aqueous noise, "The Light That Failed" succeeds at drawing the listener in while still keeping her at arm's length. "An Orchid", meanwhile, presents the listener with a dreamy ballad that feels like an indistinct outline for a Deerhunter song. Cox's vocals and the song's guitar hook are buried just deep enough in the mix to force the listener to dig a little. When "Walkabout" finally hits, it feels like a reward well earned.

Luckily, "Walkabout" isn't the only nugget of pure pop bliss to be found on Logos. "Shelia", a disarmingly straightforward slice of jangly college-rock, proves hard to shake, with its Pixies-esque melody and sun-bleached three-part harmonies. Lyrically, the song serves as a world-weary rejoinder to the sweetly nostalgic refrain of "Walkabout" ("What did you want to be / When you grew up"), with Cox explaining, "No one wants / To die alone", before promising the song's titular subject, "We'll die alone / Together." It sure goes down easy, though.

Cox has publicly acknowledged that Stereolab were his favorite band in high school, so it should come as no surprise that given the opportunity to collaborate with Lætitia Sadier, he puts his best foot forward. On "Quick Canal", he lovingly builds up and tears down a cathedral of sound for Sadier to inhabit, layering a deep bass groove, tambourine hits and a wall of gently panning organs atop a steady, shuffling beat. Midway through, the song falls apart, briefly taking a detour into glitchy noise before giving way to a squall of fuzzed-out guitars. Try as Cox might to obfuscate the vocals, however, Sadier's voice proves indefatigable. To her credit, she sounds right at home here, bouncing her voice off of the song's jagged edges to produce a track that's equal parts haunting and triumphant.

With regard to electronic composition, on Logos Cox sounds more confident than ever before. Samples and electronic instrumentation form the underpinnings of many of the album's songs, though not to conspicuous effect. Penultimate track "Washington School" illustrates this point better than perhaps any other on the album. Opening with a loop built from fragments of a minor key piano line, the song soon piles on a pounding, bass-heavy beat, chimes and a playful synth line, blossoming into a full-on folktronica number that recalls Four Tet circa Rounds. Somewhere in the distance, Cox's disembodied voice rings out: "Shine a light / On me."

If Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel was the product of Cox's willful isolation, then Logos is the sound of the auteur stepping outside of his bedroom to engage the world outside. Though it cedes little of the hazy delivery that made Let the Blind… so compelling, Logos brims with a wide-eyed energy all its own, conveying a palpable sense of optimism that's all too rare in Cox's oeuvre. This isn't too surprising when one considers the circumstances; the path that led Cox to the album's creation -- globetrotting tours with his idols, collaborations with some of the most distinctive voices in indie rock -- is the stuff of dreams for hermetic music nerds. Perhaps that's why Logos sounds as vibrant as it does: it's the result of Bradford Cox living out his dreams rather than just dreaming them.

3) One of many unsatisfactory things about end-of-decade retrospectives is that musicians are rarely so accommodating as to plot their careers in nice, convenient ten year cycles. Nonetheless, that’s how posterity tends to remember them, regardless of finer details. Thus the Kinks are Sixties artists, the Clash a Seventies act, Talk Talk an Eighties band, Nirvana from the Nineties, and you’d comfortably stick a punt on The Strokes and Sufjan Stevens ending up defined by this decade we’re exiting.

But what of Bradford Cox? Even if you were aware of Deerhunter's raucous 2005 debut ”Turn It Up Faggot” at the time, you're a wizard or a liar if you foresaw how their frontman was going to fill the years 2007 to 2009. That is to say: three Deerhunter albums (‘tis a fool indeed who views Weird Era Cont. as anything other than a record in its own right), two EPs, and a solo project as Atlas Sound that’s yielded God-know-how-many free downloads, as well as last year's Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, and now – an epic 22 months later - Logos. That all of this bar the odd freebie has been good to exemplary is simply astonishing, and points to an artist whose profligacy and cult popularity has him nicely set up to be a defining artist of the next decade.

