#originally it was the first few paragraphs + dialogue + a whole bunch of keyboard smashes in capslock

[astrhae]

hi so i just read your hanahaki fic and it ruined me and like i am actually crying it was so so so good but also i read your deleted scene with jespers pov and that was amazing too!! and i saw that you said that you had another deleted scene and i would love to see that too (and any others that you have) if you wanted to share them?

(also i actually adore the entire vibe of your blog it's so pretty)

hi hello thank you so much *slides tissues over* i'm so glad you liked the fic so much and that you liked the deleted scenes too!! there are... quite a lot of them that i literally made an "appendix" section in my word document 😅 this fic truly was a monster to write because of how many scenes and jumps there were, and while that was a whole lot of fun, i also had to test and remove many, many scenes too keep it manageable. most of the deleted scenes are just dialogue without much prose to them though, because i had a Vibe but then realised the fic was going to be too long --- but here's a deleted scene that i polished up just for you 💙 it's in jesper's POV too because you all really are enabling me to write more of that 💕

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“You kept it,” Jesper stared at Wylan.

Wylan’s gaze skittered away, hands clasped behind his back as they stood there, side by side, at the threshold of the mansion’s storeroom. He looked every bit a mercher, now: all the soft lines Jesper used to tease him about were gone, replaced by a gauntness from the sickness.

It had been a month – a month since the embassy, since Wylan had lied still on the bed, and the Shu Princess’ fiancée had come under the cover of the night. Do it, Jesper had told her to save Wylan’s life.

They’ve gone too far for me to save him, she had warned Jesper. This might not work – he might never feel again, never –

Do it, Jesper had repeated. Wylan had wanted this, had counted his own life worth more than his heart, and Jesper had to agree. Jesper had to be grateful that Grisha didn’t get sick: if Wylan came out of this not being able to love, then at least Wylan came out of this.

Then Jesper would still love him, anyway, whatever happened.

So she had done it, and Jesper had watched as a delirious, barely conscious Wylan had coughed and coughed – Wylan wouldn’t remember it, later, feverish and shivering, from both the sickness and the canal waters, and Jesper had promised, over and over again: I love you, I love you, I love you.

And Wylan, eyes clouded with fever, had tipped his head blindly toward Jesper’s voice, and apologized.

Now – now, a month since, Wylan was still recovering. He showed no signs that he remembered any of it. Jesper had been careful not to linger, unsure if Wylan wanted him, but he had stayed in one of the guest rooms that Marya had forced him into.

They ate meals together, Wylan staring at Jesper silently all the while before he disappeared again into his rooms, closing himself off as Kaz scrambled to keep the business afloat and Jesper tried to keep out of the way. With Nikolai and Zoya pleased that things had gone as smoothly as they could, Jesper wasn’t expected back in Ravka anytime soon, and he stayed in Ketterdam to pick up what pieces he could, trying to at last keep his promises.

Marya showed him the cracks in the house – the places where paint had started peeling, floorboards creaking, the carriage rattling, and Jesper placed his hand over them. He placed his hand, and called on his blessings: an act of prayer, an act of penance. He couldn’t heal the places where Wylan’s ribs had cracked from the roots that had wrapped around them, but he could at least fix the foundations. Could at least strengthen them.

He hadn’t known what to expect when Wylan had called for him earlier today.

He certainly hadn’t expected Wylan to lead him up to the attic, to show him a room full of everything he’d left behind. All the coins he’d turned into lopsided keys sitting in a jar by the far end of the room, the bullet fragments and shrapnel from his failed attempts at distracting himself. The mess of a canvas from when Jesper had tried to paint for Wylan, all those years ago, eighteen and too young to understand the weight of it. The weight of this.

His powers reached out to them all, now, the room a riot of metal and memory and color, all his hats and all the ledgers from his debts –

Wylan had kept it: all the good things, and the bad.

“I wanted to burn them,” Wylan spoke to him for the first time in weeks. “I wanted to burn it all.”

Jesper took a step inside, his feet leaving footsteps in the dust. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“I broke some of them,” Wylan admitted, staying at the threshold, gaze shifting toward the broken glasses to their right, the shredded fabric, the shattered frames. “But I – I didn’t have anything left.”

When Jesper had left – so quickly he’d terrified even himself – he hadn’t had to time to bring much. He had thought it was for the better: a new start, without all his things, all his memories trapping him. He turned around to face Wylan, now, their past in scattered pieces around them.

