#crying themselves to sleep

[kybercrystals94]

I Miss You

By KyberCrystals94

Read on Ao3 here!

Whumptober 2023|Day 5|Alternative Prompt: Playing Cards

Bad Things Happen Bingo|Prompt: Crying Themselves to Sleep

Rating: G

Words: 785

Summary: Echo discovers a message from a brother.

“Those look so old!” Wrecker declares, leaning on the upper bunk to scrutinize the playing cards Echo is sorting through.

Echo smiles. “That’s because they are old. I pilfered them off a graduated trooper when I was a cadet.”

“You stole them?” Wrecker sounds as impressed as he is surprised. “I thought you never broke a rule in your life.”

“With the right motivation, I’ve been persuaded to bend a few.” Echo chuckles. “Technically, they were contraband for the guy I stole them from. So, really, I was doing him a favor.”

Wrecker grins. “That’s neat you still have them even after they thought you were blown up.”

Echo’s smile falls slightly as he continues to set the cards out, dividing them into suits. “Yeah, when they thought I died, they went to my old batch mate, Fives. After Fives, they went to Rex, and then Rex gave them back to me when I-"

"Came back to life?” Wrecker offers.

“Sure,” Echo says. “When that happened.”

“I don’t think you could even shuffle them if you tried.” Wrecker laughs.

“They’ve definitely seen better days.”

The cards are dogeared, and every one of them has been folded into quarters because of the time Cutup tried to cheat at Sabaac. He folded a few of them so he could identify them in someone’s hand. When the other Dominos found out, they had painstakingly copied the folds on every single card so they all matched. Echo had been so angry at his squad mate, but he desperately wishes he could take back the harsh words that came out of his mouth. After all, they were just cards. A toy. Nowhere near as important as the individuals that played with them.

Echo finds the card he is looking for, the one that had made this deck obsolete. He had accidentally dropped the card in his cup of caf, discoloring it. Fives had suggested they stain all the cards in caf to match; however, Echo decided to retire the deck and get a new one. The old deck was tucked away in his storage bin in the barracks on Kamino, carrying too many memories in its deteriorated fibers to throw away.

Echo holds up the stained card for Wrecker's inspection. “I dropped it in my caf. It’s the reason we didn’t play with this deck anymore,” he explains.

“What does it say?” Wrecker asks.

“What does what say?”

Wrecker points to the back of the card. “On the back. There’s writing.”

Echo flips the card around, squinting to make out the ink of a pen on the intricately designed backing.

I miss you.

Echo feels like the air has been stolen from his lungs.

Fives wrote those words. There is no doubt in Echo’s mind. Not before the Citadel mission. After. After Echo died. After Fives went back to Kamino. Echo can see him. Sitting in their barracks, sorting through Echo’s meager collection of personal effects. He’s searching for a playing card stained in caf. He writes the three words, handwriting ragged by a trembling hand. A note for the brother he lost. That he'd never get back. I miss you.

“Echo!”

Echo blinks and finds that Wrecker has half climbed into the bunk with him, a hand on each of his shoulders. “You with me, buddy?” Wrecker asks.

“Yeah,” Echo croaks. He clears his throat. “Yeah. Sorry.”

Wrecker’s good eye searches Echo’s face, trying to understand. “You scared me there for a second. You sorta zoned out, and then your breathing got weird.”

“Sorry,” Echo says again. Emotions bubble up, threaten to burst out of him, card still gripped in his flesh hand. Dark, inky, familiar script carving into his mind. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

“Did I do something?” Wrecker asks, climbing down from his precarious perch.

Echo shakes his head and tries to reassure the man with a thin smile. “No, you didn’t do anything. It’s just…” Echo holds up the card. “The writing. It’s a note from my batch mate, Fives.”

He leaves it at that, and Wrecker doesn’t ask for more. Instead, he offers Echo a kind smile. “I'm gonna go start my watch but let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Wreck, I will,” Echo says, and he means it.

Wrecker leaves the bunk room, and Echo gathers up the cards, tucking them in their tin. He keeps the caf stained card out. He lies down, back to the room, facing the wall, and holds the note in front of him. The last words his oldest brother ever gave him blurs in his watery vision.

“I miss you too,” Echo whispers, and silently cries until sleep claims him.