And yet... anomalous as ”Turn It Up Faggot” may seem, such scabrous origins are indicative of a palette that has been cooling and quietening ever since Cox first intersected with the limelight. The soundbite-friendly ‘ambient punk’ aesthetic never really lasted beyond Cryptograms, with Microcastle canning the abrasiveness in favour of reasonably straightforward shoegaze set off with dreamlike Fifties flourishes. Having arrived at something like a commercial sound, another artist might have stopped there; however, Cox has ploughed right on through, this year’s Rainwater Cassette Exchange far and away Deerhunter’s most introverted work, a retreat into quiescent childhood reverie.

Logos has much more in common with Rainwater... than Let the Blind..., for the most part ditching the dissonant electronics in favour of delayed acoustic guitars and old-time pop structures. On the face of it, it sets out Atlas Sound’s stall as simply being whatever Cox may do sans Deerhunter. Yet in a way the 'ambient solo project' tag still kind of makes sense. Strictly speaking ambient music is defined not by instrumentation, but by its evasion of the consciousness. Whole swathes of Logos are blurred and indistinct - technically melodic, hooky songs treated and delivered in such a way that they all but self-negate, leaving nothing but fleeting impressions: the winsome viola that arrives in ‘Attic Lights’, just as Cox mutters ”maximum pain, maximum effect”; the gay singer’s unsettling yearning for traditional marriage on ‘Sheila’ ("we’ll die alone, together"); the barely discernible mantra ”all is love” that briefly ghosts through ‘Washington School’.

This might sound like a way of romanticising an unmemorable album, but that's far from the case. These songs are bunched together into two dreamy, fog-like passages that serve as a backdrop for a handful of the most tangible tunes Cox has ever written, soaring atmospherically above the misty dreampop. Opener ‘The Light That Failed’ roots itself in the consciousness through eerily torpid glitching, Cox’s disconcerting use of something approaching a falsetto, and the doomy langour of its titular lyric. It sets up an album that frequently drifts into disquieting areas, yet never quite follows through on this early moment of dread. Indeed, delightful Panda Bear hook up ‘Walkabout’ serves as definitive proof that the light hasn't failed at all. While much of Cox’s early pop obsession speaks of a desire to creep out of the now entirely, ‘Walkabout’ is far more tangible and good natured, thanks largely to Panda Bear’s high, comforting tones and the appropriation of the hook from actual vintage Sixties pop gem ‘What Am I Going To Do?’ by The Dovers. Ironically for a song built around a 40-year-old tune, nothing, else on Logos has ‘Walkabout’s immediacy, though the excellent title track comes close, a rattling Strokes-alike number slightly removed from the world by Cox’s arsenal of floaty FX.

As we’ve known ever since last year’s leak of the Logos demos, the centrepiece is the eight and a half minute, wholly electronic ‘Quick Canal’. Though tamed a little from the leaked 13 minute instrumental, this more mannered, Laetitia Sadier-sung incarnation is a better fit here, and still towers above the skyline. The Stereolab singer adds an inescapably Enya-ish quality to the gentle early stages, but by the time the song’s swooshing, snowy motorik has kicked into full gear she fits in immaculately, an aloof Old World passenger on a song charged with haughty European electronica. It perhaps doesn’t sound so jaw-dropping as it did in isolation, but a lot of that can be attributed to an intentional effect of the surroundings. Those short, subliminal songs serving to filter away reality and focus, like half remembered dreams that leaves the senses baffled and feverish.

Logos is a gorgeous, hallucinatory and somewhat sickly outing. While there's every chance he'll wrong foot us, and soon, this record is entirely in keeping with the increasingly self-erasing route Bradford Cox has taken as a musician; it's hard to stifle a shudder at that blanked out cover image. Maybe Cox will go on to be a star next decade - he's a gregarious, prolific man liked by critics. But listen to his music, and that doesn't feel quite right. Maybe he'll become an icon. Or maybe he’ll finally make his escape from our timestream entirely, leaving us to wonder if he was ever there at all.

