#found the thousand and one nights and the idea of letting an arrow find the bride intrigued me

[shivunin]

A Golden Bell Hung In my Heart

For Kat (@star--nymph)—happy birthday! When I was trying to think of what to write you, I couldn’t think of anything more fitting than, well…this. (And here is the AO3 version, cus it's loooong) 

I’m sure you know where this is going by the title, but if not I pose the question: What if Amalthea had been the one to define what her “self” was? What if Lír didn’t have to let her go after all? And, of course—what is the point of immortality if you don’t get to choose how to spend it?

I hope I’ve done your loves justice and that this is coherent. Thank you for trusting me with them, my dear, and again—happy birthday!! May it be ever better than the last. 

"Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart; I would tear my body to pieces to call you once by your name."

—The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle 

“Ghilan'nain's curse took hold, and the hunter found that he was unable to hunt. Ashamed, the hunter swore he would find Ghilan'nain and repay her for what she had done to him. He blinded her first, and then bound her as one would bind a kill fresh from the hunt. But because he was cursed, the hunter could not kill her. Instead, he left her for dead in the forest. And Ghilan'nain prayed to the gods for help. Andruil sent her hares to Ghilan'nain and they chewed through the ropes that bound her, but Ghilan'nain was still wounded and blind, and could not find her way home. So Andruil turned her into a beautiful white deer—the first halla.”

—From Codex entry: Ghilan'nain: Mother of the Halla

“Unicorn, mermaid, lamia, sorceress, Gorgon—no name you give her would surprise me, or frighten me. I love whom I love…You have no power over anything that matters.”

—The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle 

There was no sense in hunting within the bounds of the silver halla’s forest. 

Everyone knew that. The great halla’s forest was a protected space—peaceful, enchanted, even sacred, in its way. A hunter would find no quarry there, nor a tracker prey to flush beyond its boundaries. 

The forest’s trees and glens rang with the songs of birds, its grounds and bushes thick with the creatures of the wood. What sport they might make of each other went unmonitored, for even in such a place it was not the right of any creature to dictate the nature of another. The creatures might fall to tooth and claw, for that was their nature; almost none of them fell to arrow and sling, nor knife and spear. 

The streams of the wood ran with clear water in the spring and summer, thickening and hardening in the fall and winter until their surfaces were smooth as glass and just as transparent. The leaves on the trees were beautifully green, untainted by spore or rot until the moment they turned yellow or amber or brown, then drifted away to the forest floor. The berries grew thick on the bushes, and the halla and scampering creatures grew fat on the fruit. Winters were harsh, but there seemed always to be just the right sort of underbrush to huddle beneath for warmth, just the right sort of outcropping in the cliffs to make one’s den. 

On calm nights, the wind itself seemed made of song. When it played over the branches and leaves of that place, any human who’d been allowed so far might hear flutes or violins instead. A fanciful idea, perhaps, but anyone who spent the night within its borders would have difficulty denying the truth: that the land itself had its own music, even beyond the sweet songs of the birds in the trees. If one listened carefully, if one had a true enough heart, one might even hear it. 

The statues had been there longest. The owls, the great stags with their proud heads, the watchful wolves—they’d stood on the walls of ruins even longer than the trees. If they’d been possessed of memory, they might have recalled a time of blood and screams, a time when elves had fallen by the score and had never risen again. A thousand years gone and more, those days, but the statues might have remembered. 

There were other things they might have known, too. They might have remembered a time when the great halla who’d dwelled there had trotted past the dens of the bears without a second glance, when she’d sang of water over stone, of tree roots reaching deep, of the ponderous pace of the years. Most critically—the statues would have been able to tell the animals who dwelled in that wood that the silver halla who wandered the wood now was not the same as the one who’d once guarded these borders.

No; despite the peace of the forest, despite its prosperity and harmony, it was a different creature who stepped in the bracken and trotted through the streams now. Her body was—to her occasional, distant discomfort—much the same as the one who’d once stepped lightly over the undergrowth. The same strong legs carried her forth, and the same twisting, silver horns graced either side of her brow. For this creature, all was much as it had been for her predecessor. But her heart—

Her heart bade her slow when she saw the bear cubs tumbling down a hillside, their watchful mothers nearby. Her heart ached with a wound no balm could ever heal when she saw the swans gliding upon the lake, pair by pair, their little cygnets gliding along in a line behind them. When humans made their careful way into the wood, bowing their heads before taking careful handfuls of berries from the bushes or curling bark from the willows, the silver halla found herself lingering just out of sight to hear their voices, to listen to the sounds of their laughter. 

She’d heard laughter like that once. It had been deeper, though; she was certain of it. Laughter, the flash of gold on crimson in the sunlight, and—

Gone. 

Whatever it was, it was gone now.

When she sang, she did not sing of the forest, whole and hearty around her. She did not sing of slow growth through the soil and the earth. Instead, she hummed the tunes of humans and elves, love ballads and lullabies and laments alike until she could not hear the songs that the woodlands sang around her.

The land was peaceful, calm, and whole. 

And Eurydice dwelled there profoundly, completely alone. 

|

Before

It seemed like the whole world was full of sunlight for the Commander and Inquisitor since the birth of their daughter. 

The two of them spent most of their time in her quarters, for it had only been a week and Eurydice still needed more rest than usual. Little Psyche was a source of fascination for both of them, for all that she spent most of her hours sleeping. There—the little curl of her mouth. Could that be a smile? Or—when she waved her hand, was that her reaching for her mamae’s curls? 

But, for all that they were cozy and happy in their rooms, they could not stay there forever. Nor would they want to; with Corypheus so newly dead, there was plenty of cleanup yet to do. There were experiments she’d put on hold in her workshop, and small mountains of paperwork in Cullen’s office to sift through. 

And then there were the gifts. 

They’d poured in from everywhere, piling higher and higher until Josephine had, somewhat desperately, sectioned off part of the great hall for their keeping. Unfortunately for the happy parents, some of the gifts were useful, so they could not simply get rid of the lot without checking. It would be painfully inconsiderate to ask poor Josie to look through them and send her thanks in their stead, so in the end the task fell to Cullen and Eurydice. 

There were bright spots: a little cloth wrap sent by one of the western Dalish clans, intended for carrying the babe comfortably on one’s back; well-cured leather from the farmers of Redcliffe made from the wolves who’d once hunted them, some of it cut into neat strips for weaving. One of the mages’ groups had even sent a small orb which, when touched, illuminated the walls with swathes of stars that perfectly matched the nighttime sky. When Eury had touched it, Psyche had been in her arms. The little one had reached for the swirls of color, making a soft noise that might have been wonderment, and Eurydice had been hard-pressed to do anything but set it aside to keep for her. 

Most of it was utterly useless, precisely the sort of things nobility sent to each other to garner social capital: ornate rocking chairs it would hurt to sit in, teething rings of ivory and gold, a cradle with so many gilded faces on it that it was sure to give any child nightmares, and on and on. These things, they were more than happy to record and rid themselves of by whatever method seemed quickest. Useful metals were melted down for reuse, books on the care and keeping of children were foisted upon the keep’s librarian, and the fussy infants’ clothing was unstitched and put back together in new shapes for more practical purposes. 

But—they still had to sort through it all. 

Cullen stood on the sidelines now, unarmored and unarmed, Psyche snuggled into his shoulder. Eury pressed one last kiss to their daughter’s cheek, her eyes closing for a moment at the contact. 

Maker, how he loved her; it still took him by surprise sometimes, as if  his love of her was a force that knocked him breathless to the ground. It had been a wonder to watch her grow round with their babe; it was a wonder now, every day, to watch her be a mother. As he had many times since he’d first seen their daughter cradled in Eury’s arms, he thought how painfully sweet it was to hold something so soft, so breakable, and know that she depended on you utterly. To know that the whole glory of her life still lay before her, every possibility untested, all of it yet new and fresh with no mistakes nor faults to mar its potential. 

“Let me know when you’re ready to trade,” he told Eury, catching her mouth with the briefest of touches. It would be too easy to get caught in each other, even now. If he let himself hold on to her, he would never want to let her go and there was still plenty of work to be done. 

His love nodded, her mind plainly elsewhere. She stroked a hand over Psyche’s curls and stepped into the hills and valleys of the gifts sent for the Inquisitor’s first child. 

“How is the little one this morning?” Josephine asked, stepping up beside him and smiling at the babe pressed to Cullen’s shoulder. 

“Quite well,” he said, smoothing a hand over Psyche’s back, “She slept all night, so Eurydice did as well. It was much needed.”

“I am not surprised,” Josephine said, “It is a tiring thing, to have a newborn. I remember when my Mama had Yvette that not one of us slept easy for what felt like a month. We threw a party for the family the first time she slept through the night. A very quiet one.”

Cullen chuckled, eyes still following his beloved. Eurydice sidestepped an ornate statue of what looked like an irate toddler and flicked the hem of her skirt to the side just before it would have been caught on the edge of a surprisingly realistic rocking horse. 

“Yes,” he told Josephine, “My youngest sister used to cry constantly when she wasn’t held. I would carry her up and down the hallway until she calmed just to give my mother a break. Thankfully, our Psyche seems to sleep well so far.”

Josie chuckled and adjusted her grip on her writing board. The smell of breakfast cooking began to drift up from the kitchens, and Cullen’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in quite some time. Amongst the gifts, Eury held up a loose, soft-looking dress and tilted her head consideringly before tossing it in the direction of the things she wanted to keep. 

“Our Inquisitor seems to be recovering well,” Josie went on, bending her head to jot something down on her topmost page.

“She is,” Cullen said, watching as Eurydice considered an ornate, beribboned box. 

“Motherhood suits her,” Josephine said absently, and her quill scratched over the paper. In Cullen’s arms, Psyche stirred, making a soft noise of protest. 

“Shh, shh, shh,” he murmured, rocking her slightly, and she subsided against his shoulder. 

How soft she was, and how warm; he’d forgotten how boneless infants seemed, how vulnerable and fragile they felt to hold. Perhaps the effect was magnified now because she was his own. Cullen did not know; but holding her now woke a fierce, protective streak in him. He wanted to clutch her tight and shield her from the world, nearly as much as he wanted to wrap her in layers and layers of soft things to keep her from every sharp edge and bumpy road. 

Foolishness. 

It was foolishness, he knew that. To remain static and unchanging was to cease being truly alive; no amount of protection could save her from the world. 

Eury fiddled with the ribbons on the box, then drew her ever-present dagger from the small of her back and slashed them away. Cullen smiled fondly, still rocking Psyche, and watched as she finally lifted the lid and took the contents out in her left hand. 

It happened so quickly. None of them could have stopped it, no matter how much Cullen told himself otherwise later. 

As soon as her hand touched the twisting silver horn  in the box, it lit with the light of a thousand noons. Its light was white, harsh, and as soon as it lit the room it was impossible to look away. Eurydice’s mouth was open in a silent scream, lit from within by that horrible light. Cullen willed himself to move; willed himself to step forward, to draw the sword he wasn’t holding, to call up powers he no longer held to end whatever spell held her in its grip. 

He could do none of those things. His blade and armor were upstairs still, tucked out of the way. His strength had drained away with the last of the lyrium, and he could no more Purge this spell from her than he could spread wings and take flight. 

Stuck. Helpless. Vulnerable—he could do nothing to protect the woman he loved, and she was right there. 

Beside him, Josephine stood frozen as well, and he couldn’t tell if Psyche was breathing in his arms—Maker, if she was—she couldn’t be—

As his thoughts turned desperate, as he tried to turn his head to look, the light dragged his love into the air as if pulled by a rope at her waist. Eury went, her head turning barely, barely toward him, those lovely violet eyes as wide and desperate as his felt. 

As if she needed him; as if she was asking him to help her. 

He couldn’t move; couldn’t even take a breath.

The light dripped from Eurydice’s skin and hair, stronger and stronger until it hurt Cullen to look at it. When it had coated her entirely, something changed—he did not know what—and the light cast a different shadow on the wall: a halla, horns weaving backward from its head in spirals, shining with that same merciless light. 

And then she was gone.

Everything, from the moment she touched the artifact to the moment it fell to the ground, dull and lifeless, lasted only seconds. Cullen knew this only because, as the horn thudded against the stone of the great hall, the ribbons cut from the box finally, softly, finished drifting to the ground in a coil. 

All was still.

Psyche, at last, sucked in a breath and began to cry. 

|

The ground below was damp and soft. When the silver halla first struggled to her feet, the earth gave away beneath her and she sank in slightly into the welcome forest floor. She stumbled, righted herself, and panted into the cool air for a moment. Her breath rose from her in a mist, visible against the dark trunks of the trees around her. 

She stood in a forest. 

Why that surprised her, she did not know. It was her forest after all; she knew that as well as she knew…well. 

Not her name. 

As well as she knew that up was up and down was down. 

Something was…strange. She could not hold it in her mind, but there was something not right. For a moment, the halla stood frozen, ears pricked for any sense of movement. 

The wood was still around her. Only the trunks of the trees stood dark against the expanse of white, the snow settled into drifts and hills over the forest around her. She stood in a curiously bare patch, the earth under her feet soft as mud in springtime, the snow melted away in a clean circle. Not right; it did not seem right. 

There were no sounds, no skittering movement. No birds flapped their wings, and no other halla darted past near-invisible in the snow. The silver halla wanted to…reach for something. Strange. But how she might reach, she did not know. Her legs were strong and good, but they were not meant for…whatever they wanted to be doing. Twining with…something. Tugging at…something. 

She did not know.

A shiver worked its way under her flank; the halla flicked her tail to work it out, then stepped delicately into the woods. Soon enough, she blended in with the ice and snow, save the faint glimmer of green that twined around her front left hoof. 

Eventually, all that was left to signify her arrival was the circle of bare earth. When the snow began to fall that evening, soft and downy as cotton, even that much was gone.

|

Two Weeks Later

“I can’t,” Cullen said, knuckles braced on the desk, head hanging low, “I cannot leave her. Not after what…she needs a parent.”

“Of course,” Josephine said, gripping her writing board, “It is your—”

“Not of course,” Dorian said, slashing his hand through the air, “There is no choice—and you’re a fool if you think otherwise. Did you make a vow to the Inquisitor or not? I cannot seem to recall.”

“Do not—” Cullen began hotly, but cut himself off at the soft noise from the cradle beside his desk. Psyche had been restless ever since her mother’s disappearance—which Cullen understood well, because he felt much the same. She’d finally fallen asleep only moments before these two had walked in, because that was how his luck had fared since Eurydice had vanished. 

He bent over the cradle now, but she was not quite awake; only frowning slightly, one hand curled into her own hair. Cullen ran a hand over his face and turned back to the other two. Josephine stood near the desk, poised as ever, and Dorian paced on the other side of the room. 

The problem, as they’d just explained, was this: 

Tracking spells no longer worked on Eurydice. 

Oh, they were no phylacteries—she would never have allowed it—but there were spells to be done with hair, for example, that should have given some direction. And—nothing. They’d used her sister as a focus for a spell next—something which Aegle had taken part in with her usual cheer—but this, too, had not given them enough. They needed more. They needed someone who’d known her more recently, who could focus their thoughts on the essence of her. For that, there was nobody more fitting than Cullen. 

“I cannot leave her,” he said more softly,

“I know you are not a gambling man,” Dorian said, planting his hands opposite Cullen on the desk, “But consider your odds. If we do nothing, she remains lost, possibly forever. That kind of magic is powerful—and I know of nobody who can counter it. If you come with us, we might yet find her. The Inquisitor is a powerful mage; she may have knowledge of the Dalish that I do not. If the spell continues to affect her, that is. We’ve no confirmation of that now, of course.”

At this, Psyche began to cry. Cullen turned at once and lifted her into his arms, automatically falling into the soft, bouncing rhythm that soothed the worst of her cries. 

“Shh,” he said, “Shh, shh. It’s alright, darling; I have you. I have you.” 

Cullen pressed his cheek against her head, murmuring soft nonsense until she calmed again. He would need to call the wet nurse in soon enough; Psyche was due to eat, and he could not hold onto her forever. 

“Consider,” Dorian went on, and Cullen knew at once from his tone that whatever he said next would hurt, “What she will think about this when she’s older. What will you tell her about her mother? Will you tell her that you did everything in your power to bring Eurydice back? Or will you tell her that you abandoned her, alone somewhere with none of her allies to support her? Vanished by some foul magic that none of us know, lost, perhaps captured?”

“That’s enough,” Cullen murmured, but Dorian wasn’t done.

“Will you tell your daughter that you gave up on her mother?”

“That’s enough,” Cullen said, sharper, and Psyche made a soft noise of protest into his shoulder. 

The Commander turned away from them, pacing toward the window that looked out over the valley below. The snow was blinding down there, its covering complete. There might have been nothing under it; there might have been rivers frozen over, or hard stone, or homes and lives lost a thousand years ago. The Frostbacks were like that; they did not give up their dead. They held their mysteries close. 

Out of sight of the others, Cullen reached under the bottommost layer of clothing, drawing a locket from around his neck. He did not open it. Looking at the picture inside only hurt him now, Eurydice’s face detailed with exquisite care, her expression beautiful and at peace. He held it not as a remembrance, but as a reliquary, as if praying to some distant god for guidance. The metal warmed in his hand, and his pulse thrummed harder where the locket pressed hard into his skin. 

In the end, he…he couldn’t allow her to wander out there, lost and alone. Not when he knew their child would be safe here. 

He had to take the chance—that she could be found, that he could bring her home, that they might yet raise their daughter together. Dorian was right to say that there had never really been a choice at all. 

“Alright,” Cullen said at last, turning from the pitiless landscape below, “Give me today to prepare myself, to hand the most urgent matters off to others, and…”

“She will be cared for with the utmost attention,” Josephine said, stepping forward at once, “Please, allow me to handle it. I will prepare an appropriate list and you can approve it; her aunt will, of course, remain with her at all times, and when she is not nearby I will be. There is nothing to fear; she is safe here.”

“Thank you,” Cullen said, his attention already divided. Half of him was somewhere far away, his thoughts on his vanished love; the other half dwelled on the soft shape against his shoulder. 

The daughter he would soon be leaving behind. 

Abandon one by leaving; abandon one by staying. No; it was no choice at all. 

“Leave me,” he said, “to my preparations. We’ll leave at dawn.”

Dorian nodded sharply and turned on his heel at once. Cullen did not watch him go. He sat instead, the weight of the world pressing down on him all at once. 

“She will be safe here,” Josephine said again, already writing furiously on her board, “I guarantee it.”

“Thank you,” Cullen said again, but he hardly heard her words at all. 

|

When the party rode forth the next morning, Cullen hung back an extra moment to kiss his daughter’s sweet forehead, to brush her wealth of curls away from her face. He lingered a moment longer than the others, just holding her, trying to make it last as long as he could.

“Be safe, darling,” he told her, as if she had any power over such a thing, “I…love you more than the entire world, and so does your mamae.” 

The locket was in his hand again, though he did not recall pulling it from where it rested over his heart. He hesitated, then lifted it over his head. When he would have handed it to Aegle, Eurydice’s sister shied back. 

“Keep it,” she said, “Keep it. It’ll be luck.”

“I—” Cullen spoke around the tightness in his throat, “She should know what her mother looks like. In case…”

“There are plenty of court portraits,” Josephine said, “Of both you and the Inquisitor. Should something happen—be assured that she will know precisely who her parents were.”

Cullen’s hand drifted back to his side, the long chain dangling in the frigid winds of the mountains. 

“Every day?” he said, “You’ll show her?” 

“I will,” Aegle said, adjusting her grip on her sleeping niece, “I will, every day. Promise.” 

Cullen nodded, because words were beyond him. He drew the chain back over his head and let it slip soundlessly back beneath his tunic, where it was safe. 

“We’ll be back soon enough,” Bull said, striding the other direction, “She won’t have time to miss you. You’ll see.”

Cullen nodded, already turning toward his own mount—but he had his doubts. 

Whatever had happened to her—it would have no easy ending. This, he knew all too well. 

|

The silver halla happened upon the den one bright morning, when the sun on the snow refracted rainbows into the cold air. Her steps were sure and careful in the powder, but when she rounded a certain corner she saw them: 

Two older bears, a mother and father, fat for the winter. They were curled around babes—one, two, three little cubs, curled safe and warm between their parents. They did nothing; it was too early for them to wake and go foraging. 

She stood silent for a long time anyway, watching and watching and watching, until the sun fell over the horizon and she could see them no longer. 

|

Several Months Later

Cullen couldn’t count how long they’d been traveling. The days had blurred together very quickly, each one so like the next that it seemed pointless to count. If he thought about it, thought hard, he might have found the answer—but it grew harder to think the longer they searched. It seemed that by now, the four of them had seen Thedas in its entirety, from sea to mountains, from forests to plains. They’d been cordial at first, then grouchy, and after the months of searching they’d all settled into a sort of weary, companionable rhythm. 

In the morning, the four of them rose quietly and packed up their night’s camp. There was usually something hot to drink and something simple to eat for breakfast. None of them were at their best this early in the morning—frankly, Cullen didn’t know how the Inquisitor had stood traveling with them all that time—so after several increasingly heated arguments they’d agreed to spend their pre-travel adjustments in silence. 

After that, when the mounts were loaded with gear and the campsite was cleared of belongings, Dorian would do his spells and Cole would do…whatever it was Cole did. Searching through the Fade, perhaps. Then, if they could get a direction from either Dorian or Cole, they’d turn themselves that way—sometimes backtracking for miles, sometimes heading in an entirely new orientation—and when they or their mounts were too tired to go on they would make camp and settle in for the night. 

The morning this routine finally changed, Cullen waited beside his mount while the mage worked. Bull leaned against a tree nearby, finishing a letter to update the ones they’d left behind. The raven to carry it waited on Cullen’s shoulder, preening its wing feathers, a loose string hanging from one foot.

