#im out of things to write

[picklehaube]

doodlesssssss!

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[all-my-ocs-are-evil]

[insert poetic title here]

fun fact: this did not start out as isat fanart

(rambling in tags)

[wonkyjaw]

Quilt update. This is split somewhere in the blues and I have to sew that together and then I have to add one more yellow row to the top. Then the quilt top is finally, finally done.

[illustraice]

someone save alphonse elric and may chang from a very long suffering year

[hinamie]

unconditionally

[abstractfrog]

Happy 1 year anniversary to Mr Sherlock Holmes! Here's a litttleee celebratory comic from me

[lucabyte]

Yeah, that about sums it up.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

personal happiness or what the fuck ever

bonus:

[tommygotwrittenoff]

i literally do not care about big emergencies on abc's 911. i want to see my characters talk to each other and have stories that are parallels to small, everyday (everyday for first responders) emergencies

[dreamsteddie]

Trying to think of a way for Steve to propose to Eddie using a character creation sheet.

I'm thinking it's their aniversery? Steve wants to propose but he wants to do it in a way Eddie will actually love, not some sappy normal proposal that he would tolerate but not choose for himself.

He's always been resistant to playing DnD, doing a couple of one-shots with pre-made characters just so he isn't being dismisive of Eddie's interests. It's not for him, but it's fun to do every now and then with a small group for just a couple of sessions.

He makes the kids all come over when Eddie is working so they can workshop it. Everyone brings character sheets and books and they go though so many trying to get it right. Not sure what exactly it would say, but I know the actual written proposal would be in the Ideals or bonds section with cheesy stuff like "weak for big, brown eyes" in the faults section, a ring in the equipment, and Race: Lover Boy, Class: Fiance?

Anyway, I just think it would be cute, and I know Eddie would swoon and have it framed and literally never shut up about it.

[keferon]

Two Peas in a Pod: part 4/?

Hopefully the dialog isn't confusing.

______________________________

"Still dizzy?" 

"Not really," Jazz answered with a comfortable smile, though stole a quick glance over to the gate. The first since Blaster had arrived for the morning routine. The other mer wasn't awake yet last he saw, but he was shifting more. The medication had obviously long worn off by now, but Jazz still hoped they weren't in too much pain. 

But Blaster noticed and it prompted him to pause his checks to ask, "did he wake up last night?" 

"Kinda? He could have been talking in his sleep though." 

"Hm, there's a good chance he'll be up soon, then." 

Jazz's expression of his usual cheerfulness shifted, just slightly and if it had been anyone other than Blaster, they would have missed it. He flipped the clipboard over in his lap and rested his elbows against his crossed legs. 

"You're nervous," Blaster pointed out gently and gave Jazz an encouraging smile. "Is this about their injuries, or is this about making a friend?" 

The mer's face soured and he looked away. "I thought I wasn't supposed to ask." 

"That was about the gate, and I'm sorry about that." It was just the two of them on the pier, but Blaster still practised a surveying sweep of the area with what looked like stretching. Then with a lower voice, he continued, "The Vet Chief wanted to fully isolate them from you, to keep them in a transfer-crate, at least until the injuries had a low risk of reopening. I argued that it would put them under a lot of undue stress, and you because you knew the Mer was here. Which is part of why it took so long for–" 

"–and it's fine to say this now?" Jazz snapped and turned back to him with a small scowl. 

"Jazz, how many staff members were in your area yesterday? When we talked about the gate?" 

He paused, trying to recall. Blaster was with him and the group that went into the bay had five… seven? 

"There was thirteen, Jazz," he supplied, knowing that any answer coming would be incorrect. It was a lot of people, and with Blaster already known for making waves on the regular, the sudden addition had eyes and ears on him. That, and because he had fought so hard against the 'great idea' brought up in the first meeting after emergency treatment had ended. "You didn't even clock the vet on standby at the pier entrance." 

Jazz huffed and laid out flat, resting his chin on his crossed arms. Okay, so he wasn’t paying attention to who was around. "Then what is it about the gate? I get the bit about climbing the walls, but…" 

"That one is on me, I was – am – being overly cautious. Not of you, but of others misunderstanding your excitement or anxiety as aggression. And I know how persistent you can be when something catches your interest. But that's not the point, what is, is that if the team reports you showing signs of aggression, they'll… remove him." 

Now looking worried, Jazz glanced from Blaster to the gate. "But what if he shows aggression?" 

"We're expecting that, at least at first." Blaster wanted to reassure him, but there were still too many unknown variables. "Unknown place with an unfamiliar face, and likely limited communication. There is bound to be backlash." 

Jazz looked down with an expression of growing despair, before dropping his face against his arms. His words muffled, "so whether he stays or not depends on me being able to talk with him." 

