#a bitter withered eve

[thenighteternal]

𝕰𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖊𝖑𝖉 - ℑ 𝔯𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔪𝔟𝔢𝔯 𝔬𝔲𝔯 𝔩𝔞𝔰𝔱 𝔪𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔰

[bohemian-nights]

What We May Mend (Chapter 1)

Word Count: ~6,908

Rating: Mature

Pairing: Daemon Targaryen × Laena Velaryon

Warnings: Difficult Childbirth; Attempted Suicide

Description: In the year 126 AC Lady Laena Velaryon survives her difficult in a foreign land surrounded by strangers. With a second chance to mend their fractured marriage she and her husband Prince Daemon Targaryen return to Westeros with their children in tow as chaos unfolds around them.

AN: Basically, no one is writing for them(which is a crime if you ask me). I’ve gotten multiple asks about them so here is my attempt at giving Laena the happy ending she deserved😊 Keeping that in mind, this is a multi-chaptered work based on show canon(which means physical descriptions including the lack of violet eyes among others will be left out). I'm planning around 5-7 chapters, but that may change 🐉

Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6

Death was a foreign concept to her. As foreign as the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, whatever lay west of the Iron Isles, or even the wild plains of the barren North. Driftmark was a fortress of life. Neither melancholy nor illness plagued her childhood. Her parents had not been taken away before their time from battle nor sickness. Her brother, cousins, and uncle had been blessed with good health and fortune as well. There was laughter, adventure, and childish mischief to be found in abundance.                                                  

Lady Laena Velaryon had known that many girls could not count themselves half as lucky as herself. Not even her cousin Princess Rhaenyra whose mother had died before she had reached her fifteenth nameday, but the silver-haired cooper-skinned Velaryon girl had not given much thought to death. The stranger had rarely visited the isles' rocky shores and all but once entered the white stone walls of High Tide to call home its inhabitants. On that one occasion, Lady Jocelyn Baratheon had been enveloped in the stranger's embrace.                

Laena was but five when her grandmother passed on to the realm beyond that of the living. ‘Twas on the eve of her sixth nameday. She could recall the tall once black-haired woman whose hair had turned gray in the final year of her life well enough at that moment when she was closer to the Stranger than death itself. 

Age had not withered her regal continence nor rendered her unable to speak fondly of the early days of her elder half-brother's reign, the old king Jaehaerys, Laena’s grandfather though she could not recall, who had passed on a mere year past. True enough the Baratheon lady had never fully forgiven the man for his slight against Laena’s mother, but perhaps it was nostalgia that caused her to look upon those days with longing wistfulness. The world is always brighter when viewed from afar. 

It was those early days that were happiest. That seemed as if the Old King's golden reign would stretch on for an age. That the fate of the blood of the dragon, the last dragonriders of old Valyria was assured at long last, but those days had turned sour. Leaving behind only the bitter taste of ruefulness on the tongue. 

Jocelyn Baratheon was the last of the old lot. Her brother, Lord Baratheon, who was as fierce a defender of her daughter as she herself, had gone shortly after the Old King.  Her beloved husband, the crown prince, the only man she had ever known, her Aemon, was taken before his time at the hands of vipers. She was to be his queen and yet he never wore his crown.

Her half-sister Good Queen Alysanne, her only sister, more a mother than a sister for she was the only mother she had ever known, she had died of woe long ago from all her heartache. 

All were gone. She alone was what remained of them. Of a time that had faded away and lived on only in the memories of the few. 

The once great Baratheon lady had grown weary at a court she no longer recognized. The faces had changed, but she had not. She had come to Driftmark to be among her family. The house of her mother who had given her life to bring her into this world would be her final resting place. Her refuge. 

“You have his eyes.” She had given Laena a half smile as she lay in her bed wheezing. A frail hand the color and shape of bone reached up to touch her cheek. Her lady grandmother had caught a chill that she could not shake. The first time she had struck ill, Laena was told, since she was sick with the shivers as a wee girl an age ago. She had taken to reading to her every night while her mother braided her hair. Easing her mind while she slipped away from her flesh.

It had been peaceful when she finally passed on. Dying in her sleep. A look of contentment upon her pallid face when a serving girl found her the next morning. A natural end to a full life. It was Laenan’s mother's wails reverberating off the walls afterward that made it so sorrowful. She had taken to her own bed for the fortnight that followed. Her sobs drowned out the waves that crashed on the shore. 

Not even her father's sweet temptations with little trinkets, a fool, and singers from all the seven kingdoms and across the Narrow Sea bring back light to her eyes. Not even his boisterous laughter or that of her uncle, the gossip of her aunt, or the gaggles of her cousins filled their halls, and soon enough the sea called with the waxing oh the moon for her father and he went with it. She and Laenor did their best to cheer their dear mother up in their father’s absence, but the stranger was a cruel foe. Their home became as quiet as a tomb for that short time.  

Her mother only dared to venture out from chambers when Laenor had received a gash and sprained his ankle when he had done what all growing boys were prone to do. Sought for action where there was none in a castle that had fallen victim to the Stranger. “Get down from there, Laenor.” She had said running to a tree at the mouth of the cove. She had flown out of the castle like a bat fresh out of the seven hells. Her long silvery-gray hair once had been black trailing after her. Hazel irises widened with panic. A mother's fright, one Laena would know well in time. 

“Come to me.”  She had motioned him to climb down from the ledge where he had fallen to.  “That's it, my love.” When Laenors leg had been set to right and her mother's fears abated that night, laughter returned to Hide Tide once more, and death remained an ever-present shadow looming in the background. Waiting for the moment to strike once more.

No matter how foreign the stranger may seem, Laena supposed her life was shaped by death. If her grandsire had not been killed before her grandsire had died her mother would be the queen. She may be heir to the Iron Throne or rather Laenor would and she would be his queen in the tradition of their Targaryen forbearers. Though the thought of that minor detail made her stomach roll even now. 

Though she supposed whatever would’ve happened, whatever way the dice had landed if she were she would not be here right now. In a foreign distant land. Among strangers. Bleeding out upon white sheets. Her lifeblood steadily slipped away from her. As sure as the sands empty into the bottom of the hourglass. Grain by grain. 

It was a strange experience. Laena could not see the stranger, but she felt him there in these humid chambers. Right there beside her. Over her shoulder. Breathing down the back of her neck. Causing the hairs on her damp neck to stick up and stand on their ends. Death clung like a second skin. Waiting for the pain to run its course and drain what was left of her before he called her back with him. 

She had known pain before. A broken arm from falling off a tree. Climbing to see the last of her father's warships head off to the Stepstones. A cut upon her foot from Laenors first sword grazed the skin when she had dropped it, not realizing how heavy it would be to wield it. The cramps radiated out from her abdomen when she got her moon blood and was bedridden for the first night. A bruised rib when she made her maid lace her stays tight enough to show off her figure during the visit of a visiting Sealord and his son from Bravos who later be engaged to for a time. and the hundred times after that for each suitor that came to Driftmarks rocky shore all ending with one. 

She had known the pains of the birthing bed well enough. Laena had taken to it twice now. The first time had been long and rather taxing. She labored for a day and a half. She had not thought she would make it lying there upon sweat soaked and the Gods know what else sheets, twisting herself into a ball, but then out came Baela. Her fearless girl. A little red squalling babe with a set of lungs upon her that alerted the whole manse of her arrival. 

Rhaena’s labor had been quick. A mere two hours after her pains began did she pop out into the world. A tiny thing she was. Smaller than her sister, quieter too, but just as precious in the eyes of her young mother. Where her birth had been easier than Baela’s, what followed afterward had not.   

Laena had bled for a fortnight straight. Apart from short jaunts to take a turn around the gardens she was regulated to the confines of her chambers for a moon. Much to her displeasure, she was too weak to feed her daughter from her own breast. A wet nurse had to be called for while she spent her days in bed.

The recovery had been a slow one, but she had recovered. She had become herself again, her girls blossomed, and the pain of the birthing bed had become a distant memory. This, however, was different. 

The Stranger had visited with the night this time. Such pain he brought. Laena could feel him in her bones. Exhaustion seeped through every pore. As if every muscle in her body craved to give in. To give up. To meet the stranger who held his hand for him to join her in his cold embrace. 

Never before had she felt so unlike herself. Tired. She was so very tired. She could no longer push. Been instructed not to push even if she could. Her legs were numb. Her silver curls painted to her clammy forehead with her own sweat. 

Her eyes desperately wanted to shut. Calling for rest. A moment of respite. Her arms ached from holding herself up hunched over the bed. From the near-death grip of the midwives hand. Even lifting her fingers to inch up the bedpost for a tighter hold was a strain. 

Laena burned with something she could not name. A foggy bog that she seeped into overpowering her, but some part of her kept her in a hazy state of half-dream half-wake. A candle flickering in the wind. The past and the present intertwined in its dimming glow. 

She could hear the waves crashing back on coming in from the open window that had meant to cool her down. The room frayed. Faces came in and out of view. Switching between her mother's smile and the nurse's worried pallid face as she wiped the beads of sweat off her brow. Voices muffled and low as if they came from the other end of a cavernous tunnel and yet she kept a hold to the last shreds of her wit and strength. A tiny ember. The last snuff before the light went out. 

“My brave girl.” She could make that out with startling clarity. It came from her princely husband. They stood huddled up in a half-shadowed corner of the chamber whispering to themselves, the healer having left her side. He was a swarthy man who sweat like a pig. If he did not open his mouth one would think he was Dornish. Laena was not particularly fond of him. 

There was something in his person,  in his manner of address which, how he always deferred to her husband which made her uneasy. She wished to be back within the safety and care that could be found at her father's house, surrounded by her cousins and aunts who would fuss over her, with her mother by her side who, or at least have a maester who knew her body better and would not act as if mere paranoia was the cause of her woe, but she had little choice in the manner of her present circumstances.

“The magister has healers who will take care of you Laena.” Daemon had replied when she confronted him in the library where he spent his days. Obsessing over their family's history twirling a glass of sweet wine from the magister's cellars in his hand. 

It was a final plea, a desperate plea for she had asked him a dozen times before throughout this pregnancy where she felt her body weakening little by little with every passing day, but he dismissed her with his usual care. Placing a kiss on her belly as their babe greeted his father with a little kick before he went back to his reading. There was no room for argument. He was in one of his moods. He was always in a  mood. 

Her husband had replied to what the healer spoke in that absent-minded way of his. The way that reminded her his mind was a thousand leagues away. Across a narrow sea. To the alleyways, taverns, and well-tread roads that made up King’s Landing to his ailing brother, to the Iron Throne, or perhaps even his beloved niece. Laena could not tell. Not anymore. Mayhaps she never could. 

Or mayhaps she had been the occupier of his attentions and affections at one point. Perhaps it had been she who evoked his passion. Before Baela when they had first wed? When he had whisked her away to this place from her home. Winning her hand away from the Braavosi Sealord's son with the plunge of Dark Sister through his skull. The excitement of it. He had always been one for the dramatics in the most spectacularly brutal fashion. 

Basking in the glow of his victory. Claiming his prize. A bride of his own choosing. A Valyrian bride to wash the stain off his ill-favored union with Rhea Royce. The vale-bride that had been chosen for him. The bride he never wanted nor favored. 

Her father, the great sea snake, was all too keen to give him her hand. To give him his prize for ridding him of an unfavorable match despite his dear wife’s protests. Despite the whispers that swarmed him. He killed my cousin. Blushed her to death. Budgeted her to beyond recognition He’s the devil. 

Laena herself ignored their tales and dismissed her own mother's warnings. “He is charming, but charming men seldom make for good husbands, my sweet girl. Let us find you some lord who will make you laugh.” 

She did not need some simpleton who would make her laugh. She had someone who made her feel more than that. She had someone who caused her belly to erupt with flutters when he threw a smile her way or his pale green eyes met dark ones. 

He was not particularly handsome, his lips were too thin and his brow was hairless and prominent. His face was rather primal, but he was tall, his jaw strong, and there was something magnetic about him. Daemon Targaryen could command a room with a single glance. Why should she not want him? Why should she not have him?

She was Lady Laena Velaryon. She was the blood of old Valyria through and through. She came from not one, but two ancient and proud lines. Even her Baratheon blood was forged in the flames of Valyria. She was the dragonrider of the largest and oldest dragon in the known world. The last living vestige from the time of the conqueror.

The Rogue Prince wanted her. He had wanted her by his side. To be his wife. To bear his children. He saw who she was and he wanted her. They were the blood of old Valyria. Like called to like. They were made for each other. She was his match. She was his wife. 

Wife was just a title she learned. She was so very naive then. Young and in love with the idea of him. An ideal was not enough nor was a title. It did not keep one warm at night. Comfort one when their heart aches. Or while they were bedridden with sickness. 

No, Daemon Targaryen had not married her for such feelings of adoration and cherishment. He had married her for an empty title. For her name. Still, she liked to think that she had been enough for him. That she had been what he had wanted. That he had wanted her for more. That they had a chance the same as any other. 

Mayhaps after Baela they still had hope? When he thought that she might give him the solace he looked for. The peace he craved. what he made no effort to hide.

She had given him a girl to be sure, but there would be more babes to follow. Her own mother had given her father a girl first then her brother came. Why should it not be the same for her? 

She was still young and healthy. Had just celebrated her seventeenth name day. Daemon himself was in the prime of his life at six and thirty. There would be babes a plenty. “The next one shall be a boy husband.” He did not say anything. In fact, he seemed rather in awe of the tiny red-faced babe in his arms. Taking her little hand broken free from her swaddle to wrap around his pointer finger. Bringing the small fist up to his lips to place upon as he stared down at her, utterly entranced,  but she knew. 

When a letter from Kings Landing arrived announcing the birth of Jacaerys Velaryons she knew. She saw the light gone in his eyes. In how he did not let the wine in his cup go empty. She knew what she must do. What she must give him. It was a son he wanted. Just a son. A son and he would be happy. A son and they would be happy. She would give Daemon Targaryen his sons.  

After she had almost given him his long-desired heir, but had only delivered another girl? Did she dare hope then? This one was more of a disappointment than the last for she was not even a dragonrider. Her egg withered in her cradle. Turned to stone. There was no use for the girl. For their sweet Rhaena. 

What was one to do with two girls and no son in sight? No heir. Two girls. Ten years gone by and all she had given him was two girls. Every raven arrived from home a bitter reminder. Son after son. Year after year. A full life lived across the Narrow Sea. A life he was no party to. A son was not all he wanted. 

How he burned those letters and stiffened at the mere mention of her name. At the suggestion that they return. Your brother would surely find you a position at court. Dismissing her words with a smile that did not reach his eyes and a swig of Pentos wine. Pouring over text and drinking himself to bed. Baela only managed to win his attention with her Valyrian or their rides. The better part of him. Rhaena was lucky if she got so much as a good night kiss from her dear kepa. Her failure. 

Yes, wife was only a title. For there were some days he would not even come to her bed. Those days were better despite their loneliness. He was drunk when he climbed on top of her and put this babe in her. Pushing her into the bed. Pushing into her. One thrust. Two Three. In and out. She lost count. Merely trying to distract herself from the dull ache of the stretch.

“Forgive me.” He left her lying there as his seed slipped from her heat. Hastily throwing on his clothes as he scrambled out of the chamber. She did not see him until the next night at dinner. Having to sit through it with a smile that pulled at her mouth from its strain as he and the Magister discussed his son's return from Braavos. A handsome boy with a head of brown curls who was a mere two years Baela’s senior. He was apt to introduce them. Her husband could not seem more delighted by the prospect. 