END

Read the prequel, You Promised, here!

[lauronk]

I think a Joel crying himself to sleep would be so slay 👁️👄👁️ especially if it's cause Ellie is hurt or something. Idk. Make that old man cry

i made the old man cry

[starry-bi-sky]

my body's aching like a knock-down drag-out

and my poor heart is an open wound A Childhood Friends Au snippet that very briefly delves into Danny's life post-accident. CW: Mild Mentions of Blood, Violence, VERY mild gore ig. Danny briefly recalls getting impaled during a fight.

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What they don't tell you about being dead is that it hurts. That it can hurt. That it can hurt more than when you were alive. That when you die, the emotions you die with stick with you like a leech that just won't let go. That emotions are ugly little thorns that stick their barbs into you and grow beneath your skin; or, at least, whatever’s left of it. 

Danny is familiar with anger. It kept him warm in Gotham, when his parents weren't home from work and he and Jason were crowding Crime Alley with their presence. It kept him warm in Amity, when the fresh sting of moving was still needling into his heart and he wanted nothing more than to rip and tear into the closest person next to him.

He's familiar with violence. With fights. With death. He's seen people die in Crime Alley probably every day. From overdose, from gunshots, from stab wounds; anything that can kill, rest assured he's seen it. He's familiar with getting his own knuckles rough and bloody when other kids turn and bare their teeth at him and Jason; they're all just starving dogs stuck in a fighting pit, primed and ready to rip out each other's throats. 

Black eyes, stomped hands, bloody noses. You name it; he’s had it. Gotham is paved with the blood of her children, and Danny likes to imagine that when he was born, the doctors handed his mother a file and told her; “Take it. He’s going to need it for his teeth.” 

Danny’s mom (and dad, for that matter) was too busy trying to keep him and Jazz fed, so Danny stole the file from her drawer with Jazz’s help, and did it himself.  

He’s familiar with anger, he thought he was getting better at it these days. It doesn’t come to him as easily as it did before. Of course, that was before Jason died. 

Danny is less familiar with grief. Caring kills and Gotham kills the caring, so Danny cares very little about other people. Or he tries to. But grief hurts. His grief hurts. It hurts too much. It hurts like a bug trying to crawl out of his chest; like a rat chewing a hole through his heart. Some days he wants to dig his hands into his hair and split himself down the middle. Some days he just wants to scream. 

He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. 

He wants the whole city to hear him wailing, some days. It sticks itself in the back of his throat like bile, and Danny is one wrong retch away from letting it loose. It sticks in his lungs like all the tar he’s smoked in since he was nine. It pushes and aches at his temples, in his head, like his brain is trying to swell out of his skull. His thoughts becoming so loud they threaten to commandeer his tongue.  

He has no mouth, but he must scream. 

Something they don’t tell you about being dead is that it hurts. That it hurts more than when you were alive. Something they don’t tell you about being dead is that it’s violent. That it’s bloody. Or as bloody as it can be when everyone has no blood. 

Another thing they don’t tell you about being dead, is that it’s a lot like Gotham that way.

With no threat of death, Danny’s enemies forget death itself. Blood comes easy, like water, and teeth are encouraged. Bring your own fangs to the fight. Dying is something you can just walk off. 

Danny’s been dead for three months. He can’t say he’s been walking it off easy. He’s perfected the art of turning his nails into claws since his heart was still beating, but he can’t say he’s perfected fighting other ghosts. 

Scrappy is just not enough. 

He feels like he’s back in Gotham again. Back in her death-shroud alleyways, fighting someone bigger than him. But there’s no Jason to watch his back, and Danny has to get himself out of there alone. Or he might just not get up at all. 

Black eyes, busted lips. It’s familiar to him like an old scent, Danny isn’t quite sure that he’s missed it. It’s more familiar than his fights with Dash. 

But there’s no one else who can do it but him. Not Sam, not Tucker. He can’t lose them too. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t. His heart can’t take another break, he already feels like he’s going insane. 

With no threat of death, Danny’s enemies fight like death themself. He learns why when Technus puts a street sign through his stomach one day. It pins him to the asphalt like a moth pinned by its wings. 

Danny claws at the metal like how an animal caught in a trap chews off its leg, and every move is blinding pain. He thinks he was howling, but it’s hard to tell. He couldn’t recognize the sound of his voice. 