Jesper didn’t need any of this. He just needed –

“I would have come home,” Jesper promised again, confession turned into sin, into vice, because even now, he still loved Wylan like an addiction. Like benediction. “I would have come home, if you asked.”

“And you would have resented me for it,” Wylan’s smile was a knife. Jesper wasn’t sure if it was a knife meant to cut Jesper, or himself. Did it matter? Either way, they both hurt.

His powers itched, needing to reach out, crawling beneath his skin, clawing at it. Grisha didn’t get sick: their fevers just burnt through bone, through soul – their powers demanding more than they could give. Wylan couldn’t love again. Not after the sickness. That was fine: Jesper would love him enough for the both of them.

“I already did, a little,” Jesper admitted, because hadn’t Wylan wanted him honest? “I resented you, but I missed you more.”

Wylan studied the floor. Eyes fixed at the distance between them.

“You stayed,” Wylan whispered.

“Do you want me to?”

He had stayed in Ravka for himself, but for Wylan too. He would stay here for himself, and for Wylan too. He owed it to them both to see whatever was left between them through: Wylan wasn’t a debt to be repaid, or a broken thing for Jesper to fix. He was a chance that Jesper wouldn’t let himself lose. Not again.

A strangled noise escaped Wylan, so similar to the cough that Jesper flinched at it –

“I want you to stop hurting,” Wylan said, just as he had all those years ago, when push became shove became fall. And then – “I want to stop hurting.”

Jesper stumbled forward, stumbled closer, pulled into orbit – pulled out of it, until distance became touch and his hand reached for Wylan’s – and Wylan’s reached for his, trembling, trembling, trying.

“I want you to be happy,” Jesper took the words, and made them his own. Made them his wish. “I want to be happy, too.”

Because he was selfish, because he was certain. Because he was trying, too.

#asks #voidtraveller #wesper #six of crows #fic: ammonium nitrate #sorry it took so long to answer i needed to make the scene a little more presentable #originally it was the first few paragraphs + dialogue + a whole bunch of keyboard smashes in capslock #this scene killed me to cut but i couldn't get it to fit into the pacing of the fic #one day you all are going to enable me to write a proper coda to this fic #and i'll thank you for it #no but really thank you it's truly such a compliment to be able to move someone to such feeling #and i'm very honored that you want more of the fic 💙 #also i don't know if you mean desktop or mobile theme #but if desktop then you can go to the little &. symbol on the bottom for a link to the theme download!

[nvcl347]

Writing Reality

Based off of @neoalix's gorgeous Anti illustration here

~

12:13

The clock ticked once... twice... on and on again.

You could smash the thing to bits at any moment by each second that passed. Chances are even if you shattered the thing to its smallest fragment you could you'd still hear the chimes of its mechanisms echo through your head endlessly.

The humming of your computer engine was the worst of it. Touching its side felt like a steaming heated plate of fries. It had been on all day long without even a simple restart. First, it was your mother for work, then your brother for his classes, and finally you. You didn't care either-or. The only thing that was getting on your nerves was the fan inside it attempting to cool it down, which didn't do much but heat it more to even run the fan itself and cause a bunch of nagging noise. Everything else was silent.

Without a doubt, out of all the family, you were the one who stayed up arguably the latest of everyone. It scared them at times, but your work schedule made up for it as your hours tended to be positioned in the afternoon more than in the morning.

In the midst of writing a draft for what was a script for your job, the words began to scramble as you typed rather unnaturally.

"They had no idea what to do at first, staring at the phenomenon with a cold, pale expression."

Suddenly, the screen jittered out for a moment, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it if you will, and the text shifted into completely different dialogue.

"There was nothing they could do, even if they tried... the pair of eyes stared at the creature with a dead look in their rotting soul. They were left for dead."

You blinked a few times, staring blankly at the text in denial. You were just seeing things, right? You must've just accidentally sleep-typed mindlessly for a moment. But why would you write something so dark? Your mindset didn't feel all that negative lately.

You sighed with a tiresome rub of your hand across your head. You really needed to get some rest already. You're seeing things now.

You hastily retyped the text back to how you remember it originally being written, a little dumbfounded as to how it could've possibly occurred. Shaking it off, you continued to type. Your head throbbed, and your eyes didn't feel like they had blinked in hours.