She did not make him content. She was not the wife he wished for. Her failures in the birthing bed proved that. Her failings to bring him his desires prove that. Laena Velaryon was a disappointment. 

He could not even look at her. She lay in her deathbed, soiled, blood pouring from her at an alarming rate and he could only spare her half a glance before he moved it back to whatever it was that captured his attention on the stone floor underneath him. He did not notice her. Not even now. 

Mayhaps he never had. Not really. Why turn his attention, his affections to her? She had never been what he wanted, only a thing he had settled for. She was always a thing that he was burdened with. What he had settled for. A prize, indeed. A consolation prize.

A Valyrian wife, but the wrong Valyrian wife. Children that were just Targaryen enough, but just as Velaryon in truth as they were Targaryen. A life of comfort and ease, but no action. Close, but not quite. Not what he truly wanted. Second choice. She was his second choice. 

The Stranger mocked her with his silence. She could feel him and yet he said nothing. Just waiting. Waiting for her own body to give now the rest was gone. Now that she could not avoid it. Could he laugh? Mayhaps? Mayhaps not. 

“We could pry open the womb.” He stuttered ever so slightly. Ringing that cloth covered in her blood and tears in his hand. She felt a chill run up her spine. The Stranger reached to hold out his hand. Waiting.” Try to remove the infant by way of the blade.”

“Would the mother survive it?” Her husband had turned his body away from her. He would never notice her. The healer shook his bowed head. A quiet no confirmation fell from his lips. It was he who looked as if he saw a ghost. Her life for her babes. If that. She knew how this tale would end.

No, she had never been what he wanted. She could not give him what he wanted. Second choice. She who had burdened him with her failings. With her inadequacies. She who could perhaps serve him better in death than she ever could in life. The cold reached her shoulder. 

Would he notice if she slipped from the room? Into the night air? Just beyond the castle's walls? Made her way to Vhagar? Grabbed his hand? Ran into the Strangers embrace? 

A dragonriders death. Or at least death at the hands of something which she loved. Something which did care for her. Something that did not which to only take from her.

Yes, that was preferable to this. Preferable to being carved like a stuffed pig. Served up for a grand feast. A feast worthy of a prince. 

He hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t noticed when she pushed the maids away who tried to hold. She pulled herself up on shaky legs to make her way to the door of the chamber. He hadn’t noticed.  A wide-eyed mousy girl shrieked a my lady when she slipped through the doorway. The others gawked with open mouths like a fish gasping for breath on land with horror. Not speaking a word at her retreating feverish figure hunched over, but he hadn’t noticed.  

“Mother,” Laena thought she had heard. Thought she’d seen a little brown worried face peeking out of the nursery that she shared with her sister. Baela for she was too tall to be her sister. Their host had been gracious enough to offer them chambers of their own, but the girls were as thick as thieves. They could not be separated nor should they be. 

She ignored that small voice. The call of a mother. She did not want to know if it was real or a figment of her clouded mind. A trick of her imagination conjured up by the Stranger. Prayed it was only a mirage.  

Baela was asleep, warm in her bed. Dreaming of the trip her father had promised he would take her on the morrow. Riding on the back of Caraxes. Her dragon was too small to mount, but she already had a taste for the skies. “Faster kepa. Faster.” She’d say as she would cry with glee. The wind would whip around their faces as they dove and gilded through open blue causing her eyes to water with happy tears. 

“Eglikta, nyke jaelagon naejot jikagon eglikta.” Higher, I want to go higher. Her Valyrian would be clunky, but she improving. Soon she’d be better than her mother. Would be better than her. 

Laena hoped Daemon would keep to that promise. Perhaps he’d bring Rhaena along with them. The girls would need a distraction. Surely no one would fault him for providing them with one. He’d want to do it. He’d be relieved to be out. He was never one to be idle and she doubted that would change on account of her absence. He’d be free. 

Of course, he’d have to mourn her propriety’s sake. For six moons, a year, a very long year, but any bit of freedom he’d have during this mourning he’d welcome. Relish in it. Yes, he’d take her riding tomorrow and the next day after. 

That little voice did not follow her on her hobble down the corridor. Nor were her ears met with the little patter of bare feet other than her on stone. It seems the mother was kind enough to grant her one. Her babies were asleep safe in their beds. With not a care in the world. 

With a shaky hand upon the banister, Laena turned the corner leaving the guest quarters towards the backstairs that the magister's servants use. It was safer that way. If anyone should come looking for her they’d think she’d use the ones. They’d look for her there. Not creeping around like a beggar woman. 

No one followed her. No one looked for her. Not a single soul. There was some relief in that. If they had happened across her they would surely force her back.  Back to that chamber. Back into that soiled bed. A lamb for slaughter. 

She felt the chill upon leaving the warmth of the manse. It had not been a particularly cool day, but the nights in Pentos were cooled by a western breeze from the bay that bordered its shores. Cool enough to need a cloak of one we’re to venture out for a night stroll, but not Laena felt as if she had stumbled into winter. 

Goosebumps erupting over her sticky bronze skin. Every step felt like she walked in water. Her legs felt like lead. She knew if she were to look down at her feet she’d be met with the sight of her lifeblood. If she were to stop she would collapse into the dirt and never get. Mayhaps she was not as careful as she thought for anyone could find her, but it would soon matter not. 

She was close. So very close. Home. She was almost home. Away from here. Away from the cold. Away from the pain. Nothing could touch her. She would feel nothing. Not the sharp edge of the healer's blade that would pierce her belly. Not Daemon’s disappointment. Not her own longing for what she could never give. A life that would never be hers. With a kiss from her dragon's flame, it would all end. 

It was only by the Stranger's hand that she made it to Vhagar. Stumbling over the pieces of gravel beneath her feet. The pain made her double over. Dropping to her knees. Bowing her head. Pleading. Begging her for release.To be free.

“Vhagar Dracarys. Dracarys. Dracarys. Dracarys. Dracarys.” She had croaked it out half a dozen times to the old dragon, but she would not move. Her voice grew weaker with every plea Threatened to give out. Already sore from screaming, she continued on. She saw no other way. Descending into tears, but tears did little to endear Vhagar to help her. Remaining as unmoved as ever. 

Her mouth opened and closed over and over, but she made no move to bring forth fire. To end her riders' suffering. “Dracarys.” She would not move. Only fanning Laena’s damp face with hot dry air. Not a flame to be seen. No orange glow cast.

“Dracarys.” Another wave of pain came over her. It was hard to breathe through it. To force air through her lungs so that she may speak. 

“Dracarys.” A whisper. A final plea. Yet she did nothing. Unbowing her head so that brown met golden red. She pleaded with her eyes for Laena had no voice left in her. Her gaze went soft. A  lamb begging for the Shepherd to guide her. To save her from the wolves. 

Pity was there. Reluctance too. A resistance to do as she was bid. Like a dog commanded to leave his wounded master on a hunt. but that pity had one out. Understanding. Just for a moment. She understood what she wanted.

Vhagar opened her ancient mouth to reveal an orange glow. A glow that burned her skin, feeling the heat making her sweater soon blister and peel if she were to keep at this distance, but that would be the last pain she would feel. For the glow would burn bright and engulf her in its fiery bite. Laena raised her head. Closing her eyes to meet the fire. Let me be free. 

“Laena.” She heard his voice. In what would be her final moments left on this mortal plane it was his voice she heard. Carried across the dirt in the windless night. How cruel the Stranger was. He brought her here on her knees with pain shooting through her only to prolong her suffering. How he laughed at her expense.  Stinging heat fading bit by bit. As if it had never been. The Stranger laughed indeed. 

“No Vhagar.”  The glow dimmed. It must have dimmed at the sound of her husband's panicked roar for Laena no longer felt its searing burn. She no longer could feel the brightness of light on her eyelids. 

Her dragon had been released from her obligation. Given a choice. Vhagar came to with shame. Did a dragon have shame? Realization that what she was about to do was too rash? Too final? Too desperate. Nothing good ever came from desperation.  Not even now while the Stranger made a joke of a dying woman. 

The flap of wings reached her ears. With a gust of wind bringing back a chill to her bones. Vhagar deserted her. She was left alone with him.

Laena refused to open her eyes. Refused to see what had become of her. What was going to become of her. Mayhaps she could have tried to run, but she would not get very far. She did not think she could even pull herself to her feet much less hobble her way to wherever Vhagar had flown off to. It would be a crawl. A slow crawl. If that. Her lifeblood that left a steady trail from her womanhood painting her thighs crimson told her otherwise. 

“You’re freezing Laena.” He wasted no time enveloping her in his arms. Tucking her carefully into his person. Placing an arm under her legs, the other bore the weight of her back while her head rested underneath his chin. Like a bride. Like how he had so very long ago. Her gown had been a lovely embroidered thing of white Myrish silk rather than the soiled nightgown she wore now.  Not a single curl was out of place. Her silver mane shone in the candlelight. Her head had been crowned with a golden diadem. A single ruby placed at its center. She was a vision. 

Daemon had refused the bedding ceremony that her uncle called for to carry her back to their chambers himself. Halfway along he had begun whispering something rather naughty into her virgin ears which caused her to burst into a fit of giggles as she was thrown over her groom's shoulder. There would be none of that now. 

He must have been closer than she realized she decided. It’s the only way he reached her with such speed. He had no blanket nor cloak with him, but the heat coming off his person warmed her. He felt like a fire. Why was he so warm? Had he always been this warm? This solid? 

She clung to him. Burying herself into his chest. Resting her silver curls into the pocket-marked skin of his neck that told the story of the man she loathed and loved. That he cradled their own babes into when they had been little things. 

 She did not wish to, but he was the only thing keeping her here. The only thing that was here. She longer felt the Stranger's ominous presence. His laughter in her head had left and had been replaced with a pounding in her head. There was only him now. 

“What were you thinking?”I would've been free. I would have freed us both and then you would not have had to pretend as you do now. He was doing a good act of it. 

“If you had left me. I would not be freezing.” Her voice was so very small. A murmur. A croak really. Hardly recognizable to her own ears. Did she really sound like that? Like an old woman? So very weak. If he had not placed her head near his ear would not have heard her. 

“My darling.” He hadn’t called her that in a while. A long while. The last she had was on her twenty-fifth nameday. The night of her twenty-fifth name day. The last time they had truly made love. He had been sober. Gentle. Present. 

He spoke her name with such reverence, whispered things into her ear which made her cheeks flush in heat with such tenderness. In the afterglow of their peaks, he had not pulled from her. They had simply laid their breathing each other in as he petted her. He made love with his words where his body had been spent and she savored every morsel of it, but she wouldn’t give too much thought to it now. Desperation caused one to speak falsities laced with honey. 

Still, there was something, something in his voice, something thick and unsaid that caused her to open her eyes the slightest to meet his. Pulling herself from where she buried her head to find that they were glassy. Filled with unused tears. Threatening to spill from those green depths.

Laena had never seen him cry. Not once. Not even when she presented Baela to him. Her mother had said that her father could not stop crying when she had placed her in his outstretched arms, but not the Rogue Prince. Never Daemon Targaryen. It was shock , she decided. He was just in shock. She had shocked him. 

“You’d be free of me. No healer’s blade required.” He’d be rid of her without another stain on his name. Without it weighing on his conscience. If he was even capable of feeling remorse through that dark haze of his. 

“I won’t let them cut you Laena.” She laughed. Did she really mean so little to him? So little that he would not even give her the truth? Did he truly believe she was so naive? After being with him these ten years as his wife, that she knew nothing of him? Of how little his word meant when he gave it out so freely. When he spoke lies so freely from those pale lips. With his airs. His smirks. Mayhaps he believed his own versions of the truth. He had told so many of them. It must be hard to keep up with them, but she remembered.  

“You will if it will give you the son you want.” It was men like him did. Proud men. Lords,  princes, and kings alike. The need for an heir was too great to pass for men like them.  ‘Twas what his brother had done. His wife’s life for a son, a babe who had only survived a night. His wife who he butchered for an heir that lived but a day. 

Aemma Arryn had been no more with the swipe of a blade at the command of her husband. A command that left him plagued with guilt and regret and no proper heir to show for it. He had loved his wife, claimed to love her, and yet he murdered her all the same. All for a son. Such as men like him do. 

A sharp pain ran through Laena’s abdomen. It had begun to dull before then. Distracted by her abandonment and the cold she felt in it, but that mind-numbing ache was a reminder that the worst was not over yet. That this fight was pointless. That him trying to save her, to make amends after ten years of misery was pointless. Daemon pulled her closer to his warmth, the lines upon his brow made all the more prominent with his worry, but it was no good. 

She would still be dead by the end of it. Laena had found dying to be a rather exhausting business. There was no point in wasting any more breath on the matter. Her fate was inevitable. 

“Take care of our girls or I shall haunt you.” Her last attempt at humor. Daemon did smile at it and Laena herself could find little amusement in it. 

Her one regret. Leaving her girls alone in this world. It was selfish. To take her life so violently when she’d leave them behind. Without saying so much as a goodbye to them. It was heartless. To leave Daemon to pick up the pieces. 

To explain to them what she had done. How does one explain that to a child? Why their mother would no longer be able to tuck them into bed at night. Why when they turned to find her smile they’d only find thin air. Why everything had changed in the blink of an eye. 

Laena herself did not know what it was like to live without a mother. If RhaenysTargaryen had any faults it certainly did not lie with her mothering for she had always been there for her children. No septa, wetnurse, nor nanny could replace the comfort of a mother. 

It was she who fretted over them when they were sick—staying up with them through the night wiping sweat from their brows, singing them lullabies, recounting stories of old to lull them to sleep. She who would kiss their bruises away. She who would listen to their woes without complaint. She who Laena could always depend upon. Only a raven need be sent and she would journey from the ends of the earth to her.   

Her girls would be without that comfort, but they'd have her mother. That much she knew. Her mother would care for them as she had her and Laenor when they were little. That much Laena could take comfort in. They would not truly be alone. Just without her. 

“You will take care of them yourself.” He must have lifted from the ground because the throbbing increased tenfold. With each step he took she could feel it moving through her. Shooting through her wave after wave. Her back, her belly, and her head were all burning. A stab here. A pinch there. She had thought she had known pain, known weakness, but this was all-consuming agony. She went limp in her husband’s hold.

He was with her, she knew he was holding her but he began to sound distant. The blood pounding in her head muffled his speech. It sounded as if they had journeyed into a dark cavern. She on one end of it, he on the other. His voice was a faint echo yet he would not cut that shallow cord of communication. “You will see them grow and have children of their own. You will not leave me. I will not let you leave me.” 

At his last words, his voice broke with a choking sob. A hitch in his breath shook her. Something wet landed on the apple of her cheek. Making its way to her chapped lips. The taste of salt left a kiss upon them. 

Mayhaps she had thought too cruelly of him. It was not every day that one witnessed their wife attempting to light herself on fire to escape them. Mayhaps there was sincerity. Something. Yes, something other than the darkness that resided in him. 

“You’ll die old in your bed Laena. I promise you—” If he had made any other promises Laena did not know. The pain became too much for her to keep awake. Her eyes fluttered shut before they reached the manse. 

Ao3 Link:

[lizmindpalace]

Hoping for snow

This is inspired by Hoping for snow by The vamps.

Summary: Lucifer faces a lonely Christmas eve.

Word count: 2 K

Status: Complete.

Warnings: Angsty, but not too much.

Ice covered the glasses as snowflakes fell over the dark lands before his eyes. Coldness was creeping up on the night as it was slowly clasping his heart, leaving a bitter taste in his lips. 