He bleeds green. It mixes in black with the pitch blackhole in his heart, which throbs and twists and cries in time with his reckless panic. The finger-choking terror of dying again strangles out the air he doesn’t need. His blood evaporates, only to reabsorb into him. It just bleeds out again, cycling like a snake eating its own tail. 

Danny breaks his nails clawing at the metal, and eventually gets it in his mind to pull it out. So he does, and the end drips ectoplasm green as he gets to his feet. In red-vision, Danny sends the sign back with snarling, vicious fervor. The pain is irrelevant in his rage.

Only after the fight does the hole the pole left start to close. Danny doesn’t shift human until it’s gone. Unlike other injuries, a scar stays behind. Ugly; mottled, it aches for a week with every twist and stretch his body makes. He hates it. 

Being dead is agony. 

Every part of him is in pain. Every step, every word he speaks, everything he does, it is prerequisite with pain. The body is temporary, but the soul is forever, and death has carved into it with its freezing green hands and left him with never-ending heartache. It has torn from him and stolen what of him it could, and in return it’s left him with sorrow. 

His pain is his grief, and he’s sobbed in the safety of his room more times than he can count. It’s still as fresh as the day he heard the news of Jason’s death. He knows, instinctively, that it will stay fresh forever. 

In his room, Danny shoves his hands over his mouth and shrieks in whatever, muffled way he can into his pillow. It’s not enough. It’s never enough. He needs to be louder. He needs to be heard. He refuses to be. 

Being dead hurts. 

[lotus-pear]

bsd fic authors i understand yalls pain SO well right now why is it so fucking HARD to write dazai. like i have a whole fucking spreadsheet dedicated to tireless analysis i have done on my part so i can accurately characterize him but he is such an unpredictable and morally gray character that it's hard knowing his limits and boundaries and where he draws the line for himself.

[pharawee]

It's more than like. Actually... it's been more than like for a while now.

[ayyy-imma-ninja]

(fairy) Hey there boys! How was the vacation? :0

"Wouldn't exactly call it a vacation-" "But it was nice! For the most part. Got a lot of things taken care of, spent some quality time together--" "Cried ourselves to sleep." "A-Ahaha..."

[mishkakagehishka]

"We're old moms, we can't wait to stop breastfeeding so we can get [very excited, shrill even] botooooox!!!"

We are never making it out of the patriarchy.

[siilvan]

Someone posted on TikTok the bios of the new MW3 operators, including Vladmirs. You have to squint and pause the video a lot to read it, but here it is: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJcKKotP/

my actual hero, ilysm 🫶 i’m gonna go ahead and post makarov’s bio for anyone curious, since it’s hard to read in the vid lol:

“Vladimir Makarov was born before the fall of the Soviet Union in the suburbs of Moscow. As the son of a high-ranking politician within the Russian government, Makarov watched the Soviet Union crumble, taking his father with it. The bright-eyed, intelligent boy woke up one morning to his father’s hanging body. Makarov came to despise his father’s weakness, as well as the failures of the Soviet Union which had brought it about. He vowed not to make the same mistakes and so began his lifelong obsession.

In 1998, Makarov joined the Russian military at the age of 18. A natural soldier with a talent for strategy, his reputation turned sour when he joined forces with an unsanctioned rogue army to maintain control of Urzikstan. When the ULF rose and took back their home, Makarov experienced his first failure.

Recognizing traces of the Soviet Union’s failures once again, Makarov pleaded with his superiors to reclaim Urzikstan, disgusted by the national mockery the ULF had made of Russian power. But the Kremlin, who had not sanctioned the attack on Urzikstan to begin with, refused, stripping Makarov of all military honors. Seeking justice, Makarov joined the Konni group and plotted an attack against Verdansk to get Russia’s attention. Captured by Captain Price and Task Force 141, Makarov was handed to Russian authorities and sentenced to life in a maximum-security gulag.

Now a liberated man, Makarov plans to resume his operations against Urzikstan and its allies. Determined to redeem himself and Russia for its past failures, Makarov will only stop at the full reclamation or annihilation of Urzikstan; and if the Kremlin’s too cowardly to play their hand, he’ll gladly force it upon the rest of the world.”