“What do you think, Knight? Is it a lucky day?” Cullen murmured to his horse, his back to the mage. 

He dreaded the moment that he would see Dorian’s head bow in resignation. He didn’t want to see the look on the man’s face when he turned to tell Cullen they were traveling without a course again today. Instead, he kept stroking his gloved hand over the horse’s neck, leaning into the warmth and solidity of it. For a moment longer, he could pretend that today would be the day, that all would at last be well. 

Let it be today, Cullen hoped silently, squeezing his eyes shut. If he tried very hard, he could still feel Eury beside him, could still see her as she’d woken that last morning. Her hair had been in a mass, drifted over one shoulder and splayed over the pillows, her expression peaceful in the early morning light. Their daughter had been curled into the crook of her arm, equally serene. They’d been beautiful, the two of them—perfect. And then—

“Yes!” Dorian shouted behind him, and Cullen spun around, his recollections set aside for the moment. 

“What?” he barked, “What is it?” 

“We’re close,” the mage said, cupping an orb of violet and green light in his hands, “And I’ve made it stable—we should be able to track this to the source very soon.”

“How soon?” Cullen asked, gripping the reins tightly in his left hand. Cole stood there, too, his face tilted down and away so his face was hidden.

“We might expect a day’s travel until we reach her, maybe two,” Dorian said, flicking a stray lock of hair from his forehead, “We should be close enough to search visually once we’re within the range.”

“Maker preserve me,” Cullen murmured through an abruptly tight throat, “I—thank you. Thank you.”

“Well, what’re we waiting for?” Bull boomed behind him, causing one of the other mounts to shy back, “Let’s go!”

The raven shot into the air with a rustle of black wings, the scrap of white on its ankle visible for only a moment before it passed into the trees and was gone. 

|

The wood itself was always loud, but the silver halla walked in silence. 

The forest was her charge. As any other creature that needed care, it was finicky, fussy, needing the halla’s constant attention lest it fall to ruin. She could hear the trouble like a low hum in the distance—poachers, rot, and such—and she made her way in its direction quickly whenever something was amiss. Hunters could be run off; those too foolish to leave fell to her horns and hooves. 

They were better as food for the forest, anyway, she might think absently before trotting away again, their bodies splayed and lifeless behind her on the soft earth of the forest. 

One memorable afternoon, she happened upon a hare trapped in a cruel snare. The wire loop hung from a low branch had caught its neck as it ran along its path. The snare gleamed silver from the recesses of its fur now. The more it struggled, the tighter the snare wrapped until it was choking, gasping for air, its wide feet kicking feebly against the soft earth below. The silver halla watched it in sorrowful silence until the creature’s eyes finally filmed over, for she did not have the means to free it. Breaking the branch would not have let it go; it would still have been trapped, snagged on another branch somewhere else down the path unless someone with careful hands had come upon it and twisted the loop free. She was the only witness when its body went lip, when its legs stopped kicking at last and its soul left its body behind.

When the hunters came back for its body some time later, she made very certain they knew better than to try that again within the bounds of her forest—if they made it back out again. 

It would be hard for them to leave after she’d broken some of their pieces in return. But this, unlike the rabbit, was not her problem.

Yes—there was much she could do for the creatures who lived there; some things, few as they might be, were beyond her. 

The snare was one. The cottage was another. 

There was only one of its kind built within the bounds of the wood, and she didn’t see it until the thaw was well underway, as if the snow itself had hidden the house beneath. It stood near the northern edge, closer to where most of the humans were. It must have been there for an age, for its whitewashed walls had long since fallen prey to storms, the pale covering flaking away in large patches that littered the forest floor around the outer walls. Its thatching was in disarray, the tightly-bound reeds now home to any number of birds and rodents. 

Curious, the halla peered through the time-worn windowsills and holes in the brick of the fireplace. She saw little of the insides; told herself she ought not care. Whoever had once put it here, it was clearly better used as a home for the forest creatures. 

Except. 

Except she kept coming back anyway, circling the clearing around it, admiring the strength of its walls, the surprising evenness of the wooden floors within. There was even a shed tucked up against the main structure, and to her sensitive nose it smelled faintly of herbs and magic. 

She…did not know why she liked that smell so much. 

The cottage was her one indulgence, her one concession to selfishness. She wished only that she had some means to see the rest, to put it back as it had once been, to walk those even floors and lay down in the shelter of its damaged roof. 

But why she might want such strange things—that, she did not know. 

|

Their quartet reached the wood that night and camped on its outskirts, Dorian rightfully arguing that searching around in an unfamiliar forest in the dark was too foolish for words. Cullen chafed at the delay, though, pacing along the boundary long after the others had begun to make noises about turning in for the night. 

“Hey,” a deep voice said behind him, and Cullen spun on his heel. 

“Yes?” he snapped, then sighed, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“’s alright,” Bull said, waving a hand the size of Cullen’s head, “Here. Message from Josie.”

“Is—” Cullen began, already reaching for the letter with his heart in his throat, but Bull was shaking his head again. 

“All good. Just an update,” he paused, surveying Cullen’s mussed hair and shaking hands, “Be up a little more if you need something. Almost there.”

“Almost there,” Cullen echoed, and the letter crinkled in his hand. 

Bull nodded once more, then strode back to the campfire, his steps improbably near-silent. Cullen took a deep breath, tucked a finger under the wax seal, and opened the letter. 

Commander Cullen, it read, 

Before I address other matters, I must begin by informing you that your Psyche is in good health and progressing beautifully.

Cullen paused here, eyes squeezed tightly shut. After a moment, his lungs reminded him that they still needed breath. Shakily, he sucked in air and went on:

She is beloved by everyone who sees her, and she now ably flips from front to back. Though she struggles with the reverse, I and her aunt are confident she will continue to learn. She is certain to inform passers-by of her every thought and seems most perturbed that none of them quite seem to understand her yet. We are careful to show her the court portraits of her mother and yourself daily—

“Maker,” Cullen said with feeling, sucking in a sharp breath and turning his face to the sky. 

The faint wind cooled the tears on his cheeks until he scrubbed at them with his sleeve. One hand found the locket on its chain, tucked under his shirt where nobody else could see. Since the day he’d lost his Eurydice, he touched it often—though he still hadn’t opened it again. He was afraid to; as if her expression might have changed to one of accusation. He had left their daughter behind, after all.

It was not fair. Not fair. 

None of this should have happened; had Eurydice not given up enough? Had she not sacrificed her role with her people, time with her family, her own eye for all of Thedas? 

Had they not suffered enough? And now they must miss every milestone of their young daughter’s life. Had they missed her first laugh, her first smile? Would she even know his face when he returned to her?

More importantly—would she know Eury’s?

Above him, the moon sailed on, serene through the night sky. Clouds had gathered along the horizon, puffy and white, silver where the moonlight touched them. He’d looked up at that moon every night since she’d vanished, wishing he could know for certain that wherever she was, Eury could see it, too. Whenever he stopped for long enough, the questions crowded in: was she safe? Was she hurt? Had she been confined somewhere, locked away from the air and the sky? 

But now, as every other time he’d asked himself those questions, he still had no answers. Only the wind and the stars and the cool light of the distant moon above. 

And the little sketch Josie had tucked into the letter of a small, round face and two tiny, pointed ears surrounded by a fountain of curls on either side. 

By the Maker, if there was any good left in this world he would make damn sure she would see them both again.

|

When the silver halla dreamt, it was often of a strange, brilliant figure shaped like one of the People but formed of light instead of flesh. In the dream, she sat amongst the trees and the halla lay her head upon the light-woman’s lap. Her horns ought to have eviscerated the woman, ought to have pierced her in a dozen places, but they never did. 

“You have seen much pain,” the woman would say in these dreams, one hand stroking along the halla’s neck, “You have known betrayal and abuse. You have felt pain beyond your years. It is calm here; it is quiet. There are no demons nor voices calling when you would not answer. You are safe now—safe from everything. This is what you were meant to be—where you were always meant to go.”

It seemed to the halla that this was not right, that the information was somehow incomplete. In the way of dreams, she never knew precisely why she thought so. She just lay still and let herself be comforted for hurts she neither felt nor remembered.

Each day she woke again, lifted her head, and began her daily wanderings. 

Each night she lay down her head and felt a deep, sourceless sense of grief and dissatisfaction that no manner of dream could lift. 

No—regret. That was the name for it. 

The halla felt regret. 

She prodded at the feeling as one might a bruise, feeling for its boundaries and origins, but to no avail. 

Perhaps it, like the loneliness, was simply something she was meant to feel. 

|

The trees were tall and dense. They did not welcome outsiders. 

As the days went on, it became more and more clear that the forest itself was alive, knowing in a way that did not fall neatly into any category of magic Cullen had yet seen. After days of brambles that seemed to spring up directly in their way, branches near-falling on Dorian when he tried to use his tracking spell, and Cole’s somewhat ominous pronouncement that they weren’t all welcome, Cullen had begun to despair. 

Now, with a headache pounding at Cullen’s temples, the four of them faced a racing river. There was not supposed to be a river here. No river entered nor exited this wood on the map, though there was meant to be a lake somewhere further in. And yet—here it was, and no bridge with which to cross it. 

Eury was somewhere on the other side. Dorian’s spell, before it had been broken by a falling tree limb, had been clear about that.

Cullen crouched, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment and trying to think around it. There could be an easier fording place elsewhere on the riverbanks. They might split up, search for a better place to ford it further down- or upstream. They might cut down a tree or section off one of the downed trunks to make a simple bridge. Or—

“Cullen,” Cole said in a strange voice, and Cullen turned his head to look at the boy.

“Yes? What is it?” Cullen said. 

“The wood doesn’t want us.”

“Yes,” Cullen said, frowning, “I’d divined that for myself, thank you. Now, we need to—”

“No,” Cole said, shaking his head and coming closer to crouch at Cullen’s side, “It doesn’t want us. Wrong, too much metal; push it out, like a splinter under skin. The river is a wall.”

“Metal—What…?” 

Ah; yes, perhaps that was it after all. He’d heard of such places before—places that had a mind of their own. The Blackmarsh, the Korcari Wilds, the Brecilian Forest—and there were some things such places did not tolerate. 

Cullen pushed to his feet, ignoring the usual wave of dizziness that followed. One hand reached for the buckle at his shoulder. 

“Here,” he said, catching Bull’s eye, “Take this for a moment.”

It was quick work to remove it all, for he’d long practice donning and unlatching all his armor. The Qunari took it with a look of understanding, and none of them stopped Cullen when he shouldered his pack and waded into the shallow end of the river. 

Cullen’s boot stretched over the water for a moment. He steeled himself, took a breath, and set it in the white foam of the rushing river below.

To his shock, the racing water stilled. The foam gathering along the top of the water drifted gently, piling up until it made a sort of path through the center. In the smooth, still water, he could see a clear reflection of the tree’s crowns, the small patches of blue interspersed amongst the green. He could see his own face, drawn and unshaven and haggard. 

Cullen swallowed and waded on until the water was at his knees, then mid-thigh. He hoisted the straps of the pack higher to keep it from the wet and strode on, ignoring the drag at his legs, ignoring the reflection in the water, until at last his feet met the damp rock of the other side. 

“I think—” he began, turning, but his words were lost in the roar of the river as it sped up again behind them. 

The others tested the waters as he had, but it would not let them pass and it would not let Cullen return. It seemed that they had come as far as they were going to come. 

The rest of the journey must be his and his alone. 

At last, Cullen swallowed, pressed a fist to his heart, and turned away. His pack was a heavy but reassuring weight at his back. The forest echoed with sudden birdsong around him, and the sun shone brightly between the gaps in the canopies above. 

Maker, he prayed silently as he stepped into the clear path between the trees, let her be near.

|

It was almost eerie the way the forest seemed to part for Cullen now that he’d left his weapons, armor, and traveling companions behind. 

The ease of it left him uneasy, jumping at shadows, wary over every rustle in the bushes even after it became obvious that the wood was improbably full of wildlife. Birds winged from every bough, some in colors he’d never seen on such a creature. He saw glimmering eyes in the distance at night more than once. After one day’s fruitless searching, he returned to his camp to find tracks all around the fire. Cullen slept in the trees after that, careful always to pack up and hang his food when he was gone. Something told him he’d have very little luck with hunting here, even if he were equipped with something he could use to hunt. 

Uneasy as Cullen was, he never really felt like he was in danger. Nothing growled in the dark; nothing hunted him in the bushes. For all that the forest was technically located in Ferelden, there were no signs that the Blight had ever touched this place. He saw signs that other people had been here recently, but as far as he could tell none of them remained. At least, in his days of searching he never heard or saw someone else. 

Still: it was a beautiful forest, and edible roots and berries seemed plentiful enough. If Cullen hadn’t been searching for the lost love of his life, he might even enjoy himself. But…well, as matters were, he felt guilty for every beauty that he saw, as if even the potential for enjoyment took something away from the seriousness of his search. In recompense, he doubled down: less sleep, more walking, even when it was by the light of the crystal Dorian had passed off to him before he’d left. 

On one such evening, Cullen held the crystal aloft, peering into the darkness around him. He was fairly certain he knew the way back to his makeshift camp. This direction was simply the only one left that he hadn’t searched yet. If he just went a little further—

A tree root in the path; his foot caught on it unexpectedly and he launched forward, then down, down, down. There’d been no rain, but the bank he rolled down was slick with newly-wet mud anyway. By the time he reached the bottom, he was all but coated in it, and dizzy and sore besides. As he rolled the last few feet and stared, dazed, at the sky, he let go of the crystal lighting his way. It slid away in the bracken, still lit. 

Briefly, before he gave in to the dizziness that fogged his mind, Cullen could have sworn he saw a…halla, standing over him, its horns glimmering silver in the intermittent moonlight. 

And then all was dark. 

|

It wasn’t that the halla had never seen a human up close before. She’d seen plenty: gatherers with lowered eyes and upraised palms, backing slowly away; hunters she drove away and those she left broken in the bracken and earth. 

In all her days, she’d never seen one quite like this. 

The human’s face was lit in the flicker of the stone he’d held. He was pale, dark under the eyes, with muddy golden hair. She saw little of his eyes, for he closed them almost as soon as she stepped closer, but what she had seen reminded her of the soft underbark of a pine tree, beaded with sap in the sunlight. 

Strange; another of those odd urges she could not shake. She wanted to touch his hair—but carefully nudging it with her nose did not seem to satisfy the urge. What did she want?

Why did it distress her to see the creature lying at the bottom of the slope like that, limbs askew? He reminded her of that poor snared rabbit, kicking and kicking until the wire finally cut its neck. 

She did not like that. 

No; no, she did not. 

So instead of turning away, as she so often had, she stepped closer and made a choice.

|

Cullen woke on the forest floor. 

For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. A raindrop hit his cheek, filtered from the overhang above, and when he blinked it all came into focus: a grey day, but it was day now. He lay half-under the shelter of a large, flat shelf of granite. The cold wall of rock pressed against his back, and when he shifted he found himself supported by a bed of leaves and vines. What…?

You were injured, a painfully familiar, rough voice whispered. Cullen sat up, immediately knocking his head against the rock above. 

That was unwise, Eurydice’s voice went on, cool and disinterested and agonizingly dear, your head does not need more damage, yes? Yes. 

“Eurydice,” he gasped out at last, eyes still squeezed shut, one hand bracing against the earth and the other pressed to his aching head. 

A pause. 

Rest now, the voice said, a note of command in its tone. 

A note—but not one he heard aloud, Cullen realized. However the voice was speaking, its words were whispered directly into his mind. The old fears crept back again; that this was a demon somehow reaching into his thoughts to give him what he wanted most deeply. Would he betray himself by giving in just because it sounded like his…his…

“Eurydice?” he said again, and opened his eyes.

A creature stood before him, silhouetted against the grey of the day beyond. It was a halla; he knew that at once. But where bone-white horns ought to curl back from its head, it bore a different set. They were silver, as if they’d been dipped in metal or mercury, and even the faint sunlight seemed to trace them with exquisite care. Along the creature’s foreleg, there were traceries of green. At first, Cullen thought that it might have stepped through undergrowth of some sort, but then he looked closer. 

The green pulsed with a faint, near-inaudible hum that Cullen knew very well. He’d slept beside that hum. He’d held it to his lips, against his skin. That was the Anchor; he’d stake his life on it. There was no fabricating something like that. And her eyes…

Violet, beautiful deep violet, shining faintly when she blinked. 

Those were Eurydice’s eyes. He knew them better than he knew his own. 

“Eurydice?” he said again, and slid from beneath the granite shelf, “Eury—it’s me. Don’t you remember…?”

She didn’t. He could see she didn’t. 

The halla cocked her head, silver horns winking in the light. 

You will not heal if you do not rest, she said, If you walk away, I will not follow you.

Cullen’s hands curled into fists at his sides, the abrupt fear and anger and relief twisting inextricably in his chest. 

She was here; she was gone. He’d found her; she was lost to him. 

Beyond all that—Maker, his head ached. He could barely think past the throbbing.

Rest, she said again, and—well. There seemed to be no better choice. Still watching her as if she’d vanish when he took his eyes away, Cullen settled back into the hollow made by the granite and lay on his side. 

|

Eurydice was gone when Cullen woke, but his head had stopped aching. Rather than try to find his camp again, he stayed in place, neatening the little alcove for lack of anything better to do and then performing his usual stretches in the sunlight when she still hadn’t returned. 

She arrived in the glen at last sometime around noon, judging by the height of the sun, when Cullen’s stomach had begun to grumble badly. He was just beginning to consider trying to forage in the berry bushes just past this little clearing when she broke through the trees on the other side, trotting into the light and surveying him with a tilt of her head. 

You are still here, she said, Are you in pain?

“I—no,” Cullen said, throat tightening at the sound of her voice, “No—I am quite well.”

Then why do you remain?

“I…wanted to offer my thanks. And—offer to help you, if I might.”

She tilted her head the other way, the sharp points of her horns catching the sunlight. Cullen ignored them and focused on her eyes. 

“There must be tasks you need help with,” he said, for he’d had some time to think about how he might stay near her, “I—I would be glad to offer my service. Surely…surely having hands would be of use to you? I would be glad to assist, however you may need it.” 

For a long moment, he thought she might simply choose not to answer him at all. Then, she huffed and began to trot away. 

Come, then, she said, there are things to be done, yes? Yes.

Cullen swallowed hard, straightened his shoulders, and strode after her.

|

The halla still dreamed, but sometimes the words were different. 

This night, the light-woman stroked her flank and spoke in the gentle tone of a mother correcting a wayward child. 

“Do not trust a human,” she chided, and the halla wished for nothing more than to not be touched, though she could not lift her head or move away. 

“He is not meant for this place,” the woman went on, “He upsets the balance. You do not need any help he can offer; you are better off on your own. You have been doing quite well so far, have you not?”

For the first time, the halla, dreaming, wondered: 

Who is she? And, Why does she tell me what I should do? I know what I should do. I do not need her help. 

When the dream ended, she did not send the man away. There were things—specific things—that she wanted him to do. But…perhaps she would not start with those. Perhaps she would watch him first, to see what he would do. 

Yes; yes, that was wisest. 

First, she would learn more; then she would ask. 

|

Cullen knew when he was being tested. 

There were simple tasks: move this rock here or there for the snakes to den under, drag this branch closer to the river so it doesn’t start too large a fire, put this little bird back in its nest before it’s trampled. He performed all the tasks without complaint, searching always for some hint that she still knew him. Two years ago, he would have thought himself mad for playing errand boy for a talking forest creature, let alone believing that said creature was the mother of his child. Now, though…

Now, he did as she asked simply for the pleasure of hearing her speak to him again. 

He thought often that he should go back to the others, explain what he’d seen, but then what? Could he guarantee that she would still be here when he returned? 

They’d searched for too long for him to walk away now. So he stayed instead, did all she asked him, and lived for the next time he heard her voice—distant as it was.

At last, perhaps a week after he’d woken under the rock shelf, Eurydice nudged him awake and indicated he follow her. Cullen rose, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and trailed behind. It seemed that the forest itself moved for her, or perhaps it was simply that she knew the wood so well that she could easily pick a path between the trunks and bushes without needing to consider where she was going. 

There is a place, she told him after over half an hour of walking, It is near the edge. You can fix it. 

“What?” Cullen asked, for he’d expected another trivial task. 

The halla looked back over her shoulder, one delicate hoof raised. After a moment, she turned away and carried on. 

It is an important place, she told him, a note of impatience in her voice, A good place. A…house. It is broken, but it is good. You can fix it. You are a human. Use your hands.

“I…” he bit back the refusal, the explanation that for all his youth growing up at a farm he didn’t clearly remember how to make major household repairs. The explanation would mean little to her, though. He knew enough to know that much. Instead, he took a deep breath and continued:

“I will do what I can.”

|

The cottage might have been lovely once, at the top of a low hill with the forest laid out around it. There was a bit of a meadow, too, with tentative flowers tucked her and there amongst the tall grasses. A stone path still led up the hill to it, and the stone steps seemed intact. 

That was the best he could say for it. 

The walls were falling apart; he could see daylight through them in several places. The roof was missing large sections, and what remained was patchy at best. A large section of the fireplace had fallen in, and when he stepped inside the floor reeked of animal droppings and rot. On the fifth step, his foot went through. 

At first glance, he would have said it was hopeless, except he walked outside and found Eurydice, dancing back and forth in an attempt to look inside again. When she turned her violet eyes upon him again, there was only one answer he could give. 

“I’ll try,” Cullen told her. 