He had longed a bit of privacy in his studio, but he did not expect his bedroom would become some kind of burial chamber due to the embracing silence overflowing it, drowning the distant echoes of the joyful expressions and catchy songs of the other inhabitants of the manor since snow had covered the lands and they had left in order to enjoy the view and the amusements that the white material brought with it; and because now that he had some time alone with himself; his dark thoughts slowly encroached his mind.  

A sigh escaped his withered lips; and as an attempt to increase his body's temperature he fired the chimney up, however, as he had noticed over the last days, no heat was able to bring warmth to his body or his heart and he was condemned to crawl throughout the nights with a dead weight in his chest. 

The view from outside promised to bring some kind of short redemption to his despondent persona, yet, despite his efforts to avoid it, he found himself staring at the main gate, as though the part missing from his heart would suddenly show up at the entrance, changing the loneliness overflowing him and turning it into the Christmas spirit he was missing; but it was not like that and so, depression grasped his soul and he found irritating and aggravating the joy the others were having.

A distant memory crossed his mind as he closed his eyelids, bringing the noise of the crowds and the aromas of baked food, and mistletoe. A slow waltz that belonged to the nutcracker was being played in the background. He had found a quieter spot behind a white wooden door, where a mid-size christmas tree was standing in a corner, and it'd be a room in complet darkness except for its dim lights and the crackling fireplace. The hubbub of the guests was diminished once the door was closed, although the musicians were still able to impregnate the environment with their skilled movements on the strings. 

"Remember, it's... one, two and three". 

The cheeks of the recipient of his instructions turned red, as their right hands were intertwined and his left hand rested on her waist, controlling the movements of both of them. She had refused to dance that night because she had said she was not skilled and probably would stain his reputation if they danced in the centre of the dancefloor; he had said it did not matter, yet she was not comfortable and the demon had to find a secret spot, so the two of them could enjoy the evening together.

They both swung and turned around throughout the room, and when the music met an end, their faces were so close, she could not help but feel her bloodstream rush and warm up her face, his playfully eyes sparkled and the grin on his face disappeared when his lips touched hers.

A speck of warmth was brought to his chest at the thought, since this year, a mere thought from afar was all they were, and whilst everyone wished for snow and the holidays to begin, he just wished she could come home. 

"What do you mean you won't spend Christmas here at the Devildom?" it came as a shock hearing those words leaving her mouth, in his mind he could not get a grasp of the idea going through her mind. Christmas was supposed to be a date to spend with those who were special... at home. 

"I have to go home". His face remained neutral, yet she noticed the change in the sparkle of his eyes, as though light was abandoning them, and he gave her a cold gaze. She thought of rephrasing, explaining that she missed her human family despite seeing the Devildom as home as well, but it was too late, and he was speaking again.

"None of the inhabitants of the Devildom aimed to retain you here, you may go home and do not be concerned, for we'll manage and carry out our normal activities even if a student and member of the student council is away".

His cold voice made her heart froze, no more words were needed to let her know she was not essential and not even required in their... his life. She looked away and nodded at the rough answer and headed for her room. The next day, she vanished into the snowstorm, and no one had known anything about her, and they knew she was home, she had to tell them just because Beel had been starving to death due to the research and the worry and she had to say something, although she asked them with a begging voice not to mention anything to Lucifer. 

Lucifer knew well though, she would receive calls and would also exchange messages with his brothers, the angels, even Diavolo and Barbatos, and he was aware Solomon would pay visits to her more often than he would have liked. 

He was not looking forward to celebrating Christmas this year, and he had made a business trip and tried to stay away long enough to skip the holiday, however, he had to return home sooner because Diavolo requested him to be present, and now he was drowning in the melancholy of his studio and in his dark thoughts.

"You should call her and apologise". A voice coming from his right shoulder whispered, he frowned and turned around.

"What are you talking about?"

"MC, of course. We all miss her, but I can perceive some kind of special discomfort in you, I'd even say... guilt". 

Simeon reflected holding a tray with gingerbread and Lucifer looked away. He sighed. 

"I don't need you to tell me what to do". The bitterness in his voice confirmed Simeon's suspicion who only shrugged. 

"It was only a piece of advice, but you're right, you don't need advice I can see you don't need it, you're fine". He left Lucifer alone, who once more felt a gulp of regret running down his throat.

He remained dead silent for some minutes; it was hard to believe that it had been months and he had not dared to take the first step on making things right. His gloved fingers tapped over the screen of the phone with a lack of confidence that he found ridiculous. The first attempt failed, as did the second, the third and the fourth. But now that he had made up his mind, he'd not quit his resolution.

"Is everything alright down there?"

"It is".

"Then why would you wake me up in the middle of the night?"She faked a sleepy tone of voice so she would not give away the fact she had been also up and thinking about him. 

"I wanted to talk to you". 

A sigh coming from the other side of the line hurt his pride, although it was in fact already hurt. He hesitated for a moment, knowing that he had to continue and to say something convincing enough if he wanted another chance.

"And it has to be now? I mean if you were willing to wait months for having this conversation, I don't think it'd hurt to wait a couple of hours". She tried, it was some kind of trial for him, in her mind if he accepted the deal, he would lose everything. 

"I was an idiot". 

"Are you calling me to state the obvious? I thought you had something more important to say, well then..."

"I'm sorry, MC".

"It's been months, Lucifer, do you think saying sorry will fix anything?"

He held his breath for some seconds, and she thought of hanging up.

"I let my pride get in the way, I acted as an absolute brainless individual, and I'm here begging for your forgiveness".

"You were an idiot, yes". She sighed, making his cheeks blush. "I don't know if the words said on the other side of the line are enough to forgive your stupidity, for the months you were silent as if I was the one blame; I accept I should have chosen other words, or broaden my explanation, but you refused to talk, you left me in darkness for months and now you want to fix this with a phone call". 

Her voice was broken; she had obviously suffered due to what had happened too. 

"The only reason I'm not kneeling on my knees right in front of you is because I thought you'd have problems with your family if I showed there..." 

She sighed once more. 

"MC, I was confused because I thought we were family now, after everything we've gone through, yet I have to accept I was an idiot and my words were cruel and did not make any sense, and my silence was a decision I highly regret, sentiment was overflowing my senses and I know it might not be enough reason to grant me your forgiveness... but I miss you... and I love you, endlessly, and nothing will ever change that, and I shall respect your decision of spending your time where you feel the best. And although it's hard, for me, if I must resign from my happiness for you to find yours, I'll gladly accept it".

His deep voice was stained with sorrow that struck her heart. 

"Lucifer... the problem is that you don't listen and jump over conclusions, and I wonder if you will ever change. You don't know me better than I do myself".

  The words were stolen from his mouth as he found himself speechless and silence turned into an uncomfortable vortex. 

"I appreciate your apology, though, good night". 

The sound of the broken line left his heart beating fast, and a bitter taste in his lips ran down his heart, he took a seat in front of the window, and sighed while a tear rolled down his cheek, his pride was hurt, but especially his heart. He had not even had the chance to say happy holidays.    He stared at the main entrance of the House of Lamentation, everyone had been waiting for the snow to fall, but he was waiting for her to come home, and his heart shattered at the realisation she would not be there.      

As though they were a waterfall, his eyes started leaking and suddenly the picture of the landscape became blurry, the characters became only moving stains in the iced glass, and just a minute later shadows took over them, for blackness was everything he could be aware of.

"Always overworking yourself to the point of exhaustion". 

He heard a whispering voice close to his ears, and his eyes opened wide just to realise no one was outside and the woman of his dreams was not walking towards the entrance. Although, he realised there was some kind of change in the environment since some kind of light came from his back, he turned around and found some Christmas decorations spreading light in the darkness.

"You came..." maybe it was the fact he was still asleep, or maybe he had really missed her, but the avatar of pride stood up, wobbled towards her and wrapped his arms around her. 

"I made it home... Merry Christmas, Lucifer". She whispered. 

And as only answer, he placed his lips into hers. There would be time to reach agreements and ask for forgiveness, for now, the only think that mattered was seeing each other's eyes glowing in the quietness of the night under the Christmas lights.

-

Merry Christmas!

Read also:

English love affair

Breath before the kiss

Beber de tu sangre

The party of death

[camusscigarette]

Violets for Roses

Chapter III: Sinful berries mixed with the bitterness of one's ‘cum-scientia’

(Smut. 'Cause I was noticed by my Tumblr crush but not concerning the story ,rather the fanart of it. But it's okay, improvements.)

(I can not write smut it seems. Anyways)

TW: Torture in a flash back.

❦

Soon enough, their dance came to a halt when the music stopped. They still remained in each other's arms, their bodies had moved closer to one another as they stared silently into each other's eyes. Everything at that very moment was intimate between them. Oddly enough, and to Bedelia's own surprise she was comfortable in that very moment.

"I've noticed that you have The Original Copy of the Kamu Satra in your library" He said with a small smirk as he dipped her to a nonexistent symphony playing in his head.

She had to give it to him and his watchful eye. But it truly seems like men only think from their stomachs and their penises, or else, why would he have felt the need to point it out now? A small smirk grew on her lips as he pulled her back up and began to sway with her once again as another soft symphony began to play in the background.

"I do, yes" She said simply, her eyes narrowing slightly as she stared into his eyes for a moment before she chose to go with a risky question and ask "Why? Intrigued?" And bingo. There it was. The sudden desire ignites in his eyes like Fireworks on New Year's Eve.

"I find ut fascinating that a woman as reclusive and very rarely sexually driven as yourself would own such a book" He said simply with a small chuckle. "No judgement intended, Doctor. I am simply intrigued, as you said."

"Well..I find such books to be rather vulgaire at times, but I do consider sex to be an art. Like painting, writing and so on. Sex is an art. Not everyone is good at it. And one can easily get creative with their positions, non?" She asked him ever so innocently, her eyes holding a certain spark in them that told him quite a lot of things, but at the same time, none.

"You are quite the confusing woman" He said as he twirled her and pulled her closer to him with one swift movement, their chests pressed to one another.

"Mhm" She only gave him a slight hum as her eyes stared into one eye, his lips, and then right back to the other eye they went. She wanted fun tonight.

"Have you ever practiced any of the positions in that book?" He asked her curiously with an expressionless face.

"I have. Quite the few actually in my younger days"

"And why not now?"

"Self pleasure is much more fun when you're well equipped" She said with a smile that threw him off guard.

He knew that Bedelia enjoyed herself at times, who didn't after all? But to see her say it so bluntly stirred something inside of him, something such as arousal.

"How so?" He asked her ever so quietly.

"Technology evolved rather well, don't you think?" She said with a raised brow as a small chuckle escaped her lips.

His eyes widened slightly and the image of her pleasuring herself made his pants feel a bit more tight than usual, giving her a small nod as he processed her words. "Mhm, yes"

"But I find myself getting lonely at times" She whispered in a husky tone, her hand that was on his shoulder sliding to his chest. "Don't you as well?" He knew better than to fall for that. And he didn't. But damn it did he ache to feel her withering beneath him.

"Mhm" He hummed again, leaning in to whisper in her ear "I can fix that" And with that he pulled back and twirled her one last time before he pulled her roughly into him, his hands gripping her hips and pressing them into his. It was a hunger he couldn't tame. Neither with human flesh nor with meaningless sex. He ached to taste her on his tongue, and his mouth. Ached for a saltiness mixed with natural musk. Famished and lust driven.

She wrapped her arms around him and lead in ever so slowly to the couch behind her, forcing him to take a seat as she sat in his lap, stranding him in the process. "Something like that?" She asked him in a sultry whisper, her sharp nails grazing his Adams apple.

"Yes" He couldn't help but groan, feeling her weight on his lap, his erection growing and his pants becoming more than simply uncomfortable.

She let her hands trail all over his chest, watching him carefully as his pupils dilated and his hips jerked almost unnoticeably beneath her own.

And like a hungry beast, having had finally captured it's prey, Hannibal's lips attacked Bedelia's own. A battle of tongues and teeth. Nipping on each other's flesh. Tasting not only their saliva but also their blood. The sound of suckles and moans filling the room. Hands exploring one another's bodies until eventually he had her pinned to the couch despite a sound of protests.

But he did not care.

He wanted her.

He had to have a taste.

With his lips leaving hers and moving onto her neck, he latched onto her skin almost immediately. Her head tilted backwards to allow him the space he needed to explore her flesh.

His teeth sunk into her skin and her mouth opened in a silent scream though a moan escaped her lips. With her fingers tangling into his hair a slight gasp came from her as his hands began to hike her skirt up to her waist, and his kisses grew sloppier and wetter as he moved down her chest.

"Hannibal—" She gasped, feeling how hard he was, his erection pressed into her panties, their clothes rubbing uncomfortably around one another.

He did a swift job of getting her blouse undone while she worked on his, ripping it off rather roughly while he worked delicately. His chest was exposed and Bedelia could see the beads of sweat forming at the hairs there, while his chest heaved with each breath. She on the other hand was half naked as his hand sneaked behind her back to unclasp her bra. But his mouth found her clothed breast and bit into it, a small whine escaping Bedelia's lips as she tightened her legs around him.

"Our mouths were always meant to taste the human body" He whispered against her skin, moving away the bra and throwing it over his shoulder as he finally exposed her breasts to him. Taking it the sigh like the greatest treasure known to man kind, his hand already squeezing and teasing one of her ample mounds while his tongue latched onto her other.

"Dieu Christ.." She breathed out, her hand not leaving his hair as she pulled at them.

His warm tongue circled her nipple before he pulled his mouth away and gently blew onto it, watching it harden and noticing how her body shivered in anticipation. And with that, he bit it , earning him a yelp and a teasing hand rubbing him through his pants.

"From lips to necks .." Bedelia whispered, watching him trail his kisses down her stomach, his tongue sticking itself into her belly button. "Nipples and breasts" She continued, growing wetter with each second as his face buried itself in-between her legs and he lapped at her through her panties.

After a few more licks and suckles, it was safe to say that her scent was making it impossible for him to now devour her almost immediately.

"Vulvas and genitals" She said again, her voice growing more and more breathless as he but her inner thigh and it took everything in her not to squeeze his face with her thighs. He trailed up kisses to her knee before he went back onto his usual trail, licking down her inner thigh, his nose burying itself into the lace panties again as he felt her slightly push her hips into his face. He felt her growing impatient.

Her scent was intoxicating. But he had to take this slow, moving his lips to her other inner thigh, biting and sucking onto the flesh with a full intent if marking her there. He wanted her sore. He wanted her sore and in bed with him till the next day, so his lips may soothe her soreness. Tasting her on his lips once again after tonight.

"Hannibal" A needy whine escaped her lips as she ground her hips against him once again. His thumb hooked the hem of her panties and eventually removed them ever so slowly, tying them around his wrist as he settled both of her legs onto his shoulders.

His fingers spreading her, his mouth settling onto her clitoris as he sucked some of her arousal, before his tongue licked down her vulva and began to feast on what he desired the most, letting his primal instincts take over him, his erection painfully hard as he rubbed himself against the couch.

A symphony of whines and whimpers filled his ears, and the more he lapped and suckled onto her vulva, the more his tongue was filled with more of her juices, and the more he got a taste of her, the more he sought out her climax. Till eventually, her thighs squeezed his face, her hands pulling at his hair and a loud cry erupted from her chest as she came. And she came hard with all the build up he made her feel and he didn't stop.

No.

He wanted more.

And more he got as two of his fingers penetrated her, rutting roughly into her as her gasps were almost breathless. And it only took a few more minutes before she came for a second time. Her cum dripping down his chin as he pulled his fingers out, licked them clean and cleaned her up as well.