…dude’s blaming urzikstan for his joint self esteem-daddy issues, damn 😭

i feel so… conflicted lol. obviously he’s an asshole, that doesn’t need to be restated a million times, but i do feel sympathy for him as a child. he never stood a chance at a “normal” life— he was born into those insane beliefs. as an adult, he’s the only one to blame for still holding those beliefs, but it’s pretty clear that his child-mind created a link between the soviet union falling and his father dying; ergo, if he can fix the cause, he can “fix” the death. i get that.

OG makarov and reboot are both referenced as obsessive and compulsive… “developed severe OCD after his father’s death” anyone? no? i’m just projecting? understood. 🫡

i could go into far more detail about my thoughts on his backstory, but this is already a long-ass post, and i’m a little worried about looking like i’m sympathizing with him outside of the childhood trauma. like i said, he is at fault for his actions as an adult. he knows better. it’s a very interesting change from the original, though. this may just be me, but he almost seems… less intimidating? not in a bad way, i think they’ve made him feel more human and less like a caricature of evilness.

this is also 100% influencing how i write him in bloodsport lol. mmm, character analysis…

[toointojoelmiller]

alone together: a last of us fic

Prompt submitted by @eedsknees

read at ao3 here

When they finally stop walking the daylight isn’t far off from fully disappearing.

He doesn’t say anything to her. Hasn’t - not a single word since he’d left Tess behind to die alone and dragged her along, screaming and slapping at him. The only signal he gives that they’re stopping is shrugging his pack from his shoulders and dropping it to the ground.

Ellie glances around them and sees the same thing she has for the last few hours - trees, dirt. There’s a narrow stream of water that trickles downhill towards what looks like a creek, but it’s hard to see very far with the dark starting to settle in around them. 

Joel isn’t looking at her. Doesn’t seem like he’s looking at anything, really - he mostly has his back turned to her, but she can still make out the profile of his face. His eyes are closed. His fists are clenching and unclenching at his sides like he’s trying not to punch something, which is concerning. There aren’t a lot of targets around other than her and the trees.

And she doubts he’s feeling pissed off at the fucking forest.

A ripple of fresh fear rises up like bile in her throat. She fights it - he hadn’t spoken to her since they walked away from that blown up building, but he hadn’t done anything to her either, and she tries to keep that piece of information at the front of her mind to keep herself calm, because getting worked up won’t help anything. It’s been just the two of them for hours, she tells herself. Plenty of time for him to ditch her, if he was going to. Or beat the shit out of her. Or do whatever else the dark anger he’s wearing all over his face pushes him to do.

She’s trying to keep the other moments in mind too - the ones that hinted that maybe he wasn’t as much of an asshole as he seemed, and that she’s clinging to like a life raft.

Like how he’d crawled over to her when that thing was getting closer and she was frozen in fear, about to be ripped apart (and about to shit her fucking pants if she’s honest) - and how he’d thrown his arms up to block it when it lunged at them, pushing to keep it off of her and almost getting bitten in the process.

Or how he’d yanked her arm so hard when the explosion happened that she nearly yelped in shock before she realized he was pulling her behind him as he raised his gun, in case any infected that somehow made it out of the blast. Like he was actually trying to protect her.

“You must have heard that he wants to shoot you,” Tess had said. She shivers and tells herself it’s just from the cold.

“Stay here,” Joel says suddenly, his voice sounding weird. She nearly jumps in surprise, and by the time she registers what he’s said he’s already walking away into the trees.

A flicker of anger sparks up and she forgets for a second that she’s afraid of him. “Where are you going?” she asks loudly, getting angrier when he doesn’t respond. She loses sight of him quickly. “You’re a fucking dick,” she breathes under her breath. And then she repeats it, louder, half hoping he can hear. 

She takes her own bag off her back roughly and swings it hard onto the ground, wincing at her mini temper tantrum.

She can’t believe there are two now. Two people she’s known who’ve gotten infected while she was there, and died - well, Tess blowing into pieces a few hundred feet away wasn’t exactly the same as -

She has to squeeze her eyes shut as it flashes in her mind - the heavy wet splatter that tore out of Riley’s head, the slow twitches that rolled through her body once, twice - was it her or the fucking fungus moving her fingers like that? - she fell on her side as she died - blood spilling out of her mouth, over the lips that Ellie had finally been brave enough to kiss.