Blaster reached out and placed his hand on the orca's shoulder. "Listen, buddy, this might be hard to hear. But let me explain, okay? … So far it looks like there are no issues and the current plan is to have him released once he recovers." As he feels Jazz tense, Blaster frowns in understanding and begins to rub his shoulder to comfort him. "There is only one reason that the aquarium wouldn't go through with it, and honestly, I don't want that to happen. It's all sorts of fucked up and would only make things worse– but I don't want you to distance yourself from him. I want you to try and befriend him." 

"… why," Jazz asked weakly, cursing him for telling him the truth – for reminding him of the truth – for breaking his small piece of hope of not being alone anymore. If he was going to be taken away, if he was just going to lose him no matter what, then it would hurt less if he just ignored him. 

All sorts of answers bounce around in Blaster's mind. From wishful thinking – because I want you to go with him. To long term goals – anything we could learn could help Mers everywhere. But he settled on as close to the truth as he could. "Because I'm trying to make sure that no matter what happens, it's the best result for both of you. But I can't do that if the two of you can't at least work together. So, I'm asking you to try." 

"Right," because he doesn't need to be kept here to survive… he just needs time to heal. Where I – "–right. Okay, I'll try… but where do I even start?" Jazz took a deep breath to compose himself before he lifted his head. 

"Well, why don't we see if sleepy-head is waking up? Maybe he'd like breakfast." Blaster offered, first with a reassuring smile, but then twisted it into something more mischievous. "And maybe you could find out if he's got a beautiful name, too." 

It took a second to realize what Blaster was getting at, and for the first time in his life Jazz felt bashful. "W-what are you talking about?" He hid it terribly. 

"He's beautiful~" he whispered dramatically, and Blaster learned that mers could in fact blush. 

— 

When Blaster left to get food for the wild mer, Jazz calmly made his way over to the view port. Only to be taken by surprise, he was looking directly at Jazz. Though, glaring, might be more accurate with how his face was pulled tight with focus and the sheer intensity of his stare. 

But otherwise, they were completely calm. Jazz wasn't sure if that was a good sign or bad. Yet, it didn't stop his nervous excitement from returning. He waved with one of his best smiles – one without teeth – and greeted him with a friendly, "hello!" 

What he got in return was a slightly more intense furrowing of their brow – irritation or confusion? 

"Oh! Sorry, habit." Jazz switched to mer. {Hi!} 

The tension didn't leave his face, but there was slight movement and, again, Jazz didn't know how to interpret that. But he did answer, {||၊|။||||•။၊|။|။|၊|။||၊၊၊|?} 

"Uh…" Yep, didn't understand any of that. 

Then the door opened on the edge behind them and Jazz for a moment thought that it would startle the wild mer. But they didn't even flinch. And while their eyes remained on him, Jazz was fairly sure now that they had been using their sonar to track the human's movement. 

"Are they still asleep?" Blaster asked, puzzled. 

"Nope, very much awake." He shifted lower to try and get more than the man's boots in his sight. 

"Ah…" He sounded uneasy and began to make small careful steps around the edge closer to Jazz while he spoke as calmly as possible. "Well, I'm going to keep talking, just so you don't think I'm trying to sneak up on you." 

When he reached the point where he was straight across from the wild mer, they lifted their head to turn their glare on the human. Blaster to his credit did not flinch, but he did freeze. "Whoa– that's – wow, t-that's quite the look." 

A series of slow clicks came from them, but their lips did not move. Jazz didn't think it was echo-speak, as it reminded him of his own searching clicks when he was trying to get a better picture. "Oh! I think he's trying to see what you have." 

The wild mer glanced to Jazz, becoming silent once more before looking back up at Blaster. 

"Fair enough, alright new buddy, I'm going to be real slow about it okay?" Back to narrating his actions calmly as he knelt down. Showing the long pole with a thin, blunt hook, "just an arm I don't mind losing if you decide that you don't like the breakfast I brought," and poured out the fish from the bucket. 

Still the wild mer glared, unblinking and watching every little movement. 

"Okay… I'm not sure what to make of this, so far everything has been nothing like previous encounters." 

"Ya, didn't you say he'd be freaking out?" 

"You got anything to calm or reassure our new buddy here that I ain't going to hurt him?" Blaster was doing his absolute best at trying to remain calm, but even his hands were starting to tremble under the pressure the wild mer was giving him. He wasn't even moving, just watching, but it felt like the human was being stalked. 

Honestly, Blaster was probably one bad move from being lunged at. Though, if that was the case, he had maybe one chance to get away. The hammock would throw him off on the first strike, the supports could probably take two or four hard thrashings before it snapped under the mer's strength. Injuries be damned, this mer was in peak physical condition. 

Jazz gave a small chirp to try and gain the other's attention, and failed, but continued with trying to talk. {It's okay, you're safe.} 

He was given a very tiny dip of his finial facing the gate – a tell that he had heard him? 

{You're safe,} Jazz repeated. 

The mer didn't look away, but he did at least respond. {•၊၊|•|၊|။။၊|။•|||။||||။၊|။•၊၊||၊|။||||။•၊|။•၊၊||၊|။||||။၊|။•} Though, far too fast for Jazz attempt to understand. 