4) Much like Starbucks, Bradford Cox has become a ubiquitous presence. What with his work with art-rock outfit Deerhunter, his involvement in Karen O’s official soundtrack for Where The Wild Things Are, and now this, his second solo offering under the Atlas Sound banner, you’d be forgiven for thinking that such familiarity will start to breed contempt. But you’d be way off the mark.

There are two things you should know about this unlikely lo-fi hero of gangly deportment (he has Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that stretches his limbs and strains his heart) and a girlish speaking voice (the affliction for this is yet uncertain). Firstly, it is impossible to dislike him (just see Wayne Coyne’s spoof argument with him on YouTube, branding Cox a “dick”). Secondly, his creative output has proved him to be one of – if not the – most forward-thinking and inspiring musicians of our generation.

So, as Cox takes time out from Deerhunter, along comes ‘Logos’. Less of an experimental minefield than its predecessor, ‘Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel’, it sees Cox weave in and out of dream-like sequences, such as the sombre ‘The Light That Failed’ and ‘Quick Canal’, the latter featuring the sweetly masculine vocal of [a]Stereolab[/a]’s Laetitia Sadier; while ‘An Orchid’ pitches in as the aural equivalent of a David Lynch storyboard, guided along with looped noises and whimsical vocals.

It’d be easy to overlook Cox’s lyrics when the soundscapes are this rich and ornate, but there’s a delicate exploration of the most human of sensibilities and yearnings on ‘Logos’. He opens up the emotional vaults on ‘Sheila’, pining softly that “no-one wants to die alone… we’ll die alone together”. Likewise with ‘My Halo’, where Cox reveals “My halo burned a hole in the sky/My halo burned a hole in the ground… so I wait for polarity to change”. There’s much warmth and playfulness to be found here too, the unfeigned honesty and childlish desires expressed on ‘Walkabout’ – featuring the falsetto of [a]Animal Collective[/a]’s Noah Lennox – with its lyric “What did you want to see?/What did you want to be when you grew up?” being a case in point.

Cox may have tagged Atlas Sound as just another side-project, but ‘Logos’ is a clear indication that his solo creative output is just as richly rewarding as what came before.

5) For a project originally started as a way for Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox to give a voice to his despairing isolation (he records completely alone) as a teenager, Atlas Sound is starting to sound like an arena-filling, widescreen pop project. Logos, Cox’s second proper solo album, takes the dense, gray worlds of Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See, But Cannot Feel and puts them through a rainbow, delivering a splendid album.

If there’s one word to describe Logos, it’s “watery.” And in that regard, Logos shares a lot in common with Merriweather Post Pavilion (and Deerhunter’s Rainwater Cassette Exchange from earlier this year). Both albums trade in dreamy avant-pop landscapes buoyed by soggy atmospherics. “Criminals” sways like a shipping vessel in choppy seas, while the album’s great closing third (“My Halo” through the title track) sounds like it was transmitted from that underwater base in the third season of Lost. Cox is still reliant on the general ambiance that envelops his solo work, but here he’s willing to let his vocals float above the mix. And while musically this is brighter, he’s still all Debbie Downer. Old standby lyrical tropes of growing old (on “Sheila” Cox sings “we will grow old” like he’s reassuring someone else), loneliness (“Attic Lights”) and lost hope (“The Light that Failed”) show up repeatedly, and he still sounds like he’s on his deathbed when he sings.

But for an album created largely by one guy alone in his room, the guest performances shine the most on Logos. Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier wrote the lyrics for “Quick Canal,” a sprawling, shoegazey track that never loses its motorik motion, peaking repeatedly in its eight minutes. The bubbly “Walkabout,” the high-profile track with Animal Collective’s Panda Bear lives up to all the hypertext spilled about it this summer, delivering the best of both Panda Bear’s effervescent youthful innocence and Cox’s wistful yearning.