At least she’s alone when the tears that have been threatening to spill over all evening finally do. She brushes them roughly off her face and drops to her knees, rummaging through her bag until she finds Riley’s fucking Firefly pendant. She’s too afraid of breaking the chain and losing it to keep it on all of the time, but she puts it around her neck now, tucking it into her shirt and focusing on the feeling of the metal touching her skin. 

Everything is so fucked up. All one big nightmare. Riley kissed her back - after so long imagining it and wishing for it it actually happened. It made her feel soft and warm and happy like she never had before, and then the world flipped over to show it’s rotted underbelly and nothing could ever go back to the way it was.

She hears Joel coming back before she sees him, branches cracking in the trees as he gets closer. He doesn’t even look in her direction when he emerges, going to his bag and digging out the little bundle of wax paper he and Tess had kept their rations wrapped up in. He sits down, leaning his back up against a tree, sighing heavily and groaning as he does like he’s a hundred fucking years old.

It’s a nervous thing she does sometimes, talking when she shouldn’t. She doesn’t know why she bothers with him - especially doesn’t know why this is the topic she decides to break the silence with - but she hears herself being an absolute moron and asking, “What’s with all the like, sticks or whatever in the dirt?”

He looks, finally, for the first time in hours. Glares at her, actually, his brow furrowing even farther down somehow. He doesn’t say anything - just stares. 

She points to them, even though they’re all over and he really shouldn’t have a hard time seeing them for himself - hard, horizontal cords of wood that rise up from the dirt for a foot or so before burying back under the earth.

“Ain’t sticks,” he huffs at her, scowling. “They’re roots. From all the trees?” The ‘idiot’ goes unspoken, but she can hear it in his voice just the same.

It’s annoying as hell, how he looks like he’s mad at her for not knowing that - like she’s ever been in a fucking forest before. She decides to be the bigger person and let it go, because she’s not a miserable fucking old man, but her irritation makes her a bit more bold than she probably should be and she keeps talking.   

“So we’re staying here for the night?” Ellie asks.

He’s back to keeping his face turned away from her as he snaps, talking through the food in his mouth, “Where the hell else would we be stayin’?”

“I don’t fucking know, man, that’s why I’m asking!” She snaps back. “You haven’t said a fucking word to me, how am I supposed to know what’s going on?!”

“It’s gonna be dark in a few minutes - sorry for thinkin’ you might put two and two together.” His voice is harsh as he says it. “Shoulda known better.”

Fuming, Ellie sits down and crosses her arms in front of her chest, glaring at the prick who can’t even look her in the eyes when he insults her.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” she hisses before she can think any better of it.

“Yeah, I am,” he says roughly, and she’s done trying to convince herself otherwise.

Asshole, asshole, asshole. She hurls it at him over and over again in her head. 

Watching him eat makes her own stomach start rumbling. She yanks her bag over to her lap and digs out the last of her sandwich, regretting her hissy fit from a moment before when she unwraps the cloth to see that it's apparently not well built enough to survive being hurtled to the ground.

She stares at the mess of bread and filling for a moment before trying to reassemble it with her hands the best she can. It’s still falling apart, and it would probably be easier to lower her head down and try to eat it without having to lift it up so high, but she can’t resist giving in to the petty and immature part of her that hopes he’ll see her eating it and long for some for himself.

Like I’d share with you, fuck face, she thinks at him as hard as she can.

She just ends up with scraps of food all over her lap.

When she’s done eating, she’s overcome suddenly with the urge to just be alone. Get away from him. She stands up quickly and turns from him without a word, walking down hill, following the little stream of water. He doesn’t ask where she’s going because he doesn’t give a shit and that’s just fine.

Her eyes are still watery, a bit blurry with tears from time to time. When she reaches the bottom of the hill she nearly loses her footing, stepping out of the treeline and off of the dirt onto rock covered ground. She was right about the water running down into a creek, but it’s a lot bigger than she’d imagined. It’s probably a cool sight, when there’s enough light to see by, but right now it feels a bit like the world is going to cave in on her with the way the ground slopes up away from the rocks and water in almost every direction.