"Hannibal" She mumbled, already in a high daze as he removed her skirt, yet his eyes fell onto a scar on her hip bone, shaped like an hourglass with some writing beneath it.

Russian.

It was in Russian.

Huh?

Черная вдова

"Hannibal" She said in a whisper once again, pulling him by the hem of his pants as she grabbed him by the chin and kissed his lips once again.

"We are all Cannibals, meant to devour each other"

°•୨♡୧•°

Hours later and he lays besides her in bed, her back pressed into his chest, his arms wrapped around her sleeping form as he placed soft kisses onto her cheek and forehead.

But the scar didn't leave his mind so easily. Not at all in fact as his fingers traced down to her hip bone, where the scar was located. His finger traced it as he tried to remember where he had seen this symbol before. And why was it engraved onto Bedelia's skin ? What was she hiding?

The signs are all Infront of him yet he is incapable of connecting the dots, leaving him nothing. A trail which leads to a dead end.

Or was it truly a dead end?

°•୨♡୧•°

"You mustn't underestimate my power, Dalia" Said the man as he circled her from where she was hanging upside down, stripped naked.

"You left me no choice" She stuttered out, the cold biting her skin and the chains were making it impossible to breath in.

"I did. You simply chose the wrong one. This isn't a democratic country for you to assume that you are allowed to choose the choice that facilitates the task for you. What is this? America?" His question bitter and mocking as she bit back her tongue to keep herself from whimpering.

"I'm tired. I simply wanted something easier than usual" She tried to explain. But it was useless as he pressed a button and she was sunk back into the freezing water with a loud yelp. A minute later he pulled her back out and she was drenched once again, her body trembling like a leaf and her lips turning blue.

"Look at you. Like a wet cat. Shivering and whimpering. What else? Will you meow in protest Everytime I dunk you in?" A cold chuckle followed his words as he dunk her back in before she could say a thing.

Thirty seconds later he pulled her back out as she gasped for air.

"I'd like to hear you meow" He stated, a cruel smile playing on his lips as she glared at him, breathing heavily still.

"Come on kitty, kitty. Meow for me" He said, but she knew it was an order. An order she refuses to give into.

"Meow, or back to the water you go kitten" He threatened but still nothing.

And so, he dunk her back in. Leaving her for almost two minutes, until, he began to see more bubbles form on the surface of the water, and out of pity ,he pulled her out.

"Will you meow now? I'm sure Natalya and Yelena would be saddened to know that their mother is dead. With no one to protect them. Only their father around" He was a cruel man. A cruel, nasty old man that exploited their children to get her to bend the knee.

"Mhm—M—" She was shivering far too much and her teeth were clanking together, unable to say a thing.

"Mhn? What was that, kitty cat?" He asked with a raised brow.

"Mhm—Me—" A whimper escaped her lips as she fell silent.

And so he dunk her again. And again. And Again. Until bruises began to form on her body. Frost bites. And she seemed close to passing out.

Til...

His finger went to the button but before he could press it—

"Meow! Meow meow meow!" She said almost immediately, her eyes filling with tears as she shook her head. "Meow. Meow, meow, meow" The meows sounded more like whimpers but it was something.

His smile widened.

"How easy it is to dehumanize you" He said with a bitter chuckle, signaling two of his men to untie her. And as she came down, thrown to her knees before him, it was obvious that small frostbites were beginning to develop onto her skin due to the discoloration and the slight bruising, but he could care less.

"I have the perfect way to keep you warm, Lisichka." He said mockingly, snapping his fingers as one of his men yanked her by the hair and she yelled in protest.

"Rutting into you might bring back some of the circulation in your body" He said with a laugh.

And with that..

She awoke with a startled gasp. Her hand had already reached for her hidden gun underneath her pillow, aiming it at the door. The last image in her mind was that of— oh him ontop of her.

"Bedelia?" Came Hannibal's alarmed voice. She still did not lower her gun, her eyes staring blankly far ahead, breathing heavy as her chest heaved with desperate wheezes of air, her hand firm as it gripped the gun and her finger on the trigger.

"Bedelia" Hannibal said again, sitting up in bed, his hand ever so carefully settling onto her elbow as it lowered her arm ever so gently and carefully. "Easy there" He whispered softly, his other arm wrapped itself around her as he pulled her to his chest, and to his surprise and her own, she let him. "You're okay. It was a bad dream. A bad dream" He spoke softly into her ear, pulling the gun out of her grasp and setting it onto the bedside.

A bad dream.

It wasn't a bad dream. It was a reality lived decades ago. But still, a reality that remains freshly present in her brain.

"Deep breaths" He instructed her, his hand tangling into her hair, caressing it gently as he tried to soothe her clearly distressed state.

"Deep breaths" He repeated, his lips finding her temple as he gave her a soft kiss.

And so, her eyes closed again, and she let him wrap her tightly in his embrace.

It's over..

Or was it?

[as-is-above-so-below]

In the Middle of the Night (Jason Todd x OC)

Masterlist

Chapter 8, Chapter 10

story summary: Melanie Withers and Jason Todd do everything together - including but not limited to stealing tires off Gotham's famous vigilante. The newest additions to the Wayne family begin their journey, learning how to navigate their new family, life as vigilantes, adolescence, grief, and rebirth.

chapter summary: Happy New Year from the Batfamily! (and also, SURPRISE WALLY NAME DROP! AAAAAAA)

December 2012

Strong winds tugged at Redwing’s cape, the yellow fabric billowing behind her on her gargoyle perch. People littered the streets below under the soft glow of neon and street lights; they poured in and out of various bars and nightclubs, despite the frigid temperatures and quickly accumulating layers of snow. 

Nothing could keep the city of Gotham from a good time on New Year’s Eve.

She grabbed the hems near her midsection and clipped them together, securing them around her torso for warmth. Robin did the same on the next statue, tugging his hood over his wet hair. While cold fronts and heavy snow were typical for that time of year, the continued steady drop in bitter temperature over just a few hours wasn’t. She raised her gloved hand to her earpiece and tapped open her comms.

“Oracle?”

“Hi, Redwing! How are you this fine winter evening?”

“Cold. Unnaturally cold,” she grumbled, dusting the heavy flurries off her shoulders. “Could you pull up weather patterns and temperatures for the last ten years?”

Robin shifted from the balls of his feet to a seated position, his legs dangling below. He rested some of his weight onto his hands, pressed forward between his legs. “What’re ya thinkin’, Red?”

“I’m thinking that it was thirty degrees when we left the cave, and we’re about to drop into the negatives in the span of,” she turned back to look up at the clocktower behind them, “three hours.”

“Abnormal weather conditions don’t necessarily mean Victor’s involved.”

Batman crouched on his heels between them following his question, shrouded in his black cape. Like them, he had a winterized version of his suit on – the usual color scheme, but slightly bulkier with the extra layers and warming factor built in. The bat symbol at the center of his chest had more shine than his usual suit.

“I don’t know… I could be wrong, but this doesn’t feel right.”

“You have a good sense of climate, Redwing!” Oracle chimed back in. “The chill you’re feeling is way below normal. Gotham normally hangs in the thirty- to forty-degree range in December. And temps definitely don’t drop this fast.”

Batman hummed in affirmation, a proud smirk on his face. “Don’t ever doubt your instincts. Well done.”

“But why now? Freeze covered Gotham in ice in the middle of August before; he doesn’t need cold weather,” she wondered, looking to her father for ideas.

The bat tapped away at his gauntlet, pulling up the records from his last encounter with the man. “I found Victor so quickly before because it was the dead of summer. He could be using seasonality as camouflage.”

Oracle’s voice echoed in their ears again, “I’d be willing to bet he hoped we would be preoccupied with this evening’s festivities.”

A smart move on his end, considering they were just now noticing the weather fluctuation. 

“Assuming he built the same kind of devices, there were three units I had to track down before they reached their full potential. My analysis then estimated it would have taken five hours to freeze the city over.”

The winged duo nodded solemnly, meeting each other’s white eyes. “It’s already been at least three. We don’t have much time,” Robin pointed out, rising to his feet again.

“I could reach out to KF and see if he’s available to help?”

“No need! I think I have an idea where at least one will be.”

“Care to share with the class?” she asked. Her forehead wrinkled where her eyebrows were concealed under her mask.

The boy smirked as he pulled out his grapple gun, his arm hanging loosely by his side. “Freeze is the sentimental type, right? Do you still have his wife at the lab?”

“Yes.”

“What better place to attack Gotham from than the tallest building in the city?”

“You think he’s at Wayne Tower?” Redwing stood with him, readying her own line.

“I don’t think. I know.”

Her eyes rolled behind the white lenses of her mask. “Fascinating.”

“What, my charm? Dashing good looks? Searing intellect?”

She stepped forward so only her heels balanced on the beast’s nose. Her arches and toes hovered in the air. She tapped the muzzle of the tool against her chin with pursed lips as she pretended to think. “Your enormous ego,” she finally concluded, laughing wildly as his boyish grin morphed into a hurt expression as she tipped over, letting her body fall head-first into the neon lights below.

Redwing allowed herself to freefall for a few seconds before firing the grapple hook. It caught on a nearby water tower, launching her back towards the sky.

In the year since Bruce had adopted them, Melanie had learned that Dick was right about at least one thing.

There’s nothing like flying.

Her earpiece crackled to life again. “Ego?!” Robin cried, appalled, coming into view about forty feet to her left. “My ego is well-earned! I deserve an apology!”

“And how might I get back into your good graces, Boy Wonder?”

“It’ll be midnight soon. I think a New Year’s kiss is in order.”

“Who else would I kiss?”

“No PDA on duty.”

“Golly gee willickers, Batman.” He took a high-pitched voice, mocking the original Robin. “Don’t be a party pooper. You swat spit Catwoman in the field all the time!”

“I do not. Even if I did, it would be different.”

“Hypocrite.”

“Focus,” Batman snapped, the blue halo from the Wayne Enterprises logo coming into view. Lo and behold, a structure resembling a stocky cell tower sat on the roof, pumping a cold front into Gotham’s atmosphere. Nearby, a similar unit lit up the Foxteca building; in the distance, a third condenser at the Sporting Complex.

The group took refuge on a neighboring rooftop as Batman cataloged the force they were going up against. “I don’t see Victor’s heat signature,” he mumbled, making a mental note. “You two distract his henchmen. I’ll shut down the weather machine then we'll move on to the next. We have to be quick.”

“Yessir!”

With the plan set, the two birds took to Wayne Enterprises, scaling the side farthest from the equipment. While they would work on the goons, Batman would sneak up the back to access the interface. Two loud cackles drew the attention of the dozen or so men to the teens; Robin traipsed the curbed edge like a tightrope while Redwing juggled R-shaped shurikens atop an exhaust vent.

“So,” Robin started. He spun on one foot to turn back around and go back the way he came. “You all have two options. You can surrender peacefully, and we leave you for the GCPD. Or, we can kick your butts, and you’re arrested anyway. Your call!”

Despite his generous offer, Regulator brutes charged them, a few hanging back while their gauntlets whirred to life.

Robin sighed dramatically, hopping down from the ledge. “They just never learn, do they, Wing?”

“They don’t, Rob. They really don’t.” She snatched one of the sharp weapons out of the air on its downward arch and directed it into the muzzle of a rifle. The gun backfired, causing its holder to reel from the bright flash of heat.

As Robin sprinted forward, Redwing jumped from the vent onto her partner’s locked and ready hands, propelling her into the air in their enemies’ direction. She swiftly moved between enemies, sometimes kicking some in Robin’s direction for an assist. She prioritized enemies with guns first, wanting them disarmed and out of the way quickly. Despite the freezing air, Redwing still felt a layer of sweat forming underneath her thermal layer from the effort of the fight. 

Bullets pinged off the concrete and metal structures around them as they dodged and weaved through their trajectories; the sharp, tangy smoke almost overwhelmed her senses.

As the number of active targets dwindled, Redwing felt a hot muzzle press against the back of her skull; she immediately pivoted, barely knocking it away for the bullet to miss. “Oof, that was a close one!” she laughed, ripping the rifle out of the man’s hands. “Almost got me there!”

While she was quick to knock him unconscious with the butt of his gun, she wasn’t fast enough to avoid the massive hand that wrapped around her bicep and yanked, sending her skidding across the roof. Her shoulder audibly popped, and she groaned at the sound and sudden shooting pain down her arm.

As she tried to her shoulder it back in, the last lackey loomed over her. Allowing herself to get grabbed was a big mistake that allowed her opponent to hold all of the power, especially now that one of her limbs was out of commission. She could fight with what she had, but adjusting to the ache wasted precious time that she did not have.

At least, until a sticky pellet thudded against the Regulator’s gauntlet and activated, volts of electricity arcing through his arm to the ground. He stumbled back, leaving Robin open to slide underneath his grip and forcing him to topple by tripping his feet.

“You heard her, man! It’s not her time.” He, too, fell unconscious when the black-haired boy was finished with him.

“You good?”

She nodded, gripping her bicep with her opposite hand to brace it to her side.

“You were tellin’ us about being quick?! What the hell, B? What’s taking so long?” Robin pressed, helping Redwing up while nursing his own bruises at his side. 

“These condensers are different,” Batman grunted as he typed at the machine’s terminal. “We have to shut them off at the same time. We’re going to have to split up.”

“You can’t figure out how to disarm them manually?”

“No. That will take hours, which we don’t have.”

He stepped away from his task to inspect Redwing’s limp limb, pressed against her side. The girl hissed as he tried to twinge it with barely any pressure, jerking away from his touch. Robin certainly had a busted lip and a few bruises of his own.

“It’s dislocated.”

“Batman, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. I’m calling the Batmobile to take you back to the cave–”

“We need three people to turn these off,” Redwing cut him off, turning her shoulder to her partner. “Robin?”

He sighed deeply, gingerly looping his fingers around her wrist and bracing her back. “Alright–”

“Robin, don’t you dare–”

POP!

“GAH–” Redwing took a deep breath before letting out a whoosh of air. “See? All good!” She turned momentarily as if to look around, hiding the pained expression on her face. “Christ on a cracker, that hurt.”

Batman was pinching the bridge of his nose over his cowl, his head bowed and shaking. “Nightwing’s supposed to be my problem child, not you two.” He took her arm and tested her mobility, moving and rotating the appendage in all directions. When he was begrudgingly satisfied, Batman sighed again. “Fine, but you’re staying here. Robin, you go to Foxteca; plug this into the terminal before I give the signal. I’ll cover the arena.”

Robin took the flash drive from their father and tucked it into his utility belt. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, brushing a spot of blood off her cheek with his thumb.

She smiled warmly and shrugged. “I think I can handle pressing a button. I’ll be fine. Besides, you owe me a kiss.”

“Me?! No, no, no, you’re supposed to kiss me–”

“If I have to tell you two to focus again, you’re suspended for a week.”

Batman wasn’t one to make threats lightly, and neither Redwing nor Robin wanted to find out how strict the man was feeling. Redwing laughed and shoved him away before heading over to her station.

It took Batman and Robin some time to get to their respective locations. Long enough for the eerie silence to make the hair on the back of her neck stand. Nothing but the cold wind gusts and mechanical buzzing in her ears. 

Something was missing…

“Batman, Robin. Do either of you have eyes on Mr. Freeze?” she questioned, taking cautious steps toward the middle of the skyscraper’s roof.

“Negative.”

“No, why?”

The air shifted, setting off alarms in her mind. Redwing dove forward just in time to not get crushed by a giant mecha suit’s fist. She rolled easily and sprang to her feet, finding herself face-to-face with the man himself. The temperature dropped noticeably around the icy metal, the vapor from her breath thicker and more visible than before.

