#Leave This Song Behind

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

ok so. forgive me for a second but i've been abnormal about skizz and ren since the hiatus between third life and last life and holy shit this season is already not helping.

let's talk about skizz, ren, undying loyalty, and golden apples, shall we?

so the thing that you need to understand about skizz is that he is loyal to a fault. impulse literally says this exact thing about him in limited life, and skizz himself says himself: "you know me and my factions, i never turn." the second thing is that the first person their loyalty manifests for in third life is ren. he and ren run into each other on the second night when ren is getting accosted by mobs outside skizz's door and skizz gives him a place to stay the night. ren decides to trade skizz for his leather, for the upcoming enchanting buisness, and gives skizz a golden apple in exchange. skizz thinks this is wildly more than he deserves but is very thankful. skizz doesn't say it here, but this is the moment he swears his loyalty to ren.

throughout third life, he is willing to do or get basically anything for ren. the two of them literally die together to the tnt trap. when ren dies on the alter and everyone thinks martyn betrayed him, skizz is the first person to get there in the morning. he's in half broken gold armor and borrowed tools from bigb and he still tells ren "get behind me", still tries to protect him from martyn. when skizz is on red, he goes a bit crazy, but he channels that bloodlust into protecting ren. he kills jimmy in the red desert, he kills cleo when she tries to attack ren, he chases down impulse when he betrays dogwarts and dies trying to kill him.

when skizz dies in third life, he's got an unused golden apple in his hotbar. after he dies, he remembers the first time he met ren, etho, and martyn, and he spends quite a bit of time on his memory of ren and ren appears in his first memory of etho. after he dies, ren wields a blade named in his honor.

skizz spends third life loyal to ren- he dies for him and he dies with him.

in last life, ren and skizz end up on completely different sides, and it very quickly gets bad because when ren becomes boogey, he kills skizz. he lures him into a trap. he tells skizz he loves him. skizz literally says "i am broken hearted" when ren kills him. ren holds no regard for the relationship they used to have and yet skizz cannot help but compliment ren's skill with the trap, outright says he can't be mad at ren.

and then it only gets worse because skizz tries to storm ren's tower with impulse after they've gone red. and that! doesn't go well! and while skizz is retreating, while he is eating the golden apple in his hot bar, ren shoots him dead.

and that is the last time they've spoken. two years ago.

because skizz isn't in doublt life. and ren isn't in limited life.

and when skizz's time comes in limited life, he ensures he doesn't have a golden apple in his inventory this time. this time, he hands the apples off to his teammates, where he knows they will go to good use. and then he hands etho a diamond fucking axe (red winter is coming) and asks him to execute him for the sake of their alliance. ok! sure! fill ren's role more explicitly, why don't you!

and that first session of secret life genuinely only made it worse. when skizz is talking to tango and cleo about their alliance, skizz says he wants to give leadership over to someone else: "i want to be more of a soldier than a leader this time." cleo says she'll fill the roll of leader- she doesn't take orders well - and then seals their alliance by giving tango and skizz a golden apple each. because of course she does.

and well, we all know that didn't really work out, so that's one person off the list that skizz can fill the dogwarts shaped hole in him with, so then he goes to bdubs. he says he'll lay his sword at bdubs' feet. he says he'll win bdubs with his loyalty. he calls bdubs "my leige", jesus christ dude, you couldn't be less subtle unless you straight up called him ren's name.

skizz has been (whether accidentally or on purpose is up to you) trying to recreate the experience he had with dogwarts, and particularly what he had with ren, since the moment dogwarts fell. he can't have it with ren because he missed his only chance in last life, so he'll fill the void with whoever he can. his fellow soldier. ren's successor. ren's new kingmaker. anyone. and it's never gonna work. i need ren to come back for like, 900 reasons, but i especially need him to come back so skizz can have a shot at making it to spring.

[bellamysgriffin]

Please know that I tried to hang on to the days when you were mine.

[significant-ace-nnoyance]

annabeth "my grand plan is that i will be remembered/and someday soon someone will notice me" chase

vs

percy "i swear i swear that im a good kid. all i need is one last chance to prove im good enough for someone" jackson

[zishuge]

Story of Kunning Palace (2023) | Ep. 38

[babbimetal]

BABYMETAL IN LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND

[felicitywilds]

"that's what I like about you, the domestic approach" immediately followed in the next episode by "i'd have to settle down. get a house or something" / "i'd have to get one, too. we could share"..... you just. you really get a sense that ten is changing his mind. that rose is different than anyone else. the way he adamantly denies when rose says she's going to die in battle. as if it isn't a Rose Tyler Classic to continuously charge in head first into danger to do the right thing, even and especially against her own well being. as if Believing In Her really will be enough to save her every time.........