She picks a random spot and plops herself down. Bugs are swarming her face. Rocks dig into her legs through her jeans. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe.

He was her partner - he can’t be that bad - another refrain she’d been leaning on to try to keep herself chill about it all. It didn’t seem all that convincing now that it was just the two of them.

There could have been a lot of reasons Tess worked with Joel, and none of them required him to be the same kind of person as her. They were obviously different - Tess was in charge, and he was just the fucking attack dog. There’d been a few times Ellie had seen a FEDRA dog tearing into someone. She wonders how long it’ll be before he does it to her, now that there’s no one holding onto his leash?

Tess didn’t take any bullshit but she wasn’t a dick about it, either. It was almost embarrassing how quickly Ellie had started to like her, but it was hard not to - she answered Ellie’s questions, and asked her own back like she actually gave a shit. Acted like she actually cared if Ellie got ripped apart by a monster. More than she’d gotten from 99% of the adults she’d ever interacted with. ‘You got some balls on you, sister’, she’d said - offhand, and definitely not meant to carry half the weight it had to Ellie.

Thinking about Tess’s absence makes her chest start to feel tight, so she focuses instead on being mad at herself, at how pathetic it is, to get attached to someone she’d known for like, one fucking day. Classic fucking orphan bullshit.

She might be even more pissed off at herself for the way she always gets her hopes up, no matter how many times life tries to teach her that there’s no fucking point. All it ever does is hurt - but Riley said once that she liked that about her. “It’s kinda cute,” she’d teased, and Ellie had thrown her pillow across the room at her, hoping Riley wouldn’t see the way she blushed.

For the thousandth time, she wonders why she couldn’t have just died in that mall with the only person who ever really cared about her. Marlene said she survived because she has a ‘greater purpose’ - and all she can think is that it’d better fucking be true, because right now it just feels like she lost the chance to die while the memory of the best moment of her life was still fresh. It’s only been a few weeks, but that kiss is already starting to feel less and less real in her memory. Fuzzy at the edges.

Ellie sits there for too long. It’s the bugs buzzing in her ears and landing on her face that piss her off enough to finally decide to go back. By the time she gets to her feet and takes a look around she realizes just how dark it’s gotten - she can barely make out which spot in the trees she had come out of on her way down. Stupid - should have brought the flashlight with her.

She takes her time, stepping carefully and slowly on the rocky ground so she doesn’t loose her footing. After a few close calls she finally gets off the rocks and back to the dirt, sighing a little with relief as she starts to make her way back uphill.

It’s a lot easier to walk in the dark with somewhat even ground underneath, so she moves a bit quicker, but the trip back up the hill is really taking it out of her. She’s fucking drained - probably won't have any trouble sleeping, despite having just about every reason to.

She thinks she must almost be back to the spot Joel had randomly decided was their camp for the night when one of her feet catches on something she can’t see. Probably one of the fucking roots. She pitches forward, scrambling not to lose her balance, and thinks for a second that she’s saved herself from falling, but her sneaker lands on a patch of loose dirt. It immediately gives way, sliding out from under her, and it’s game over. She slams down onto the ground, landing with one of her arms bent weird underneath of her. There’s instant pain shooting through her wrist and her elbow. She smacks her chin hard as she hits the dirt, too, flooding her mouth with warm metallic blood as her teeth dig into her tongue.

“Fuck!” She hisses into the dirt, breathing through the first initial seconds of pain before spitting out a mouthful of blood and rolling onto her back. She cautiously lifts her arm and tries moving it to see what damage she’s done. If her wrist is broken it must be a small break - she thinks, anyway, because she can still bend it in most directions if she really tries to - but it feels fucked enough to make her a bit queasy. A throbbing ache is settling deeply into it, radiating up her forearm, and when she tries to extend her arm there’s an unsettling twinge in her elbow.

As a bonus, she notices there’s a long wooden splinter poking up out of her palm, too - she grunts as she tugs it out, barely able to see it. Hoping she got it all. Blood trickles out of the gouge, a dark line running down the pale skin of her palm, just barely visible in the darkness that seems to be getting deeper by the second.