“Ah, the Girl Wonder. I was expecting Batman.”

Victor Fries played into his villain persona well. His voice didn’t just have a cold tone; the vibrato sent actual chills down her already taut spine.

“Sorry to disappoint, Victor,” she replied, readying her fighting stance. “I guess he just didn’t think you were much of a threat.”

Her opponent chuckled darkly, his heavy steps clunking on concrete as he closed in on her. “She thinks she’s Batman,” he growled. “How quaint.”

Redwing slid under his downward swing, sprinting back toward the weather machine at the now far corner. Freeze just caught the corner of her cape, which she immediately released as soon as she felt the familiar tug. Out of his reach again, she tapped her comms back on. “Speak of the devil!”

“He’s there? I’m coming back to you–”

“There isn’t time!” the girl interrupted, narrowly sidestepping an ice ray. The ends of her hair had long since gathered an icy sheen from the wet air and subzero temperatures. “We have to do this now!”

Her evasive skills would be the hot ticket item for their next team meeting, considering how often Redwing was snatched up during this encounter.

Freeze seized her by the back of her neck, stopping her in her tracks and lifting her off the ground without effort. She scrambled for one of the pouches on her belt, only for it to be torn away and slammed into the ground. “I don’t think so, little bird,” Freeze snarled and pulled her face forward, stopping just short of smashing the protective barrier around his head. Redwing was forced to ignore the chattering in her ear, focused only on steadying her breathing and figuring a way to do her part and shut down the terminal behind Freeze. The man adjusted his grip, now keeping her suspended from the front.

“Why…are you…doing this?” she choked out, slowly slipping her hand over her stomach, then her breastplate…

“Batman and Mr. Wayne took my Nora from me,” he shared as if it was obvious. His corpse-like, blue skin was infinitely more horrifying up close. “I intend to retrieve what is mine and leave this wretched city a tundra when I’m done with it!”

“Redwing, now!”

“She’s not…your…property.” Finally, she pressed the ‘R’ on her chest, dispensing another golden shuriken, and, with a year’s worth of practice and great skill, hurled the star at the red switch.

Flip

“No!”

The cold front spewing into the night sky immediately started to narrow until it dwindled into nothing, the various gears and pieces slowing to a stop. She assumed, in the distance, the other machines and beams had similar reactions. Already the heavy, white storm turned into soft flurries, more representative of a New Jersey winter.

The plan had worked.

“Red, hold on! I’m coming!”

“No!” Victor roared again, charging to his creation, only to find a black screen. The drives permanently disabled the software once it was shut down, making it inaccessible. Forever. “You insignificant little witch! You’ll pay for this!” 

And suddenly, the bruising pressure was gone, and she was flying again.

And flying.

And flying.

Then falling.

Her ice-tipped hair bit and stung her face as she slapped at her hip, gloves meeting her suit helplessly with wide eyes.

He took her belt; her grapple–

And no cape. She’d ditched it, effectively clipping her own wings.

She wanted to scream and call out for Robin or Batman, but the panic and violent terror gagged her as she plummeted toward the empty city street. Would her father be the one to retrieve her broken, bloody body, or her brother?

Not Jay, anyone but Jay…

Jason

Jason

Jason

A body slammed into hers with a grunted Oof, knocking her path to the snow-covered pavement off course. It was like colliding with a brick wall. Her body jerked from being caught at the waist before being enveloped in a tight hold and turned in the air, nose pressed against a firm chest; she smelled musky sweat, gunpowder, and the lingering twinge of mint toothpaste. 

They soared for about two seconds before their trajectory arched back to the ground. When they finally hit solid ground, the other person hit first, cushioning her landing, before they tumbled down the street. When they slowed to a stop several feet from the initial impact, the cage around her loosened, and her loose body flopped face down into the crisp snowfall.

“Red! Red, hey!”

Redwing let out a low groan as she was flipped on her back and shaken, eyes squeezed shut. “Am I dead?”

Robin was visibly relieved both at her consciousness and her ability to speak. “Nah, you can’t die just yet. It’s 12:06.”

January 2013

Jason.

Kevlar hands delicately cradled the sides of her neck before frosty, wet lips pressed into her rosy cheek. The sentiment continued across her face – on her forehead, nose, the corner of her lips. Some barely touched her flesh, overlapping with the edges of her mask or hair. Each word he spoke was punctuated with a loud peck.

“I - love - you - so - much.”

Redwing mustered the strength to softly tap his cheek with two soft pats. “Love you t-too. Good…save…” she wheezed, arm dropping back down and displacing some white fluff back into the air. If the fact that her whole body already hurt was any indicator, she was in for a world of hurt over the next few days. 

Robin allowed her a moment to gather herself before slipping his hands under her shoulders and forcing her to sit up. He moved to one knee, some joints cracking and popping at the effort, and wedged his arms under hers until the crooks of his elbows settled in her armpits.

“C’mon,” he ordered, rising to his full height, hoisting Redwing to her feet. He slung her good arm over his shoulder, adjusting until he found a comfortable position. “You have to get back to the Cave. The Batmobile’s right here.”

Immediately, her heels dug into the road. “Wait, Freeze–”

“B has it handled. You’re in no shape to fight. You need to go.”

“Mmm’kay…”

For once, she complied with his orders, feet dragging as he mostly carried her to the car. The driver’s door opened for them, and Robin took the utmost care in lowering his other half into the seat before swinging her legs in.

“Happy New Year, Rob.”

“Happy New Year, Red.”

.

.

.

Copyright © 2023 as-is-above-so-below. All rights reserved.

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Another Hungry Mouth

Starvation started when autumn died. When the riot of colors faded, turning into every shade of brown among the leaves as wind took them down, leaving all trees barren and naked. Those same winds whispered through holes in rotting fences.

Enclosed by those fences, the house on the middle of the road stood empty and abandoned. Old paint had peeled from its wood long ago, and bitter-cold air crept in through broken, barricaded windows. The front door creaked and groaned in every stormy gust of wind, hanging crooked in its hinges.

And in that house’s dark attic and darker cellar, the bowels of this old ruin tightened. Derelict insides twisted with hunger. Unmappable halls and rooms, some said. Haunted, said others.

In the dark, eyeless, it watched. Between the rumble of cars and the ringing of bicycle bells, earless, it listened. It sensed every presence. Every soul, every fleshy body, made up of blood, and guts, and brains. Gnarled branches of dying yard trees reached out like skeletal hands, yearning for every unsuspecting passersby.

Whenever any stopped on sidewalk to gawk, the house whispered to them. Through cracks and holes, wind carried indecipherable invitations. In some, it instilled terror, inspiring to move one quickly.

In others, this sparked their curiosity. Curiosity that lured them past that fence, past a jungle of overgrown lawn, onto a decrepit patio, and into the hungry, hungry house.

Prey.

Ideal nourishment took the shape of such people. Those whose burning curiosity and boldness eclipsed their fear and survival instinct. Wood and stone drank their blood, and walls chewed on their flesh and bone till nothing was left behind.

They fed the shadow. The living shadow, that dark heart beneath the earth. They nourished that insatiable, cancerous thing that festered in its depths.

Once, someone placed a jack-o’-lantern on the withered porch, wishing to spread merry among her neighbors. Her own morbid fascination and curiosity lured her past the creaking threshold inside. Her blood flowed down attic stairs, and bone-dry wood soaked up all, leaving no trace of her behind.

Once, two young men went in with cameras, eager to make a name for themselves as ghost hunters. The house struggled to swallow more than one at a time, but insatiable hunger emboldened it to distend its maw. Their plastic and metal equipment provided more pain than nourishment, but the house ate all, and beyond its fill that summer. It kept its quiet when their friends and police came looking for the two.

So many gone missing. As years went by, people disappeared in that town. Only few believed the missing had vanished in that house, and none would ever prove it.

Yet less and less disappeared with every passing season.

More and more, people avoided the house altogether. Louder than its whispers, rumors of its body count circled the house’s surrounding town, keeping the curious at bay. Someone spread lies on the internet, “debunking” stories of hauntings as fake or tall tales, keeping fortune seekers away.

It had not eaten in years. Mockery from the sidewalk followed more often than gazes filled with fears. Its desperate whispers even pleaded with stray cats to enter, but to no avail. A living trap needed bait to lure its prey. The house now stood empty, in every thinkable way.

Its legend had fostered a fear too strong, and its legend had become too unbelievable. Until this night, All Hallow’s Eve, when a young woman approached, hungry to do the unthinkable.

That witch, disguised as witch to hide in plain sight, stood on the sidewalk and stared.

The house sensed her sense of adventure, it could almost taste her yearning. She hungered for something else, something burning. Behind her forehead burned a fire of ambition so bright that the house almost feared it might burn and consume it outright.

She stared from the sidewalk and set into motion. Wind whispered louder through holes in the fence than her sneakered feet fell upon grass, movement fueled by dark devotion.

The young witch was eager. The house was desperate.

Not even at the threshold of the front door would she stop, unfazed by that yawning portal, groaning as it creaked and cracked and opened for her, praying more she would descend into its bowels, like all those gone missing in the decades past.

No fear from her, which mattered not, for the house just wanted her flesh and blood. Food’s feelings never mattered. Oh, what wondrous creature, what perfect prey, the house whispered from the basement to her, thirsting for blood, crazed to eat her that day.

And then, cut short, another ran forth, dashing past fence and tall grass. She caught up to the first, stopping her in her tracks, yanking at her arm, so hard she fell on her ass.

She begged her friend to turn around, for the price was too high to pay. They both sought power, they practiced magick, but there had to be another way. Another place, another hour, they needed to leave.

Too close to the sun, she said, but you can stop! I am begging you, please stop! And she sighed in relief as her wish came true, and helped her dear friend back up.

The house’s walls shuddered with dread and rained dust upon their heads. Too hard had it tried to hide its hungry nature. The violence too transparent in its quake, while wind picked up, and whispers turned into howls. The fear it struck drove them out, farther away from its dark and empty bowels.

Hallways shifted, yet just too late, and the witches escaped the house. The door slammed shut, not by its will, but driven by human hands, sealing its final fate.

Its final gasp, pathetic and weak, made grass and pickets shudder. Many would later point and gawk, but daring to enter? There would never be another.

Winter came and went. Snow and sun widened cracks, and the roof gaped open with holes. Light flooded attic, and stairs collapsed, burying all ways to the cellar. Where light no longer reached, no person could reach either, and the house succumbed completely.

Come summer, a man shuddered as he stood upon that dead lawn, where he staked his sign into the dirt. The buyer he found felt no fear nor wonder, and hired an entire force of workers. With rhythmic quake and metal thunder, machines arrived, plowing walls, and tearing everything asunder.

Thus the house died all hungry and alone. Buried under tons of cement, its wretched being ended. All hunger, all festering hunger, now remained silent.

Another year past, all wind and whispers now carried through steel cages, filtering through the empty skeletons of rows of shopping carts, rattling by day, and silent by night. Seasons passed, holidays brought fortune, past glowing trees of Christmas, and Valentine’s pink hearts.

The house was gone and dead, sooner than its legend, and many cars now parked in its paved space. A different curse now claimed this place. A different greed, borne by commerce, all lured by neon signs.

Another whisper, another gasp. And another hungry mouth opened upon this wretched earth.

[welcometomy20s]

July 9, 2022

VOCALOID LEGENDS - 2018 Part 8

#413 - Diagnosis: Lovesickness (HoneyWorks) [GUMI]

Achievement Date: 18-09-02, Upload Date: 13-12-27

The story that takes before or after a confession about the known unknowns and unknown unknowns of love. I think GUMI’s voice is a bit off here, which is odd because they do GUMI fine, it’s just lacking in a respect that I don’t know.

#414 - Daydream Sky Train (Orangestar) [IA, Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-02, Upload Date: 15-02-21

Rare duet from Orangestar, and probably the most refreshing song from the producer, and the producer is known for refreshments. I think it’s because the song is actually slow enough to feel more open, but still driving enough to feel that breeze.

#415 - Hated by Life Itself. (Kanzaki Iori) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-02, Upload Date: 17-08-06

An anti-’suicide song’. As in, the song is a complaint about all the songs about suicide and wanting to sing more happy songs. A lot of Kanzaki Iori songs are like that. Mafumafu’s version, to me, presents the song as too simple and sad, while to me, it actually feels a lot more angry than sad. Whatever the interpretation, good song. What’s with the doubling in the second verse though, that’s very odd, but okay.

#416 - When the Morning-glory Withers (Zips) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-05, Upload Date: 15-03-15

Now part of TUYU, there is a cover from them. As with TUYU songs, it is a very poetic song. Quiet Miku songs always sound ancient due to the nature of Miku. Very much a summer song, in fact part of the Summer series, but it came out in March. Come on! Nice mix of instrumentation and progression, something apparent in TUYU as well.

#417 - Failure Girl (Kairiki Bear) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-10, Upload Date: 15-08-08

The original, not the MARETU arrangement which is more popular. As with the arrangement, this might be Kairiki Bear’s darkest song in terms of sound. The lyrics are dark as the rest of the oeuvre. Honestly, the early songs kind of sound like a much more settled version of Human Zoo of Hell series, not that this distracts from the song.

#418 - Happy Halloween (Junky) [Kagamine Rin]

Achievement Date: 18-09-11, Upload Date: 14-10-10

The go-to Halloween song for people to cover. The knock opening is one of the most iconic openings in VOCALOID, least to me. The song is actually quite macabre, surprising from someone who wrote Melancholic. But it’s suitably cute as well.

#419 - Dareka no Shinzou ni Nareta Nara (YURRY CANON) [GUMI, Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-13, Upload Date: 18-02-12

Song that brought YURRY CANON almost instant fame. Song that prominently establishes the producer’s style, a mix of rock with an eclectic beat and instrumentation with that iconic synth riff. Hard song to sing because the song is usually low and that spikes during the chorus. About wanting to love after a loss, that subtle bitter sad themes are littered throughout YURRY CANON’s discography.

#420 - drop pop candy (GigaP) [Kagamine Rin, Megurine Luka]

Achievement Date: 18-09-14, Upload Date: 14-07-18

Relatively rare Rin/Luka song, and one of my favorite Giga songs. I think this is still quite underrated. Giga at its most sweetest and innocent, and it fits him surprisingly well. I just want Giga to write more clean and cute songs like this one.

#421 - The Disease Called Love (Neru, z’5) [Kagamine Rin, Len]

Achievement Date: 18-09-15, Upload Date: 17-09-17

Progressive wonky house… don’t know what that means, but I like this more contemporary house-influenced take on a typical Neru song. And I like how the lyrics might be the sweetest Neru would ever get, fitting the house theme. Really like this.

#422 - Outsider (Eve) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-20, Upload Date: 18-04-06

Another classic intro. Eve’s tuning of Miku is so clear yet light, which is really good for singing… which is an odd thing to say, but it does sound like Miku is an utaite herself. Probably the darkest of the trio of songs which Eve is known for in terms of lyrics, although more in its bitterness than content. Desperation carries through, though.

#423 - Hi-Spec NEET (40mP) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-20, Upload Date: 17-01-06

Another COMPASS song, it’s interesting that 40mP takes on the ‘perfect but unhappy’ character, kind of sounds like 40mP writing a kemu song, including the more prominent guitar and drums on this song. Tells that 40mP has some range in his composition.

#424 - celluloid (baker) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-21, Upload Date: 07-10-05

One of the earliest notable VOCALOID songs, a shame it took this long. People say melt was the first song to break the Miku mold, but it was actually this song. Not only that this song’s tuning heads above anyone else. It still sounds state of art, even though it was released a month into Miku’s existence. It just got buried and forgotten.