So he did. 

|

There was much to be cleaned from the dwelling. The silver halla drifted back periodically to check on the human. He fashioned a broom from twigs and things and cleaned it all out first. That was the boring part. But the rest…

She liked watching him. Sometimes, he grew angry and shouted at the wood and the paint. Sometimes he sang. Sometimes he did nothing at all; only lay on his back before the damaged building and watched the sky above. At night, when the stars came out, sometimes she came and watched with him. That…made sense, somehow. Seemed right. 

“Do you remember a time before this forest?” he asked her on one such evening. She sat with her legs folded beneath her several feet away, just in case. When the man spoke, the hart tilted her head his direction. 

What do you mean?

“Before you came to be here,” he said, his face lit only by the moonlight, “Do you remember what it was like?” 

There was no time before the forest, she told him, puzzled, There is nothing to remember. I have always been here. I am the forest.

He seemed to consider this in silence for a time, but he spoke again at last. His voice was odd; crumbling, like old clay.

“Have you tried?” he asked, “To remember?” 

Why should I? I have everything I need. I am happy.

She hadn’t spoken false, but the words didn’t sit right with her. The halla shifted uneasily, flicking her tail to the side, shaking her head as if casting off the touch of an insect. 

I am leaving, she said abruptly, and trotted away into the woods. 

The man didn’t call after her. 

|

At long last, the cottage was clean and dry. Now, the floors had to be patched and repaired in places. Water had soaked into the corners, expanding and rotting the wood in turns. Whole sections had to be ripped up and replaced—and Cullen wasn’t certain at first if he could trust the timber and tools that simply turned up one day, set neatly beside the front door. 

So: floors, which he must then sand and finish. But before that, he must do something about the roof—for what was the point in fixing the floors if they might be rained on again before he could get to them? So, then, the roof, and then the floors—and the stairs, of course, to the small second level. 

Maker, he was glad the foundation was solid, that the bones were good. He’d no idea what he might do if he had to shore it up from beneath, if he had to replace the studs and struts or patch a cracked foundation. At least he could count on the fundamentals. 

|

“Do you know where all this comes from?” the man asked the halla one day. His foot nudged a board, laid to the side of the door. 

The halla glanced at it, then turned her attention back to the man. He was fascinating, with his curling golden hair and his strange fingers and ears. Sometimes he waved his hands when he talked, and sometimes his face turned paler or pink or red in the sun. It made little sense to her, but she could not shake the feeling that if she just kept watching him she would come to understand it all in time. 

From me, she told him, and he looked at her with surprise. 

“From you? But how? You don’t carry them here.”

No, she said impatiently, I told the forest how I want this place to look. It brings the things for me. 

“But the forest can’t build it for you,” the man said, looking at her for a moment and dropping his eyes, “That’s why you asked me.” 

He did that often, too—looking away. She did not like it. She wanted to keep looking at his eyes.

Yes, she said, Yes. When will you be done?

The man sighed and ran a hand back through his hair. The curls were pressed back for a moment, then sprung back into shape again. The halla watched them intently, as if each coil held a secret she might yet unravel. 

“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know.”

|

Eury came to watch Cullen sometimes, and despite his hopes she never seemed to see him as anything more than an intriguing distraction. There was no sign that she knew what they’d been to each other or what they’d left behind at Skyhold. There was no sign she had much personal interest in him at all.

Until one day there was. 

Cullen was resting by the side of the house, sipping from his water. The thatching was near-done, and thank the Maker for that. He’d move on to replacing some of the boards on the stairs and…

What is that? Eury asked. 

Cullen started; he hadn’t heard her arrive. Well, he rarely did these days. 

“What?” he asked, and she inclined her head to his arm, where he’d been toying with his braided leather bracelet.

“Ah,” he said, and the grief struck him out of nowhere, as it often did. He swallowed around the lump in his throat and toyed with the cool bump of the bead at the end. 

“It was a gift,” he said, “Someone I care for a great deal made them for me. I’ve more in my pack.”

He’d packed nearly all of them when he left Skyhold. He’d taken several from the hilt of his sword before leaving it with the others, too. It had seemed…wrong to leave them behind. Wrong, when he needed every piece of her that he could hold. 

He had left a few, though—the ones without beads. For Psyche, he’d told Josephine, who’d taken them from his hand like they were made of crystal or porcelain instead of worn leather. 

Eury watched closely while he fetched the rest and even deigned to come closer to inspect them up close. 

They are very neat, she said after a moment, doubtfully. 

There was something odd about her voice, and it took Cullen a moment to place the tone. She’d sounded like that before, he thought. When she was unhappy with how one of her gifts had come out, when she wasn’t sure if she should give him yet another to wear on his wrist. 

“They are good luck,” he told her, and when he held one out she didn’t move away, “I…could give you one, if you’d like?”

She looked like she might shy away at that, so he kept himself carefully still. If he moved an inch, he thought she might bolt at once. One minute went by, and then another. A breeze blew through, cooling the sweat on his clothes. 

Yes, she said at last, Yes. 

Cullen moved closer than she’d allowed him yet, moving very slowly. She tilted her head his way and he marveled at the shine of silver on her long, braided horns, at the graceful slope of her neck. It was horrible, what had been done to her; and yet, it did not seem horrible to look at her now. She looked like moonlight given form, like art that breathed and moved.

It seemed wrong to tie the bracelet off around her horn; too much like some kind of harness. He wove it into the base of the horn instead, tying only the ends together so it wouldn’t fall off. She allowed this maneuver and only shook her head back and forth when he finally stepped away. 

Thank you, she told him gravely, and darted off for the forest again. 

But—but she’d nudged his arm first. She’d let him touch her. 

And so—there was still hope. 

|

The forest was well, but the silver halla was not. 

Something was wrong. 

She did not know what. She did not know what. 

She visited the human fretfully, watching him from a distance for a time. The roof was finished, and the work moved inside. She did not like this. How could she see him if he was hidden away? 

Yet she could not determine why this bothered her. Why losing sight of him caused her to creep closer than she’d meant to, to peer through cracks and windows at the man. 

Why did she care? Why did she want to look at him again, to hear the sound of his voice? Sometimes she could hear him singing from a distance and the sound of it made her want to wail in grief.

Something was wrong and lost, and she couldn’t find it; she couldn’t even name it. But he…

He made the hole seem smaller somehow. 

So she kept coming back. 

|

The stairs were solid enough to trust, though Cullen despaired about the color of some of them. He supposed there was no way to properly match wood this old, but the lack of evenness bothered him. Ah, well; there were more pressing things. Repairing the fireplace, for one, and that was a chore. Filling in the worst of the cracks and holes in the walls—yes, that too, and fiddly work it would be. At least he could move his things inside and sleep under cover when it rained. 

One evening, he lay outside looking up at the stars as he often did. There was a rustle in the bushes and she was simply there, all at once, as if she’d appeared to him from nothing. Cullen didn’t react; he’d learned it was best not to. 

Where did you come from? she asked him, Before you were here. 

There was a focus to the question that made him turn his head. 

“I was…at Skyhold,” he said after a moment, “I…used to lead an army.”

Used to; that stung, even though he knew he would never have been able to stay without her there at his side. 

Skyhold, she said, and nothing else. 

That night, she slept just outside the front door. When he couldn’t stop checking to see if she was still there, Cullen took his bedroll outside and curled up only a few inches away. 

This…wasn’t quite what it had once been, but it was still her, and they were still here together.

And…even if she was gone when he woke, he’d still spent the night close to her. Cullen would count it as a victory. 

He needed every victory he could get. 

|

The time before. 

That was the problem. She’d known it for a lie when she’d told the human she was happy, but there had been no question in her mind that the rest was true, too. 

But—there was a time before the forest. She remembered arriving here, so she must have arrived from somewhere. 

But where?

The silver halla pondered this question for a long time. She even returned to the spot in her earliest memories, though it looked different in the spring than it had in the winter. 

The dissonance troubled her, fretted at her mind, and she spent more and more of her time at the cottage to make the thoughts go away. The questions seemed less pressing when she watched the man work, filling in the cracked walls with white clay that had appeared in a bucket one morning. They began to speak to each other during these hours.  

Even stranger, she began to enjoy it—an alien sensation, that, to crave the sound of someone else’s voice. 

Why are you doing that? she might ask him, and he might find a window to peer through for his answer. 

“If I don’t close up the holes between bricks, the heat will escape,” he might say in response, or, “I am tired. I am sitting down to rest now.”

Or, one sun-drenched morning when she’d wandered into the glade to find only the sound of him breathing inside, labored and heavy:

“I cannot work today,” he told her when she made her presence known.

Why? she asked, peering through the hole where a door ought to go. Her horns made it so she could not look entirely inside, but she tried anyway, until the sharp ends scraped along his new doorframe. 

“I am not well.” 

He seemed unwell—or, at least, he seemed like he wasn’t himself. His face was even paler than usual, almost as pale as her coat, and the pleasant flush of exertion he usually had about his cheeks was gone. He looked wet, too, golden ringlets sticking to his forehead, the collar of his tunic dark and damp. 

She did not ask what was wrong. She had little understanding of such things, and even if she did it seemed…wrong to ask, especially when he looked so dreadful over it. 

Can you reach the door? she asked, and the point of her horn carved another new line on the lintel. 

The man made it at last, stumbling toward her and crawling when his feet would no longer cooperate. When he reached her at last, she bent her head and bade him hold on. Surely it would be better for him to rest in the light; it offered the forest creatures comfort to curl up at her side in pools of sunlight. Perhaps it would be the same for him. 

Indeed, he did seem to rest easier once he’d curled up along her flank. After a time, his hand curled into the longer fur along her neck, and the silver halla found to her surprise that she did not mind his touch at all.

Odd, that this should feel so perfectly natural; odd, that she felt the urge to tuck the hair back and away from his face. How would she even do such a thing? She hadn’t the fingers for it. 

She considered this while he slept, when he murmured fevered words in his sleep: 

“Eury,” he said, and “No,” and, most bewilderingly, “Psyche.” 

That last word revolved over and over in her mind, fixing itself in place. She could not think around the word; it took up all the space, frightening in its intensity. She might have run if he hadn’t been lying bent over her flank, but instead she lay in place, stiff, trembling, frightened of the word that would not stop resonating in her mind. 

Psyche. Psyche. Psyche.

What did that mean?

|

Eurydice stayed away for days after he recovered from his bad spell. 

Cullen blamed himself; how could he not? But he went on working even so, taking more care to rest when he could. If he had a dizzy spell and fell from the roof, no amount of comfort from her would put his bones back together. 

The back of the fireplace was finished at last, solid as he could make it, smoothed over along the back with more clay in case there was a crack he’d missed. The walls inside were a mess; he’d need to scrape the old plaster off in places where moisture had gotten under the first layer, and after that he would have to reapply a new layer. Exhausting; but at least the bottom floor had walls of wood, so only the top would need the work. Strange—that a cottage in the woods would be constructed thus. He wondered who’d once lived here, so long ago. 

So Cullen scraped the plaster, applied new in place of old, neatened up the corners, painted the walls that needed painting—alone. He felt her absence keenly after so much time together; but he knew Eury. She would come back to him when she was ready. 

He spent the warm nights lying in the grass outside, staring up at the stars and wishing himself in two places at once. 

Eurydice always came back to him. He had to have faith in that even now, no matter how hopeless it seemed.

|

“My poor child,” the dream woman said to the halla, and this time the halla did lift her head, did pull away when the woman tried to lay her hands upon the halla’s fur once more. 

“My poor child,” the woman of light said again, “You are disturbing things best left alone. You are like the rabbit, thrashing against the snare. The more you fight it, the more it will hurt. Do you not see? You are meant to be here. You were always meant to be here. You marked yourself for me long ago, did you not?”

No, the silver halla told her, You are wrong. 

“Am I? You have wished for this your whole life, or you would not be here. Are you not free? Are you not fast enough to get away? Strong enough that none will touch you? Free of petty concerns and arguments, of foolish requests and all the noise of those creatures and their cities? I have given you the gift that I was given, long ago; the gift of freedom. Will you spurn it now? Will you throw it aside without a care?” 

The halla took a step back, then another. 

She didn’t have an answer. Didn’t know. The woman kept speaking of…a time before the forest. So—the man was right; there had been something before. 

“Do not leave what you fought so hard to find,” the woman pleaded, and for the first time the halla peered past the light and saw her. She had horns of her own, skin that was both fur and not-fur, eyes that were both eyes and not-eyes, hands that were bound and free at once, fingers and hooves at the end of her wrists, a face that was a halla’s face and the face of one of the People simultaneously. She was there and not-there, light and not-light, and the harder the halla looked the less she felt she saw. 

When she woke, rain poured over her. She stood, shook herself, and turned at once for the cottage. 

She may not understand—but she wanted to. And there was one person she knew she could ask. 

|

What is Psyche? 

Her voice was abrupt, and Cullen dropped the paintbrush as soon as he heard it. 

“Eury!” he said, and winced; she wouldn’t answer to that name. Or—she hadn’t before. It had to have been at least a week since he’d seen her, though it was hard to keep track of time here. It slipped through his fingers in a way that didn’t seem entirely natural—but then, it was hard to tell when he had his bad days. How much time was passing? He could not say.

What is Psyche? she asked again, and Cullen leaned out the window on the upper floor to look at her. 

“Where did you hear that name?” he asked, fingers curling hard around the wood. 

She shook her head, the silver winking in the light, the bead on the leather band in her horns throwing a flash of red amongst the rest. 

It is a name? Whose? one silver hoof dug at the soft earth, leaving a deep divot behind, Whose? 

“Our…my daughter’s,” he told her, and cleared his throat, “Psyche is my daughter.”

There was a sound, then, a pained cry that came from her throat and not her mind, as most of her speech seemed to. She wheeled around and raced away without another word, so quickly that the forest swallowed her in seconds. 

Cullen, alone on the second floor of the house, bowed his head and felt the weight of time on his shoulders. 

How long would he spend here, hoping that repairing this cottage would somehow bring her back to him? How long could he hope? This magic was beyond him, far beyond him. He could never imagine wanting to leave her side, to leave her behind.

 But…but his daughter needed him, too. She deserved to have both parents. If both could not return, she deserved at least one. Maker, that much at least, when he would rather give her the world. 

“A little longer,” he murmured to himself, taking the paintbrush from the floor, ignoring the splotch of paint it left behind, “I’m so close. The walls, the cabinets in the kitchen, and then…”

And then, he acknowledged silently, there would be more. He couldn’t help himself; he wanted to make it right, and fixing a cottage was a poor stand-in for bringing back his beloved. 

But—for the moment, at least, rebuilding this place was all he could do. 

A little longer, at least; and Maker let that be enough. 

|

A dream, a nightmare; she could not tell which: 

It was bright; perhaps too bright. She ached from somewhere in her midsection and her head, but this did not seem to bother her. A soft noise roused her at once, and she sat up, lifting hands with fingers on the end, pushing away thick grey curls that hung from her own head. Another soft noise, and she lifted a soft bundle of blankets into her lap. 

(It did not trouble her, in the dream, that she had hands and hair and such. She knew them, and they were hers, and that’s all that mattered to her. The rest was irrelevant.)

There was a little face in the blanket, and a wealth of curls which acted as a frame. It had two tiny, pointed ears, a perfect little nose, and soft, plump cheeks. The sun shone brilliantly through an open door somewhere to the side, and the light of it played along the babe’s golden curls. Someone touched her back, and it was expected, wanted, comforting. The warmth of a hand she had chosen to welcome; the soft, incomprehensible murmur of a deep voice she both knew and did not know, all at once. 

And the little babe tucked into soft blankets, held safe in her arms. 

Psyche. 

|

Cullen was shocked to find that she’d come back to him the next day. He paused midstep, peering out the great round window in the largest bedroom. She waited below, circling the little cottage, plainly waiting for something. 

Waiting for him. 

“Good morning,” he told her when he reached the bottom. She turned to look at him, for she’d been walking away, and approached very slowly over the meadow flowers and grass. 

...Good morning, she said after a long moment’s consideration, I have questions.

“Ask them,” he said, taking a step closer, “I will answer as best I can.” 

She did not shy back from him. Instead, she bent her head until they were nearly eye to eye. 

Your Psyche, she said, Tell me about her…mother. 

Cullen sucked in a sharp breath. His heart seemed to pause in its beating before picking up speed quickly, and he clenched his hands at his sides. 

“What about her?” he asked. 

Eurydice considered him for a moment. 

What…was she like?

“She’s fiercely loyal,” Cullen said at once, “Strong. Beautiful. Clever. Curious…Fascinating.”

The halla shifted uneasily, and there was…something in the tilt of her head that abruptly reminded him painfully of how she’d been before. He took a step forward.

“I miss her terribly,” Cullen said before he could think better of it, “I think of her every morning when I wake and every night before I fall asleep.”

Perhaps that was enough. Or—he thought, his heart hammering against the inside of his ribs, maybe he should keep talking. She’d been speaking to him more often of late; maybe talking was the key.

He…he might as well try.  

“When I close my eyes, I dream of the day I lost her.”

One more step.

“Do you…do you ever dream?”

She took a step back just as he might have brushed his fingers against her neck. Cullen froze in place, hand still outstretched. For a moment, they looked at each other. The woods around them went quiet.

Yes, she said, and took another step back, But I do not want to anymore. 

This last was said quickly, as if she was trying to get the words out as quickly as possible. Without saying any more, she turned and bolted, the sunlight rippling over the silvery-white fur for only a moment before she made it to the shadows of the trees again. 

Gone. Gone. 

Cullen’s hand dropped to his side. 

After a moment in the sun, his head bowed, he turned around again and strode into the house. 

He had things to set right—and no time to feel sorry for himself. This much he could do, so he would do it. 

But he owed their daughter more than groundless hopes. Soon, he would need to pay up. 

But not today.

He did not see the pale shadow amongst the trees, watching, watching, still and silent as the trees themselves.  

|

When she opened her eyes that night, the halla was in the same glade in which she usually saw the woman of light, but the figure was not there. The silver halla turned and turned, hemmed in by trees on either side, her horns catching on low branches until she must wrench them free over and over again. 

She woke moments later, sides heaving, and crept back to the dark cottage on the edge of the wood. 

The man was snoring inside. She could hear him through the big, round window on the second floor. The halla listened for a moment, ears twitching at the rhythm of his sleep. At last, she lay in the meadow outside the front door. She did not sleep again, but listened to the soothing rumble until dawn broke over the treetops again. 

Do you dream? He’d asked. 

Only once, as far as she knew, that had actually mattered. 

|

That night, when Cullen stood in the meadow to watch the sunset, she came to him. 

“Hello,” he said. She regarded him solemnly. 

“Ah—did you need something?” Surely she’d come for a reason; Eury would not have needed one, but she did not remember that she was Eury. 

Cullen did not try to move closer. He just stood, and waited, and hoped. 

She came closer, each step as deliberate as a note played on a lyre. 

Something is wrong with the forest, she told him when she got closer. Cullen straightened, reaching for a sword he no longer wore. 

“What is it?” he asked, “Can I help?”

She angled her head, her eyes wise and distant. After a long pause, filled by the birds in the trees and the last sunlight splayed over the treetops, she spoke again. 

There is something wrong, she said, I do not know what. I want to stay.

“Oh,” Cullen said, and his hands fell loose to his sides, “Well, I…Of course. It’s your cottage, isn’t it?” 

She did not answer this. Instead, she settled herself beside the door and stared at him. 

“Right,” he said, “Right. Let me get my water and I’ll join you.”

|

The night was vast and deep and neither moon hung in the sky. 

The halla regarded it all as if from a great distance, the wrongness stirring again in the back of her mind. The human sat to her right, resting against the cottage wall. He’d spoken earlier, but she hadn’t taken note of the words; now, the wood seemed too loud, though the wind had stilled in the leaves and the night creatures did not call any more than they usually did. 

Her eyes were good, but they saw little in this darkness that felt infinite and deep. The jangling in her ears intensified, no matter how she twitched them to dispel it. It was too loud; the quiet was too loud; she needed—

Say something, she told the human, who startled like a hare in a bush. 

“Ah,” he said, leaning forward with a rustle and peering at her, “What should I say?”

I do not care. Something. Sing. I like when you sing. The night is too—

The halla cut herself off; to say would be to admit some weakness. She waited, though, picking out the shape of him in the darkness. He shuffled closer. 

“Do you care what I—”

No, she interrupted. 

The man sighed and took a sip of water. Then, he took a deep breath and began to sing. 

She’d heard little of human songs. Or—she’d thought she had. But this one sounded familiar. The halla shifted closer to him, the soft words filling her ears, driving away the dark of the night and the discomfort in her heart. By the time he was done singing, she’d moved closer to him and settled herself against his side, careful to keep her horns out of the way. When the tune died out, he cleared his throat again. 

“Another?” he asked. 

He smelled pleasant; like leather and clean skin. 

Yes, she told him, and he sang again. 

The halla closed her eyes in pleasure at the sound, relaxing for what felt like the first time in her life. After a long, long tune, he set a hesitant hand on her forehead and stroked the fur there. It did not bother her; it was not unwanted. His hands were gentle, light, nothing like the ones in her dream. 

Much to her surprise, when she fell asleep she had no dreams at all. 

But she woke with her head in his lap, and that was far too much; the halla bolted into the forest before she could think better of it, and the soft cry behind her did not halt her steps. 

|

Cullen built the cabinets for the kitchen, fit them in snug and neat beside the intact fireplace. He woke one morning to find glass windows leaned against the side of the house, and installed them with only a few minor incidents. The shattered glass was easy enough to clear from the floors, at least.

It looked like a home now. It had seemed like spring in the woods when he’d first seen this place, but now it seemed…well. The flowers had not been anywhere this thick on the ground then, nor as lovely. It was odd how much time had passed, how little time it seemed at all. 

But time had passed. Time would continue to pass; he could not stop it.