"I'm hoping you two are talking about your favourite fish." Blaster joked to cover his nervousness. 

Jazz sighed and admitted the truth, "I haven't a clue to what they're talking about…" 

"Just let me know if I should run, kay?" He shifted slowly on his knees, trying to find a comfortable spot without making himself too vulnerable. 

But Jazz hadn't given up yet. {Hungry?} He tried instead. 

More chirps and clicking that didn't translate. 

{Hungry? Yes? No?} 

The heavy huff that came from them caused Blaster to flinch, but the mer finally focused on Jazz. There was clear irritation in their face now on top of glaring. And the damns broke, he started ranting at him loudly. 

"Hey, don't yell at me, I'm trying okay!?" Jazz glared back, not backing down. Though wasn't all that intimidating with him just having a little porthole to look through. 

"Jazz, buddy, please don't aggravate him." He, after all, was the one in the room with the wild mer. 

"He fuckn' started it!" 

Silence came quickly as the wild mer plunked his face into the soft floaty that had been his pillow. Blaster would have found it utterly hilarious if not fearing for his life currently. With another heavy and long huff, the wild mer looked back at Jazz, still glaring, but slightly less than before. {•|||။||||။၊|။•၊၊||၊|။? Yes? No?} 

Jazz blinked at him for a moment, depending on the question, no could be a yes. {No…?} He answered tentatively instead. 

{It's safe? Yes? No?} And he pointed his nose towards Blaster briefly, but clearly wasn't happy about it. 

{Yes!} Jazz nodded vigorously and smiled for extra encouragement. Out of all the staff, Blaster was safe, Jazz held some trust in the human after all. {[Blaster] safe.} 

"What about me?" 

"He asked if you're safe and I told him you were. Relax a bit or something to show him." 

Easier said than done. Blaster cursed, but did his best to ease the tension from his shoulders and smile a little. Even, daring to slowly lift a hand to wave. 

The mer did not seem convinced, but his glare lessened some more and looked over the human with more curiosity than before. 

{Hungry? Yes? No?} Jazz tried again. 

There was a long pause, but they sighed and answered. {… yes.} 

"Progress!" He cheered and then stuck his hand through the little window. "Blaster, hand me one of the fish. He's hungry, but I have a feeling that he'll trust you more if he sees me eat what you have." 

"Okay." He made sure that it was clear as possible what his intentions were. Taking a fish under the gills, Blaster looped the blunt hook in and out the mouth. Then, very slowly, began to feed the length of the pole towards Jazz's waiting hand. Once Jazz felt the tail touch his palm, he grabbed it and waited until Blaster twisted enough for the fish to slip free. Then the pole was just as slowly drawn back. 

The whole time the wild mer watching the exchange intensely. 

Jazz pulled the fish over to his side, chirped for the other's attention before he swallowed it whole. Smiling once more as he said, {safe.} 

Blaster had to admit, he was surprised when the mer shifted slightly in the hammock, and then cautiously held out his right hand. The glare never left, but this one felt like a threat, that if he messed this chance up, there would not be another. 

Though this was the first time Jazz had been able to see any of his injuries. The colourful tape-bandages almost covered every inch of his skin from his hand up to his bicep. It reminded him that just yesterday he had been mortally wounded. Which was probably a key reason the wild mer seemed so calm, they had only started to recover and every action was either painful or exhausting. Likely both.

Jazz watched closely as Blaster went through all the careful steps as he had with Jazz and held the fish out. The only difference, was that the human's grip was loose, just in case the wild mer decided to try and yank him into the water with it. But they didn't, doing exactly as they saw before, allowing Blaster to release the fish and retreat. The whole process was so slow that the wild mer's arm started to shake from being held out. 

But both Jazz and Blaster let out a breath of relief as there had been no backlash. 

He eyed the fish in his grip with a mild sneer before he swallowed it and then held out his shaky hand for another. It was clear that the pain was getting to him, but nothing in his expression showed weakness. 

The feeding got easier and quicker as Blaster relaxed a bit, not fearing that a normal pace would come off as threatening to the wild mer. 

When the shaking got bad enough, the mer rested his arm back in the hammock, but kept his eyes on the remaining fish. As if to convey he wasn't finished, just needed a break. Blaster was more than happy to comply and gave him a few praises, even if they didn't understand. 

"Hey," Jazz called gently, chirping for the other's attention. He waited until they looked his way, then pointed at himself. "Jazz," and then to the human, "Blaster," and back to himself once more, "Jazz," before pointing to the other mer with a questioning tilt of his head. He hoped it was clear what he was asking for. 

When the silence stretched on for a bit, the human also joined in. "Blaster," to himself and to his mer, "Jazz." 

There was a brief moment that Jazz could see that they were working over something, opening their mouth a few times before the sound of a sharp zip came out. "… 'tzz?" 