[the-butternut-tree]

when the amazing devil said “pick your chords well loves, but sing your notes off key” and when they said “tell them all your names” and when they said “we’ll be all that you hate about yourself so you can grow” and when they said “we were the winter nights so you could be the morning snow” and when they said “life begins by leaving and our love is shown in the letting go”

[traumainpyjamas]

YUTA // ‘ The BAT’ Archiving Video Behind the Scene

[antigonenikk]

"Hell should be the highest name of Love." -Hadewijch

Buck/Bucky

[dulcesiabits]

just one yesterday.

summary: You, Ace and Deuce try to reconcile what your relationship means now that you’ve gone home.

notes: 1.5k words, fic, angst, can be read as platonic or romantic, ace and deuce are in their fourth year

Ace tries not to think about you too much anymore.

It’s not like he dislikes you now or anything. Don’t get him wrong. You were one of his best friends for three years at NRC. You, him, and Deuce: you three were practically inseparable, causing trouble and getting lectured by Riddle almost daily, back when Riddle was housewarden. 

But that was then. This is now, and you aren’t around anymore. You had chosen to go back home.

Oh. Ace doesn’t blame you, of course. He understands. If he were in your shoes, there’s no way he could have left his family behind without a goodbye, all his friends and his home and the town he’d grown up in. So your choice was understandable. Really, it was.

But it’s just that things have changed since you left. He has internships to worry about! A dorm to check up on! A future to plan! There’s just so much he has on his plate as a fourth year, so he can’t spend too much time focusing on the past.

“Ace, what the heck are you fiddling with? We have to go now.”

Ace looks up, flashes a smile at the girl who just interrupted his reverie. He’s on his lunch break, but there’s only five minutes left before he has to go back to the office to run errands and shadow his mentor. The girl who’s talking to him is another intern, he’s pretty sure, from Afterglow Savanna. 

(An office worker, that’s who he’s shadowing. With an ordinary, boring job, at a respectable company. You would have laughed if you knew what sort of internship he’d chosen but hey, it’s not like he’s passionate about anything, like Deuce).

“It’s a present from a friend,” he says, letting the charm slip from his fingers.

Her gaze follows the charm on his wallet curiously. Ace has tried to take care of it (or, with more care than he usually treats his possessions), and it’s just a frayed red and white friendship bracelet, complete with a dangling heart accessory.

“They must be a good friend, huh?” she says.

Ace stands, putting his wallet back in his pocket. The bell chimes over the restaurant door as he holds it open for the girl. “They are.”

(Would you forgive him for trying to not to think about you too much? Probably. You would understand that he’s always hated goodbyes).

-

Deuce knows there’s no path but forward.

The past has already gone, and there’s no point lingering on things he can’t change. If he spends his time regretting the things he’s done, he would miss any sort of opportunity in his present to make things better.

Still. Sometimes, he can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if you stayed. It could have been you, Ace, and him against the world. You could have grabbed dinner together after your internships. And… the three of you once joked about moving in together after NRC. If Deuce closes his eyes, he can almost imagine it.

The day you left, he had cried. Ace, on the other hand, tried to act nonchalant, but his hands shook, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

You hugged both of them, and Deuce knew his tears were soaking into your blazer. You didn’t say anything.

“It’s been a wild three years,” you had said, your own smile wobbly. “I couldn’t have done it without you two.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ace said, his voice tight. “I could have done just fine.”

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Deuce whispered.

Your grip tightened on the two of them at his words. It was the last hug the three of you would ever share.

Deuce shakes his head. Now wasn’t the time to reminisce about the past. Still almost unconsciously, he grips a small spade charm dangling off a blue and white braided cord attached to his phone. It’s a habit he’s picked up since you left: to play with the small charm when he’s nervous.

Deuce adjusts his bag, brushes down his slacks, and takes one step into the building in front of him. It’s go time, and he can’t be distracted any longer. There’s no way he’s going to blow this interview for his internship. No way. He has to make his mom proud, and show Ace just what he can accomplish. And… if he’s honest… he wants to make you proud, too, by getting into the internship he’s always talked to you about.

(He wonders if you remember the promise he made to you on your first Starsending together: he would make your wish come true. No matter how far you are, he would always wish for your happiness).

-

You wonder if going home was the right decision.

You don’t regret it. Or you try not to. You have a life here, family and friends and responsibilities. It was frightening how easy it had been to adjust back to your world, too. If it wasn’t for the fact you had stepped through the mirror into your bedroom when you returned home, still in your NRC uniform, you could have easily convinced yourself it had been a dream.

You flip over in bed, trying to avoid the sunlight streaming through your window. It’s not good to linger on these sorts of thoughts, you know, but they always catch you unaware in the early mornings, when you’re trying to work up the urge to get up and get ready for classes. It’s funny to think that you spent three years attending college in Twisted Wonderland, and now you were going to attend four more years at your local college.

Before you left, you had asked Crowley if there was a way for you to travel between worlds. There had to be a way for you to see Deuce and Ace again, right?

But Crowley had shook his head. “I’m sorry. To do such a thing, we would need to keep a passageway open between your world and ours… and that would cause distortions in the very fabric of reality and time, which would be disastrous.”

All your hopes had been dashed in an instant.