Logos, while just the second solo album from the frontman for a band of marginal fame, represents the latest and greatest chapter in Cox’s ride to indie stardom. He rose to prominence mid-decade as a confrontational trickster riding blog-hype (circa Cryptograms), continuing with a solo album to build his brand (Let the Blind), an indie-rock masterwork (Microcastle) and a solo album of nearly as high repute (Logos). As for what’s next, Cox has remained mum (though Deerhunter might be taking a hiatus), but with Logos, he ensures we’ll all be waiting.

#rock music #art rock #atlas sound #bradford cox #kranky #4ad #2009 #2000s #2000s rock #pitchfork #pop matters #drowned in sound #nme #prefix magazine #review

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valasania-the-pale · 5 years

Text

Unforgivable

This takes place post-V6 and presumably pre-V7 in that happy little space where the party finally gets to settle down in their new locale before diving headlong into a new set of problems. Please enjoy! This can also be considered a spiritual successor to my other drabble, ‘Contemplation.’

Either he was getting better at noticing changes in his surroundings, or Ruby was truly exhausted, because when she slipped out of the small apartment provided to them by the Atlesian military, Oscar was aware of it. That alone surprised him – travelling with a group of huntsmen (‘Not yet’ a voice whispered back at him, not his own) was stressful. Not only did they attract terrifying monsters seemingly by chance, but they also managed to constantly surprise him.

Huntsmen were quiet. They were skilled. They needed to be to stalk their prey, and in the ‘killing Grimm’ category, his companions were particularly prodigious. Sadly, he was a mere farm boy and they often managed to sneak up on him without meaning.

‘You’re improving,’ the other voice whispered again, part in amusement, part just stating a simple truth.

Oscar scoffed, suppressing the tiny glow of pride in his chest, but the other presence noticed it anyways and flickered with amusement.

His mind returned to Ruby. It wasn’t the first time she’d slipped away from the group to be alone. According to Weiss it was extremely unusual behavior for her – Ruby tended to cleave to her friends when emotional or troubled. The heiress had been very offput when he’d confided in her about it; she’d waived him off at the time, but Oscar didn’t need help from his other half to realize that she was more troubled she hadn’t noticed it herself.

What was Ruby doing? Was she just trying to get away from everyone for a little while, find some privacy? After living with just his aunt for several years – punctuated by the frequent visits of neighbors and distant relations, especially during harvest season – Oscar could appreciate how overwhelming it could be to suddenly be surrounded by people day and night. Hell, he felt the same way when he first joined up with Qrow and RNJR for the first time, never mind the additions of Ruby’s original teammates.

‘…Go talk to her.’

“What?” Oscar muttered back. He wasn’t quite used to the mental conversation thing. It was far more comfortable to speak aloud when possible. “Maybe she just wants some privacy, I don’t want to be rude!”

Ozpin shifted – an interesting, if decidedly odd feeling, constrained by his own little partition of their shared consciousness as it was. ‘I don’t believe that is the case… at any rate, I want to speak with her.’

Oscar hesitated. “If you’re sure…?”

‘As I can be. This has been long in coming anyways. Better now than after we meet with James… Powers know what will happen after that conversation.’

“Fine.”

He grabbed his cane from the countertop he’d been fiddling with it on, the handle fitting his hand like a glove. Thankfully he’d elected to stay dressed – Solitas was, quite frankly, freezing. To an extent Oscar hadn’t felt since the bitter winters of his early childhood. The lining of his coat was particularly good at keeping out the chill.

Ruby’d been wearing her cloak, but aside from that just wore her usual attire… Thankfully her footsteps were clear in the fresh snowfall, not yet destroyed by the passerby that would undoubtedly turn the white blanket into grey slush come morning.

A few blocks down – not far enough to be worrisome, far enough to feel distant from the rest. Up some stairs, and there she was. Protected from the snow by a decorative awning, Ruby shivered on a bench, staring out over the Atlesian skyline.

Tense – and still not sure he wasn’t interrupting some sort of private moment of self-reflection or somesuch – Oscar of course tripped on the last chair, startling Ruby out of her contemplation. “Oscar!”