Jazz snorted, before breaking into a few chuckles. "Ya, missing the Ja, but you'll get there. I'm Jazz." He placed a hand over his heart. 

The gesture was reflected, {•၊||၊။} 

It was his turn to try and work out the sound in his head. Jazz tried the word out soundlessly on his tongue once. It was like a popping roll? {•၊||၊၊၊၊၊?} 

{•၊||၊။} they repeated, firmly correcting him. 

"Nice to meet ya, {•၊||၊၊၊၊၊}!" While the mer scowled at him for not even trying to fix his pronunciation, Jazz just smiled brightly.  

"So... what is his name?" Blaster asked for a translation, very interested in the development between them.  

Jazz laughed, "I have no idea." 

______________________________

Don't ask about my attempt to make sound-wave-like-text, it's gibberish, lol, and going forward only •၊||၊။ (Prowl) & •၊||၊၊၊၊၊ (Prowler) will be used until Jazz has a English (common?) name to attach an understanding to.

Keferon, I just wanted to say that every comment or tag you leave on the fic is like serotonin being injected into my veins. Every silly little image is like rolling down a grassy hill in the warm sun while I laugh with manic joy. When you add art, it's like an adrenaline shot to the heart that makes me want to run across the globe just to frantically wave hello with both hands, give you a hug and run back to get started on the next part.

And the next part will be Prowl joining Jazz in the main pool and Jazz learning just how fast he is, even while injured. >:)c

-GLC

𓆝 Previous 𓆟 Next

---------------------

Me looking in my inbox and seeing that there's two peas in a po

Odjndgdjdkfhdkm PLEASE. Blaster is so nervous EVERYONE IS SO NERVOUS Ooohhhnooo he's gonna freak out and kill everything he can reach oh no we all know how all those wild stupid creatures are oh no watch out While Prowl is trying to blow their pancakes with mind

And I juswannasay I love it so much ehehejgknfbfkdn THE SOUND WAVE SPEACH? I LOVE THE LOOK OF IT EHEHEH

Always a big fan of creative ways of showing imaginary languages. This thing?? ||ll•|Il It looks hella stylish >:O

Aaannnndd I got excited and made some art hehe

[inkskinned]

we were sitting on the floor and i was cutting out tiny pictures to make a collage for a friend's birthday. you were on your phone and you laughed about something, and i was still in love with you then, so i asked what had you giggling.

"sorry. i was just..." you took a moment and went back to texting. "i was telling someone about how you're afraid of the dark."

i'm afraid of the dark because something bad happened. "oh." i felt a little slinky of shame crawl down my throat.

you glanced up, and maybe it showed on my face, because you rolled your eyes and held the phone to the side casually so i could see the group chat. "what? was it a secret?"

i looked down to the scissors in my hand. "i just..." no, it's not a secret. it just felt like something private, something serious. saying why would you tell someone that just feels like an accusation. it's unfair. i honestly am not even ashamed of it, it's just a fact about my person that i don't usually share.

what a strange experience. is this a human thing or a generational thing? for our grandparents: did they need to worry about how quickly someone can just... share your personal information? again, i didn't even really have a true objection. what could i say? i want any person in my life to feel they can be honest with their friends. it's not like i said don't tell anyone this.

i cut out another letter to complete the rainbow happy birthday, started hunting for the exclamation mark. i heard you sigh dramatically.

"don't make a big deal about this," you said.

this entire conversation was a pattern for us, and this was when we got to my least favorite part of the pattern. i would get my feelings hurt in some oblique not-technically-terrible way, and then it would be making a big deal about something. you'd get frustrated for me for being soft, but i was born soft. you knew i was soft when you pierced me. it's one of the things that made controlling me so easy.

"i'm not," i felt my voice crack. the question came without my wanting. "why are you guys talking about me?" and why are you saying that thing? why not like - i'm telling them how you're generous and kind and pretty.

you let out this low, tragic groan. "oh my god." you tossed the phone away from your body. "there, see? i just won't talk to them if you don't like it."

the rest of the hour went the way it always went, between us: i said i don't actually mind if you talk to your friends but -, you found a way to call my minor expression of discomfort "being dramatic." you got upset that i had been offended. i ended up apologizing, even though i hadn't actually done anything.

afterwards, you picked up the phone again. after texting for a little bit, you snorted. "okay," you said, "but it is kind of funny you're afraid of the dark. i mean, when you think about it."

[dishwasher09]

and they were narrative foils (oh my god they were narrative foils)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW WHAT LES MIS I WILL CRY IF THE REFERENCE GOES OVER EVERYONE'S HEAD AGAIN PLEASE anywau kunizai as enjolras and grantaire,,, yayyyy

[bunnieswithknives]

Thanks.