You pull down the covers of your bed. No point in lazing around anymore, or you would be late. As you open your closet to pull out some clothes, your eyes catch on the NRC uniform hanging in the very back. Washed and neatly folded, it beckons you to pull it on again. 

You grab what you need and close the closet door again.

When you first came home, you had thrown a blanket over the mirror in your room, and used the one in the bathroom if you needed it. However, you’ve long since removed that blanket. Now, you check your appearance one final time in your bedroom mirror.

Impulsively, you touch the glass. Nothing happens. Of course it doesn’t. You’re no longer in a world with any magic.

You’ve lost friends before. Friends who had moved away, who stopped talking to you, or maybe you stopped talking to them. There’s any number of reasons you can lose contact with someone: time, distance, interest. 

But you’re certain if you tried hard enough, you could track those people down. You know they exist somewhere in this world. 

Ace and Deuce, though? Your best friends?

Well. There’s no way you can traverse entire worlds to see them again. You can only hope that they’re doing well. They should be in their internships for their fourth year right now. After that, you have no clue what they’ll do, if they’ll even accomplish the things they dreamed of. But you want them to. 

(You can never see them again. What terrifies you more than that, though, is the idea that you’ll forget the sound of their voices. What they look like. The idea of moving on and growing up without them).

With a final sigh, you sling your backpack over your shoulder, idly twisting the bracelet on your wrist.

It’s a band in your two favorite colors, with a little star charm. You had bought matching ones for Ace and Deuce. Even if it became nothing more than a tattered piece of string, you would never throw it away.

“Guys, look at how cute these are,” you had said one day at Sam’s shop. “You can use them as phone straps, or wear them, or put them on a bag… surprisingly versatile, huh?”

Ace and Deuce clustered around you, examining the bracelets you held.

“I like the color of this one,” Ace said, picking up the red bracelet from your hands. “But jeez, prefect. Matching bracelets? You’re cheesy.”

“I like them, though,” Deuce said earnestly. “It’s like… a sign of our friendship!”

You pouted. “Then me and Deuce can buy two bracelets, and Ace can just go without one!”

“What? Hey! Prefect!” Ace protested.

You and Deuce had snickered at his tone, and Ace rolled his eyes. 

All right. You can’t spend the rest of the morning stuck in your memories. You open the door of your bedroom, and step out into the world.

[a-s-levynn]

"Even if the sky cracks in mourning / And the heavens just won't open up for me" A Series of Small Offerings - II/12 - day20

[piercethenix]

how destroya sounds when theres not someone freaking out over gerards moaning everytime its put on

[alteredsilicone]

...he's barefoot

[im-kino853]

more trigun idol au doodle dump ig More. under cut

silly guy (forgive me for the amounts of babymetal references...)

[todayisafridaynight]

it only took one look

[the-cookie-of-doom]

Starset

Send me an ask and I'll tell you about one of these WIPs!

Ahhh, this fic is my spur of the moment little passion project that I'm working on for the next two weeks (until my concert). Every chapter is inspired by a Starset song (so far: Transmissions, Manifest, Telescope, Trials, Monster, Ricochet) with the overarching plot of Kim being a smuggler lost in space. Chay is his lover left behind in the space station where he ran his goods, waiting for him to return, desperately searching for any sign of him once he realizes Kim is gone.

Chay craves the next rushing jolt of synthetic stimulation. An escape from the station—his home, his prison—numbing his mind from the pain, the uncertainty, the grief. The awful, all-consuming grief that he refuses to feel, because to grieve is to accept what is lost can never be found, and he won’t. He can’t. Not while there is still some small chance that Kim is out there.  Pleasure arches through his veins, an electric crackle up the conducting wire that is his spinal cord, following the bath from brainstem to medulla to pons to midbrain to the center of his brain, to his limbic system, that felt so wrong now feels so good.  Nova. Supernova. Some people call it novocaine, but it isn’t, it’s something else entirely, but it feels like novocaine. Anesthetic and numbing and good, and Chay giggles. He brings tingling fingers to tingling lips, his own skin so unfamiliar it’s like kissing a stranger. He watches stars burn out and burst anew right before his eyes, entire galaxies created and destroyed outside his window, deep into the endless night. Artificial elation, hope and happiness soaring with the electricity that dances in his synapses, making an all-too-willing partner out of dopamine.  Neurotransmitters sing with praise and jump with joy and so does Chay, a one-man show in his empty room, spinning and spinning and spinning within his own orbit, though he’s lost without his star. A wild thing hurtling through space. That’s alright, if he spins fast enough, tight enough, he’ll generate his own gravitational pull. Maybe it will be enough to bring his star back into place, at the center of Chay’s universe, where he belongs. Stars aren’t supposed to drift alone.  The high is temporary, like all good things. It’s not in comparison to those first few months with Kim. It is a meteor burning away to nothing in the atmosphere, a flicker of light in the horizon, gone before you realize it was ever really there. But Kim—he’s the only drug Chay ever needed. His smile sweeter than any liquor, the warmth of his embrace a greater comfort than anything Chay could inject or snort or swallow.