One morning, Cullen woke and trudged downstairs to see what the forest had left for him this time. He found only four pieces of wood and a small pail of nails there, and puzzled over them for a moment before he realized what they were. 

A simple rectangular box, its shorter sides ending in curved pieces. A cradle—the forest had sent him a cradle. As if by finishing the house, the forest had decided he ought now furnish it. 

How cruel, to see it and remember all of their hopes, all of their wishes for their little one. How cruel, to look at the pieces of it and remember that his daughter had been left behind—with family, perhaps, but left nonetheless—and he couldn’t even remember how long he’d been away from her. He might have been fixing this cottage for an age; it might have been only a month. He could not say. 

Cullen sat on the small set of stairs leading to the house for a long time, elbows resting on his knees, his head in his hands. 

At last, he carried the pieces inside, nailed them together with care, and gathered up his waterskin. 

It was time to send a letter—long past time. 

He could not be forever split between the forest and Skyhold; there was only one solution he could see.

|

The man was gone. 

The silver halla didn’t know when he’d left. It must have been when she’d been on the other side of the wood, watching a swan and her cygnets drift over the water. She’d lost track of time, and when she’d come back…

She hadn’t needed to look. She just knew. 

He was gone. He had left her. 

She hesitated for a long time, her ears pricked, her eyes trained on the pretty cottage. He’d done well with it, from what she could see. The walls looked sturdy, the roof was watertight—as they’d discovered during the last storm—and the hearth could happily hold a fire without causing the rest of the house to go up in a blaze. 

It had only seemed worth it to ask him to do this because it was a special place. It was still special, whole and beautiful against the green of the meadowgrass and the yellow and pink and blue of the flowers. But it was also…empty. Empty. 

For many hours, the halla paced around the cottage, trying to make sense of the emotions that crowded her chest and mind, hammering against the inside of her skull when there was nowhere for them to go. 

No matter how she tried, she could not understand. 

At last, when night fell, she curled herself up by the front stoop and allowed her head to droop low. Maybe…if she could not find him here, in the cottage he’d put back together, perhaps she could still find him in her dreams. 

|

Cullen strode through the forest with speed, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He passed the rocky overhang where he’d first seen Eurydice again. He ducked past trees where he’d once slept, retreaded paths he only half remembered, and at last he reached the river again. 

It all looked exactly the same as it had the last time he’d seen it. Even the other three—somehow, they were still camped on the other bank, in more or less the same state he’d last seen them. Strange; he’d expected them to return to Skyhold and take up their duties again. But he could hardly complain when their presence made his task so much easier. 

The moment he set foot in the river, it calmed for him in a path straight across. Cullen blinked, then cleared his throat. 

“Thank you,” he murmured, hand absently reaching for the hilt of a sword he hadn’t held for months and then dropping to his side. Nothing changed; nothing responded. He waded into the water even so, eyes trained on the far bank. 

He wasn’t sure when he felt the change; perhaps it was only his imagination. But sometime between lifting his first foot onto the riverbank and lifting his second, there was a sensation like a…snapping against his skin, like something breaking loose. Cullen grunted at the feeling, and the dizziness that accompanied it, but shook it off. 

“Done already?” Dorian asked, standing from the camp and frowning, “That was far too quick—did you find a path? Something more from us?”

Cullen blinked, fighting back a moment’s disorientation. 

“What do you mean? It’s been months. I’ve been gone for…what do you mean, ‘done already?’”

The other three looked at him. Cole clasped his hands around his knees, then tilted his head to speak. Cullen could not see him past the hat and all the hair, but his words were gentle enough.

“Time can move faster and slower; you don’t decide. We don’t decide, either. It’s the trees that know, and the forest.”

“Yeah,” Bull said, watching Cole, “I don't know what that means, but you’ve been gone for two days. We haven’t even got a messenger back yet.”

“Two days,” Cullen repeated, then raked a hand through his hair, “Two days. Right. Right.” 

There was no time to think about the implications of this now—that there was, apparently, a forest that existed out of time in the middle of Ferelden, that nobody had thought to explore or record it until now. All of that was rather decidedly not his problem. 

Cullen turned again, eyeing the river. It rushed on and away into the woods, as fast and uncrossable as ever. What if…what if it wouldn’t let him through again? What if he’d lost his only chance to…

To what? Remind her of what had been? Would it not be cruel now, to show her what she’d had before she’d touched that gift? When he had no way of turning her back to what she’d been before?

Was it not enough to bring their daughter to her? At least then she might still be able to watch her grow. Cullen, for his part, would much rather spend the rest of his life in a cottage in the woods with a Eurydice who did not know him than in Skyhold with only her memory.

“I need to send a message,” he said instead of voicing any of these questions aloud. 

They would not have the answers anyway.

|

When the silver halla slept, her dreams taunted her. 

They were pain, the arc of steel cutting into her eye, hands dragging her by the hair, huddled alone in the earth; they were joy, the swooping feeling in her chest while she stood with her hand on an unfamiliar wooden door. 

“Was it not all too much to bear?” the woman asked her in the dream glade. The halla wheeled around, looking for her, but there was nothing to see; the clearing was empty, and the voice came from everywhere.

“Is this not better in every possible way?” she went on, “Does it not make more sense? All of that messiness, all of that pain and uncertainty; you can leave it behind. He left you, did he not? So let him go. You might yet live forever, little one. Be happy with what you’ve been given. It is more than most can begin to comprehend.”

The halla—Eurydice, she remembered all at once; her own name was Eurydice—shook her head as if shaking off the voice. Her silver hooves dug furrows in the ground, the green-laced one ringing with a strange song with every blow. 

“No,” she said, and struck at the encircling with her hooves once, twice, and—

|

It took Josephine and Aegle only a few days to reach them along the king’s road. How strange it was that the path they’d taken had dragged them back and forth across the country for months when the journey was really only three or four days by the Imperial Highway. 

The days waiting for his daughter seemed to drag on and on. Cullen spent most waking minutes pacing back and forth before the river, wondering if he should have left the forest the way he had. Surely he should have told her what he was doing. Surely he should have explained. 

He knew why he hadn’t, though; it would have been far too painful for her to tell him she didn’t care if he stayed or went.

When he wasn’t worrying, he was planning: How could he get Psyche safely across the river? How would he find Eurydice again? Could they arrange for a supply to feed the babe while he sought the cottage again? 

By the time they rode up through the woods, he’d planned and planned again, accounted for every possible obstacle and concern between him and his beloved Inquisitor. 

He hadn’t accounted for how he would feel when he saw his Psyche again. 

She was riding with Josephine. He’d been very specific when he’d left, once it had become clear that they wouldn’t be finding Eury without his presence. Either Aegle or Josephine was to remain with her at all times; it would be all too easy for anyone with a grudge to take or hurt her and, by extension, the Inquisitor and their organization. So, when the small party came to a halt, he knew exactly where to look. 

She was still so small; so perfect. But she’d grown in the months he’d been gone, and he saw the flash of one hand over the sling as she reached beyond the confines of the cloth. 

“Here is your Papae, little one,” Josie said, even before she’d greeted the rest of them, and lifted the babe to hand him. 

For a moment, he stood frozen, as frozen as he’d been before he’d taken her the first time. What if he’d forgotten how to hold her? What if she didn’t remember him?

But Psyche turned her head and met his eyes, and when she lifted her hand she was reaching for him. 

All at once, she was in Cullen’s arms and he was clutching her to his shoulder, eyes squeezed tightly shut. 

“I’m so sorry, darling, I’m so sorry,” he was saying, his eyelids not quite managing to keep the tears from his cheeks, “I didn’t mean to be gone so long, I swear it; Maker forgive me, I did not mean to leave you.” 

Psyche made a little hiccup against his shoulder and cooed, one hand with its tiny, sharp fingernails curling into the collar of his tunic. For a long time, Cullen held her just like that, ignoring the voices of the others in the distance. 

Nothing else really mattered; only that he had her safe again. 

Only that soon enough her mother would, too.

|

Cullen was tall enough, strong enough to carry Psyche over the water without getting her wet. He couldn’t seem to stop talking to her, little as she seemed to understand. Her eyes peered up at him with keener interest than she’d had before he left, and he wanted, all at once, for her to know everything. 

Her eyes—those were different, too. When he’d ridden away from Skyhold, they’d been the undifferentiated blue that all infants had. He’d told Eury that he’d hoped they would be like hers in time, shining with the violet he loved so well. Now, they were like his own eyes looking back at him, warm and brown like sunlight on a tree branch. When he would stop periodically to rest, he would marvel at them over and over. 

How strange it was, how wonderful, to see a piece of yourself in someone else and find that you loved it after all. 

The forest let him pass without any trouble, though it was much quieter than he remembered. Again, he passed his old camps, the ways he’d wandered looking for his lost love, the overhang where she’d tended him, and…

And the cottage, right where he’d left it. 

Cullen paused just before the trees broke to the green meadow beyond. It all looked much the same as it had when he’d walked away a few days prior, save one major difference. 

Eurydice lay beside the door, curled up and sleeping. She still looked like a halla, with horns of silver and one green-vined leg. The bracelet she’d woven for him was still twined around one horn. Unlike other mornings when he’d woken to find her resting by the front door, flowers had grown up and around her, stark contrasts against her silvery-white fur. She seemed almost like a statue there, a statue that nature had grown up around and accepted as one of its own. 

But she was no statue; she was the love of his life, the mother of his daughter, and he would not give her up to the forest. Not while he still had breath in his lungs.

Cullen leaned down to press a kiss to Psyche’s forehead, then straightened his shoulders and at last strode across the meadow to the cottage where Eurydice waited. 

|

“This is a battle you cannot win,” the woman of light told Eurydice, who struck again and again at the borders that held her, “You are fighting yourself, poor creature. Can you not be content with the peace you’ve been given?”

And, when Eurydice continued to ignore her:

“It hurts me to see you like this, so full of desperation. Be still—calm yourself—”

“You speak too much,” Eury snapped back, and a branch cracked free from the encircling briars, “Too much.”

“You are only hurting yourself,” the woman said, from the trees and the earth and the sky, “Do you not remember the rab—”

“The rabbit died because I do not have hands. I do not have hands because you took them. Stop talking.”

The voice was silent for a moment, and more branches broke free. 

“You could be at peace. Why do you not wish for peace?”

“I wish to make my own choices,” Eury said, and though her limbs were shaking and weakening, she struck out and snapped one more branch free. 

A hole opened in the undergrowth. 

A hole through which she could see the man walking through the meadow before her, an infant cradled in his arms. 

Psyche. 

Her Psyche.

No; she would not be held any longer. Not here. Not by this being, whatever she was. Her daughter was right there and Psyche needed her mamae; Eury needed to leave now.

“Why do you not wish for the companionship of the wood? Why do you not wish to be amongst kin, amongst those who would understand you?”

“I wish to be my own self,” Eury said, and the hole widened before her. 

“Why do you not wish for strength? For freedom? When such concerns only drag you down, only trap you where you would not be.”

“Eurydice?” there was her name, called gently through the space she’d made in the trees and thornbushes, “Eurydice, love; wake up.”

“Freedom?” Eury said, and at last it was enough: she could fit through, push through to the other side, “I am free.”

And—all at once, she was.

|

Cullen knelt before Eurydice, he on one side of the circle of flowers and she on the other. He did not know how to wake her; in the old stories, it might be done with a kiss. Given the circumstances, he thought it might be better to call gently from a distance. He was holding something fragile and precious, after all; best he not surprise her too badly. 

“Eurydice?” he called, and settled Psyche more comfortably in his arms, “Eurydice, love—wake up.”

To his shock, she began to glow. It was not the harsh, merciless light he’d seen in the great hall all those months ago. No. This was a softer light, the gentle glow of the moon on a dark and cold night, the light that guided one home through inhospitable lands. It was the light one saw through one’s window on waking from a nightmare, the light that brushed aside the cobwebs of unfriendly sleep. 

As she glowed, she changed. The fur melted away, blowing gently in the wind like dandelion fluff. The horns fell bloodlessly aside, one to her left, and one to her right. When it faded away, as gently as it had come, she opened her eyes. 

Cullen might have thought, given the gradual change and the light, that it would be a gentle awakening. He would have been profoundly incorrect. 

Eurydice sat bolt upright, her eyes wild, her hands already reaching for him. 

“Psyche,” she said, “Where—where—”

“Here,” Cullen said, because he could no more deny Eurydice her child than he could choose not to breathe, or not to love her wholly. Eury leaned past the encircling flowers, snatching the babe up in her arms, and cuddled her close, her face twisted with pain. 

Maker; what was there to say? What was there to do? What time they’d lost could never be retrieved. 

“I’m…sorry,” he managed after a moment; for what could one say to such pain? He’d failed her, in not finding her sooner, in not preventing her from being taken from them in the first place. They’d lost months with their daughter, both of them; they’d lost all of the first changes, precious moments they might have lingered over together. 

“I should’ve,” he began, choked, but she had none of it. Eurydice reached for him, too, and dragged him against her free shoulder with an iron grasp. 

“Cullen,” she said, pressing his face into her shoulder, and he gave a gasp at the sound of his name on her lips, “Cullen, ena’vun, my ena’vun; You are here. You found me; you came back.”

Words were beyond Cullen for a moment. He didn’t even bother to try searching for them. He just pressed his face into her shoulder and wept, too overcome to bother with anything but holding her just as tightly and making sure Psyche wasn’t being pressed too hard between the two of them. 

They stayed just like that for a long, long time. Cullen lay half-across the crumpled flowers, Psyche already rested sleeping against her mother’s shoulder, and Eurydice held them both as tightly as she could. 

Whole, together, and free. 

|

Eurydice’s memories of Psyche were still foggy. She could not remember what the babe had been like before; had her eyes been so clear, so bright? Had her fingers been so clever, her ears so sweetly and faintly pointed? 

She did not remember, but it mattered little at the moment. They sat among the flowers now, Psyche laid over her knees, and she traced the babe’s features over and over again with her fingertips. The touch at her nose made the infant sneeze, her tiny face screwed up with surprise, and Eurydice laughed when the babe did. Joy spread across her face like ink in water, and the sight of it warmed her. She had been so cold for so long; it was a relief to let it all melt away.

She was loath to let go of her daughter for even a moment; holding her felt right, filling the hole in her heart immediately and perfectly. There were pieces of her mind that remained fragmented, trapped in some other body with its other, graceful limbs. As long as she held Psyche, none of that mattered. This body had hands to stroke her hair; this body had arms to hold her, and a lap to set her in, and a mouth that could smile. That was all that mattered—and the longer she held the babe, the more the broken pieces found new ways to fit together. 

Yes; this was her body. The other one was hers, too. It did not matter that the two ideas did not agree; she could make them both true. 

What mattered was the sun on her skin and Psyche’s, the way the babe seemed determined to stuff fistfuls of her mother’s hair into her mouth. 

What mattered was the soft noises she made as she waved her hands around, as if trying to explain something very important to Eurydice. 

What mattered was that Cullen was here, too, leaning against her side and watching them both with a smile on his tired face. As if this was all he’d wanted—as if he, too, was content. 

As if he, too, knew that this was home.

|

Much, much later when the stars were spread across the sky like a comforting blanket, Cullen stepped back from checking on Psyche in her cradle. Eury, lying in the grass, held out her hand to him. 

It was hard to stop touching even now; setting their daughter aside to rest had felt like too long apart, even if she was only a few steps away. Neither of them had really wanted to put her down, but they’d badly needed a few moments just to hold each other without checking to make sure Psyche hadn’t rolled off down the hill or stuffed a handful of flower petals in her mouth. 

When he lay down beside her, Eury rolled onto her side and into his arms, sighing faintly. Cullen laced his fingers together, holding her against him, savoring the familiarity of the sharpness at her hips, the weight of her head on his shoulder, the waves of her hair flowing over his shoulder yet again. 

“You’re here,” he said, because he couldn’t help himself. 

“Yes,” she said, and he could feel the tickle of her eyelashes against his neck. 

They lay in silence for a moment, the rise and fall of his chest matching hers. 

“It is still there,” Eury said after a moment, and he tilted his head to look at her, “The other one. I did not undo the spell. I did not want to give it back to her.”

Cullen tilted his head to look down at her, and she angled hers to look up at him. 

“She should not have given it to me if she wanted to keep it for herself,” she said, “I can still be the other one if I choose it.”

“But…” Cullen frowned, “But—would you forget, as you did before? Would you…you wouldn’t…”

“I will not leave,” she told him, “If I go, I will come back to you.”

“I believe you,” Cullen said slowly, trying to wrap his mind around the concept, deciding at last to think about it later, when his mind was not in a fog, “I…suppose it is like being able to change shapes, as some mages do.”

Eurydice hummed in agreement and squirmed even closer, the arm across his chest tightening. 

“We will come back here someday,” she said, “It is supposed to be ours, this place.”

“Is it?” Cullen considered this for a moment, “I suppose it does feel that way, doesn’t it? Like you and I were meant to find it.”

Earlier, when the three of them had stumbled into the house, he and Eurydice half-distraught, the cottage had seemed almost to curve around them, comforting and solid. He’d written it off as another quirk of this strange place; the wood that had always seemed alive in its own way. Perhaps what he’d felt had been more than the forest’s usual strangeness after all.

“Yes,” he said after a moment, squeezing her as tightly as she was holding him, “Yes. We’ll come back, someday. Together.”

“Together,” she echoed, and lifted her face to be kissed. 

The wood sang around them, a song they might have heard more clearly if the world hadn’t already seemed full of each other. Only a few steps away, little Psyche, curled in her father’s mantle, supported by the cradle he’d built for her, dreamed of warm arms and purple eyes that shone with love. In the distance, cygnets huddled on their parents’ backs to drift sleeping for the night. The trees rustled with the life of the night creatures, while the creatures of the daytime sought their dens and burrows for the night. 

The statues of owl and halla and wolf, overgrown and tucked amongst the ruins, might have been able to tell that this had all happened before, in its way. They may have been able to speak of loves found and lost, of a cottage built for a family once before and now again. Perhaps they may even have told the story of one transformed ages before, of the creature who’d once found freedom in four legs instead of two, of fleet feet and the emotions—or lack thereof—that only immortals can feel.

But statues, as we know all too well, do not speak, nor do they tell tales. 

That is for the living. 

And Cullen and Eurydice’s tale was far from over.

~The End~

[phoenixduelist]

@pyratezlife

It was the crew's idea and curiosity. Pirate heaven Nassau, rich with the mixture of cultures. They all heard about the place & desperately wanted to visit it at least once. As a well deserved vacation. Rozália refused every time, unease always settling within her whenever the place was mentioned. Perhaps it was only her paranoia. Therefore, she finally gave in and let Mátyás dock in the famous port. They didn't plan to sell anything, had more than enough in their pockets to enjoy pleasantries such place can offer. Turned out, she was right after all. Whispers arose whenever someone witnessed her gold fangs, caught word a price higher than she remembered; high enough for most to overlook all she had done.

It was swirling chaos in its finest, the tightly knit family forced to separate to survive or to avoid captivity as their leisure turned into a nightmare. One million Gulden. Just for her alive. The rest of the crew, all thirty of them roughly half million, with Marcell the second highest with one hundred thousand. Both because of his past status and his closeness to her. Nassau closed in like a deadly trap, blades, pistols, shackles gleaming in every corner, men lost in the golden cloud of greed. How Rozália loathed being right.

It was nearing sundown when Marcell pushed her into a cramped alley when her heart acted up. Just before he was swarmed by too many men, too many for him to cut down, too many for her to attempt in this state. So she watched as they wrenched the man closest she had as a father from her, unable to help him. Just like when the Habsburgs beheaded her true one. Sára's unconscious form also registered in her mind along with how the fort's entrance swallowed them.

Something switched within her. The darkest pits of her bestial rage ignited, consumed until near nothing remained from the woman; instead The Hungarian Devil stood in all of its grotesque, gruesome glory. Miklós had managed to sneak back to the Vihar, sneaking onto HER OWN FUCKING SHIP and retrieve a few weapons; she took the longbow instead of the recurve one, it needed more strength to draw, Jancsi was better off with other. Miklós disappeared back into the darkness of the night as if he had never been there in the first place and Rozália set her attention towards the eastern wall of the fort. By the time she should arrive to the top, dawn should be cracking. The night watch tired but not relieved of duty yet. The sun behind her and if she was honest, no one truly expected her to scale the wall.

Fugitive Countess: they thought of an easy prey. A scared, lost, dainty little thing. She almost laughed at that as she shred the crimson coat from broad shoulders rippling with sheer power. Quiver of arrows along with the bow secured on her back, swordbelt firm on her hips, knives tucked into her boots. Confident fingers found every tiny crack, stone eroded with time and weather, each move morphing into an another one to not give herself the faintest time to think of anything else. Her family was inside and their chances of survival depended on her. That was more than enough to occupy her mind than what woulds.

Her calculations proved to be right, first rays of sun piercing through the dusty shroud as she was approaching the top and stilling for a moment and finding a secure position. From the faint sounds, one guard near; left hand clenched the jutting stone harder, her right reached for one of the many knives. She let out a small noise, enough to make him curious to check but not to raise alarm. He glanced over the edge. His gaze locked with the predator. The millisecond of sheer disbelief was enough time for Rozália to lunge upwards and plunge the knife between the jawbone, penetrating tissue with terrifying ease. She withdrew just as swiftly and seized her body over the edge with catlike grace while he dropped to his sure death.

She didn't waste a moment with resting, drawing the longbow immediately to end the closest guard, the arrow tip exiting on the other side of his skull. The clang of his weapons drew attention and the Devil truly began to unleash her frenzied fury. She didn't feel the ache, each draw was quick, precise with brutal strength behind them, sometimes enough to knock the corpse back a few feet. Her positioning couldn't be better in terms of sight and defense, not many reached stairs of the walkway of the eastern battlement, if they tried to approach from any other direction, their advance was quickly and literally shot down.