“Uh… hi?”

There were shadows underneath her eyes, and Oscar felt Ozpin measuring the slump of the girl’s shoulders, as well as the sag in her usually excellent posture.

If she noticed his once-over, she didn’t show it, instead putting on a concerned expression. “Is something the matter? Everyone’s alright, right?”

“Yeah!” Picking himself up, he walked over to the bench. “Yeah, nothing’s wrong, just saw you leaving and figured I’d… um.”

Oscar floundered for a moment, suddenly aware that he hadn’t followed her for any particular reason. ‘A little help?’

Ozpin chuckled, a sound Oscar only knew from Ozpin’s memories – when he took the reigns his voice was Oscar’s, if inflected differently. It was a different man’s laugh in his mind.

He felt the nudge, like a hand slipping into a glove, except the glove was his body and the hand was Ozpin’s mind slipping around Oscar’s. It was quite the feeling, and one he hadn’t realized he’d grown familiar with until Ozpin disappeared entirely for the last few days. Oscar surrendered to the loss of agency willingly, becoming just a presence in another’s mind, watching from his eyes as a passenger.

Through those eyes he saw Ruby’s silver widening in recognition as Ozpin shifted posture, both hands resting on the handle of their cane, shoulders evening out in that just-so manner that Oscar’s aunt would have cried to see.

“Oh… Professor Ozpin.”

“Miss Rose. If we’re not interrupting anything, I would like to have a chat.” Oscar could feel the distance between Ozpin and his words. The formality, the coolness bordering on warmth – it was the tone he used to greet new students at Beacon, the tone he’d used to first greet Oscar himself that fateful morning. Jovial, polite, and perfunctory… but still undeniably the voice of a stranger speaking to another stranger.

Ruby blinked, some emotion passing over her face before it shifted into something resigned. Or maybe resolved. Oscar couldn’t really tell – he was used to drawing on Ozpin’s muscle memory and tactical memories, not so much the social kind. Those were a bit more… personal.

At any rate, she didn’t say anything, just mutely nodded and sat back down. Ozpin joined her, leaning forward to put his weight on the cane, just staring out over the Atlesian skyline.

He and Oscar both could sense the tension radiating from the girl. Among the myriad emotions swirling within his other half – more than Oscar had ever felt at once from the older soul – he could feel a trickle of pity and, surprisingly, empathy. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s so much…” Ruby whispered. “So many buildings… like Vale, but so much more high-tech… This is where Weiss grew up.”

“Indeed. It’s not too hard to see how Miss Schnee could come to be the woman she was when she first arrived at Beacon when her origins lay here.”

“It’s nothing like Patch.”

Sadness, a faint memory of a childhood spent far from the city, stars overhead and forests surrounding. Oscar marveled – the images were not his… yet they were so similar to his own, save for perhaps the constellations.

“Atlas is spectacular… though I find myself longing for the days when Mantle was ascendant. Perhaps it was less prosperous, less populous, and dare I say even less beautiful, but there was a pioneer spirit to be found here. The feeling that if you just worked hard enough, for long enough the faintest of dreams were within your grasp.”

“Kind of like Beacon.”

“Yes. The best huntsmen came here because of the city’s lack of natural fortifications, Grimm were still drawn here like moths to the flame. It was slow, but progress was made, and all so suddenly the city was rising before my eyes.”

Oscar saw a flat plain, broken only by the random outcropping of grey stone. Hardly the kind of place one would put a city, with so little in the way of natural fortifications. Grimm would wash over this place like a dark tide, and yet…

Dust. Someone, somehow, managed to discover a truly incredibly vein of Dust. That justified the settlement. The mines. The mistreatment, though he could only watch on in sorrow, a mere visitor – a stranger – hoping against hope that things would change.

Change it did. The vein led to deeper tunnels, more intensive mining, new veins and even more Dust. Soon the settlement grew to a city. Alsius coming into being after the war. The military moving in, providing even more protection as more of Mantle’s population moved to the thriving boom town.