12:35

Enough was enough for you. Every paragraph you wrote was somehow twisted into a vile manuscript that seemed to be written out by a psycho in less than a second after you would press the return bar on your keyboard. It was disturbing some of how the text would transition over, and the process of going over it nearly made you sick at times for what you read. It was about time you went to bed.

You went to close out of your document, clicking the X to shut the window. Strangely, it was grey. You couldn't click out of it.

You cocked your head to the side, trying to minimize the window instead and right-click it to exit the tab. Once again, the option wasn't available.

"Jesus, what the hell is up with this thing?" You slammed the desktop lightly at it's side, causing the screen to flicker momentarily.

Your heart jolted for a moment, regretting your decision to hit the computer shortly after, thinking you nearly could've broken it. What you didn't know, however, was that the flicker of the screen wasn't from you.

You pressed ctrl+S on your keyboard to save the document for later instead, but the saving menu didn't appear. You pressed the combination of keys again, and again. Nothing appeared.

You grit your teeth together in irritation and distress, nearly just wanting to punch a hole through the screen. Why was it that the computer only had problems like this when you were on?

Then, one final click blew the computer screen to a clean sheet of white, the only thing left which the pixels presented to you were the words typed to your document. In shock and dismay, you observed as the cursor actively hovered over your numerous lines of text and deleted it all. Without laying a finger on it, you watched as an invisible force pressed the key combination of ctrl+S on your keyboard. That's when you heard the small ring of your computer emit from it's speaker. It was successfully saved.

Hours of work erased... just like that.

"What the... Wh-what is this!" You stumbled on your words, pushing back in your chair unsteadily.

The keys began typing on their own once again, the text appearing over the screen in pure silence. That's when you noticed the clock wasn't ticking, and the computer was no longer humming; it was off... but the screen wasn't.

12:35

That same line you typed out just a few minutes ago was typed out once again, right before your very eyes.

"They had no idea what to do at first, staring at the phenomenon with a cold, pale expression."

It was talking about you.

The text was deleted, and you were left with a blank, beaming screen of white blinding your eyes. Just as the description noted, you were frozen stiff in fear. You had no clue as to how you should react to this.

Abruptly, a large green hand latched onto the edge of your computer monitor, pulling its entire form out of the white light which illuminated the whole room. You gasped in terror, nearly falling off your chair as the figure's sickening bloodied face appeared before you.

You knew exactly who it was.

"You think you can just get away with leaving me behind by writing out your sorrows on flimsy paper don'cha?" He taunted you in a distorted tone, tilting his head to the side sarcastically.

The red drooping from his eyes made you clinch yourself together. His smile was wide and vicious, flashing with only malicious intent for you.

"Truth be told (Y/N)..." You watched in horror as his other arm reached out from the screen with a bloody blade in-hand.

"... I never left, because your sorrows are just me!" He held his knife to his throat, gently sliding it across the already open wound which was present there.

"What do you want from me!" You shouted at him with a crack in your voice, your hands clammy and throat strained tighter than ever before.

"Oh you idiot, it's not what I want," He raised his red-stained hand towards you with those soulless black eyes piercing through yours.

"It's what you've earned, " He cackled loudly in amusement, echoing across the room endlessly.

His eyes flickered back to their green and blue irises, staring at you with amusement visible in his glare as opposing to your horrified expression in return. Your mouth could barely manage to twitch out a whisper anymore.

"Good luck with that sweet little paper of yours~," He cooed satirically.

"Both you and I know that we best hope it doesn't give me any new ideas; I'm not done with you, " His voice suddenly went into a deep, monotone reverberance.

A white static noise began to fill the air, filling your eardrums painfully as you covered them with your hands as hard as you could. Nothing stopped it from being any quieter.

Your computer screen glitched in and out violently as he laughed his way back into the flashing-white screen. A single tear slid down your face as you shouted aloud for everything to stop.

Then, everything went quiet again, leaving behind only a subtle ringing in your ears.

Your computer screen was back to your document with all of its writing restored. You could now save and close out of the document without a struggle. The computer was also back to cooling itself away again with its boisterous humming as did before. Last, but not least, was the clock. Ticking away once again as time began to stride away through the unsettling night.

12:36

#jacksepticeye #antisepticeye #writing #tumblr exclusive