Laying on her back lets the blood from her tongue start to pool sickeningly at the back of her throat. She scrambles to her feet in a rage, wanting to scream until her throat is raw, but not as much as she wants to make sure he doesn’t hear her - nothing would be worse than him seeing her like this - seeing what she’s managed to do to herself when there’s no actual fucking danger around. It’s the sort of thing that will make him take off on her - can’t let him see how much of a fuck up she can be.

She forces herself to grit her teeth and marches the rest of the way back, spitting the blood out from her mouth every few seconds as it keeps building up. Her teeth are aching from how hard they’d clattered.

Joel is laying down by the time she gets back, facing away from her. She looks around in the dark for a sort of flat spot to lay down, as far away from him as she can get, but she cuts the search short and just picks at random when a sound makes it way out of her involuntarily - a bit of a moan, or a gasp. She sounds fucking weird - horrified to recognize it as the way she gets when she’s going to cry hard.

She’d rather get shredded into ribbons by a fucking clicker than cry in front of Joel right now, but her tears start pouring down her face anyway, so she sinks down to her knees, folding forward and pressing her forehead onto the ground. She’s shaking - it’s easier to pretend it’s from the cold, because it’s actually sort of freezing now that the sun is gone, and her jacket definitely isn’t warm enough - but she’s lying to herself.

“Fucking fuck,” she whispers as quietly as she can, biting down on her cheek. She can feel the sobs fighting to make their way through her chest. Only a matter of time before they get out. She slaps a hand over her mouth and scrunches her eyes shut, breathing through her nose and trying uselessly to stop it from happening.

Her other hand wanders up to her neck, grabbing onto the metal chain and tugging until Riley’s pendant comes out from under her shirt. She presses it into her palm and wraps her fist around it tightly, squeezing until the edges of the little circle are digging painfully into her skin.

There used to be a flutter in her chest when thought about Riley. A good sort of trill - it was soft and gentle and accompanied always by a bit of a high. It made her feel all warm and excited and hopeful. It’s all wrong now. The flutter her heart does now at the thought of her - her eyes and her hair and that smile she seemed to only show off to Ellie - how painfully fucking cool she always was, from the moment they first met - now it just feels like she’s dying in small bursts. One blow after another, each beat chipping pieces of her away for good.

A particularly hard sob has her gasping loudly for air on the inhale, and her whole body freezes. She’s going to wake him up, and he’ll be angry with her for it - the last straw. She’ll find out exactly what sort of man he is - exactly what he’s capable of - out here alone with him in the dark woods.

When he somehow doesn’t seem to wake up she shifts to lie down, pulling her pack over to use as a pillow. She folds her arms over top of it and buries her face down into them, trying to muffle whatever sounds she’s about to make.

It’s like her body was waiting for permission to give up the fight - as soon as her face touches the scratchy fabric of her bag she’s bawling. He must be almost fucking deaf, she thinks after a long time, because even when a wail makes it's way out of her against her will and she listens for the sound of him rolling over and telling her off, it doesn’t happen.

She’s so exhausted the crying jag feels like it’s draining the life out of her, but she can’t stop. It feels like she cries for hours.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, so waking up is disorienting. Even with her eyes still closed, she can tell that it’s lighter outside. Her face feels swollen and puffy, the skin around her eyes stinging raw, and her head is heavy, nose stuffed up.

She stays curled up, not ready to really be awake yet - she’d been cold the night before, but she wasn’t now, and the warmth made it easy to want to just stay sleeping. Opening her eyes as little as she can manage to while still being able to see, she makes out where Joel is just uphill from her, sitting awake with his back against a tree. In the barely-there early dawn light, the deep blue of his denim is easy enough to spot. He looks different. She can’t tell why.

He notices that she’s woken up right away and stands.

“Goin’ to the creek,” he says in a flat voice as he walks away.

She knows he’s coming back because he leaves his pack behind.

It’s still so early - she breathes deeply a few times, closing her eyes and trying to get back to sleep - wanting deeply to avoid having to face another day.

Before she drifts off again, she realizes what was different about Joel - he wasn’t wearing the brown coat he always had on. He wasn’t wearing it because it’s draped over her like a blanket. He took it off of himself at some point, and covered her with it while she slept. He must have been cold.