Prev

[emmg]

It is no hardship, Emmrich tells himself, to wear his face. It is his, after all. The one he was born with, the one that grew and shifted under his own patient gaze, seen in puddles, in mirrors, in the glass of a carriage window as he smoothed down his hair with the flat of his palm. A face he had stared at for far too long that first time he shaved, and again a few years later when he invited that very pretty boy out for a promenade and wanted, with all the force of a young man’s vanity, to be just as pretty himself—no hair astray, the kohl at his lower lids an almost imperceptible shadow, the perfume at his neck a whisper of carelessness, though in truth, nothing had ever been more deliberate.

For a decade now, they have called him distinguished. Before that, they called him handsome. He knows his face, likes his face. Its summoning should be no trouble at all; especially now, especially like this, stripped down to something more elemental, all ivory angles and nothing more. But Rook is uneasy. She does not say so—she is all sorry, shit, don’t mind me, fuck, fuck, I’ll get used to it, I’ll get used to it—but she is not made for the sight of bone in the dark when she wakes abruptly. He has had years to come to terms with the unmaking of his flesh. She has not.

So he does not miss his face, not really. But Rook does. And for Rook, he will pretend. 

No, he tells himself again, he does not mind. He does not. 

Lichdom, as he had once explained to her, sanded down most of his senses. Blunted them, rubbed them smooth. But in their place, others have surfaced. Senses without names, without proper edges, ones that slip through language like smoke through a cracked door. He cannot smell the perfume she wears, though he knows it is dreadful, some sticky, saccharine thing she bought in Treviso with Lucanis and spilled all over her shirt. But he can see her pleasure when she presses a little figurine into his palm, triumphant and insistent. This one, she affirms, is so much prettier than the first, and most importantly, not haunted. 

He watches her giddiness churn inside her, thick and writhing. It is purple, inexplicably. It loops and knots, wriggling sideways, swelling through her veins, a restless thing. It coils, slippery, around her heart before pouring from her mouth when she speaks. When she presses her lips to what passes for his cheek, he thinks he can taste it. Or something like tasting. As if she had chewed it to a pulp, crushed it between her molars, worked it down to something fibrous and wet and pressed it into him, like carrion slipped between teeth, offered as a gift. 

He swallows it, slow. 

Perhaps this is what purple has always tasted like. 

There are other things. Other feelings. They arrive misshapen, crawling over the edges of his thoughts, curious, pestering, impossible to ignore. They perplex him. They amuse him. And sometimes—sometimes—he wishes he felt nothing at all.

Like when she cuts herself, and he watches the blood spill, a slow, indifferent line along the curve of her arm. But it is not blood, not in the dull, medical sense. Not something as pedestrian as iron and salt. It is a ribbon, impossibly red, and he can see the rest of it coiled inside her, packed neatly away, waiting to be tugged. How much could he pull free before she wavers, before her lips lose their color, before the bright, stubborn thing inside her gutters out? 

He heals her arm. Does not look at her when he does it. Says nothing of consequence. 

But he wants to take that ribbon and wind it around her wrist, knot it, twist it, pull it so tight that it ceases to be a ribbon at all. Flesh yielding to pressure, pressure forcing permanence. A bracelet of skin. A smooth, bloodless seam. A correction. 

Rook thanks him. A glance, a nod—already half-gone as she turns toward Rivain. There are things to be done there for her, and he cannot stray from the Necropolis for long. What things, exactly, she does not say, but he knows their shape well enough: dragons, impulse, the peculiar magnetism of disaster. She has always been like this, drawn to the spectacularly unwise with the certainty of a moth misjudging distance. 

He can no longer follow. 

She will return. He knows this. And yet, if his hands still possessed the capacity for tremor, he suspects they would betray him now. 

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she sings, a careless, looping refrain, a child’s chant repurposed for a woman who has never quite learned to tread lightly. She chatters as she moves; this and that, something or other, a bad decision or three. She shows him rings, delicate and stolen, lifted from a dragon’s hoard, then tells him of a strange mug found in the same place and promptly lost to someone forgettable in a game of cards. 

"Look, look," she says, because excitement makes her redundant. "I kept these for you." 

The rings slide onto his fingers—bandaged, skeletal, indifferent to the distinction. He flexes them. Smiles, because each one carries an emerald, and green has always pleased him. 

"I was meaning to ask you," Rook says. She is still holding his hand, turning it gently in her own, left, right, right, left, as though testing whether it is truly there. "You are smiling now." 

"I am." 

"Don’t interrupt me." 

"My deepest apologies." 

"It was a joke," she says, but absently, without weight. Then, again, softer: "You are smiling now. But is it real? Or do I see a smile only because I expect to? Because I believe it should be there?" 

"It is quite real," he reassures her, lifting his free hand, brushing two fingers against her cheek. "The glamour does not fabricate emotions. It is a projection, not an invention. A polished pane of glass through which I am seen, rather than a mask obscuring what lies beneath. It filters nothing. It simply allows you to perceive what is still there, as it was." 

She exhales. He watches it unfurl from her mouth, a slip of breath that curls, dissipates, wrapped in green. Relief, perhaps. 