#425 - Shadow-Stepping Etranger (Substreet) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 18-09-21, Upload Date: 11-01-29

Another rock song from ‘11 with a danceable backing and passable tuning. Kind of sounds like a low-ranking song (probably was) in the chart back in the heydays. There’s nothing special, it’s just a competent song about your typical stuff, I think.

#426 - Redire (balloon) [flower]

Achievement Date: 18-09-23, Upload Date: 17-06-14

Kind of taking the back seat on this one, transitioning into more of a mellow sound more fitting of the PV like his later songs. Lyrically, the song is pretty… dire, about the lies of being together and being alone… and there is the plant analogy.

[quarantinedinabaddream]

i got cursed like eve got bitten. oh, was it punishment?

they say that eve’s bite was a sin, a transgression that wove a tapestry of exile and longing. when she sank her teeth into that forbidden fruit, the world split open and knowledge poured in like torrential rain. i can’t help but feel like i tasted something forbidden too. and it was sweet but it left a bitter aftertaste on my tongue, that still clings to my soul buried within the depths of my tormented mind but everpresent. a curse that shadows every step i take, making me wonder whether it was defiance or destiny? the weight of abandonment settles upon me like a bone deep exhaustion, making me feel like a mad woman on her knees howling to the midnight sky like a wounded wolf, begging to a god she doesn’t believe in to change the prophecy, tormented by the icy grips of solitude and sorrow running through her veins, marked by the vile knowledge that isolates and a truth that alienates. tell me, is it punishment? this endless cycle of parting? this poisoned garden of forsaken bonds? every connection, every embrace, doomed to wither? friends, lovers, even fleeting acquaintances all fated to always always slip away? leaving behind the cold echo of their absence. each departure a cruel reminder, a silent testament to the curse that i bear but somehow can’t seem to grasp whether it was a birthright or the consequence of seeking what lies beyond the veil of innocence. or maybe the curse is in the knowing, in the bitter aftertaste of that first bite, in the endless haunting question: was it punishment? is it punishment? or simply the price of seeing too much, feeling too deeply, and daring to reach for more than what was ever meant to be mine?

[magic-and-metaphors]

~Hallowed Masquerade~

Gossamer gowns give Shields of silken sheen

Disguising decaying deceased Lurking under lace illusion

Socially acceptably visible Hiding bones and rotten flesh

Half-corporeal specters can Crawl out from the shadows

Donned in alabaster suede One night to feel alive

This Hallowed Masquerade

Even those not yet undead Can show their truthful form

Whether fangs or claws Or withered wings

No judgment shall you find Since everyone's disguised

These costumes that you've Donned upon this bitter eve

Allowing mingling with mortals Both seen and yet unseen

During this Hallowed Masquerade

[evarcana]

I See the Moon

Oh when you are looking at the sun

Ev wears some very impractical shoes and learns that she does not know the city quite as well as she thought.

characters: the usual cast of Ev and consul Valerius

words: 2,4k

warnings: none!

notes: I wanted to write something short and sweet to act as a placeholder between the previous part and what is coming next, but I think I got a bit too emotionally attached in the process. The title is from “Be the One” by Dua Lipa and I will leave it open for interpretations.

Darkness strikes Ev’s eyes as she steps out of the theatre doors and for a moment she is completely lost in time and space, staring at her surroundings as if seeing everything for the first time - the disorientation which comes with returning to reality after the magic of the theatre wears off.

A few myopic street lanterns glimmer faintly and the moon, pitched extraordinarily high, is covered by the ragged organza of thin clouds and barely available to light the streets below. Passing groups of people turn into clusters of dark silhouettes, and Ev watches the collars being lifted and scarfs wrapped tighter, as the theatregoers hide themselves from the wind moist with the cool evening dew and disappear into the shadows, leaving only trails of soft footsteps and animated chatter behind them. It is this time of the year when night falls suddenly and way quicker than anyone anticipates.

The impatient tug on Ev’s arm cuts through the hazy darkness. “Are you going to let me leave or what?!” Valerius sounds desperate in his exasperation.

“Just a moment and you are free.” Still watching the dark street, Ev reaches for her bag and throws a pair of flat pointy mules decorated with golden beads and tassels on the ground in front of her. Using Valerius’s arm for support, she lifts one leg to untie the ribbons on her ankle. Somebody behind them helpfully holds the theatre door open, letting the light out, and they both stare at Ev’s bright red toenails as she steps out of her shoes. Ev frowns to herself and curls her toes - it is hard to be an intimidating opponent when you wear a cute sparkly little ring on your fourth toe, when she feels another tug and catches her breath in surprise, losing her balance. The arm slips from under her hand causing her to immediately crash into Valerius. Well, no chance of looking like a menace now. At least Valerius can’t run away, she thinks, because her entire face is smashed into his chest. “So impatient,” Ev rolls her eyes and tucks her heels in the bag.

Valerius hurries to brush off something invisible from his coat and then looks down at Ev’s feet with cynical interest, “Going on a hike?”

She contemplates telling that it took her a very detoured walk from the palace and four nervous circles around the Town Square to finally burn all that destructive energy her body generated in their morning argument, and that right now she is dying to rub her sore ankles, but decides against it. After all, wounded animals are easy prey. “Looks like it,” Ev says, shifting her weight from one foot to another. She scans the road once again and clicks her tongue. There is a carriage pulling away, two people inside, and another one rolling on towards the theatre, the coachman already waving to somebody, but most of the theatre crowd chooses to walk. They all must be locals, or heading to the closest tavern, Ev realises.

“Don’t tell me, -” Valerius’s voice says and Ev looks up, surprised that he is still standing there, “you don’t have a carriage because you were hoping to find a date to continue the night. You shall forgive me for ruining this little plan of yours.” His words are dripping with distaste.

She realises that Valerius must have been following her eyeline. The nervous lough blasts out of her but she manages to catch it and it turns to sound like a cough. A lucky guess on his part? Or did he take inspiration from his own plans? Ev refuses to think about the whole theatre fiasco. The sinking feeling in her chest has started and she puts her hands on her hips in annoyance. “I thought there would be carriages waiting,” she manages to say.

Valerius arches his brow in response, “...how pathetic.” Ev gives him her best withering look and turns away.

The last carriage departs with the din of wheels hitting the worn edges of the stones. Valerius’s eyes are still set on Ev’s face and his brow begins to crease slowly. He is clearly deliberating something but Ev cannot see it. She is watching clouds moving slowly across the moon. “Where do you live?”, he finally asks.

“By the Town Square,” Ev responds automatically, squinting at the sky above her.

“Not in the Heart District?” It sounds like a genuine question at first but the edge of his mouth lifts in a wry grin. “Didn’t you say I wasn’t the only one with the money here?”

“Too close to you,” she smirks back, “the urge of leaving a dead fish by your gate at least weekly would be -,” she leans in closer, turning her voice into syrupy sweet hush, “- irresistible”. This is getting weird. “Anyway,” Ev hurriedly looks behind her shoulder at the theatre doors, “I think it is going to rain later. Have a good night,” the words come in a flat orderly row, she is already concerned with something else, “I will see whether the theatre director can fetch me a carriage.”

“My carriage is waiting down the road.”

“Mm good,” Ev mutters to herself but then the realisation hits and she turns to the consul, eyes wide. “Are you offering me a lift home?” A ‘thank you’ sign lights inside her head but she crashes it with a wave of suspicion. It’s Valerius out of all people. He has no reason to offer her a ride in his carriage besides plotting to murder her and then ditch the body somewhere in the forest. Ev gives him a hard stare.

Valerius breaks the staring game first - his eyes flash with the new unidentified emotion before he regains his usual dismissive look. “Not home,” he snorts, “to the Town Square,this should suffice for a favour.”

“No no, hold on,” Ev raises her hand in protest. “I haven’t asked you anything yet, and hospitality is not a favour.”

“What hospitality are you talking about?”

“You repeat that it is your city all the time! Technically, I am still a guest.” Inside her head Ev is thanking all the available gods for her ability to just keep talking, regardless of whether it makes sense or not, because she definitely has not processed what happened yet.

“Yes, well, just keep your mouth shut,” Valerius says and walks off without a backward glance, his back soon disappearing in the darkness of the narrow lane.

Ev’s eyes follow his path and then she throws another look at the theatre building. The light in one of its rounded windows goes down. She watches the emptying street and feels the goose bumps scatter her forearms. The air is beginning to chill. She looks down at her feet. Ev decides that the consul is the kind of man who would rather pay somebody if he wanted to get rid of her than being involved himself and for the second time this evening she rushes after Valerius. This is so weird.

She is about to call him out to slow down because the sound of duck feet that her ‘emergency’ shoes make is getting on her nerves when she hears a loud thud and a curse. In the darkness of the path Ev is not sure how close Valerius is to her but she knows that he stumbled and it makes her giggle in delight. She stretches her hand out glancing at the strips of warm candlelight coming from the gaps in the window shutters and the ivory glare of the moon. A small globe of light, the size of a plum, forms above her hand. Its light is delicate and warm, as if filtered through the frosted glass, but bright enough to fill the space between the two of them.

The consul straightens up quickly, “Why -”

“I don’t know about you but I like my toes all intact,” Ev walks over to him. “It’s only a small trick, here,” she raises her hand and the light gets brighter, “you can touch it, it’s not hot.”

Valerius takes a step back, looking at the ball of light suspiciously. “You are full of tricks, aren’t you?” he says.

“Don't even make me start on what you are full of.” She bunches her hand in a fist and the light sphere drops down but, before hitting the ground, it bounces back in the air like a small ball and splits into a dozen of smaller lights, startling Valerius. They hover in the air along the path similar to a garland of lanterns as they walk in silence until the lane ends, opening to the canal, and Ev asks, “Is it your carriage there?”

***

The servant opens the carriage door and much to Ev’s astonishment, Valerius waits for her to get in first. She gives him a confused look but complies. There is no evening chill inside and the cushioned seats are invitingly soft, so Ev’s immediately decides that regardless of what is going to happen it was a good idea not to walk home. Valerius takes a seat opposite her and reaches to unbutton his coat and pull his long loose braid from under the collar. His head rolls gently to the side and Ev sees a couple of inches of the neck, soft lines and the glowing skin. She feels her cheeks beginning to heat, suddenly remembering the warmth and the bitter almond fragrance she breathed in every time she got too close to the man, and gods did she get too close tonight.

This is about as far from the real world as Ev can imagine. The carriage is small and the little triangle of her beaded slipper somehow ended up between the consul’s leather boots. If she was to stretch her leg, the bareskin on the side her foot would brush along his shin. They have never sat this close together. Ev thinks about the old lady from the theatre. How would she feel if she knew that she was the only thin barrier stopping them from recognising each other and fully succumbing to the mutual hostility, claiming at least half of the theatre as casualties in the process. This could have been a disaster.

Ev looks at Valerius again and tries to understand how could she not recognise these features straight away. The signature crease between the dark brows and the sulky mouth. Valerius sits in silence, and his eyes are definitely not the ones she knows. They are so wistful and lonely, and so golden under the lamp light, Ev has to look away.

She puts a hand under her chin and leans to the window. A fine mist of rain has started to grit on the glass, and behind the sparks of its tiny drops - a bridge arches over the canal’s silver curve, both ends of which are clipped by infinity, which, in the dim light of the early night, is only ten feet away. The backdrop is all in flashes of the lit windows and the black outlines of pointed rooftops, round cupolas and slender towers, all together resembling a crown adorned by a single grand jewel of the moon, burning bright white. Then, the skyline and even the moon gets momentarily obscured by the huge wall, deprived of any lights, looking ghostly in the tempered gloom.

“That massive rounded building, what is it?” Ev is surprised with herself for striking a conversation.

“Have you not seen it before?”

“No, I have not really been to this part of the city,” she says, turning to Valerius, “What is it? A hippodrome?”

“It's the coliseum. The count’s favourite place,” he gives a chuckle which sounds bitter. “The man loved... performances.”

“What kind of performances?” Ev asks, watching his mouth twisting in distaste. Something about his look makes her frown.

“Gladiators. Bloodshed which lacked any order or purpose besides the count’s own entertainment,” Valerius rubs the bridge of his nose and glances to the window. Ev cannot tell whether he is looking at the moon or the looming coliseum, considering something. “But it’s not what this place was intended for,” he pauses. He turns back to Ev and the expression in his eyes is softer. “It was built before Lucio became a count, although it was slightly less grand back then. The rituals and ceremonies were conducted there during the festivities and the previous count used to reenact scenes of the famous battles there, using the actors. It brought the whole city together. Nobody wants to remember those days anymore.”

Ev feels a weird tremble inside and she is not sure what has caused it until she realises that it is a strange, unusual affection in his voice. She crosses her arms and seats back to contain the feeling. It’s so freaking strange to talk to him when his face is not a mask of boredom. “Did you use to come to watch?” she asks.

“Only when I had to. As if I would mix myself with the roaring crowd of plebeians. Besides, it was terribly distatestful and the smell inside was disgusting.” His mouth tightens, and a strange shadow clouds his expression this time. “Pointless waste of human life.”

“Oh,” is all Ev can manage. She cannot stop staring at Valerius. There is some kindness beneath this asshole facade, human decency, fairness even. It is not the perspective that she has been prepared for. “I meant before that,” she adds faintly.

“Yes I did, when I was much younger.”

“I cannot believe I have never heard of it.”

“Did you do any research before you came here?” The consul is back to his dismissive tone.

“Honestly? I had other things to worry about.” Ev turns back to the window, suddenly unable to look at him anymore.

She hears an irritated snort from Valerius but then, after a brief silence, he starts talking again, and it is not about Ev’s inadequacy. He talks about the canals named after constellations, traditions which Vesuvia used to have, and what you could find in the city before the plague. His voice is calm and steady, and has this velvet quality to it, which fits the night perfectly. Ev closes her eyes and thinks that maybe if she asked Valerius, as that favour she got from him, to continue his stories sitting by her bedside, she would finally be able to fall asleep before the sunrise.

[kyunisixx]

champagne problems (part i)

a/n: back with another fic inspired by champagne problems by Taylor Swift. went circles with this one but it may possibly have a part 2.

themes: angst, heartbreak, and absolute heartbreak.

pairing: jimmy page x fem!reader

Bustling crowds or silent sleepers

You're not sure which is worse

She wasn't sure what drove her to act like she did tonight. Of course she was very much in love and head over heels. She can never fathom the idea of being with someone for the rest of her life other than him. The champagne she was sipping on earlier this evening left a lingering, bitter taste in her mouth, a pungent regret, and a sour truth.

Her ears are ringing and her chest felt like it was being compressed by a large boulder. Every breath she struggles to inhale seems to burn her throat, her eyes are clouded with tears. An experience she never thought she'd go through again, and this time, no comfort of Jimmy's embrace would calm her down. She then slumped back into a brick wall and slid down into the cold ground. 

As her breathing slowed down into a calmer pattern, she realized what she was feeling wasn't even a quarter close to what he must have been feeling at this moment. 

Jimmy, her darling Jimmy. That little boy who she met under a sycamore tree beside an old building during lunch hours. He stood up from the other side and dusted his perfectly ironed uniform and came over with his lunchbox in hand. He stopped in front of her and stretched his arm down to show the box into her view. 

"Take it. I don't like peanut butter. I'm not allergic, it's just disgusting" 

He had said in a clipped voice, but it didn't stop her mouth from morphing into a wide smile which exposed her missing tooth. "Hello, I'm new here. It's nice to meet you and I'm Y/N. How about you, what's your name?"