Amidst sorrow, toil, and sweat, a city rose to supplant its parent, eclipsing it in all things.

And then it rose. The mines finally ran dry, but the city would not be deterred. They were Atlas, now. Like the Vytal stadium, the best minds worked in concert and the city moved itself to a new vein – discovered underneath the old capital… too late to save it from ignominy.

Oscar gasped – was it a gasp, if it only happened in his mind? He was not used to falling into flurries of memory like that. It was always nudges or feelings, the briefest glimpses of thought from Ozpin.

‘Hiding did me little good before,’ the older soul admitted mentally, outwardly silent as he and Ruby gazed out on the skyline. ‘And though I don’t believe you’ll pry again, you also don’t deserve me shutting you out entirely… and wasn’t it just incredible, seeing the change?’

‘Yeah,’ Oscar thought. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that… it was like the crops back at home, but bigger. And faster.’

Ozpin chuckled in his mind, almost but not quite hiding the shift Oscar got from him. He was steeling himself for something.

Beside them, Ruby shifted uncomfortably. She was so tense he couldn’t detect her shivering any more, but Oscar could tell her mind wasn’t on the sights any more.

Ozpin broke the stalemate.

“I wanted to tell you that I was sorry, Miss Rose, for deceiving you.” Ruby flinched, otherwise frozen, but remained silent. Ozpin carried on. “I’ve had a fair amount of time to reflect on the last few months, and on my behavior since the fall of Beacon. I haven’t been fair to you, or your teams. I expected too much from you, and didn’t correct you when you made your own assumptions.”

“Professor—”

“No, I don’t want there to be—”

“Professor.”

Ozpin fell silent, halted by the ragged note in Ruby’s voice. The smallness, like he hadn’t ever heard from the girl. She clenched her fists, refusing to meet his eyes, her gaze fixed on the city like it was her prey. “Professor, what we did…” Ruby shook her head, brow furrowing. “What I did was wrong. It wasn’t my business to ask Jinn that question… I shouldn’t have pried.”

Oscar blinked – no, that was Ozpin, Oscar could only feel the slightest edge of bewilderment and sorrow from his other half. Ruby was shaking. His own gold-flecked-hazel orbs tried meeting hers, tried to lock with her gaze to convey… something, Oscar couldn’t tell what Ozpin wanted to do. But they wouldn’t turn.

“I was impulsive,” her voice cracked. “I was cruel… I was a bully.”

Oscar recoiled as the tears began to flow. “I wasn’t thinking about what would happen when I asked, I was just thinking about needing to know… I didn’t want to trust you. I didn’t trust you to not lie again – to hide whatever it was from us behind something else… I’m sorry.”

Their hand rose, hesitantly hanging in the air as the girl buried her face in her hands, cutting herself off from them entirely. Should they comfort her, should they say something? Oscar had no reference, and Ozpin was hesitant to push… worried that too much would break the fragile soul beside him, a feeling he knew too well.

They let the silence hold for a few seconds. Oscar could feel him ruminating in the back of their mind, feel the faintest swell of emotion, of empathy.

‘The harshest criticism comes from within,’ the older soul whispered sadly, a sliver of sympathetic ice spearing their heart. As it had only days before.

Their hand fell, and Oscar watched from the back of their mind as Ruby had her cry. They were a silent presence beside her – had the adrenaline just run out? Was it just the day, the fight, the horror and shock as their plan fell apart around their ears? Or perhaps it was an older wound than that – is this what she did, each time she vanished out on her own?

‘This must be really hard on her too,’ Oscar remembered sadly, images from their shared memories, neither one nor the other’s alone. Ruby knew what to say to make him feel better, at least that one time. He felt helpless now.

‘It is hard on us all – she isn’t ready for this,’ Ozpin frowned. ‘None of you are. In many respects.’

‘No kidding.’