"Good," she murmurs. "That is good." 

There are things he misses more than others. Some he had not expected to mourn, believing that lichdom would cauterize the want before it could take shape. And perhaps it would have, if not for Rook. But she exists, unavoidably, and so the loss takes shape, outlines itself, defines itself against the hollow places she touches. 

The intimacy of the body: its mechanics, its heat, its crude and glorious simplicity. He misses the way skin clings, damp and sticky, the tack of sweat drying between them. The way lips grow chapped from too much kissing, saliva sapped away until the skin cracks, until the next kiss stings. He misses the raw and graceless rhythm of it, the press of her thighs around him, the slow loss of self in the churn of it all. He misses the way he could press his palm to her stomach, still sheathed within her, and feel himself there, caged by her. 

And afterward, in the languid sprawl of spent nerves and loose limbs, the way his mind would wander, taking him by the hand, showing him its little fantasies, its secreted-away indulgences—let us get married, Rook, I will buy you so much gold, let’s get married, yes, and then let’s have a child, but not immediately, not at once, let’s linger here a while, let’s lose ourselves in this, let’s glut ourselves on one another until we are utterly ruined by it, and then, yes, then, we will have that little thing.

Now, he feels her differently. Not through skin but through something more fundamental, a closeness that eclipses anything flesh ever allowed. It is fuller, sharper, deeper than anything he could have imagined. 

But it is not the same. 

And he does not yet know if he prefers it. 

Time, as always, will decide. 

Pleasure has not abandoned him. It has only changed its nature, its source, its means of arrival. Now, it exists solely through her. He sees, now, how men dissolve into drink, into smoke, into whatever tincture delivers them to sensation. The body remembers its peaks; the body conspires to reach them again. 

"Will you come for me, darling girl?" he murmurs against her ear, his fingers curling inside her as they have done so many times before—when his hands were warm, when they ceased to be. 

And she does what she always does: she writhes, she gasps, she laughs, she moves against him with the helpless, thoughtless grace of something yielding to gravity. Her hips chase the friction, her mouth parts, her breath hitches, her lashes lower, heavy with pleasure. And he—he is there inside her, feeling it as she feels it, tasting it in a way that has nothing to do with taste, swallowing it down, letting it course through him. It is vast. It is staggering. Pleasure enough for two, for more than two, enough to fill the space where he no longer exists. 

Afterward, she is breathless, boneless, staring up at the ceiling and laughing that strange, impossible laugh. He no longer tries to make sense of it. Some things cannot be translated. She has a laugh for anger, a laugh for excitement, a laugh for surprise. He thinks he knows this one well enough by now, the one that trickles out of her in the aftermath. 

A trick, an echo, the imitation of a thing once real. He kisses her where he would have kissed her once—her mouth, the sharp ridge of her collarbone, the small curve of her breast, except now there is no heat, no wet drag of a tongue, no parted lips. Only the careful architecture of a spell, a memory sculpted into sensation, something just close enough to pass for real. He trails lower, following the old pathways, the ones his hands remember even if they are no longer the same. 

She sighs. Again. Again. Another time. 

He lingers where she yields the most, where she is all pulse and warmth, where her thighs, slick and trembling, part for him before he even touches her. Where breath quickens and thought slips away. And through it, he drinks. Draws from her as he always does, as he must, in ways he does not fully understand, or perhaps does, but has decided against understanding. He takes until she is weightless, drifting, until her voice emerges in that low, drowsy enough, enough, until she exhales, unconscious of herself, shifting, turning into him, her cheek settling against his shoulder, her body already gone to sleep.

And he wonders—if he did not stop, could he empty her? 

What is it that they share, exactly? What does she give? What does he take? Is it taking at all? Perhaps she is feeding from him just as he feeds from her.

He could ask. He could go looking for the answer. It is what he has done his entire life. 

But he does not. Because the answer, whatever it may be, does not matter. Because, at his core, he knows this much to be true: 

He is an empty thing now. 

And all empty things must be filled. 

It is a dreadful experience, watching her get hurt. Dreadful in its predictability, in the casual inevitability of it. Rook, as he has come to understand, is the sort of person who leaps from a cliff first and wonders, mid-air, whether there was perhaps a gentler way down.  

He saw it in Hossberg—how she, in some fit of blind fury over a slight he can no longer remember, kicked a blight boil with all the grace of a petulant child, only for the thing to rupture, spraying its filth over her boots, her legs, her hands, her face. Later, when he spat out his anger—you could have infected yourself, and then what? Where would the Veilguard be without their leader?—she had, without hesitation, lifted her middle finger and held it aloft, like a banner, like a flag planted firmly into the dirt, a gesture so profoundly Rook that it settled the argument before it could begin.

She returns from Rivain with a sprained wrist and, predictably, does not acknowledge it until he gestures toward it, a quiet inquiry rather than an accusation. 