The stoic little boy ended up sitting beside her and she listened as he endlessly expressed his undying hate for peanut butter and how he pretends he does. His love for music and his dreams to study biological research.

He took her to a lake just a few minutes walk away from his home for the first time that weekend. "It's my safe place. I'd go here whenever I feel like I need an escape", he had said.

In his shoulder, was a bag carrying a large guitar. She watched him meander his bony but elegant fingers across the strings creating a beautiful sound which could almost lull her to sleep but his out-of-tune voice kept her laughter bubbling out. They had stayed seated on a blanket until dusk came around.

Her fingers wipe the lone tear which fell on a picture in her wallet. It was a faded photograph of them during their high school prom. Both older and he, a lot taller. What once was a little girl with a missing front tooth, now a young woman smiling at the lense of the camera. And what once was a shy and mysterious little boy, now shares the same smile and possesses the same glint of adoration in his eyes for the woman in front of him. Flowy and white was the dress she wore and a large suit with a funny-looking tie for his lanky form. She could vividly remember her hands shaking as he took her hand in his after she had asked him to leave early and avoid prom pageant schemes. He whisked her away under the same old sycamore tree and rested their expensively-clothed backs on the moist grass in silence. A few minutes, he sat up straight and with a stuttering voice, he confessed his love right there, reciting a long message in which she interrupted with a longing kiss.

He was there to watch her audition and rejected a few times for the football team until she was finally able to get in. She was amongst the crowd of people to watch him at his gigs and push him to work towards his passion and to create music.

His family loved her and her family adored him. As Emily Bronte said; whatever their souls are made of, his and hers are the same. 

So when he had her over to his parent's house for Christmas eve, she knew something was up. Everyone had a giddy smile as they seemed to knowingly stare at either her or Jimmy. And he, especially, appeared to be distracted and uneasy. Never in her years of knowing him had she seen him act like he does as he always was well-put together.

After dinner was served, glasses of champagne were being distributed as family members turned to each other to form in small groups of their own as they all waited for countdown.

"What do you want to get for Christmas?", Jimmy's sister cheekily asked, Y/N being unaware of its doubled meaning. She smiled fondly.

"I'm happy right where I am"

"I'd be damned if you weren't", his sister laughed heartily. 

They had chatted and shared half-drunken giggles for a few minutes until his sister broke free from the conversation when someone called her over. It was when the room got unmistakably quiet. She turned around to see Jimmy, standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room. Some eyes were focused on him and others were seeking her reaction. 

"You were the first one to listen to my hateful rant about peanut butter sandwiches, the first one to believe in what I can do and urged me to do what I desire. I cannot possibly express in any word the fondness I have felt the moment I have laid my eyes on you and your smile many years ago. An outcast like me, you were. But so unaware of the shine you possess and how you have everyone in every room in the palms of your tiny hands…"

It took her a few seconds to discern what was happening. As words spilled from his shaking lips, her ears weren't so responding anymore. So many thoughts were running all over her brain. He was about to propose marriage. She looked around to see looks of expectancy and hope in every family members and friends' eyes, the nervousness in Jimmy's voice and the distinct elephant in the room.

Jimmy and her were only young adults, her being 18 and him only a year older. Her heart pounded at the thought of being a burden and possibly hold Jimmy back from pursuing his dreams. Add the fact that she had goals of her own and even though the idea of growing old with Jimmy was all she wanted, she knew it was too soon. But her idea to explain her reason was impossible when there were so many people around, all expecting her to give one answer; Yes. The pressure was building up from her very core which pushed moist in her eyes and her knuckles to turn white from balling them into fists. Never in her lifetime did she think hurting Jimmy was the only resort to protect him. 

"...I am irrevocably in love with every fibre of your being and I want to spend my last, withering days with you, Y/N. Will you marry me?"

There was an impenetrable silence fogging the room. Her heart was pummeling against her ribcage as her breaths came in short puffs. Her mouth opened and closed again as she searched Jimmy's eyes for signs of hoax. His were desperately seeking hers for answers as his fingers gripped the emerald ring from where he was kneeling down on one knee.

"Jimmy… I", her voice croaked out dryly and swallowed. She locked her eyes on his green irises, ones she adored so much. Her lower lip trembled as she searched his face one more time. She was so desperate to say yes, but she knew she would regret it and would only end up hurting him more. Her hands reached down to cup his cheek, smiled sadly and in a small voice, she uttered, "I'm sorry, I can't".

Then she ran outside, leaving Jimmy, her Jimmy, to watch her leave and wallow in tears.

One for the money, two for the show

I never was ready, so I watch you go

Sometimes you just don't know the answer

'Til someone's on their knees and asks you

fogs on windshield glass (part ii)

⭐writings list⭐

taglist: @jonesyjonesyjonesy , @princesspagey (if you want to added in, let a sis know)

[even-love-unreturned]

Meanings behind Chain of Iron chapter titles (part I, Ch1-15)

1. The Bright Web

From Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s sonnet “Body’s Beauty” (1866), alternatively titled “Lilith”, written to accompany his painting Lady Lilith.

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

2. All That Turns

3. Bitter and Sweet

4. A Good Name

From “This Marriage” by Rumi, date unknown.

May these vows and this marriage be blessed. May it be sweet milk, this marriage, like wine and halvah. May this marriage offer fruit and shade like the date palm. May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day a day in paradise. May this marriage be a sign of compassion, a seal of happiness here and hereafter. May this marriage have a fair face and a good name, an omen as welcome as the moon in a clear blue sky. I am out of words to describe how spirit mingles in this marriage.

5. The King is Dead

“The King is dead, long live the King“ is a well-known traditional saying, and is the first thing that comes to mind, though I’m not convinced that this is the particular source for this title.

6. Things To Come

There are way too many possibilities for this one to narrow it down. I’ll put two of them here:

One the poem “The Flesh and the Spirit“ by Anne Bradstreet, published in 1650. An excerpt:

In secret place where once I stood Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood, I heard two sisters reason on Things that are past and things to come. One Flesh was call’d, who had her eye On worldly wealth and vanity; The other Spirit, who did rear Her thoughts unto a higher sphere.

And the other is “Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1798. An excerpt:

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

7. Tread Lightly

Perhaps “Requiescat” by Oscar Wilde, written in the 1880s. In the poem, the speaker speaks of and to an unnamed woman, who is buried and cannot hear.

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust.

8. To Bring a Fire

Most of the references I can find for this are Biblical passages, but none exact.

9. The Scars Remaining

Most likely from “Christabel”, an unfinished narrative ballad written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from 1797-1800. The ballad focuses on a young lady named Christabel and her encounter with a strikingly beautiful stranger called Geraldine, who claims to have been kidnapped from her home. Christabel takes Geraldine in to share her bed, and they spend the night together. The story also involves Geraldine putting a spell on Christabel that leaves her unable to tell anyone about what they do or what Geraldine’s “true form“ is.

Brings to mind a certain other strikingly beautiful character in TLH who also does spells to a similar effect, doesn’t it?

This excerpt that includes the phrase “the scars remaining”, however, is about Christabel’s father and his long-lost friend with whom he had a falling-out, but who also turns out to be Geraldine’s father.

They parted—ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between;— But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.

10. The Damned Earth

Likely from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “Lenore”, published in 1843.

Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise, “But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days! “Let no bell toll! — lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth, “Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth. “To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven — “From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven — “From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.

11. Crowns and Pounds and Guineas

From an untitled poem (but often identified by its first line) by A. E. Housman, included in his poetry book A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896. According to Wikipedia, this collection sold “slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance.”

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, “Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.” But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me.

12. Requiem

A requiem is a mass for the repose of the souls of the dead, or a piece of musical composition in honor of the dead. It’d be impossible to narrow this down to a specific quote, though.

13. The Wintry Wind

Likely from “The Withering of the Boughs“ by W. B. Yeats, published as part of his poetry volume In The Seven Woods (1903). Each of the three stanzas of the poem ends with the following two lines:

“No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind, The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.”

14. The Flaming Forge

From “The Village Blacksmith“ (1840) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem makes use of the image of “the flaming forge“ twice.

And children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

[…]

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought.

15. Walk by Daytime

From poem V in “A Dark Month” by Algernon Charles Swinburne, written in May 1881.

Dreams that strive to seem awake, Ghosts that walk by daytime, Weary winds the way they take, Since, for one child's absent sake, May knows well, whate'er things make Sport, it is not Maytime.

Part 2 (chapters 16-29) here.

[arcadianstuff]

A monster

Thought it would be fun to write a douxie x reader imagine where the readers a villain. A big twist at the end !! Tell me if u want a part 2

A cackle left your lips as you sauntered down the street, twirling your wizards staff between your fingers as you watched the chaos unfold around you.

People were screaming and running away in fear, their terror making you smirk wider. They were annoying you anyways. With a lazy swing of your staff, a blast of red energy sent a nearby car flying into the wall of a building.

Glass rained down upon you and yet didn’t even scratch your skin. You were untouchable. A true monster.

“Ladies and gentlemen ! Enjoy the show !” You laughed more as a few people turned to watch in horror as you rose up into the air.

The ruby red stone of your armour glinted under the setting sun, the crown atop your head glittering.

Screams filled the air as fire began to dance across your fingertips, before falling down onto the pavement below. It rained fire upon the town, people rushing to take cover as pandemonium erupted.

“That’s not very nice love.” A voice had you spinning on your heels to glare at the familair figure of Hisirdoux Casperan.

He’d grown taller over the years since you’d last seen him, handsomer as well. What was he now 919 ? Only a year older than yourself. Hell the two of you had known each other since the years were only three numbers long.

“A pleasure to see you as always Casperan.” You smirked sauntering up to the man, who’s eyes didn’t leave yours as you closed in on him. A delicate finger traced along his shoulder, your smile growing as he visibly shivered a little. You could see the annoyance in his eyes.

“Wish I could say the same love. But it appears you’re terrorising my town” He caught your hand in his, the grip tight in warning. Though this didn’t deter you and instead you just closed the gap between the two of you.

A giggle left your lips as you pressed up against him, enjoying the way his eyes narrowed at your actions.

“I’m just having fun Casperan. I remember once upon a time you used to like having fun too. Or are you now just Merlin’s little lapdog ?” You chuckled, knowing that your words would hit a sore spot.

A low growl left Douxies lips as he shoved you away from him.

“Don’t talk about him.” He spat out.

You let out another low chuckle - clearly it was a sensitive subject.

“Oh I’m sorry is that a sensitive subject ? Don’t you like being his little delivery boy ?” You laughed loudly, too caught up in your amusement to see Douxie’s next moves.

With a sharp movement the boy swung his fist, a blue light shooting out and hitting you straight in the chest. The impact sent you flying backwards, slamming against the tarmac with a loud thud.

A bloodh cough left your lips as you pushed yourself up, blood erupting from your mouth as you coughed harder. With a low chuckle you wiped the blood off of your lips, the crimson now staining your hand.

“That wasn’t very nice.” You mumbled lowly, getting up to your feet.

In a blink of an eye you were only inches away from Douxie, before he could even prepare to defend himself.

“Didnt your mother ever tell you it’s wrong to hit a lady ?” Your outstretched palm met the hard surface of his chest, and a bright red light sent him flying backwards much like how you did.

Coughs racked Douxie’s body as he struggled to his knees, letting out a grunt as hot flares of pain shot up his sides. He watched you float towards him, the glare of your red armour blinding under the setting sun. Your eyes were cool and a smirk marred your pretty face as you leaned down to him, face so close he could feel the warmth of your breath.

"I missed you a little Casperan. It’s been what ? About five hundred years ? I’ve been so lonely without you." Your words sent a chill down his spine as you cupped his cheek lightly, and he felt his eyes drawn to the pink of your lips even though he was in the middle of a battle, one he was losing as well.

"Well then love, you shouldn’t have chosen the wrong side." Mustering all his self control the man slapped your hand away, hating himself for missing the warmth of your touch. Even after all these years his feelings hadn’t changed, no matter how much he’d tried to hide them away.

"Oh don’t be like that. I know you still miss me. I can tell." You giggled a little at the blush that coated his cheeks, even more as he turned his face to try and hide it. You had the wizard backed up against the wall he’d collided with, there was nowhere for him to run.

"Come on Hisirdoux. It can be you and me again." You whispered into his ear, noting the goosebumps that trailed down his neck as you leaned in closer.

Douxie could smell the familair scent of your shampoo, lilacs and honey, which had him wishing he could run his fingers through it like he used to. The moment you whispered into his ear he felt the fight leave him, his body reacting without his permission. He inwardly swore as the blush on his cheeks brightened, feeling as if they were on fire. The sensation of your breath and lips brushing his ear had him going slack against you.

You knew you had him now, and a victorious smirk crossed your lips as you pulled back a little, eyes locked on his lips. After five hundred years you’d finally be able to kiss him again. Just as your lips grazed his, a blast of purple magic threw you off of him.

Taken completely by surprise, you only had a second to fling your hands out in front of you, using your magic to cushion your impact with the hard surface of the road. A low growl left your lips as you spun around, your lip now cut and bleeding, the red of your blood matching that of your ruby red armour. Rage filled you up as you spun around to glare murderously at the new group of people who’d gathered around Douxie.

There were three of them, two mortals by the looks of it and one sorceress - the one who’d interrupted you and Douxie. She’d be the first to die.

"You’ll regret that girl." You threatened venomously, a cry leaving your lips as you sent a large blast of red magic right at her. She was cleverly a novice as your attack knocked her backwards easily, sending her into the side of a car.

A smirk lifted your lips as she appeared knocked out for the count.

"Claire !" One of the boys, the taller of the two, rushed to the fallen girl’s side, Claire you assumed she was called. "You monster !" He screamed at you, cradling her battered body in his arms as he fell to her side. The girl remained unconscious, still as a statue in his embrace.

"She shouldnt have gotten in my way." You spoke nonchalantly, twirling your wizard's staff in your hands as you approached them all. With each step you took, their eyes widened in fear.

Though it hurt like hell, Douxie pushed himself up to his feet and stumbled over to Claire, falling to her side next to Jim. His eyes widened in worry at the sight of his unconscious pupil, who’s pretty face was marred with blood, leaking from a wound on her head. He placed a sympathetic hand of reassurance on Jim’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze before turning to glare at you with a seething rage.

"I’ve changed (Y/n). I’m not Merlins lapdog anymore. I’ve got friends. a family." Douxie’s words had you raising an eyebrow in curiousity. The wizard pushed himself up to his feet, summoning his wizards staff. "I’ve changed and yet you’re still, the same. Still destroying everything in your path and throwing a tantrum when you can’t get your way." He spat, venom coating his words.

They hurt more than his attacks had, and for the first time you actually felt a pang of guilt run through you. It made you almost nauseous at the uncomfortable and unfamilair sensation of compassion. However you quickly shoved it down and instead sent him a withering glare.

"Why would I do anything different Hisirdoux? Clearly you don’t remember the differences between you and I. The different ways the world treated us." Your voice rose in anger as you crossed the distance between the two of you, stopping only metres away from him.

Toby stood protectively infront of Jim and Claire, who was still cradling his girlfriend, too distraught to summon Daylight and fight. Luckily, his ginger best friend would be there to defend them. The boy wasn’t the bravest person, not by a long shot, but the sight of your crazed expression, and the blood running down your lips sent chills down his spine. You were truly terrifying

Douxie however gave you a pitying look, the sight of it making your blood boil. How dare he pity you ?