Eventually the barrage of arrows came to a halt, longbow discarded with no more to shoot, the gathered crowd in the courtyard began to advance slowly but steadily. Her eyes held no fear, only urgency: after all she was human (or was she ), there was simply too many to cut through to reach her family alive. Her attention fell to the canon at her side, the promising axe with a metal coated grip from the second victim of the massacre. With strength she didn't know she possessed, she began to lodge the canon from its original position of overlooking the bay.

Heated yet ice cold pain shot down her spine at the almost impossible physical feat, every muscle worked to the utmost and beyond, her father's severed head rolling on stone vivid in front of her eyes. The axe brought down two times in rapid succession, shattering the wooden wheels upon impact and dropping the canon's angle right at the center of the mass of people.

Sweat soaked her shirt thoroughly, no traces of mercy found behind eyes burning brighter than the torch she used to ignite the wick. Deafening roar, the kickback strong enough to send the canon tumbling from the walls, plummeting below. A mess of unrecognizable bodies, a bloody sea of torn, mangled libs, agonized cries. She leapt from the last four steps of the stairs, through smoke and still burning fire; the first arched strike of her saber strong enough to completely sever the man's head clean off. The Devil itself fenced like lightning among the ruins, a brutal force of nature personified, seemingly never tiring, never slowing in her vicious whirlwind.

Steel sliced through flesh, soaked the charred ground with fresh blood, silencing battle cries. Her tempo only increased as her physical limits started to catch up even in this state, one sword cutting through the front of her shirt without touching her body; the now wine red linen shreds were only considered as possible leverage. A serpentine thrust back and forwards at the same time, burrowing her sabers into chests for the moment she discarded her clothing without care of fully exposing upper body.

Swords pulled from their temporary body sheaths, back to rapidly severing tendons, arteries, smaller cuts she couldn't twist out the way of barely registering. When one thought she would be caught off guard at a grabbed breast was mistaken, her lunge animalistic along with her bared fangs, hands brutally closing around his throat without any room to give. And her sharpened nails started to dig. Feel his windpipe beneath. Corded arms coated in a sheen of sweat, the wrathful frenzy behind her otherwise empty glare bone chilling. It took two men to wrench her off: with the motion came the torn windpipe.

Moments were all she ever needed, sinking her teeth into an another's and also ripping it out with one jerk before whirling to block the strike of a steel tipped mace with the latest corpse's hatchet. Heavier weaponry than what her body was used to, yet she didn't hesitate in bringing it down with force. Her blow blocked by the wooden part before it could reach bone, she immediately changed the direction, the upwards strike splitting the wood in two. Using both hands and the momentum she brought it down again, the edge fully sinking into skull.

Then she felt a presence behind that simply demanded more through attention. Dislodging the hatchet in time seemed unlikely, so was finding which bodies her sabers rested buried in the mountain of corpses and moaning men spitting their last misery. The sun half slid over the eastern wall, giving her a fiery contour, the elaborate inkwork of her tattooed wings deep contrast against her skin. Even with no weapon in hand, Rozália turned slowly with smoke still rising from the hole in the courtyard. Sweat slicked her body, each chiseled muscle even more prominent and defined, utterly unashamed of her undressed state. She was beyond that. Rapid yet controlled the rise of her chest, blood dripping from her maw onto her clavicle before sliding further down the ridged planes of muscle.

“My crew.”

She spoke probably the first time she had...arrived, accent roughening the words even further. More foreign blood flowed from her mouth, a glimpse of gold fangs.

“You. Took them.” bestial savagery oozing from every part of her, her words promising a brutal end for the man responsible. The remaining men dared not to intervene, nor approach anymore, not after their numbers were so mercilessly culled in many different visceral ways. Only watched the creature seemingly risen from the very depths of Hell itself.

[nikkxb]

51, 99, & Kouga/Kagome for the ask meme?

Fanfiction Trope Mash-Up || @misku-nimfa Accidentally Married and Magical Accidents

Everything about this was wrong.

Kagome had never been to anything like this. She usually had left the palace before the festivities began, having done her job and eager to be home, but today she was running late in the wash room and accidentally walked out to a row of archers aiming their arrows toward the sky.

One by one, the arrows were sent, each archer following until they found where the arrow landed, all in front of beautiful women. Kagome didn't understand what was going on, didn't understand why the women reacted the ways they did, had no idea why the men ribbed each other with knowing, lusty looks at each arrow's mark.

Keeping to herself, she skirted along until she could run and finally get home. Just as she was crossing the line of archers, she was stopped. All who step on the line must shoot, she was told. No matter her argument, no matter her fight, she was handed a too-large bow and an arrow. Point to the sky and shoot.

It takes her a few tries to pull the string, the weight simply too much for her to handle. After the first few mishaps, the angry court magician steps up and holds her arm. This arrow soars into the sky and flies, on and on until it lands just on the skirts of the forest and at the feet of a large, brown wolf.

A roar of laughter fills the sky, jeering and nasty and all the things a servant girl was used to when dealing with knights. Forcefully, she was led over to the wolf, growing ill at the jokes that she would be made a meal before the ceremony was over.

What ceremony? she cries, not understanding what happened.

The wedding ceremony, comes the horrific answer. Your arrow landed at a wolf, you must marry the wolf.

It's not until a week later that she learns of this ceremony. That she learns women are not supposed to aim the arrows, that the archers chosen to marry know how to aim just right to pick their chosen brides. And her wolf who cared nothing for human traditions took her anyway, claimed her as mate, but let her learn what it meant to be mated to a wolf who can choose to take human form and at the end gives her the choice to leave or stay.

She stays, of course. And when the court magician shows up in the forest looking to steal the servant girl from the wolf and take her for his own -- as he intended when he forced her into the wedding contest -- Kagome and her wolf mate take delight in tearing him to shreds.

[turnpage]

send me a ✐ for a random sentence starter from my muse (1-1500) — tw: profanity, mild nsfw, long list

generator here quotes compiled from here inspired by

feel free to change to fit your preferences as need.