So he buys her things. Things with weight, with shimmer, with the ability to distract. A bottle of wine she favors, a dress the precise shade of blue that once made her pause in front of a shop window, jewelry that catches light and throws it back in a thousand fractured directions. Loud things, bright things, expensive things. The kind of things a magpie would die over. Because Rook—misnamed, mislabeled—is no rook at all, no solemn, shrewd thing perching in the rafters. She is a magpie, ever in pursuit of the next gleaming fragment, the brightest piece of a broken world. That is why she is away, isn’t it? Always away. Always chasing.

But Nevarra has more gold than the Rivaini coast. 

He wants to say—won’t you stay? Won’t you, at last, stay longer? But there is something perilous in the asking. The wrong phrasing, the wrong weight to his voice, and she will fold up like a map, unreadable, distant, already turning toward the door.

She lifts a necklace, lets it spill through her fingers, a thin chain pooling in her palm. "Ooooh," she hums. "What’s the occasion?" 

"I have missed you terribly," he says. "You were away too long." 

"I missed you too." 

"Then stay. My townhouse is yours, of course. It is in the heart of the city—" 

"But you won’t be there," she interrupts, without sharpness, without accusation. A simple statement of fact. "You’ll be in the Necropolis."

"Then stay with me in the Necropolis," he says, more softly. 

She looks at him. Long enough for him to grow aware of the silence. Long enough for him to think he ought to say something more, to fill the space with some innocuous remark, something to break the weight of it—a comment on the weather, the slow drip of rain against the windowpanes, the scent of damp stone, the candlelight shifting across her cheek, the peeling corner of the wallpaper he has been meaning to mend but never does. 

Then, at last, in a whisper, as if she is considering each word before releasing it: 

"I'm trying." 

A breath. 

"I'm really, really trying. I love you so much. This frightens me, but I love you, and I'll stay longer, I promise, and you needn’t hide your face, no, no, you can stop hiding it now, but it is so terribly cold here, and I can smell the bones, Emmrich, did you know one can smell bones?" 

Senseless, rambling little words, leaving her mouth with no regard for order, no real expectation of being understood. He listens anyway. He nods as if these words, specifically, are the ones he has been waiting to hear. He holds her hands, pressing his fingers lightly over hers, as though reacquainting himself with the shape of them, the bones beneath the skin. And this time—this time—she stays.

He does not move. Does not speak. Instead, he lets the moment settle around him, lets it press in from all sides, cautious and weightless, as if sudden motion might send it scattering. A trick of the mind, surely, nothing more than habit, the vestigial longing of a body that no longer exists. And yet—something, something faint and absurd and wholly impossible—something like warmth uncoils in the vacant spaces of him, and for the first time in too long, he allows himself to believe in the illusion. 

And he is happy, so terribly, foolishly happy, until she steps where a step should have been, onto stone that no longer exists, because the Necropolis, fickle and treacherous as ever, decides to shift beneath her. One moment she is there, cursing the cold, flicking dust from her sleeve, and the next she is gone, swallowed into the dark, falling before he can reach for her. Then—impact, the sound of something snapping, something that should not snap. 

"Oh, for fuck’s sake," she spits, voice sharp with pain, her frustration seething through clenched teeth. "I hate this fucking place. This miserable, shifting, plague-ridden, necrophiliac fucking mausoleum. This—" she swallows, gasps, rage momentarily overtaken by the white-hot shock of agony, then forces the words out, savage and breathless—"this godsdamned, dusty, corpse-stinking labyrinth of a tomb. Fuck this place. Fuck you for living in it. Fuck this floor for moving. Fuck my fucking leg." 

She hisses even as she cries, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to will the hurt out of her body. He sees, at last, what has happened. A break, and not a clean one: bone slick and white against torn skin, jutting through muscle, her blood already thickening where it pools on the stone. 

And then—something strange. A pull, an unraveling, something unwinding before him, leading away. The ribbon again, unspooling, slipping from her, stretching outward, as though guiding him somewhere he does not wish to go. His vision narrows. He follows it. He follows it because he cannot help but follow it. 

"Emmrich?" Her voice has changed. The heat is gone, as is the anger. She sounds uncertain now. She sounds concerned. "Emmrich, are you—?" 

But he is looking at the ribbon. Watching where it leads. Watching where it ends. 

And he would weep if he could. 

He has spent his life in a state of want, always reaching, always grasping, always aching to be something necessary to someone. And now—now, at last—he has what he has longed for. Rook, quick and wild and untouchable. Rook, who was born lovely and careless and beautiful, who could have wrapped herself around anyone she pleased but chose, instead, him—old and grey, and then, simply, bone. Rook, with her hands always outstretched, her eyes always searching, who once told him, so offhandedly he almost believed she didn’t mean it, that she would have given him a child.

Now—now, she sits before him, cursing under her breath, her leg twisted, her blood sliding across the stone, and he understands, too suddenly, too clearly, that he cannot keep her. 

One day, that ribbon will slip from her entirely. 