"Don’t give me that look Casperan. You could come with me. It can be like old times." You held out a hand, watching the turmoil on Douxie’s face as he battled against himself.

A part of him looked at you and saw the young girl he’d befriended so long ago, his first actual friend really. The second magical being he’d eve rmet, who’d shared her food with him, her books and secrets...then kisses and love. In his long nine hundred and nineteen years of life he’d never loved anyone like you and yet he felt himself hesitating. The blood running down your lips, the ruby red of your armour and the marred crown atop your head reminded him of the truth of your situation. You were no longer the girl he’d once known and love. That girl was dead. There was only you now.

You felt your hand fall to your side as the conflict left Douxie’s face and a hard expression set in. Clearly, he’d made up his mind. The wrong decision.

"I see..." you trailed off, trying to surpress the hurt that you felt, another unfamiliar feeling, that of rejection. It stung uncomfortably.

"I-I....youre not the same (Y/n). You’re not the girl I once knew." The wizard spoke regretfully, feeling a little bit of guilt at the sight of the pain written on your face. He hoped maybe he could try and reach the humanity within you, it was there he could see it.

A bitter laugh left your lips, blood speckling the pavement beneath your feet as you glared down at it.

"Of course I’m not. What do you think happens after years of being locked away ? Of being abused by your own family ? Blamed for your mother’s death and put into hiding because your father can’t stand the sight of you ?!" Your voice rose in anger as you spoke, louder and louder, each question coming out more aggressive than the last. Another hacking cough wracked your body as you glared at your own hands, hating the sight of them.

"I was a princess once. I had a kingdom, people and a purpose. Now... now I have nothing." You spat, seething in self hatred as your body began to shake, the stress of everything starting to build up as you felt your surpressed emotions beginning to bubble up to the surface.

Hesitantly, Douxie reached out to you and took your shaking hands in his own, the warmth catching you off guard. The tender action had you stuttering to think of what to do or say. It caught you completely off guard. Only a moment ago you’d been trying to kill him and yet here you were, vulnerable under his touch.

"You have something. You have me, you always have and always will." Douxie spoke earnestly, unable to hide his feelings any longer as he watched the walls around you crumble, the old (Y/n) peeking through from under the ruins. Your eyes widened, glossy as tears began to swell up in them which blurred your vision as you glimpses up at the wizard, terrified that he’d reject you again.

However he looked completely earnest, a small smile on his lips as the familair blue of his eyes bored into yours. The perfect way your hands fit into his, the warmth of his touch seeping into your skin, it had you weak under his gaze.

"Douxie ! Get her now !" Claire roared, her voice shattering the beautiful illusion as you glanced from the now awake girl to said wizard who looked at you guiltily before bringing a hand down.

"I’m sorry (Y/n)" and that was the last thing you heard as the world went dark around you. Like a flower you crumbled in his arms, going weak as the wizard caught you with strong arms. Guilt ravaged his mind as he held you close to him. In that moment, face relaxed and eyes closed he couldn’t tell anything had changed, you looked just like the girl he’d first met that fateful day so long ago.

"I’m so sorry princess." The wizard carried you through the destruction you’d caused, eyes never leaving your peacefully sleeping figure. “I hope you can forgive me.”

——————-

Hope you liked it, part two should be up soon !!

[dustedmagazine]

Bodega — Broken Equipment (What’s Your Rupture?)

Photo by Pooneh Ghana

On Broken Equipment, Brooklyn quintet Bodega comes out swinging, invigorated after a pandemic hiatus. Songwriters Ben Hozie and Nikki Belfiglio appear to have absorbed Antonio Gramsci’s theories about cultural hegemony as a strategy of control. Further, they’ve set them to the throb of early noughties DFA dance punk, delivering a set of withering takedowns of the city that never sleeps (because there’s money to be made). All good thus far, but Bodega have extended their musical palette and tightened their songwriting to produce an album that bristles with energy and intelligence.

“Thrown,” “Doers,” “NYC (Disambiguation)” and “C.I.R.P” are all fine additions to the Bodega catalogue. The music is, as expected, all declamatory sprechgesang, rubbery rhythms and razorblade guitars. The fun here is in the lyrics; the references to New York’s history, geography and self-image, the castigations of advertising, screen obsession and identity appropriation. The verses go beyond shooting barrel-bound fish to discuss personal complicity in the distractions of media saturation with caustic wit and bracing self-deprecation. Even, nay, especially the Radiohead piss-take “It’s making me bitter, harder, fatter, stressed out.”  

They explore other musical territory with the same confidence. “Territorial Call of the Female,” takes its cue from The Au Pairs with Belfiglio dissecting female competition as Adam See’s bass line bounces around Tai Lee’s choppy drums; her challenge to God, “Statuette On The Console” is straight-ahead power pop with Dan Ryan laying down a propulsive guitar riff while “How Can I Help Ya?” channels the snotty swagger of Johnny Thunders. There’s even space for some classic old school soloing on “All Past Lovers.” Album highlight “After Jane” provides a poignant coda. Over an acoustic strum with minimal percussion Hozie traces the legacy of his relationship with his late mother. The directness and insight make it one of the finest pieces of songwriting you’ll hear this year. “Remember visit on Christmas Eve when you didn't recognize who I was … I could feel your ribs, you took an ocean of pills/Nervous for how you would act on me/Now that grace and that pain's passed to me now … I’m channeling your hurt when I sing my songs.”  

With Broken Equipment Bodega have made an album that takes its cues from very specific New York sites and sounds, but speaks to common experience, makes you think a bit, dance some more and leaves you to ponder the fates.  

Andrew Forell

[acatpersonapparently]

Jemtoria Angel AU: part 3

i.

The scent of freshly cut grass and ripe tomatoes surround Victoria in the sweet soft morning. Her hand gently works the wing of a mourning dove. Over the blade of the scapula and soft coverts. It has been three days since her newest little bird entered her coop.

She doesn’t even know why she did that.

Even after so much time, human still sits in a distorted shape in her throat. The bird in her lap stirs and coos, she’s not sure how to even exist near someone else. A dry breeze ruffles the air, blowing her hair into her eyes. She pushes the sudden blonde curtain away with a sigh, turning her gaze to her garden.

There’s the warm glow of bright red hair hiding behind her vegetables. If Victoria had to guess, the girl got up with the sun and busied herself in the soil before her alarm woke Victoria up. The dove in her lap chirps and fusses. Victoria hushes it and resumes her gentle ministrations.

How best to heal this bird?

ii.

Jemima has lived at the house with the blue door for a week and she already knows how every day will go:

-She will wake up first and head out to the garden.

-At 8:00AM, Victoria’s alarm clock will go off and some time in the next thirty minutes, the scent of bacon will waft out the kitchen window.

-By 9:00AM, her silent benefactor will step outside to greet her birds and tend to them, filling feeders and water bowls, examining hurt wings. That’s when Jemima will tend to flower bushes on the far side of the yard.

-10:45AM is the latest that Victoria leaves for work. Jemima can then head back inside before the sun gets too high and hot. She’ll find some leftover bacon on a plate left for her.

-Most of the time while Victoria is at work, Jemima reads or watches TV. She tried snooping around, looking around the house for anything fun or weird, but there’s nothing. No knick knacks, pictures, paintings. She couldn’t even find a stray ID or a letter.

-Sometime after 11PM, the door will slowly creak open and Victoria will walk through, open one of the beers from the bottom shelf of the fridge, and melt down into one of the wooden chairs at the small dining table. Jemima will lower the volume on the TV and, when she’s feeling brave, says hello. She never gets a response. The first time they spoke is also the only time they’ve spoke. She will get a polite wave or, if she asks a question, a nod or a shake.

-Victoria will wash out her bottle, place it in the bin, and shower at midnight. The soft shuffle of her feet always preceding Victoria before she appears to give Jemima a nightly goodnight wave and following her off as she heads to bed.

(There’s a few unexpected moments during her days. During a sleepy morning, she sees Victoria through the flowers, she sees her smile as a mountain bluebird nuzzles against her cheek. From peeping over a rosebush, the image is ethereal. If her father was half as resplendent, she understands why her mother was drawn in.)

iii.

Victoria didn’t mean to do it.

She didn’t mean to see anything.

There was some lemonade leftover at work so she brought it over and just wanted to know if Jem wanted some. She didn’t find the redhead in the living room so she had to be in her bedroom, so she just opened the door.

(She should not have opened the door.)

Victoria knows what her own back looks like. Catching brief glimpses of it in the mirror before stepping into the shower. Bone and blackened tissue that ached heavily, a rotted shadow of a symbol of Heaven’s glory. If Father’s intention was a mark of shame, he did a pretty damn good job.

Jemima’s was different (worse?)

White feathers molting, red raw patches, tufts of down sprouting up and down her back and across her shoulder blades. The waif was surrounded in a circle of white like fresh fallen snow. Victoria gags. Her stomach in instant upheaval at the sight. The tips of her fingers go numb as the moisture leaves her mouth. Her feet acted before she could think and she ran.

(She should not have ran.)

The birds open their wings and take to the sky when she reaches outside. She breathes deep, her chest aches, she tries to focus her thoughts. Her mind parsing through every microdetail with as much scrutiny in her panicked ability as she can get together. She looks up at the night sky and into the eyes of all the bright twinkling stars and, for the first time, she feels like they’re looking back at her.

Oh God, she’s not alone.

iv.

Jemima knows what happens next. She stuffs her bag with all of her belongings. All she needs to do is find another place to live. It’s fine. She’ll be fine. Her eyes watch the open doorway of her bedroom.

And, eventually, just like she expected, Victoria reappears with red eyes.

She waits for the cruel familiar sting of monster but Victoria just stares at her with these eyes, this cruel pitiful expression.

I- I can just go. I’m sorry. Jemima lowers her eyes and moves to push past the other girl. It’s all too bitterly predictable.

No. Victoria grabs her wrists so fiercely Jemima is sure that she’s about to be dragged into town to be burned at a stake. Please, stay.

And Jemima did not expect that.

v.

Between the two of us, we probably have enough for a set of wings, is the first thing Jemima says to her when Victoria shows her the withered afterimage of her wings. Victoria doesn’t know how to react in any way but laughter and it feels rusty in her throat, but good, really good.

Turns out holiness isn’t a factor in being a good dad and that seems to be a universal truth.

Victoria grabs two beers from the bottom shelf of the fridge and the two of them lay out in the garden, drinking to stories about how the shadow of divinity has taunted them. They yell into the void of the night sky at fathers that have fucked them over and what’s the point of abandoning them with enough holy to bitter the blood? Victoria grabs them another round when they start talking about how humanity is just another set of stone shackled to their ankles.

They’re still wiping away the tears from the last set of ab-aching laughter when Jemima asks Victoria what heaven feels like.Victoria hums to herself, a little tipsy, and sinks into the grass.

It feels a little like this, I guess.

vi.

Jemima has lived at the house with the blue door for three months. Long enough for hot dry summer to roll in and for the summer plants to start blooming. She has no idea how her day is going to go.

Last week, Victoria took her into town to get her new clothes. A few days before that, she came home with a blanket and a tub of ice cream for her. They had stayed up late that night because ice cream is received with enthusiasm, even by former servants of a deity.

(The two other colours are two different flavours? This Neopolitan guy is really smart, Jem)

Jemima finds herself waiting at the dinner table, an open beer at the seat across from her, waiting for someone to fill it. The clock hits 10:30 and the front door bursts open. Victoria rushing in to hug Jemima before helping herself to her beer.

Jemima had no idea that someone being excited to hug you could feel as good as a hug itself

That night, they curl up in front of the artificial glow of the television. Victoria offers to share a blanket with Jemima as the redhead scoots under it with pink-tinged cheeks. Throughout the night, Victoria’s breath warms the side of Jemima’s face as she leans in to whisper the occasional question about the television.

(Jemima is suddenly worried about spontaneous combustion cause that’s what this feels like, right? Right?)

Jemima wakes up before the sun rises like she always does. She doesn’t move an inch, coveting this moment in a never-ending form. The soft babble of the television, Victoria’s warmth snug against her, birds chirping outside. She looks around the small house and she can’t believe how much light its contains

Victoria’s eyes flutter open way too soon but it makes Jemima brighten up with what feels like the goofiest smile. Victoria returns it.

Good morning.

Good morning to you too.

What are you thinking about?

Do you know what happens at 4:30AM? You turn gold.

vii.

Victoria hit the earth crying for heaven. Her halo rests crooked.

Jemima's earliest memory was of the sun. Her mother is tearing fistfuls of feathers from her back again.

The girls are wrist-deep in the warm rich soil, worms dripping from the gaps between their fingers in every handful of dirt. They've managed to turn the air into music, permeated with the singing of birds and bursts of deep chest laughter. There was nothing in any hymnal that could rival it. Victoria sits back on her knees, removing her wide-brimmed hat to push down her sweaty hair. She looks up at the sky, vast and inviting.

(What’s wrong?)

It’s not easy, it hasn’t been easy. Half-angels and monster-girls creeping along the spine of the world made for Adam and Eve. There are dark moments: their bed brimming with nightmares and past memories on darkest nights, flinching and holding each other tighter when they’re in town, fat wet tears running down Jemima’s cheeks the first time Victoria acts on the urge to kiss her.

(I’ve been so lonely and so angry and so angry about being alone. I’ve been angry for so long that I- I’m not sure who I am without it.)

But, those good moments, those good glorious moments. Victoria has gawked at rapidly expanding nebulae, she’s stood with her brothers and sisters as gravity collapsed in on itself in an instant and formed neutron stars and black holes, she’s blown the last wisps of steam from a black star cupped in her palms. None of them are as good as Jemima waiting for her when she gets home, or when Jem reminds her that a proper diet includes more than bacon. The light dripping from those big brown eyes every time she showed Vic another sprout pushing to the sun from under the damp earth was something Victoria could savour until the world tires of spinning.

(I can’t promise you that I know who you are without it either, but I can promise that you’ll never be lonely again. A-and I’ve technically been a part of a hivemind since time began, so maybe we can find out who we are together? If you don’t mind staying here a little longer, that is.)

Alongside a narrow dirt road, fifteen minutes from the edge of town, there is a house with a blue door and a beautiful front garden of newly blossoming life and birds taking flight on recovered wings. The doormat has bright yellow lettering, written by two different hands, together.

Heaven is a place on earth.

[pocket-void]

Adam & Eve - The Two Hands of God.

Some character icons for The Withering Beyond. ^\\\^ They’re subordinates of a higher entity, but are most akin to overseers. They both have differing jobs though.

Adam and Eve are the so called left and right hands of a more powerful, eldritch being of some kind but that’s not particularly important as of right now. They don’t particularly get along. In fact, Eve’s the one who ripped off Adam’s left arm.

Her animosity comes from the suspicion that Adam is purposefully not doing his job properly, and also a deep seeded bitterness from Adam basically being the more favored child. That’s, a lot more complicated than it sounds wjdjwndnw-

Her animosity comes from the suspicion that Adam is purposefully not doing his job properly, and also a deep seeded bitterness from Adam basically being the more favored child. That’s, a lot more complicated than it sounds wjdjwndnw-

Adam’a job is described as being their lord’s “Eyes and Ears” and Eve their “Hands and Feet”. Basically, Adam’a job is to observe, and Eve’s job is to execute. As a result, Eve has a pretty negative reputation, and her general presence makes people nervous. Adam has been increasingly not reporting information to Eve as of late, so she’s starting to get impatient with him. And it doesn’t help that they’ve suddenly all got a massive new issue on their hands.

In a way, they’re both envious of eachother for different things. But that’s a story for another day.

Fun lil fact, they’re both 5’6” tall.