She brushes the soft fabric lining of the jacket with her fingers, and her heart does a little flutter. It’s the kind that feels good again.

ao3 link here

my fics listed here

💙

[midnight-moth]

Seemed like a good time to remember this one too

[stromuprisahat]

Aleksander @Fruzsi: "You remember when your family first brought you to me, the price they demanded when they discovered you were Grisha?"

narrative: Look at this evil, bad, horrible villain! Reminding his insane minions HE PAID FOR THEM!

narrative: ...and don't look too closely at the fact her parents are IN POSITION to treat her like cattle and DEMAND money for their "beloved child", because he's gonna take her away from them anyway, so it's just repayment for the emotional damage they'll have to face...

[waitingforsecretsouls]

I can grin and bear a lot of Maedhros slander. But giving him, the OG Thingol hater, pre- Quenya ban and Silmaril Quest even, who is trying to unite all of Beleriand in his Union against Morgoth and who will kill himself to never have to relinquish the Silmaril he eventually retrieves, the exact same opinions as Thingol rather than Celegorm and Curufin on the Silmaril Quest is where I draw the line.

You really think the guy who's trying to get everyone he can on board is gonna be angry at C&C for trying to recruit a hidden (ergo useless to him) realm to his cause rather than the flip-flopping elves of Nargothrond and Finrod's willingness to throw his own brothers and their family oath and labour of their fathers SOUL-literally-under the bus for a stranger and the heiress of the guy who is content to sit and try to wait out Morgoth (who herself has no plans whatsoever to eventually help out with that or try to convince her father to chip in a bit)? Instead of Beren and Luthien's selfish "politics? what politics?" attitude or Thingol for the temerity to set the quest in the first place? On my hands and kness begging people to stop trying to strip Maedhros from his canonical demonstrated character traits, motivations, opinions, loyalties and strength of character (and pride. Dear lord let Maedhros have his canonical pride. Not everyone is secretly an insecure, self-loathing mess and there's NOTHING to suggest this in Maedhros in particular. Seems primarily like people tying his potential scars from Thangorodrim to self-worth issues, what a novel concept. The guy is the lynchpin holding the Noldor and their resistance together, he is performing and leading better than literally anyone else, there's nothing to be insecure and angsty ABOUT except general war-related unpleasantness).

If it was Maedhros he would have either killed Beren on the spot disguised as an unfortunate casualty once he made clear he wasn't dissaduated by the oath or smiled and waved him off to Angband with a "good luck" and imprisoned Luthien for negotiations with Thingol and a "took care of your suitor problem AND got your daughter safe in custody, what have you got for me in return?" when she came looking for Beren, be for real now.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Funniest ask anyone has ever sent me so far. Will love to use this as a reaction picture thank you from the bottom of my heart

[lizaornot]

In an alternate universe where Remus and Sirius didn't die, Sirius' name got cleared and all three are living together.

Harry asks Sirius to do something for him and when thanking him, he accidentally calls him "dad", he then realizes and says rectifies it. Both are surprised by this, and not in a good way. Sirius feels like he's betrayed his own brother and Harry his own father.

James is happy Harry finally has someone to call dad, and he could not be more happy for it to be padfoot.

[falling-from-dawn-au]

@tmnthungergames hey. hey you. i got something for you

(all images under a read more, first and fourth images have gore + death)

At the very start of the games, FFD!Leo absolutely slaughtered @rye-enjoying-things' Donnie with a rock.

FFD!Donnie saw this and ran away like the man running emoji.

After all that mess, FFD!Leo proceeded to make a little figurine because the adhd kicked in and he got bored.

Soon after, @shittygaypornmagazine's Full Lair!Present!Leo stabbed FFD!Donnie in the chest with a stick, which immediately killed him. FFD!Leo saw this.

FFD!Leo, having just seen his brother die, proceeded to cry himself to sleep, because that's what you DO when you see your brother die. I did NOT feel like drawing this, have rise movie screenshots instead.

The next morning, FFD!Leo was stalked by @angelpuns' Kid Leo AU Donnie.

AND THATS EVERYTHING THUS FAR! i am still in shock that my leo committed one of the first murders of the games but ykw, you go funky gay man. kill people!!!

here's the full doodle sheet as well if y'all want it LMAO

[ladycatofwinterfell]

Was going to write “I share your bed because I want to” but forgot a part and ended up with “I share you because I want to”. That’s a whole new meaning