And he will be wanting again, except this time, there will be no remedy, no second chance, no indulgence to dull the ache. 

Because she—she—the only thing that has ever fit the hollow inside him, will be gone.

A year. Ten. Twenty. Perhaps less. Perhaps more. 

She will be gone. 

Gone, gone, gone. 

"It will not break again," he tells her.

"Really?" she asks, pale from hurt.

"Truly."

He stands, glances over the chamber, and selects a sconce, its veilfire guttering weakly within its iron frame. He snuffs it out with a flick of his wrist, wrenches the metal free from the wall, and lets it sag into liquid in his palm. The Necropolis will not miss it. It devours offerings every day; what is one more? The molten iron shifts, pulses, rolls like living mercury as he shapes it between his fingers. She watches, suspicious, wary, but when he takes the pain from her, she sighs, slackens, her body a thing that yields, a thing that trusts. 

Bone is simple. A structure, a framework. Break it, mend it, break it again. He has done this before, he will do it again, and the body always obeys in the end. With a slow push, he sets her leg back into place. Crack, crack, crack—shattered edges realign, splinters withdraw, raw ends fuse like wax pressed to wax. He sees the place where the bone has chewed its way free, white and wet against the torn meat of her calf. 

He presses his fingers into the wound, past the sealing skin. The iron above them stirs at his will, stretching like a cat in the air before obeying, flowing down, clinging to the surface of the bone. Not inside it, no. That would be crude, inelegant. Instead, it forms a layer, thin but solid, a second skeleton over the first. It cools as it settles, solidifies, binds itself to her as if it had always belonged there. He guides it lower, shaping it over her tibia, letting it follow the curve of her ankle, turning his wrist slightly to direct it sideways, until the fibula is covered as well, safe beneath its new armor. There.

The final shreds of her wound pull themselves shut, sealing over his work, concealing what has been done. 

She shifts her foot, tilting her head, considering. "Oh," she says. "I suppose I'll be heavier now." 

He kisses her cheek and feels the faint shift of muscle beneath his lips, the small, secret curve of her smile. This time, for once, her happiness has no color. Not gold, not red, not that strange, shimmering violet he sometimes sees curling from her ribs. Just happiness, unembellished, undisturbed. And because she feels it, he believes it, and because he believes it, he takes it for himself, drawing her close.

"I am so, so happy that you are safe," he hears himself say, a confession with no real shape, a drunken speech without the mercy of intoxication. "I worry when you are gone, and I worry when you are here. It seems that no matter what I do, something always finds you first." 

She hums, arms looping around him, her fingers idly mapping the planes of his back, tracing aimless patterns into the fabric of his robes. "I don’t know what to say to that," she admits, her voice softened by exhaustion, by the slow retreat of pain. "But I am so, so happy with you too. And it’s all right, it’s all right. Every time I break, you can repair me." She pauses, then adds, utterly deadpan, "Guess that makes you my skele-tonic."

It is an objectively terrible pun. 

"Until you stop breaking altogether," he murmurs. 

Another hum, vague, thoughtless. 

He draws from her as he always does: pleasure, warmth, something deeper, something without a name, though it must have one, must have been cataloged somewhere, written down by some scholar who spent his life studying things that could not be grasped. He has never fully understood what it is he takes, only that it belongs to her, and that, by some quiet, unspoken permission, it is his as well. He wants to love her forever. But more than that, he wants to ensure that forever remains within reach, that it does not remain, as so many things have, just outside his grasp, dissolving the moment he closes his fist. 

He has spent too long watching what he yearned for unravel before he could fasten it down. This, he will not allow. It will take gold, it will take iron, it will take something far stronger, something absolute. Until she ceases to break. Until breaking is no longer a possibility, a concept, a word that has anything to do with her. 

He does not yet know how. But he has time—too much of it. More than she does. And he has always been a man of precision, of hypothesis and proof, of elegant solutions to insufferable problems. He will find a way. Through metal or magic, through that ribbon of red that keeps slipping from her, unspooling itself in slow increments, always trying to get away. He will take it, force it back into place, stitch it to the marrow, fix it with something incorruptible, something permanent, something that cannot be unwound without unmaking her in the process. 

He presses a kiss to her temple, then to her forehead, and speaks of flowers. The new blooms in the Memorial Gardens. Hideous, by all accounts. She will adore them. She appreciates beauty, certainly, but she loves foolishness even more. He kisses her cheek, the tip of her nose, her small, stubborn chin, and feels it again—that bright, quiet thing. Happiness. 

And, miraculously, when he takes a piece for himself, it does not feel stolen. 

"Enough, enough," she murmurs at last, the same word twice, as she always does when she needs a break from him, when she has given too much, when she feels him pulling, drinking, taking in excess without meaning to. Laughter ghosts beneath the words, thin but present, a reminder that she is still here, still whole. She taps his wrist with two fingers, light, quick, final—a gesture that, for all its carelessness, feels uncannily like closing a book.