Several minutes passed before Ruby pulled herself together. Minutes that Oscar spent in his own partition, blocking everything else out and seeking some of that peace his aunt tried to teach him in the garden pulling weeds. Away from it all.

“It seems we’ve both made our mistakes.” Ozpin commented after Ruby wiped her eyes.

“Yeah.” Ruby sniffled, looking for once utterly pathetic.

“I’m sad to say, as your teacher, that they only tend to pile up as the years pass by.”

Ruby gave a watery laugh. “I don’t think they have to be this bad.”

That drew a smile from their lips. “We live in interesting times… it used to be said that those were the sort of times you cursed being born into. It’s still a saying in Mistral, if I’m not mistaken.”

Ruby wasn’t distracted by the old man’s intentional rambling – Oscar could only watch from the background as the professor tried guiding her back out of the hole she’d dug for herself.

“I really am sorry, Professor,” Ruby said again, finally turning to look them in the eyes. Pain shone in those silver orbs – as well as guilt, and sadness, and exhaustion.

‘She really needs a good sleep,’ Oscar observed.

‘I wouldn’t say no to that, myself.’ Something felt lighter in his other half. His emotions were a swirling mess – more chaotic than Oscar was used to feeling from the controlled, reserved soul. But it was a good chaos – there was no hiding, no shying, not even from himself.

“I forgive you.”

Eh?

He said it so simply. Like it was nothing, and yet…

“What I did was unforgivable!”

“Well, I forgive you anyways.” There was a note of humor in their voice, entirely Ozpin. He… meant it. Why?

‘Hm.’

He wetted their lips, choosing his words carefully. “Maybe it was unforgivable… It certainly hurt, more than I believe you can even comprehend… but…” Ozpin paused, his mind casting very far back, farther than Oscar had ever felt before. “…I learned long ago that forgiveness is the surest path to peace… I have committed many sins… ‘More than any man, woman or child on this planet,’ I believe I told you… Yet I have met many hundreds of people willing to forgive me, trust me, to be my friends and confidents… Those are the people I have treasured most in my, very, long memory.”

Naked emotion shone in Ruby’s silver eyes, as well as the faintest glint of tears. “I don’t deserve it.”

“’Deserve?’” Their lips quirked. “No… you don’t. But it is my choice. You didn’t mean to hurt me, though you did. Your actions were not born of malice, though their results struck truer than many a mortal enemy I’ve faced… and you clearly feel remorse.” Ozpin hummed, eyes distant on the horizon, peering far back into that ancient memory Oscar couldn’t quite view. “Maybe I shouldn’t forgive you… maybe I should hold onto my anger, lest you tempt me to lower my guard again… but I won’t. I don’t want to. I won’t let her win.”

“Professor…”

“Ozpin. I may still be your teacher, but while we journey together, I believe it wouldn’t be too out of line for your to call me by my given name.”

‘Such confusion!’ Ozpin chuckled.

‘Ozpin?’ Yes, he was confused, and would like an explanation please?

‘I don’t like grudges, Oscar. Perhaps you may feel differently – and I will not urge you to choose anything not to your desires – but I will not torment Miss Rose further when she clearly loathes herself for what she did more than I ever could. Better to bury the hatchet and move on.’

Not parley to their mental exchange, Ruby stared in bewilderment at them. “Does that mean we’re… friends?”

Ozpin mentally blinked – he was too outwardly controlled to let such a tell go unchecked. It was another distinctly odd sensation to feel from a mind. ‘Not the question I would have asked.’

‘Ruby is Ruby.’

“If you would like to call it that, yes.”

That seemed to break her out of her shell a little, because she smiled. It was weak – tentative – but it was something. “Well, my friends call me Ruby.”

Ozpin smiled wryly. “Ruby it is then.”

“Yang is still mad at you.”

Their eyebrow quirked.

“Indeed, and I don’t believe I’ve forgiven her for the ‘bastard’ remark – my mother was a wonderful woman, and happily married.”

“Uncle Qrow’s drinking’s been getting worse.”

“Neither I nor Oscar have forgiven him that right cross… and shan’t until he pulls himself out of his despair enough that he apologizes himself. Oscar can speak for himself on the matter.”

“I still don’t trust you entirely, even though I want to.”

“I don’t believe I shall ever forget what you made me go through, at least not for a long while… but hindsight truly is crystal clear.”

Ruby let out a laugh, hugging herself. “Dust… I’ve made so many mistakes…”

“The Leviathan was a particularly impressive fuckup, if you’ll pardon my language.”

Her arms tightened. “I was only thinking about getting to Atlas…”

“Tunnel vision,” Ozpin remarked clinically. Oscar marveled – he was so… casual about it. About all of these terrible things. The lightness in his spirit refused to be dampened. “It’s a trap even the best fall into. Huntress you are, you were trained to work with goals in mind. If things had been different, Glynda would be working you to the bone even as we speak on repercussions, law, and the more mundane skills to learn. Like critical thinking.”

Ruby groaned, burying her head in her hands.

“Now now, Ruby. You managed to clean up after yourself, and only a few people were hurt.”

“The gryphon pack grounded three of the Argussian airships and thirteen people were injured,” she muttered.

“And a steeple,” Ozpin threw in flippantly. “Never forget infrastructure damage – Glynda was always on me about the migraine of paperwork involved in that.” He folded their hands. “Indeed, your failure endangered countless lives and might have had grievous repercussions… but such is the life you have chosen to lead. Entrusted with the lives of Remnant, your mistakes will cost many more as the years go on. The trick of it all is to reduce the mistakes, and ensure that those that are, for the most part, preventable, do not occur.”

“How can you be so… casual! About this?!” The bewilderment was back.

But Ozpin had an answer for her – one that drew on some of the darker clouds in the morass of his soul. They had just the slightest hint of sharpness, self-loathing. Some irony. “Because I vividly remember a time not so long ago that my lack of foresight and passivity cost me my home, my school, and thousands of people their lives. Even after thousands of years the simplest mistakes to make are made, and there is little to do about it save to pick yourself up, do your best to ensure it never happens again, and move on. Such is life.”

Ruby laughed into her hands, a sound suspiciously close to a sob, and Ozpin patted her gently on the shoulder. Thankfully, she didn’t dissolve back into tears and her moment passed.

“Will you come back after this?”

“I will to meet with James… I don’t believe that Qrow is up to the challenge of countering James’ ego… nor his paranoia.”

“But what about… us? The group?”

“I…” Ozpin paused, eyes flickering down. “In time. A few days isn’t very long. It speaks to your character that you are willing to forgive so quickly… I am not so… inclined.”

‘What happened to the ‘no grudges’ thing?’ Oscar asked.

‘You’ll find that there’s a difference when the other party actually feels remorse for their misdeeds. I don’t like grudges… but I am not a saint.’

Ruby straightened up. In spite of the exhaustion clinging to her frame, she looked more like her normal self than she had all day. “I’ll talk to them,” she said resolutely. “Yang is angry… she’ll be angry for a long time. So will Jaune… Blake will listen, I think. So will Ren. They can help me with the others.”

Curiosity.

“And Miss Schnee?”

“I don’t know about Weiss…” a shadow passed across her face. “Being in Atlas is hard for her, she’s scared her dad will come after her when he hears about her being here. I don’t want to push again…”

‘Ah.’ Ozpin hummed. “Give it time. Impatience got you into this mess, patience will, hopefully, be the cure. I appreciate your effort all the same.” To both his and Oscar’s surprise, he meant it.

“Thank you, Ozpin.”

“Thank you, Ruby.”

#RWBY #Valasanias drabbles #Ruby Rose #Oscar Pine #Ozpin #RWBY Spoilers #Post-V6 #Pre-V7 #I just want these two to talk it out #This is probably a lighter version of that conversation #I've seen some really harsh emotions from Oz #In other stories #Which I get #But I'm curious to know how this will be recieved #Please let me know what you think!#Feedback encourages me to write more

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