❨1❩ ❛ They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. ❜
 ❨2❩ ❛ Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters. ❜ ❨3❩ ❛ I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. ❜ ❨4❩ ❛ Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. ❜ ❨5❩ ❛ The world's a hard place. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate you and me, but it doesn't love us, either. ❜ ❨6❩ ❛ The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. ❜ ❨7❩ ❛ Pull your act together and just go on. ❜ ❨8❩ ❛ I had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there is nothing physically wrong. I hurt all the time. ❜ ❨9❩ ❛ Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ❜ ❨10❩ ❛ Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford? ❜ ❨11❩ ❛ Truth comes out. In the end it always comes out. ❜ ❨12❩ ❛ Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are. ❜ ❨13❩ ❛ No matter where you go, the same asshole gets off the plane. ❜ ❨14❩ ❛ We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives. ❜ ❨15❩ ❛ That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. ❜ ❨16❩ ❛ Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. ❜ ❨17❩ ❛ God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you. ❜ ❨18❩ ❛ Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you. ❜ ❨19❩ ❛ How many times, over how many years, have I—a grown adult—asked for the mercy of another chance? ❜ ❨20❩ ❛ I was suddenly so sick of myself, so revolted. ❜ ❨21❩ ❛ You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. ❜ ❨22❩ ❛ But those pieces, they’ll never fit just the same way again. Never in this world. ❜ ❨23❩ ❛ Dying is a part of living. You have to keep tuning in to that if you expect to be a whole person. ❜ ❨24❩ ❛ Officious little prick. ❜ ❨25❩ ❛ I’ve been sleepwalking again, my dear. — The plants are moving under the rug. ❜ ❨26❩ ❛ How I wish you were fear. ❜ ❨27❩ ❛ But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. ❜ ❨28❩ ❛ All we have is time, you know. An eternity of time. Or shall we end it? Might as well. After all, we're missing the party. ❜ ❨29❩ ❛ We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. ❜ ❨30❩ ❛ The way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. ❜ ❨31❩ ❛ Got to be regular if you want to be happy. ❜ ❨32❩ ❛ But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. ❜ ❨33❩ ❛ He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. ❜ ❨34❩ ❛ Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. ❜ ❨35❩ ❛ It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness.  ❜ ❨36❩ ❛ If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. ❜ ❨37❩ ❛ I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. ❜ ❨38❩ ❛ I cannot bear this world a moment longer. ❜ ❨39❩ ❛ I have a better idea. I will do as I please. ❜ ❨40❩ ❛ All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. ❜ ❨41❩ ❛ You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. ❜ ❨42❩ ❛ When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. ❜ ❨43❩ ❛ When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. ❜ ❨44❩ ❛ But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. ❜ ❨45❩ ❛ I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ❜ ❨46❩ ❛ This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. ❜ ❨47❩ ❛ You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. ❜ ❨48❩ ❛ Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. ❜ ❨49❩ ❛ If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. ❜ ❨50❩ ❛ You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. ❜ ❨51❩ ❛ Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. ❜ ❨52❩ ❛ I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape I’ve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. ❜ ❨53❩ ❛ I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. ❜ ❨54❩ ❛ Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. ❜ ❨55❩ ❛ Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. ❜ ❨56❩ ❛ The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ❜ ❨57❩ ❛ My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ❜ ❨58❩ ❛ This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ❜ ❨59❩ ❛ Witches are not so delicate. ❜ ❨60❩ ❛ Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. ❜ ❨61❩ ❛ I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. ❜ ❨62❩ ❛ There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. ❜ ❨63❩ ❛ The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. ❜ ❨64❩ ❛ Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ❜ ❨65❩ ❛ Now it's a whisper from the past. ❜ ❨66❩ ❛ But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. ❜ ❨67❩ ❛ Why is it always such a surprise? The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush. ❜ ❨68❩ ❛ Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it. ❜ ❨69❩ ❛ What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?  ❜ ❨70❩ ❛ I have scars, inside me. ❜ ❨71❩ ❛ The dead are not entirely dead but are alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. ❜ ❨72❩ ❛ However dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void. ❜ ❨73❩ ❛ Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. ❜ ❨74❩ ❛ It is another way of saying tough luck. To people you aren’t going to help out. ❜ ❨75❩ ❛ I'm waiting, far off in the future. ❜ ❨76❩ ❛ The only sure camouflage is unpredictability. ❜ ❨77❩ ❛ There are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. ❜ ❨78❩ ❛ First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. ❜ ❨79❩ ❛ I long to swim in liquid moonlight. ❜ ❨80❩ ❛ That's right, I don’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. ❜ ❨81❩ ❛ The part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. ❜ ❨82❩ ❛ Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew. ❜ ❨83❩ ❛ Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. ❜ ❨84❩ ❛ At last. It's you. ❜ ❨85❩ ❛ No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish. ❜ ❨86❩ ❛ Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful. ❜ ❨87❩ ❛ How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. ❜ ❨88❩ ❛ Is it disapproval or extreme lust? With some men it’s hard to tell the difference. ❜ ❨89❩ ❛ My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died. ❜ ❨90❩ ❛ Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. ❜ ❨91❩ ❛ Everything digests, and is digested. ❜ ❨92❩ ❛ My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft. ❜ ❨93❩ ❛ You cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜ ❨94❩ ❛ I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. ❜ ❨95❩ ❛ And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living. ❜ ❨96❩ ❛ The world is a beautiful place. Don’t forget that. And don’t miss it. ❜ ❨97❩ ❛ I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. ❜ ❨98❩ ❛ Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. ❜ ❨99❩ ❛ It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ❜ ❨100❩ ❛ We’re interpreters. We’re translators. ❜ ❨101❩ ❛ You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way. ❜ ❨102❩ ❛ No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that. ❜ ❨103❩ ❛ We lived in monochrome those nights. ❜ ❨104❩ ❛ You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? ❜ ❨105❩ ❛ Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? ❜ ❨106❩ ❛ I stand here in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing. ❜ ❨107❩ ❛ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. ❜ ❨108❩ ❛ Not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye. ❜ ❨109❩ ❛ Selective emotional detachment. ❜ ❨110❩ ❛ Not for me, or at least not today. ❜ ❨111❩ ❛ Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene. ❜ ❨112❩ ❛ Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that? ❜ ❨113❩ ❛ Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon. ❜ ❨114❩ ❛ The dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone. ❜ ❨115❩ ❛ My shadow stretches along the carpet, as though trying to detach itself from me. ❜ ❨116❩ ❛ It curls away from me, like blood in water. ❜ ❨117❩ ❛ It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind. ❜ ❨118❩ ❛ But snow I never want to feel again. ❜ ❨119❩ ❛ Through adversity to the stars. ❜ ❨120❩ ❛ No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out. ❜ ❨121❩ ❛ Thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. ❜ ❨122❩ ❛ The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you. ❜ ❨123❩ ❛ Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. ❜ ❨124❩ ❛ Women get consumed. ❜ ❨125❩ ❛ Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them. ❜ ❨126❩ ❛ A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. ❜ ❨127❩ ❛ Safer to be feared than loved. ❜ ❨128❩ ❛ I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. ❜ ❨129❩ ❛ It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wish I could stop trying. ❜ ❨130❩ ❛ I always feel sad for the girl that I was. ❜ ❨131❩ ❛ Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. ❜ ❨132❩ ❛ How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. ❜ ❨133❩ ❛ See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. ❜ ❨134❩ ❛ Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ❜ ❨135❩ ❛ To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ❜ ❨136❩ ❛ I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. ❜ ❨137❩ ❛ I'm tired of dying. ❜ ❨138❩ ❛ What if you hurt because it feels so good? ❜ ❨139❩ ❛ How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. ❜ ❨140❩ ❛ Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait? ❜ ❨141❩ ❛ Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own. ❜ ❨142❩ ❛ Everyone has their own version of a memory. ❜ ❨143❩ ❛ Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon? ❜ ❨144❩ ❛ My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past. ❜ ❨145❩ ❛ Do what I want; I might like you. ❜ ❨146❩ ❛ I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been. ❜ ❨147❩ ❛ She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. ❜ ❨148❩ ❛ The sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. ❜ ❨149❩ ❛ It infects you. It ruined me. ❜ ❨150❩ ❛ Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects. ❜ ❨151❩ ❛ Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? ❜ ❨152❩ ❛ We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ❜ ❨153❩ ❛ Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. ❜ ❨154❩ ❛ The strongest of all warriors are these two — time and patience. ❜ ❨155❩ ❛ If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. ❜ ❨156❩ ❛ There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. ❜ ❨157❩ ❛ The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness. ❜ ❨158❩ ❛ Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. ❜ ❨159❩ ❛ It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. ❜ ❨160❩ ❛ You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. ❜ ❨161❩ ❛ If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. ❜ ❨162❩ ❛ We are asleep until we fall in love! ❜ ❨163❩ ❛ I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. ❜ ❨164❩ ❛ Everything I know, I know because of love. ❜ ❨165❩ ❛ Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. ❜ ❨166❩ ❛ If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ❜ ❨167❩ ❛ Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. ❜ ❨168❩ ❛ How can one be well...when one suffers morally? ❜ ❨169❩ ❛ Kings are the slaves of history. ❜ ❨170❩ ❛ God is the same everywhere. ❜ ❨171❩ ❛ Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. ❜ ❨172❩ ❛ One must be cunning and wicked in this world. ❜ ❨173❩ ❛ We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. ❜ ❨174❩ ❛ When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! ❜ ❨175❩ ❛ For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed? ❜ ❨176❩ ❛ He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. ❜ ❨177❩ ❛ Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. ❜ ❨178❩ ❛ Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. ❜ ❨179❩ ❛ The distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. ❜ ❨180❩ ❛ How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ❜ ❨181❩ ❛ The wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ❜ ❨182❩ ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜ ❨183❩ ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜ ❨184❩ ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜ ❨185❩ ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜ ❨186❩ ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜ ❨187❩ ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜ ❨188❩ ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜ ❨189❩ ❛ He died alone. It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜ ❨190❩ ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜ ❨191❩ ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜ ❨192❩ ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜ ❨193❩ ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜ ❨194❩ ❛ If not for death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜ ❨195❩ ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜ ❨196❩ ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜ ❨197❩ ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜ ❨198❩ ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜ ❨199❩ ��� I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜ ❨200❩ ❛ You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜ ❨201❩ ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜ ❨202❩ ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜ ❨203❩ ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜ ❨204❩ ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜ ❨205❩ ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜ ❨206❩ ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜ ❨207❩ ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜ ❨208❩ ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜ ❨209❩ ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜ ❨210❩ ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜ ❨211❩ ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜ ❨212❩ ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜ ❨213❩ ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜ ❨214❩ ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜ ❨215❩ ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜ ❨216❩ ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜ ❨217❩ ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜ ❨218❩ ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜ ❨219❩ ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜ ❨220❩ ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜ ❨221❩ ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜ ❨222❩ ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜ ❨223❩ ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜ ❨224❩ ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜ ❨225❩ ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜ ❨226❩ ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜ ❨227❩ ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜ ❨228❩ ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜ ❨229❩ ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜ ❨230❩ ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜ ❨231❩ ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜ ❨232❩ ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜ ❨233❩ ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜ ❨234❩ ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜ ❨235❩ ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜ ❨236❩ ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜ ❨237❩ ❛ The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜ ❨238❩ ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜ ❨239❩ ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜ ❨240❩ ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜ ❨241❩ ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜ ❨242❩ ❛ And, oh, God . . . how frequently I weep! ❜ ❨243❩ ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜ ❨244❩ ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜ ❨245❩ ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜ ❨246❩ ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜ ❨247❩ ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜ ❨248❩ ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜ ❨249❩ ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜ ❨250❩ ❛ Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜ ❨251❩ ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜ ❨252❩ ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜ ❨253❩ ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜ ❨254❩ ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜ ❨255❩ ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right. ❜ ❨256❩ ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜ ❨257❩ ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜ ❨258❩ ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜ ❨259❩ ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜ ❨260❩ ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜ ❨261❩ ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜ ❨262❩ ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜ ❨263❩ ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜ ❨264❩ ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜ ❨265❩ ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜ ❨266❩ ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜ ❨267❩ ❛ I'm beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜ ❨268❩ ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜ ❨269❩ ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜ ❨270❩ ❛ If you see a ghost, you say "hello". ❜ ❨271❩ ❛ The war is not over. ❜ ❨272❩ ❛ You're not going. You left us once already. ❜ ❨273❩ ❛ You can’t go! ❜ ❨274❩ ❛ I loved you, but that wasn't enough, was it? ❜ ❨275❩ ❛ If you're dead, then leave me in peace. ❜ ❨276❩ ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜ ❨277❩ ❛ I won't ask for forgiveness for something I didn't do! ❜ ❨278❩ ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜ ❨279❩ ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜ ❨280❩ ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜ ❨281❩ ❛ They're everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜ ❨282❩ ❛ You're always teasing me, and telling lies. I'm sick of it. ❜ ❨283❩ ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we'll sense them. Other times, we won't. ❜ ❨284❩ ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. ❜ ❨285❩ ❛ You listen to me. I've seen them too. ❜ ❨286❩ ❛ You'll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be... changes. ❜ ❨287❩ ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn't you stay like the others did? ❜ ❨288❩ ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜ ❨289❩ ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜ ❨290❩ ❛ I wasn't expecting you so soon. ❜ ❨291❩ ❛ What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜ ❨292❩ ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜ ❨293❩ ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜ ❨294❩ ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜ ❨295❩ ❛ Whatever you do, don't open the curtains. ❜ ❨296❩ ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜ ❨297❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜ ❨298❩ ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨299❩ ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜ ❨300❩ ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨301❩ ❛ Love does not exist, it's like religion, made to control you. ❜ ❨302❩ ❛ After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. ❜ ❨303❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨304❩ ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜ ❨305❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜ ❨306❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜ ❨307❩ ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜ ❨308❩ ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜ ❨309❩ ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜ ❨310❩ ❛ It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜ ❨311❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨312❩ ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there's no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜ ❨313❩ ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜ ❨314❩ ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜ ❨315❩ ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜ ❨316❩ ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜ ❨317❩ ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜ ❨318❩ ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜ ❨319❩ ❛ We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜ ❨320❩ ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜ ❨321❩ ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜ ❨322❩ ❛ Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. ❜ ❨323❩ ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜ ❨324❩ ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜ ❨325❩ ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜ ❨326❩ ❛ Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜ ❨327❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨328❩ ❛ Maybe that's what love is: it's being pissed off. ❜ ❨329❩ ❛ You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. ❜ ❨330❩ ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜ ❨331❩ ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜ ❨332❩ ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜ ❨333❩ ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜ ❨334❩ ❛ We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜ ❨335❩ ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜ ❨336❩ ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜ ❨337❩ ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜ ❨338❩ ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜ ❨339❩ ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜ ❨340❩ ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜ ❨341❩ ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜ ❨342❩ ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜ ❨343❩ ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody -- a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜ ❨344❩ ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜ ❨345❩ ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜ ❨346❩ ❛ I'm fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜ ❨347❩ ❛ Because if you can't wish, why bother? ❜ ❨348❩ ❛ It's better to hope than mope! ❜ ❨349❩ ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜ ❨350❩ ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜ ❨351❩ ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜ ❨352❩ ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜ ❨353❩ ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜ ❨354❩ ❛ ‘Why can't I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜ ❨355❩ ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜ ❨356❩ ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜ ❨357❩ ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜ ❨358❩ ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜ ❨359❩ ❛ In the end, we'll all become stories. ❜ ❨360❩ ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜ ❨361❩ ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. ❜ ❨362❩ ❛ If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜ ❨363❩ ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜ ❨364❩ ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been. ❜ ❨365❩ ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜ ❨366❩ ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜ ❨367❩ ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜ ❨368❩ ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜ ❨369❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜ ❨370❩ ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜ ❨371❩ ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜ ❨372❩ ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜ ❨373❩ ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜ ❨374❩ ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜ ❨375❩ ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜ ❨376❩ ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜ ❨377❩ ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜ ❨378❩ ❛ Isn't the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜ ❨379❩ ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. ❜ ❨380❩ ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜ ❨381❩ ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜ ❨382❩ ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜ ❨383❩ ❛ But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling. ❜ ❨384❩ ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜ ❨385❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨386❩ ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜ ❨387❩ ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜ ❨388❩ ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜ ❨389❩ ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜ ❨390❩ ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜ ❨391❩ ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜ ❨392❩ ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜ ❨393❩ ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜ ❨394❩ ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜ ❨395❩ ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜ ❨396❩ ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜ ❨397❩ ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜ ❨398❩ ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜ ❨399❩ ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜ ❨400❩ ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜ ❨401❩ ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜ ❨402❩ ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜ ❨403❩ ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜ ❨404❩ ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜ ❨405❩ ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜ ❨406❩ ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜ ❨407❩ ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜ ❨408❩ ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜ ❨409❩ ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜ ❨410❩ ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜ ❨411❩ ❛ Nevermore. ❜ ❨412❩ ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜ ❨413❩ ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜ ❨414❩ ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜ ❨415❩ ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜ ❨416❩ ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜ ❨417❩ ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜ ❨418❩ ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜ ❨419❩ ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜ ❨420❩ ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜ ❨421❩ ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜ ❨422❩ ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜ ❨423❩ ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜ ❨424❩ ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜ ❨425❩ ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜ ❨426❩ ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜ ❨427❩ ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜ ❨428❩ ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜ ❨429❩ ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜ ❨430❩ ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜ ❨431❩ ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜ ❨432❩ ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜ ❨433❩ ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜ ❨434❩ ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜ ❨435❩ ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜ ❨436❩ ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜ ❨437❩ ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜ ❨438❩ ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜ ❨439❩ ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜ ❨440❩ ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜ ❨441❩ ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜ ❨442❩ ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜ ❨443❩ ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜ ❨444❩ ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜ ❨445❩ ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜ ❨446❩ ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜ ❨447❩ ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'. ❜ ❨448❩ ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜ ❨449❩ ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜ ❨450❩ ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜ ❨451❩ ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜ ❨452❩ ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜ ❨453❩ ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜ ❨454❩ ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜ ❨455❩ ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜ ❨456❩ ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe ❨457❩ that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie ❨458❩ asleep. ❜ ❨459❩ ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜ ❨460❩ ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜ ❨461❩ ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜ ❨462❩ ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜ ❨463❩ ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜ ❨464❩ ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜ ❨465❩ ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜ ❨466❩ ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜ ❨467❩ ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜ ❨468❩ ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜ ❨469❩ ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜ ❨470❩ ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜ ❨471❩ ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜ ❨472❩ ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜ ❨473❩ ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜ ❨474❩ ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜ ❨475❩ ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜ ❨476❩ ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜ ❨477❩ ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜ ❨478❩ ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜ ❨479❩ ❛ If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged. ❜ ❨480❩ ❛ When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass. ❜ ❨481❩ ❛ Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word; - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase.  ❜ ❨482❩ ❛ Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. ❜ ❨483❩ ❛ If the world treats you well, you come to believe you are deserving of it. ❜ ❨484❩ ❛ If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go. ❜ ❨485❩ ❛ It’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ❜ ❨486❩ ❛ There is no fool like an educated fool. ❜ ❨487❩ ❛ There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ❜ ❨488❩ ❛ I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. ❜ ❨489❩ ❛ Underneath it all is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. ❜ ❨490❩ ❛ And underneath all that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.  ❜ ❨491❩ ❛ The small details of life often hide a great significance. ❜ ❨492❩ ❛ Guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you. ❜ ❨493❩ ❛ I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once? ❜ ❨494❩ ❛ It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between. ❜ ❨495❩ ❛ Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam. ❜ ❨496❩ ❛ I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. ❜ ❨497❩ ❛ I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely. ❜ ❨498❩ ❛ If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one. ❜ ❨499❩ ❛ It’s as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent. ❜ ❨500❩ ❛ Today you wear your habitual expression of strained anxiety; you smell of violets. ❜ ❨501❩ ❛ Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude. ❜ ❨502❩ ❛ I wonder what would become of me, and comfort myself that in a hundred years I will be dead and at peace. ❜ ❨503❩ ❛ For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer. ❜ ❨504❩ ❛ There is a “do this” or “do that” with God, but not any “because”. ❜ ❨505❩ ❛ If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. ❜ ❨506❩ ❛ They say, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. ❜ ❨507❩ ❛ I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out. ❜ ❨508❩ ❛ I see what you’re after. You are a collector. You think all you have to do is give me an apple, and then you can collect me. ❜ ❨509❩ ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜ ❨510❩ ❛ Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜ ❨511❩ ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜ ❨512❩ ❛ After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜ ❨513❩ ❛ There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive. ❜ ❨514❩ ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜ ❨515❩ ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜ ❨516❩ ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜ ❨517❩ ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜ ❨518❩ ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜ ❨519❩ ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜ ❨520❩ ❛ “I'll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I'll make you me.” ❜ ❨521❩ ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜ ❨522❩ ❛ Expectation isn't the same as desire. ❜ ❨523❩ ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜ ❨524❩ ❛ Maybe there aren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜ ❨525❩ ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜ ❨526❩ ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜ ❨527❩ ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜ ❨528❩ ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It's not good for you. ❜ ❨529❩ ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜ ❨530❩ ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜ ❨531❩ ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜ ❨532❩ ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜ ❨533❩ ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜ ❨534❩ ❛ Don't be so fucking sentimental. ❜ ❨535❩ ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜ ❨536❩ ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜ ❨537❩ ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜ ❨538❩ ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜ ❨539❩ ❛ You will hear thunder and remember me. ❜ ❨540❩ ❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜ ❨541❩ ❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜ ❨542❩ ❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜ ❨543❩ ❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else's mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜ ❨544❩ ❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜ ❨545❩ ❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜ ❨546❩ ❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜ ❨547❩ ❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜ ❨548❩ ❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜ ❨549❩ ❛ You do not know just what you've been forgiven. ❜ ❨550❩ ❛ I need to slaughter my memory.  ❜ ❨551❩ ❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜ ❨552❩ ❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜ ❨553❩ ❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜ ❨554❩ ❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜ ❨555❩ ❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜ ❨556❩ ❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜ ❨557❩ ❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜ ❨558❩ ❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜ ❨559❩ ❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜ ❨560❩ ❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜ ❨561❩ ❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜ ❨562❩ ❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜ ❨563❩ ❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜ ❨564❩ ❛ Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. ❜ ❨565❩ ❛ I've got no more tears or explanations. ❜ ❨566❩ ❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜ ❨567❩ ❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜ ❨568❩ ❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜ ❨569❩ ❛ I was not a lovable child, and I've grown into a deeply unlovable adult. ❜ ❨570❩ ❛ The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ❜ ❨571❩ ❛ I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark. ❜ ❨572❩ ❛ I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. ❜ ❨573❩ ❛ I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way. ❜ ❨574❩ ❛ I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen. But the meanness usually wins out. ❜ ❨575❩ ❛ I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ❜ ❨576❩ ❛ Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it. ❜ ❨577❩ ❛ Coffee goes great with sudden death. ❜ ❨578❩ ❛ I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite. ❜ ❨579❩ ❛ “Smile, it can't be that bad!” Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad. ❜ ❨580❩ ❛ Everything bad in the world already did happen. ❜ ❨581❩ ❛ You’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? ❜ ❨582❩ ❛ Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. ❜ ❨583❩ ❛ Homesick for a place I've never been. ❜ ❨584❩ ❛ Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. ❜ ❨585❩ ❛ It is always consoling to think of suicide. It's what gets one through many a bad night. ❜ ❨586❩ ❛ Do you understand this is serious? ❜ ❨587❩ ❛ Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with. ❜ ❨588❩ ❛ How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ❜ ❨589❩ ❛ Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs. ❜ ❨590❩ ❛ We have the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia. ❜ ❨591❩ ❛ I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. ❜ ❨592❩ ❛ The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it’s near. Midtongue. ❜ ❨593❩ ❛ Nothing to it but to do it. ❜ ❨594❩ ❛ There are a lot of people who deserve a lesson, deserve to really understand, that nothing comes easy, that most things are going to go sour. ❜ ❨595❩ ❛ If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas. ❜ ❨596❩ ❛ Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ❜ ❨597❩ ❛ What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? ❜ ❨598❩ ❛ That mean old bitch across the street bit it. ❜ ❨599❩ ❛ Survival is a talent. ❜ ❨600❩ ❛ Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. ❜ ❨601❩ ❛ Who has the courage to burn themselves? ❜ ❨602❩ ❛ Is insanity just a matter of dropping the act? ❜ ❨603❩ ❛ Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? ❜ ❨604❩ ❛ You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. ❜ ❨605❩ ❛ When I am supposed to be awake, I am asleep; when I am supposed to speak, I am silent. When a pleasure offers itself to me, I avoid it. ❜ ❨606❩ ❛ There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. ❜ ❨607❩ ❛ In a strange way we are free. We've reached the end of the line. We have nothing more to lose. ❜ ❨608❩ ❛ The world won’t stop because we aren’t in it anymore. ❜ ❨609❩ ❛ I can't answer the real question. All I can tell you is, it's easy. ❜ ❨610❩ ❛ I am lighter, airier than I’ve been in years. ❜ ❨611❩ ❛ I am not dead, yet something in me definitely is. ❜ ❨612❩ ❛ You meant that as an insult but I am taking it as a compliment. ❜ ❨613❩ ❛ What life can recover from that? ❜ ❨614❩ ❛ It's a fairly accurate portrait of me. It's accurate but it isn't profound. ❜ ❨615❩ ❛ Pull yourself together! There's nothing wrong with you. ❜ ❨616❩ ❛ It's quiet. It's like― I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff. ❜ ❨617❩ ❛ Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ❜ ❨618❩ ❛ I lost him. I did it on purpose. ❜ ❨619❩ ❛ It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there. ❜ ❨620❩ ❛ Reality is getting too dense. ❜ ❨621❩ ❛ I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favourite word. ❜ ❨622❩ ❛ I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions you raise. ❜ ❨623❩ ❛ A spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. ❜ ❨624❩ ❛ Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ❜ ❨625❩ ❛ A thought is a hard thing to control. ❜ ❨626❩ ❛ Life demands skills I don’t have. ❜ ❨627❩ ❛ Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful. Most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them. ❜ ❨628❩ ❛ It never stops, even at night, it’s my lullaby. ❜ ❨629❩ ❛ Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. ❜ ❨630❩ ❛ This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes. ❜ ❨631❩ ❛ I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. ❜ ❨632❩ ❛ Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. ❜ ❨633❩ ❛ Hatred is easier. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love. ❜ ❨634❩ ❛ Potential has a shelf life. ❜ ❨635❩ ❛ Don’t move. Stay like that, let me have that. ❜ ❨636❩ ❛ I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. ❜ ❨637❩ ❛ Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ❜ ❨638❩ ❛ It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. ❜ ❨639❩ ❛ We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. ❜ ❨640❩ ❛ This is what I miss, not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. ❜ ❨641❩ ❛ I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ❜ ❨642❩ ❛ You are amazing. Amazing and agonising and almost lethal. ❜ ❨643❩ ❛ In my dreams of this city I am always lost. ❜ ❨644❩ ❛ I don't know where these feelings have come from, I don’t know what I've done. ❜ ❨645❩ ❛ I am not the centre of your story, you are.  ❜ ❨646❩ ❛ I’m mad because you’re an asshole. ❜ ❨647❩ ❛ It's enormously pleasing to me, walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. ❜ ❨648❩ ❛ There is never only one of anyone. ❜ ❨649❩ ❛ I can't do this without feeling I'm acting. ❜ ❨650❩ ❛ I am prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ❜ ❨651❩ ❛ I’m losing my appetite for strangers. ❜ ❨652❩ ❛ You wear your cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. You want it all. ❜ ❨653❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people weakens you. You are forced to understand their reasons for doing things. ❜ ❨654❩ ❛ I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. ❜ ❨655❩ ❛ Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. ❜ ❨656❩ ❛ Whoever cares the most will lose. ❜ ❨657❩ ❛ Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defences.  ❜ ❨658❩ ❛ Time has gone on without you. ❜ ❨659❩ ❛ Don't let the bastards grind you down. ❜ ❨660❩ ❛ Who can remember pain, once it’s over? Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ❜ ❨661❩ ❛ Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. ❜ ❨662❩ ❛ There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. ❜ ❨663❩ ❛ Remember that forgiveness too is a power. ❜ ❨664❩ ❛ I am not your justification for existence. ❜ ❨665❩ ❛ I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. ❜ ❨666❩ ❛ If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ❜ ❨667❩ ❛ All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard. ❜ ❨668❩ ❛ Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ❜ ❨669❩ ❛ I want everything back, the way it was. ❜ ❨670❩ ❛ You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave. ❜ ❨671❩ ❛ Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. ❜ ❨672❩ ❛ To want is to have a weakness. ❜ ❨673❩ ❛ There isn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. ❜ ❨674❩ ❛ The past is a great darkness, filled with echoes. ❜ ❨675❩ ❛ Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. ❜ ❨676❩ ❛ I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light. ❜ ❨677❩ ❛ The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. ❜ ❨678❩ ❛ By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you. ❜ ❨679❩ ❛ Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard. ❜ ❨680❩ ❛ Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. ❜ ❨681❩ ❛ Keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. ❜ ❨682❩ ❛ The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. ❜ ❨683❩ ❛ The world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. ❜ ❨684❩ ❛ Nobody's heart is perfect. ❜ ❨685❩ ❛ One false move and I'm dead. ❜ ❨686❩ ❛ Watch out. I've got my eye on you. ❜ ❨687❩ ❛ Fear is a powerful stimulant. ❜ ❨688❩ ❛ I couldn't afford to lose you. ❜ ❨689❩ ❛ Name one hero who was happy. ---- You can’t. ❜ ❨690❩ ❛ I feel like I could eat the world raw. ❜ ❨691❩ ❛ We are like gods at the dawning of the world. ❜ ❨692❩ ❛ I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ❜ ❨693❩ ❛ There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. ❜ ❨694❩ ❛ You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. ❜ ❨695❩ ❛ He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. ❜ ❨696❩ ❛ Some men gain glory after they die, others fade. ❜ ❨697❩ ❛ I am made of memories. ❜ ❨698❩ ❛ Will you come with me? ❜ ❨699❩ ❛ I wish I had let you all die. ❜ ❨700❩ ❛ It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after. ❜ ❨701❩ ❛ Bury us. Let us be free. ❜ ❨702❩ ❛ Go. He waits for you. ❜ ❨703❩ ❛ Nothing could eclipse the stain of this dirty, mortal mediocrity. ❜ ❨704❩ ❛ I know I have told you of this. ❜ ❨705❩ ❛ I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me. ❜ ❨706❩ ❛ Perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. ❜ ❨707❩ ❛ I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. ❜ ❨708❩ ❛ There is no honour in betraying your friends. ❜ ❨709❩ ❛ There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. ❜ ❨710❩ ❛ Divine blood flows differently. ❜ ❨711❩ ❛ How is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. ❜ ❨712❩ ❛ This is what I will miss, I think. I will kill myself rather than miss it. ❜ ❨713❩ ❛ How long do we have? ❜ ❨714❩ ❛ Do you think we fight hopeless wars? ❜ ❨715❩ ❛ There is no law that gods must be fair. ❜ ❨716❩ ❛ I do not fear ridicule. I never have. ❜ ❨717❩ ❛ You were always better with words than I. ❜ ❨718❩ ❛ Who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? ❜ ❨719❩ ❛ When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. ❜ ❨720❩ ❛ That's how the madness of the world tries to colonise you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. ❜ ❨721❩ ❛ The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear. ❜ ❨722❩ ❛ Silence creates violence. ❜ ❨723❩ ❛ Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough. ❜ ❨724❩ ❛ There are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜ ❨725❩ ❛ Nothing that ever lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. ❜ ❨726❩ ❛ We all live in a kind of continuous dream. ❜ ❨727❩ ❛ You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you. ❜ ❨728❩ ❛ What can you do when your five senses are not enough? ❜ ❨729❩ ❛ We will neither be what we had been nor what we would become once we reach our destination. ❜ ❨730❩ ❛ Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable. ❜ ❨731❩ ❛ When you are too close to the centre of a mystery there is no way to pull back. ❜ ❨732❩ ❛ I long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. ❜ ❨733❩ ❛ I look not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I try to imagine what kind of life lives in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. ❜ ❨734❩ ❛ I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, I think. If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ❜ ❨735❩ ❛ I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. ❜ ❨736❩ ❛ All of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. ❜ ❨737❩ ❛ We don’t have real answers, because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. ❜ ❨738❩ ❛ This part I will do alone. Don’t follow. ❜ ❨739❩ ❛ People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control. ❜ ❨740❩ ❛ Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead? ❜ ❨741❩ ❛ I loved them, but I didn’t need them, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. ❜ ❨742❩ ❛ Places can impress themselves upon me, and I can become part of them with ease. ❜ ❨743❩ ❛ There is no one with me. I am all by myself. ❜ ❨744❩ ❛ Pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic. ❜ ❨745❩ ❛ I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. ❜ ❨746❩ ❛ What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months. ❜ ❨747❩ ❛ Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool. ❜ ❨748❩ ❛ I need to know what’s inside. ❜ ❨749❩ ❛ These aren't decisions. They're impulses ❜ ❨750❩ ❛ What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden pinning, looking up at the sky? ❜ ❨751❩ ❛ If I know what’s happened I can save their life. ❜ ❨752❩ ❛ They either went crazy or something in here killed them. ❜ ❨753❩ ❛ Something is coming through the fence! ❜ ❨754❩ ❛ Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny. ❜ ❨755❩ ❛ People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. ❜ ❨756❩ ❛ Happy endings are still endings. ❜ ❨757❩ ❛ We believe in all sorts of things that aren't true; -- we call it history. ❜ ❨758❩ ❛ Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? ❜ ❨759❩ ❛ In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats. ❜ ❨760❩ ❛ Girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise.  ❜ ❨761❩ ❛ Love makes hunters of us all. ❜ ❨762❩ ❛ There is much to hate in this world and way too much to love. ❜ ❨763❩ ❛ You confuse not speaking with not listening. ❜ ❨764❩ ❛ As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ❜ ❨765❩ ❛ The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say. ❜ ❨766❩ ❛ Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. ❜ ❨767❩ ❛ We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. ❜ ❨768❩ ❛ The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness. ❜ ❨769❩ ❛ I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! ❜ ❨770❩ ❛ Even at the very worst - there is always choice. ❜ ❨771❩ ❛ Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ❜ ❨772❩ ❛ Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the entire universe is changed. ❜ ❨773❩ ❛ That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness. Life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same. ❜ ❨774❩ ❛ I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without. ❜ ❨775❩ ❛ It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new. ❜ ❨776❩ ❛ Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the godfather, never the god. ❜ ❨777❩ ❛ The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew. ❜ ❨778❩ ❛ Evil is an act, not an appetite. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. ❜ ❨779❩ ❛ How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table?  ❜ ❨780❩ ❛ Even God used silence as a strategy. ❜ ❨781❩ ❛ I learned failure early and mastered it. ❜ ❨782❩ ❛ It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all. ❜ ❨783❩ ❛ This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is a very wicked distraction. ❜ ❨784❩ ❛ Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery. ❜ ❨785❩ ❛ Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ❜ ❨786❩ ❛ Such brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. ❜ ❨787❩ ❛ I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can. ❜ ❨788❩ ❛ Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss off, go on, say it, but don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. ❜ ❨789❩ ❛ The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on. ❜ ❨790❩ ❛ One can't make peace with another by force. ❜ ❨791❩ ❛ I am a forgettable leaf on a tree. ❜ ❨792❩ ❛ That's all I want; --- to do no harm. ❜ ❨793❩ ❛ I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is. ❜ ❨794❩ ❛ Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ❜ ❨795❩ ❛ You’re too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to that we manage to endure the burden of the past. ❜ ❨796❩ ❛ Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. You are either born knowing how, or you never know. ❜ ❨797❩ ❛ Whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life. ❜ ❨798❩ ❛ There is no God worth worrying about. ❜ ❨799❩ ❛ The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. ❜ ❨800❩ ❛ Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. ❜ ❨801❩ ❛ Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the very end in itself. ❜ ❨802❩ ❛ Only God knows how much I love you. ❜ ❨803❩ ❛ There is no greater glory than to die for love. ❜ ❨804❩ ❛ Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ❜ ❨805❩ ❛ Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life. ❜ ❨806❩ ❛ Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion. ❜ ❨807❩ ❛ I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century. ❜ ❨808❩ ❛ I want to be myself again, to recover all that I was obliged to give up. ❜ ❨809❩ ❛ The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name. ❜ ❨810❩ ❛ This soup tastes like windows. ❜ ❨811❩ ❛ Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist? ❜ ❨812❩ ❛ One has to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ❜ ❨813❩ ❛ No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ❜ ❨814❩ ❛ My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. ❜ ❨815❩ ❛ That may be the reason he does so many things, so that he will not have to think. ❜ ❨816❩ ❛ Love if it exists, is something separate: another life. ❜ ❨817❩ ❛ Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you. ❜ ❨818❩ ❛ There are things you do only for love. ❜ ❨819❩ ❛ I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die. ❜ ❨820❩ ❛ There is no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age. ❜ ❨821❩ ❛ You treat me as if I were just anybody. ❜ ❨822❩ ❛ The symptoms of love are the same as those of cholera. ❜ ❨823❩ ❛ There is no law, human or divine, that you have not ignored. ❜ ❨824❩ ❛ Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years? ❜ ❨825❩ ❛ Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ❜ ❨826❩ ❛ It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. ❜ ❨827❩ ❛ We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? ❜ ❨828❩ ❛ There must be something, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ❜ ❨829❩ ❛ If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ❜ ❨830❩ ❛ If you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore. ❜ ❨831❩ ❛ You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. ❜ ❨832❩ ❛ It was a pleasure to burn. ❜ ❨833❩ ❛ I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? ❜ ❨834❩ ❛ Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? ❜ ❨835❩ ❛ Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays? ❜ ❨836❩ ❛ Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ❜ ❨837❩ ❛ I don't talk things. I talk the meaning of things. ❜ ❨838❩ ❛ I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. ❜ ❨839❩ ❛ I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. ❜ ❨840❩ ❛ That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. ❜ ❨841❩ ❛ Someday we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. ❜ ❨842❩ ❛ You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. ❜ ❨843❩ ❛ You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. ❜ ❨844❩ ❛ When they give you lined paper, write the other way. ❜ ❨845❩ ❛ The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. ❜ ❨846❩ ❛ We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing. ❜ ❨847❩ ❛ I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago. ❜ ❨848❩ ❛ I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. ❜ ❨849❩ ❛ Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! ❜ ❨850❩ ❛ How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you? ❜ ❨851❩ ❛ It must be right. It seems so right. ❜ ❨852❩ ❛ To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. ❜ ❨853❩ ❛ It's my game. And no one can help me. Not even you. ❜ ❨854❩ ❛ What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. ❜ ❨855❩ ❛ Death is a long process. Your body is just the first part of you that croaks. Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. Your anger and memories must die. Your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope. ❜ ❨856❩ ❛ Help me give up my addiction to hope. ❜ ❨857❩ ❛ Life is short, death is forever. ❜ ❨858❩ ❛ Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break. ❜ ❨859❩ ❛ If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. ❜ ❨860❩ ❛ We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. ❜ ❨861❩ ❛ All the demons of hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. ❜ ❨862❩ ❛ I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful. ❜ ❨863❩ ❛ It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ❜ ❨864❩ ❛ You fucked up. Game over. So just relax. ❜ ❨865❩ ❛ The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ❜ ❨866❩ ❛ If killing you will end my existence as well, be it. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. ❜ ❨867❩ ❛ I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. ❜ ❨868❩ ❛ Dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. ❜ ❨869❩ ❛ Any concept of right versus wrong, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. ❜ ❨870❩ ❛ To prove that I exist I must kill you. ❜ ❨871❩ ❛ I'd say that my life has been a way-too-long case history of chasing rainbows. ❜ ❨872❩ ❛ The world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard. ❜ ❨873❩ ❛ Every garden looks beautiful in May. ❜ ❨874❩ ❛ When we neglect to fear such brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless. ❜ ❨875❩ ❛ My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it. ❜ ❨876❩ ❛ Such language! Why don't you just take a dump in my ears? ❜ ❨877❩ ❛ You’d be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. ❜ ❨878❩ ❛ Depending on her mood, she can be more frightening than any demon or devil you might ever run across. ❜ ❨879❩ ❛ Cross your fingers! Maybe death won't happen to you. ❜ ❨880❩ ❛ Do not die while wearing cheap shoes. ❜ ❨881❩ ❛ Old habits die hard. ❜ ❨882❩ ❛ It's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us. ❜ ❨883❩ ❛ What do I think I am? In a thousand words; I don't have a clue. ❨884❩ ❛ If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ❜ ❨885❩ ❛ All I wanted was to be loved for myself. ❜ ❨886❩ ❛ I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer. ❜ ❨887❩ ❛ Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? ❜ ❨888❩ ❛ You have a heart that can hold the entire empire of the world. ❜ ❨889❩ ❛ Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you. ❜ ❨890❩ ❛ Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. ❜ ❨891❩ ❛ You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! ❜ ❨892❩ ❛ Are people so unhappy when they love? --- Yes, when they love and are not sure of being loved. ❜ ❨893❩ ❛ Your soul is a beautiful thing. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. ❜ ❨894❩ ❛ Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! ❜ ❨895❩ ❛ Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a life like everybody else. ❜ ❨896❩ ❛ You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. ❜ ❨897❩ ❛ I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ❜ ❨898❩ ❛ I am going to die of love, I am dying of love. That's how it is. I loved you so. I still love you so. ❜ ❨899❩ ❛ I am dying of love for her, I tell you! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her. ❜ ❨900❩ ❛ He fills me with horror but I do not hate him. How can I hate him? ❜ ❨901❩ ❛ Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest. ❜ ❨902❩ ❛ Nothing is colder or more dead than my heart. ❜ ❨903❩ ❛ I had loved an angel and now I despise a woman. ❜ ❨904❩ ❛ Our lives are one masked ball. ❜ ❨905❩ ❛ Why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing? ❜ ❨906❩ ❛ He would commit murder for me. ❜ ❨907❩ ❛ If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug, she is lost. But I shall save her. ❜ ❨908❩ ❛ We will go from here together or die together. ❜ ❨909❩ ❛ Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ❜ ❨910❩ ❛ Destiny has chained you to me forever. ❜ ❨911❩ ❛ You must never ask me that. ❜ ❨912❩ ❛ Are you afraid that you will change your mind? ❜ ❨913❩ ❛ You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly. ❜ ❨914❩ ❛ The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. ❜ ❨915❩ ❛ I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. ❜ ❨916❩ ❛ There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home. ❜ ❨917❩ ❛ I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. ❜ ❨918❩ ❛ It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to even mourn for it. ❜ ❨919❩ ❛ There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. ❜ ❨920❩ ❛ When did you become so weak? ❜ ❨921❩ ❛ I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. ❜ ❨922❩ ❛ Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. ❜ ❨923❩ ❛ Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. ❜ ❨924❩ ❛ I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. ❜ ❨925❩ ❛ I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away. ❜ ❨926❩ ❛ I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move. ❜ ❨927❩ ❛ Who was it that said following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. ❜ ❨928❩ ❛ It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. ❜ ❨929❩ ❛ Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ❜ ❨930❩ ❛ I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. ❜ ❨931❩ ❛ How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn? ❜ ❨932❩ ❛ Now look -- Now look what you made me do. ❜ ❨933❩ ❛ It’s okay, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. ❜ ❨934❩ ❛ They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. ❜ ❨935❩ ❛ You broke me and I broke us. ❜ ❨936❩ ❛ I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you. ❜ ❨937❩ ❛ I’d never realised, not until now, how shameful it is to be pitied. ❜ ❨938❩ ❛ Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. ❜ ❨939❩ ❛ I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. ❜ ❨940❩ ❛ There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. ❜ ❨941❩ ❛ Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point in denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ❜ ❨942❩ ❛ I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love. ❜ ❨943❩ ❛ You don’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with. ❜ ❨944❩ ❛ The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. ❜ ❨945❩ ❛ You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it? ❜ ❨946❩ ❛ I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it. ❜ ❨947❩ ❛ If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying, he’s got another thing coming. ❜ ❨948❩ ❛ I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away. ❜ ❨949❩ ❛ I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ❜ ❨950❩ ❛ I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate it, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. ❜ ❨951❩ ❛ Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away. ❜ ❨952❩ ❛ I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. ❜ ❨953❩ ❛ Failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. ❜ ❨954❩ ❛ It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time; I don’t feel bad enough. ❜ ❨955❩ ❛ Some battles aren’t worth fighting. ❜ ❨956❩ ❛ I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to. ❜ ❨957❩ ❛ I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? ❜ ❨958❩ ❛ What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ❜ ❨959❩ ❛ A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. ❜ ❨960❩ ❛ It isn’t only wickedness and scheming that make people unhappy, it is confusion and misunderstanding. ❜ ❨961❩ ❛ Falling in love can be achieved in a single word—a glance. ❜ ❨962❩ ❛ Though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you. ❜ ❨963❩ ❛ I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. ❜ ❨964❩ ❛ It might hurt, it is horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but it is what it is to be in love. ❜ ❨965❩ ❛ It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. ❜ ❨966❩ ❛ Come back, come back to me. ❜ ❨967❩ ❛ In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. ❜ ❨968❩ ❛ The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence and I don’t think I can blame the heat. ❜ ❨969❩ ❛ Beauty occupies a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, has infinite variation. ❜ ❨970❩ ❛ Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ❜ ❨971❩ ❛ However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been. ❜ ❨972❩ ❛ Hate is a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. ❜ ❨973❩ ❛ I’m going mad. Let me not be mad. ❜ ❨974❩ ❛ Is everyone really as alive as I am? ❜ ❨975❩ ❛ Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself. ❜ ❨976❩ ❛ Something has happened, hasn’t it? ❜ ❨977❩ ❛ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. ❜ ❨978❩ ❛ Is it possible that I am, in the modern term, in denial? ❜ ❨979❩ ❛ How could anyone presume to know the world through the eyes of an insect? ❜ ❨980❩ ❛ Not everything has a cause. Some things are simply so. ❜ ❨981❩ ❛ I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. ❜ ❨982❩ ❛ How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? ❜ ❨983❩ ❛ It was never meant to be read. ❜ ❨984❩ ❛ If I fell in the river, would you save me? ❜ ❨985❩ ❛ That was an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do. ❜ ❨986❩ ❛ I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll be eternally grateful to you. ❜ ❨987❩ ❛ I’m very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused. I’m very, very sorry. ❜ ❨988❩ ❛ Don’t call me that! – Please don’t call me that. ❜ ❨989❩ ❛ It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine. ❜ ❨990❩ ❛ Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ❜ ❨991❩ ❛ No one ever really gets used to nightmares. ❜ ❨992❩ ❛ I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. ❜ ❨993❩ ❛ Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. ❜ ❨994❩ ❛ Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. ❜ ❨995❩ ❛ Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ❜ ❨996❩ ❛ The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. ❜ ❨997❩ ❛ You will fulfil a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. ❜ ❨998❩ ❛ Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. ❜ ❨999❩ ❛ I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore. ❜ ❨1000❩ ❛ What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff. ❜ ❨1001❩ ❛ Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ❜ ❨1002❩ ❛ It’s just silent, no sound at all. It’s like something’s waiting. ❜ ❨1003❩ ❛ I guess I’m hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control. ❜ ❨1004❩ ❛ Oh and something else: – Fuck you. ❜ ❨1005❩ ❛ God I’ve never been afraid like this. ❜ ❨1006❩ ❛ I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived that you can’t call your own. ❜ ❨1007❩ ❛ I’m so tired. Sleep’s been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ❜ ❨1008❩ ❛ Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the Hey-I’m-Bleeding part. ❜ ❨1009❩ ❛ These days fantasies flourish and die like summer flies. ❜ ❨1010❩ ❛ Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous. ❜ ❨1011❩ ❛ ‘Fuck’ and 'fall for’ have very different meanings. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do. ❜ ❨1012❩ ❛ It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. ❜ ❨1013❩ ❛ It’s, well…one thing in two words: fucked up…very fucked up. Okay three words, four words, who the hell cares…very very fucked up. ❜ ❨1014❩ ❛ Do you think I could spend the night at your place?  ❜ ❨1015❩ ❛ Any fool can pray. ❜ ❨1016❩ ❛ I feel like I haven’t slept in months. My neighbours are scared of me. ❜ ❨1017❩ ❛ I’ve lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m just really drunk. ❜ ❨1018❩ ❛ Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace. ❜ ❨1019❩ ❛ I should be dead. Why am I still here? ❜ ❨1020❩ ❛ Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. ❜ ❨1021❩ ❛ You are my flesh. You are my bones. I know you too well. I read you too perfectly. ❜ ❨1022❩ ❛ Not all complex problems have easy solutions. ❜ ❨1023❩ ❛ Do you believe in God? I don’t think I ever asked you that one. ❜ ❨1024❩ ❛ We all create stories to protect ourselves. ❜ ❨1025❩ ❛ Are you kidding me? This place is scary. ❜ ❨1026❩ ❛ These days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ❜ ❨1027❩ ❛ You like that crap because it reminds you of you. ❜ ❨1028❩ ❛ You may suddenly realise things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ❜ ❨1029❩ ❛ The two hardest tests are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. ❜ ❨1030❩ ❛ People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. ❜ ❨1031❩ ❛ Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different. ❜ ❨1032❩ ❛ You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. ❜ ❨1033❩ ❛ God chose you to be different. ❜ ❨1034❩ ❛ Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? ❜ ❨1035❩ ❛ You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you. ❜ ❨1036❩ ❛ Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to. ❜ ❨1037❩ ❛ Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death?  ❜ ❨1038❩ ❛ If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem. ❜ ❨1039❩ ❛ Nothing in this world happens by chance. ❜ ❨1040❩ ❛ I want to continue living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. ❜ ❨1041❩ ❛ Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. ❜ ❨1042❩ ❛ Collective madness is called sanity. ❜ ❨1043❩ ❛ Consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. ❜ ❨1044❩ ❛ You say they create their own reality, but what is reality? ❜ ❨1045❩ ❛ Many people don't allow themselves to love because there are a lot of things at risk. A lot of future and a lot of past. ❜ ❨1046❩ ❛ Death frees from the fear of dying. ❜ ❨1047❩ ❛ The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort. ❜ ❨1048❩ ❛ The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ❜ ❨1049❩ ❛ Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ❜ ❨1050❩ ❛ It's best to accept life as it really is and not as you imagined it to be. ❜ ❨1051❩ ❛ You don't seem mad at all. ❜ ❨1052❩ ❛ We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroys us. ❜ ❨1053❩ ❛ You’re what you are, not what others make of you. ❜ ❨1054❩ ❛ Am I cured? ❜ ❨1055❩ ❛ Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself. ❜ ❨1056❩ ❛ A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Is that it? ❜ ❨1057❩ ❛ They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. ❜ ❨1058❩ ❛ I didn't know that other ‘me’s existed inside me, ‘Me’s that I could love. ❜ ❨1059❩ ❛ I have no idea what's awaiting me. ❜ ❨1060❩ ❛ What will happen when this all ends? ❜ ❨1061❩ ❛ I know that you are capable of great deeds. ❜ ❨1062❩ ❛ A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ❜ ❨1063❩ ❛ The truth is that everyone is bored. ❜ ❨1064❩ ❛ I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. ❜ ❨1065❩ ❛ If there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. ❜ ❨1066❩ ❛ Who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for even a single moment's suffering? ❜ ❨1067❩ ❛ It's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. ❜ ❨1068❩ ❛ While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. ❜ ❨1069❩ ❛ People are more often bad than good. ❜ ❨1070❩ ❛ I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. ❜ ❨1071❩ ❛ What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ❜ ❨1072❩ ❛ In fact, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. ❜ ❨1073❩ ❛ Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves. ❜ ❨1074❩ ❛ Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ❜ ❨1075❩ ❛ There are more things to admire in men then to despise. ❜ ❨1076❩ ❛ It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. ❜ ❨1077❩ ❛ What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this? ❜ ❨1078❩ ❛ Your code of morals? What code, if I may ask? ❜ ❨1079❩ ❛ I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding anything. ❜ ❨1080❩ ❛ No doubt our love is still there, but quite simply it is unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. ❜ ❨1081❩ ❛ I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start. ❜ ���1082❩ ❛ I am incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that I am incapable of anything really worth while. ❜ ❨1083❩ ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ ❨1084❩ ❛ We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. ❜ ❨1085❩ ❛ The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ❜ ❨1086❩ ❛ There are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live. ❜ ❨1087❩ ❛ The best protection against anything is a good bottle of wine. ❜ ❨1088❩ ❛ There is no peace without hope. ❜ ❨1089❩ ❛ It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. ❜ ❨1090❩ ❛ There is always something left to love. ❜ ❨1091❩ ❛ A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can. ❜ ❨1092❩ ❛ Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls. ❜ ❨1093❩ ❛ Tell me something: why are you fighting? ❜ ❨1094❩ ❛ I've come to realise only just now that I'm fighting because of pride. ❜ ❨1095❩ ❛ One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship. ❜ ❨1096❩ ❛ It's better than not knowing why you're fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ❜ ❨1097❩ ❛ Holy Mother of God! ❜ ❨1098❩ ❛ A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground. ❜ ❨1099❩ ❛ I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1100❩ ❛ Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. ❜ ❨1101❩ ❛ I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance. ❜ ❨1102❩ ❛ Get those bad thoughts out of your head. You're going to be happy. ❜ ❨1103❩ ❛ Children inherit their parents' madness. ❜ ❨1104❩ ❛ I'll turn to ashes in here but I won't give this miserable town the pleasure of seeing me weep. ❜ ❨1105❩ ❛ You would be good in a war. Where you put your eye, you put your bullet. ❜ ❨1106❩ ❛ Men demand much more than you think. ❜ ❨1107❩ ❛ Even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth. ❜ ❨1108❩ ❛ If we’re alone you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of. ❜ ❨1109❩ ❛ You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. ❜ ❨1110❩ ❛ We have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect. ❜ ❨1111❩ ❛ What worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death. ❜ ❨1112❩ ❛ What worries me is that you've ended up as bad as they are. ❜ ❨1113❩ ❛ It is characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites are satisfied. ❜ ❨1114❩ ❛ Dying is much more difficult than one imagines. ❜ ❨1115❩ ❛ If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself! ❜ ❨1116❩ ❛ We have still not had a death. ❜ ❨1117❩ ❛ How awful, the way time passes. ❜ ❨1118❩ ❛ You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house. ❜ ❨1119❩ ❛ I missed you every hour. ❜ ❨1120❩ ❛ You know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. ❜ ❨1121❩ ❛ I’ve risked my life for you. ❜ ❨1122❩ ❛ The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak. ❜ ❨1123❩ ❛ I love you, even the part of you that loved him. ❜ ❨1124❩ ❛ I’m sorry it took me so long to see you. ❜ ❨1125❩ ❛ I never really belonged anywhere. ❜ ❨1126❩ ❛ Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable.  ❜ ❨1127❩ ❛ Thanks for finding me. ❜ ❨1128❩ ❛ You and I are going to change the world. ❜ ❨1129❩ ❛ I’ve been waiting for you a long time. ❜ ❨1130❩ ❛ I’m not used to people trying to kill me. ❜ ❨1131❩ ❛ You’re shaking. ❜ ❨1132❩ ❛ There's nothing wrong with being a lizard. Unless you were born to be a hawk. ❜ ❨1133❩ ❛ Make me your villain. ❜ ❨1134❩ ❛ Just you and me. It’s always just you and me. ❜ ❨1135❩ ❛ Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every dumb thing I’ve said? ❜ ❨1136❩ ❛ Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal. ❜ ❨1137❩ ❛ Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark? ❜ ❨1138❩ ❛ Did you miss me when you were gone? ❜ ❨1139❩ ❛ What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men. ❜ ❨1140❩ ❛ You’re interfering with my plan. ❜ ❨1141❩ ❛ Too much champagne? ❜ ❨1142❩ ❛ I hope you don’t expect fairness from me. It isn’t one of my specialties. ❜ ❨1143❩ ❛ There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings. Faith. ❜ ❨1144❩ ❛ All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how. ❜ ❨1145❩ ❛ What is she? She’s everything, you dumb son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1146❩ ❛ She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned. ❜ ❨1147❩ ❛ I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ❜ ❨1148❩ ❛ It’s a great honor, to save a life. You saved many. ❜ ❨1149❩ ❛ In this world, there are things you can only do alone. ❜ ❨1150❩ ❛ What seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. ❜ ❨1151❩ ❛ If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. ❜ ❨1152❩ ❛ Why should you be interested in me? ❜ ❨1153❩ ❛ I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times. ❜ ❨1154❩ ❛ It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. ❜ ❨1155❩ ❛ I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel. ❜ ❨1156❩ ❛ The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish. ❜ ❨1157❩ ❛ The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.  ❜ ❨1158❩ ❛ So once you're dead there's just nothing? ❜ ❨1159❩ ❛ If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality. ❜ ❨1160❩ ❛ Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? ❜ ❨1161❩ ❛ Nobody can shake off their own shadow. ❜ ❨1162❩ ❛ The silence is so deep it hurts. ❜ ❨1163❩ ❛ I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. ❜ ❨1164❩ ❛ Killing time is one of my specialities. ❜ ❨1165❩ ❛ You can't fight it. ❜ ❨1166❩ ❛ Tell me something,—do you believe in reincarnation? ❜ ❨1167❩ ❛ I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it. ❜ ❨1168❩ ❛ I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner.  ❜ ❨1169❩ ❛ I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. ❜ ❨1170❩ ❛ I can't take it any more, I can't go on any more. ❜ ❨1171❩ ❛ You don't really have it together. ❜ ❨1172❩ ❛ Is it against the law for me to know it? ❜ ❨1173❩ ❛ I keep having the same dream. ❜ ❨1174❩ ❛ Are you asking because you really want an answer? ❜ ❨1175❩ ❛ I hate this! I don't want to be changed this way! ❜ ❨1176❩ ❛ No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas. ❜ ❨1177❩ ❛ Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop. ❜ ❨1178❩ ❛ If I didn’t have these memories inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. ❜ ❨1179❩ ❛ I don’t know what you’re feeling. I won’t even pretend. ❜ ❨1180❩ ❛ What are you doing here, honey? ❜ ❨1181❩ ❛ You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. ❜ ❨1182❩ ❛ You don't understand me. ❜ ❨1183❩ ❛ All wisdom ends in paradox. ❜ ❨1184❩ ❛ It is love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. ❜ ❨1185❩ ❛ I have lost my gift. ❜ ❨1186❩ ❛ Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. ❜ ❨1187❩ ❛ The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us. ❜ ❨1188❩ ❛ They're just memories now. It’s time to forget. ❜ ❨1189❩ ❛ The time has to be right and the heart willing. ❜ ❨1190❩ ❛ The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season. ❜ ❨1191❩ ❛ Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. ❜ ❨1192❩ ❛ Grief is natural, overcoming it is a matter of choice. ❜ ❨1193❩ ❛ I want out of that decorating scheme. ❜ ❨1194❩ ❛ With most people suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. ❜ ❨1195❩ ❛ You never get over it but you get where it doesn't bother you so much. ❜ ❨1196❩ ❛ Don't waste your time on life. ❜ ❨1197❩ ❛ I'm a teenager. I've got problems! ❜ ❨1198❩ ❛ Adolescents tend to seek love where they can find it. ❜ ❨1199❩ ❛ Obviously, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ❜ ❨1200❩ ❛ It was a mistake. ❜ ❨1201❩ ❛ It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever. ❜ ❨1202❩ ❛ Buffeted but not broken. ❜ ❨1203❩ ❛ Shit. What have kids got to be worried about now? ❜ ❨1204❩ ❛ If they want trouble, they should go live in Bangladesh. ❜ ❨1205❩ ❛ I can't wait until I get out of here. ❜ ❨1206❩ ❛ When she jumped she probably thought she’d fly. ❜ ❨1207❩ ❛ I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help. ❜ ❨1208❩ ❛ You're a stone fox. ❜ ❨1209❩ ❛ It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. ❜ ❨1210❩ ❛ Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. ❜ ❨1211❩ ❛ He broke my heart. You merely broke my life. ❜ ❨1212❩ ❛ I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. ❜ ❨1213❩ ❛ Words without experience are meaningless. ❜ ❨1214❩ ❛ I loved you. I was a monster, but I loved you. ❜ ❨1215❩ ❛ Come just as you are. ❜ ❨1216❩ ❛ If a violin string could ache, i would be that string. ❜ ❨1217❩ ❛ Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. ❜ ❨1218❩ ❛ What's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own. ❜ ❨1219❩ ❛ Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me. ❜ ❨1220❩ ❛ You took advantage of my disadvantage. ❜ ❨1221❩ ❛ I walk in a maze I cannot get out of. ❜ ❨1222❩ ❛ Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ❜ ❨1223❩ ❛ Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me. ❜ ❨1224❩ ❛ There is no harm in smiling. ❜ ❨1225❩ ❛ There is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere. ❜ ❨1226❩ ❛ There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. ❜ ❨1227❩ ❛ I am so tired of being cynical. ❜ ❨1228❩ ❛ Come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me. ❜ ❨1229❩ ❛ This is the only immortality that you and I may share. ❜ ❨1230❩ ❛ I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ❜ ❨1231❩ ❛ I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! ❜ ❨1232❩ ❛ Years of secret suffering has taught me superhuman self-control. ❜ ❨1233❩ ❛ Solitude is corrupting me. I need company and care. ❜ ❨1234❩ ❛ I've missed you terribly. ❜ ❨1235❩ ❛ I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. ❜ ❨1236❩ ❛ It doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. ❜ ❨1237❩ ❛ What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? ❜ ❨1238❩ ❛ Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. ❜ ❨1239❩ ❛ The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. ❜ ❨1240❩ ❛ Tell me, have you ever thought of killing me? ❜ ❨1241❩ ❛ I can not believe you are the same human being. ❜ ❨1242❩ ❛ Just how urgent is it? ❜ ❨1243❩ ❛ It is time for you to be going. ❜ ❨1244❩ ❛ How is it you know something like that? ❜ ❨1245❩ ❛ I don’t mind. Your mess is my mess. ❜ ❨1246❩ ❛ Everybody has one thing they do not want to lose. ❜ ❨1247❩ ❛ I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up for me. ❜ ❨1248❩ ❛ Nothing I’ve tried to do by myself has ever come off. ❜ ❨1249❩ ❛ I am not catching you in the middle of anything important, am I? ❜ ❨1250❩ ❛ Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. ❜ ❨1251❩ ❛ My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. ❜ ❨1252❩ ❛ To get irritated is to lose our way in life. ❜ ❨1253❩ ❛ A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. ❜ ❨1254❩ ❛ I don't really know if it's the right thing to do. ❜ ❨1255❩ ❛ Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? ❜ ❨1256❩ ❛ Most of everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. ❜ ❨1257❩ ❛ Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. ❜ ❨1258❩ ❛ You’re loads better than you think you are. ❜ ❨1259❩ ❛ You’re only half-living, the other half is still untapped somewhere. ❜ ❨1260❩ ❛ The song is over. But the melody lingers on. ❜ ❨1261❩ ❛ You are extraordinary. ❜ ❨1262❩ ❛ We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. ❜ ❨1263❩ ❛ It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. ❜ ❨1264❩ ❛ I’m forever realising things too late. ❜ ❨1265❩ ❛ I’m not complaining when I say my life is boring. ❜ ❨1266❩ ❛ Weakness is something that rots in the body. ❜ ❨1267❩ ❛ Coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them. ❜ ❨1268❩ ❛ You can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? ❜ ❨1269❩ ❛ A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat. ❜ ❨1270❩ ❛ So, kill me. Tell the others I attacked you so you killed me. ❜ ❨1271❩ ❛ Should never have come here. ❜ ❨1272❩ ❛ Hard to guess my tastes. ❜ ❨1273❩ ❛ Can’t it wait until the morning? ❜ ❨1274❩ ❛ You’ll find temper tantrums won’t help you here. ❜ ❨1275❩ ❛ It must have taken courage to return. ❜ ❨1276❩ ❛ It all sounds grimly dystopian. ❜ ❨1277❩ ❛ I am not afraid of you! ❜ ❨1278❩ ❛ All this could be avoided! ❜ ❨1279❩ ❛ You consider me a murderer? ❜ ❨1280❩ ❛ Gross way to die. ❜ ❨1281❩ ❛ What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. ❜ ❨1282❩ ❛ My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops? ❜ ❨1283❩ ❛ Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. ❜ ❨1284❩ ❛ I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. ❜ ❨1285❩ ❛ You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human. ❜ ❨1286❩ ❛ Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ❜ ❨1287❩ ❛ Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ❜ ❨1288❩ ❛ Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. ❜ ❨1289❩ ❛ Dreams are all I have ever truly owned. ❜ ❨1290❩ ❛ Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. ❜ ❨1291❩ ❛ I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. ❜ ❨1292❩ ❛ By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ❜ ❨1293❩ ❛ The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. ❜ ❨1294❩ ❛ Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right. ❜ ❨1295❩ ❛ The weak are meat the strong do eat. ❜ ❨1296❩ ❛ Do whatever you can't not do. ❜ ❨1297❩ ❛ What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. ❜ ❨1298❩ ❛ I remain thankful to God for all his mercies. ❜ ❨1299❩ ❛ You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power. ❜ ❨1300❩ ❛ Power. The ability to determine another man's luck. ❜ ❨1301❩ ❛ Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong. ❜ ❨1302❩ ❛ Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. ❜ ❨1303❩ ❛ Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions? ❜ ❨1304❩ ❛ You can’t lie to your soul. ❜ ❨1305❩ ❛ Why would I want to do a thing like that? ❜ ❨1306❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. ❜ ❨1307❩ ❛ Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨1308❩ ❛ I’m not running away, I’m moving on. ❜ ❨1309❩ ❛ The reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨1310❩ ❛ Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. ❜ ❨1311❩ ❛ Love does not exist. ❜ ❨1312❩ ❛ Fuck that ‘regrets’ bullshit. ❜ ❨1313❩ ❛ How does it make you feel? ❜ ❨1314❩ ❛ It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ❜ ❨1315❩ ❛ Choose us. Choose life. ❜ ❨1316❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨1317❩ ❛ I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. ❜ ❨1318❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. ❜ ❨1319❩ ❛ You don’t have to run away.  ❜ ❨1320❩ ❛ I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn’t. ❜ ❨1321❩ ❛ I’m not going to get crushed. ❜ ❨1322❩ ❛ I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination. ❜ ❨1323❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty. ❜ ❨1324❩ ❛ You’re a mess. ❜ ❨1325❩ ❛ I know that it’s never left you alone. ❜ ❨1326❩ ❛ Are you asking me or telling me? ❜ ❨1327❩ ❛ You just get used to all the shit. ❜ ❨1328❩ ❛ You can’t afford a conscience in this life. ❜ ❨1329❩ ❛ None of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy. ❜ ❨1330❩ ❛ Doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them. ❜ ❨1331❩ ❛ What was that? ❜ ❨1332❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨1333❩ ❛ You can’t love yourself if you want to hurt things like that. ❜ ❨1334❩ ❛ What happens when people open their hearts? ❜ ❨1335❩ ❛ Nobody likes being alone that much. ❜ ❨1336❩ ❛ I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.” ❨1337❩ ❛ Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. ❜ ❨1338❩ ❛ You need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. ❜ ❨1339❩ ❛ I want you always to remember me. ❜ ❨1340❩ ❛ Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. ❜ ❨1341❩ ❛ What stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. ❜ ❨1342❩ ❛ All I want in this world is you. ❜ ❨1343❩ ❛ I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. ❜ ❨1344❩ ❛ No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. ❜ ❨1345❩ ❛ What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. ❜ ❨1346❩ ❛ If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. ❜ ❨1347❩ ❛ I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. ❜ ❨1348❩ ❛ People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. ❜ ❨1349❩ ❛ Stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. ❜ ❨1350❩ ❛ When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble. ❜ ❨1351❩ ❛ When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. ❜ ❨1352❩ ❛ If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. ❜ ❨1353❩ ❛ Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven’t answered me. ❜ ❨1354❩ ❛ People are strange when you’re a stranger. ❜ ❨1355❩ ❛ The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. ❜ ❨1356❩ ❛ You don’t get it, do you? ❜ ❨1357❩ ❛ I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you ❨1358❩ realise. ❜ ❨1359❩ ❛ At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. ❜ ❨1360❩ ❛ All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. ❜ ❨1361❩ ❛ I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die. ❜ ❨1362❩ ❛ So I’m not crazy after all! ❜ ❨1363❩ ❛ I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. ❜ ❨1364❩ ❛ Will you wait for me forever? ❜ ❨1365❩ ❛ I don’t want our relationship to end like this. ❜ ❨1366❩ ❛ When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. ❜ ❨1367❩ ❛ It hurts not being able to see you. ❜ ❨1368❩ ❛ I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. ❜ ❨1369❩ ❛ The world is an inherently unfair place. ❜ ❨1370❩ ❛ Life frightens me sometimes. I don’t happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. ❜ ❨1371❩ ❛ I’m a real bargain, don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end up going somewhere else. ❜ ❨1372❩ ❛ We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. ❜ ❨1373❩ ❛ Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don’t know a soul? ❜ ❨1374❩ ❛ You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ❜ ❨1375❩ ❛ He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ❜ ❨1376❩ ❛ If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. ❜ ❨1377❩ ❛ We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. ❜ ❨1378❩ ❛ Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ❜ ❨1379❩ ❛ Power is not a means; it is an end. ❜ ❨1380❩ ❛ They are not interested in the good of others; they are interested solely in power, pure power. ❜ ❨1381❩ ❛ Now you begin to understand me. ❜ ❨1382❩ ❛ In the face of pain there are no heroes. ❜ ❨1383❩ ❛ Big Brother is watching you. ❜ ❨1384❩ ❛ Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. ❜ ❨1385❩ ❛ It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. ❜ ❨1386❩ ❛ The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. ❜ ❨1387❩ ❛ Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind. ❜ ❨1388❩ ❛ Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. ❜ ❨1389❩ ❛ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them. ❜ ❨1390❩ ❛ How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? ❜ ❨1391❩ ❛ You must try harder. ❜ ❨1392❩ ❛ Confession is not betrayal. ❜ ❨1393❩ ❛ What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. ❜ ❨1394❩ ❛ If they could make me stop loving you —- that would be the real betrayal. ❜ ❨1395❩ ❛ Of pain you can wish only one thing: that it should stop. ❜ ❨1396❩ ❛ To die hating them, that will be freedom. ❜ ❨1397❩ ❛ No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. ❜ ❨1398❩ ❛ What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself? ❜ ❨1399❩ ❛ To keep them in control is not difficult. ❜ ❨1400❩ ❛ So long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. ❜ ❨1401❩ ❛ The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. ❜ ❨1402❩ ❛ The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. ❜ ❨1403❩ ❛ Stupidity is as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ❜ ❨1404❩ ❛ I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ❜ ❨1405❩ ❛ The past is dead, the future is unimaginable. ❜ ❨1406❩ ❛ You know the answer already. Everyone knows it. ❜ ❨1407❩ ❛ You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ❜ ❨1408❩ ❛ It is not easy to become sane. ❜ ❨1409❩ ❛ No emotion is pure anymore, because everything is mixed up with fear and hatred. ❜ ❨1410❩ ❛ They say that time heals all things —- they say you can always forget. ❜ ❨1411❩ ❛ The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. ❜ ❨1412❩ ❛ I sold you and you sold me. ❜ ❨1413❩ ❛ You do not exist. ❜ ❨1414❩ ❛ How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. ❜ ❨1415❩ ❛ Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? ❜ ❨1416❩ ❛ Everything else we shall destroy – everything. ❜ ❨1417❩ ❛ Two and two makes five. ❜ ❨1418❩ ❛ Facts, at any rate, can not be kept hidden. ❜ ❨1419❩ ❛ The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. ❜ ❨1420❩ ❛ So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing. ❜ ❨1421❩ ❛ If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ❜ ❨1422❩ ❛ The lie became the truth. ❜ ❨1423❩ ❛ It is like swimming against a current that sweeps you backwards however hard you struggle. ❜ ❨1424❩ ❛ Turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. ❜ ❨1425❩ ❛ It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. ❜ ❨1426❩ ❛ I don’t want to die without any scars. ❜ ❨1427❩ ❛ This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time. ❜ ❨1428❩ ❛ You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. ❜ ❨1429❩ ❛ You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. ❜ ❨1430❩ ❛ You are not special. ❜ ❨1431❩ ❛ You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. ❜ ❨1432❩ ❛ The things you used to own, now they own you. ❜ ❨1433❩ ❛ Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. ❜ ❨1434❩ ❛ Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ❜ ❨1435❩ ❛ Only after disaster can we be resurrected. ❜ ❨1436❩ ❛ Everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ❜ ❨1437❩ ❛ We’ve all been raised believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. ❜ ❨1438❩ ❛ Don’t you have other things to do? ❜ ❨1439❩ ❛ Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. ❜ ❨1440❩ ❛ You have been warned. ❜ ❨1441❩ ❛ If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t. ❜ ❨1442❩ ❛ It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ❜ ❨1443❩ ❛ If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? ❜ ❨1444❩ ❛ Why did I cause so much pain? ❜ ❨1445❩ ❛ The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. ❜ ❨1446❩ ❛ Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. ❜ ❨1447❩ ❛ May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. ❜ ❨1448❩ ❛ Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. ❜ ❨1449❩ ❛ We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. ❜ ❨1450❩ ❛ The girl is infectious human waste. ❜ ❨1451❩ ❛ I want to destroy everything beautiful I’ll never have. ❜ ❨1452❩ ❛ On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❜ ❨1453❩ ❛ If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ❜ ❨1454❩ ❛ It is like you’re never really awake; but you’re never really asleep. ❜ ❨1455❩ ❛ Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. ❜ ❨1456❩ ❛ A moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. ❜ ❨1457❩ ❛ The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. ❜ ❨1458❩ ❛ You have to give up! ❜ ❨1459❩ ❛ Reject the basic assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions. ❜ ❨1460❩ ❛ Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. ❜ ❨1461❩ ❛ You have to realise that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless. ❜ ❨1462❩ ❛ A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. ❜ ❨1463❩ ❛ Lies make us evil. ❜ ❨1464❩ ❛ If you died right now, how would you feel about your life? ❜ ❨1465❩ ❛ You always kill the one you love. ❜ ❨1466❩ ❛ Maybe we should always assume the worst. ❜ ❨1467❩ ❛ Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. ❜ ❨1468❩ ❛ Which is worse? Hell or nothing? ❜ ❨1469❩ ❛ A minute of perfection is worth the effort. ❜ ❨1470❩ ❛ You’re going to die, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. ❜ ❨1471❩ ❛ Lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. ❜ ❨1472❩ ❛ I don’t give a shit. I have a gun. ❜ ❨1473❩ ❛ I know who you are. I know where you live. ❜ ❨1474❩ ❛ Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life. ❜ ❨1475❩ ❛ My philosophy of life is that I can die at any moment. And the tragedy of my life is that I do not. ❜ ❨1476❩ ❛ Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. ❜ ❨1477❩ ❛ There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love. ❜ ❨1478❩ ❛ We just had a near-life experience. ❜ ❨1479❩ ❛ If people think you are dying, they give you their full attention. They listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. ❜ ❨1480❩ ❛ I am nothing, and not even that. ❜ ❨1481❩ ❛ This isn’t really death. —- We’ll be legends. We won’t grow old. ❜ ❨1482❩ ❛ Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go. ❜ ❨1483❩ ❛ The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object. ❜ ❨1484❩ ❛ Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. ❜ ❨1485❩ ❛ I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one. ❜ ❨1486❩ ❛ Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. ❜ ❨1487❩ ❛ Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. ❜ ❨1488❩ ❛ A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger. ❜ ❨1489❩ ❛ A leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. ❜ ❨1490❩ ❛ In the end, we are alone. ❜ ❨1491❩ ❛ It is like a piece of my soul is lost, empty. ❜ ❨1492❩ ❛ If my life on Earth must end, let it end with a promise. Let it end with hope. ❜ ❨1493❩ ❛ Sorry? Sorry isn't enough. ❜ ❨1494❩ ❛ Every single thing I ever loved is beyond my reach now. Everything I ever wanted. Everything I ever was. ❜ ❨1495❩ ❛ Will you stay with me? ❜ ❨1496❩ ❛ A leader doesn't make pawns - he makes people. ❜ ❨1497❩ ❛ Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. ❜ ❨1498❩ ❛ It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. ❜ ❨1499❩ ❛ There is nothing between us but rain. There is nothing between us at all. ❜ ❨1500❩ ❛ I like a little chaos. ❜

[imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl]

I Need You

A/N: This was found on Pinterest, so if you're the owner, let me know so I can give you the credits.

Pairing: Daryl Dixon X Reader

Word count: 2 K

Requested by anons: 1- I'm like super in love with a certain Daryl Dixon and I was wondering if you could write about them getting into a big argument and they like avoid eachother for a while (super angsty if you care lol) and then Carol and Rick just kinda make yall talk and it ends fluffy? 2 - Can i request a daryl x reader where the reader’s been with the group since atlanta, maybe set during when they’re at the prison?? daryl realizes he has a crush on the reader and just p a n i c s ? and just really sweet fluff????

Summary: After you almost get bit, Daryl loses his mind and lashes out on you. Tired of the constant arguments, the group finds a way to out you two together to try and fix things up.

{The Walking Dead Masterlist}

×

“Yer almost got bit!” Daryl shouts, voice echoing through the prison. “Yer too damn stubborn, yer not goin’ on runs anymore.” He has his back at you as you follow him, struggling to keep his pace.

“I had everything under control.” You complain, ignoring Carol's questioning stare.

You, Daryl, and Maggie went on a run earlier today. Not too far, just to get some more formula for Judith. A walker fell from the roof, and it happened to be on a specific place Daryl told you not to go. The thing's teeth got a little too close to your arm, and Daryl shot an arrow through its head.

“Ya sure did!” He stops, turning around and pointing a finger at you. “If I weren't near ya, I'd be carryin’ ya back here with a freakin’ bite.” His voice gets louder, and you never saw Daryl so... Angry. So pissed. He's scaring you. “Or would ya have me cut her damn arm off? How does that sound?”

“Stop yelling at me!” You burst out, giving his chest a push.

“I'll stop yellin’ when ya understand how stupid and dangerous that was!” He steps forward, towering over you and you never felt so small.

“We needed those antibiotics!”

“Well, I freakin’ need ya. I need ya alive! Alive and well and breathin’.” Daryl shouts, right at your face. But the moment the words come out, he stops, stepping back. He seems confused, taken aback by something. “Screw that, I need a break from savin’ yer ass.” And then, he leaves, walking fast.

Huffing, you turn around, going to your cell.

You take the longest shower you can, washing the sweat and all the disgusting things the dead left on your skin. But most of the time, you were already done, dressed, and dried. You just wanted to be away from everyone. But eventually, you have to walk out. And of course, Carol finds you on your way back to your cell.

“(Y/N), I–”

“Daryl is such an asshole.” You say cutting her off and dropping on bed. “Did you see that? Did you see how he yelled at me? As if he has the right to do so.” Getting back up you pace around.

“I just think–”

“You know what? He can go to hell.” Throwing both hands in the air, you complain. “He and his crossbow, and-and his super hot stare and the stupid angel wings vest. And the bike too. All it. Straight to hell!”

“Aren't you just–”

“Uhg! Damn it.” Crossing your arms, you sigh. “Did you hear him forbidding me to go on runs?” With your hands now on your hips, you stare at Carol. “As if! Who the hell does he think he is? My boyfriend? To hell with him.”

“Will you let me talk?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Shrugging your shoulders, you nod.

But she doesn't say anything, she just takes a deep breath and shakes her head lightly. “Look, why don't you calm down first, and then we talk.” Carol gestured at the bed and you sit down, sighing. “Good... Try to relax and deal with it after a good night's sleep.”

“I could sleep a thousand years and I'd still be mad at Daryl.” You mutter as she leaves, lying on your back with your eyes closed.

You don't know where all this anger comes from, but it's always there, waiting to flow out. You do care about him, maybe too much, but it doesn't mean he gets to yell and boss you around like that. “Asshole!” You shout one last time, arms crossing as you drown in anger.

“I saw it,” Daryl exclaims, pacing around the guard tower, breathing and talking fast. “I saw her dyin’. I saw that thing bitin’ her, tearin’ her flesh.”

“She's fine, Daryl. You don't have to keep thinking about it.” Rick tries to calm him down, both hands raised at the archer.

“No, ya don't understand.” It's useless though. Daryl is a mess. He got into the shower as soon as (Y/N) got out, rubbing the walker's blood out of his skin. But after that, he went straight to Rick because he needs to vent. He needs to yell and understand why he feels so damn scared.

Why he feels like a switch was turned on, lighting up something that was there all along, but only now was brought to light.

Losing anyone from his group, from his family would hurt bad.

But he just found out that losing her would be far worse.

“I her dyin’, man.” He slows down, both hands on his head. “I saw her dyin’ and–”

“You love her.”

“What the hell, Rick?” He snaps, a hand violently gesturing at his friend.

“You might not want to admit it, but it's true. You know it.” Rick nods, a hand casually resenting on his holster. “We all know it since Atlanta. She loves you too.”

Daryl grunts, turning his back at Rick. “Yer crazy. And so is she.”

“You should sit and talk like civilized people.”

“I ain't gonna talk to her. Crazy chick.” He mutters, grabbing his crossbow a bit tighter. “She ain't goin’ on runs anymore. At least not without me.”

“Daryl–”

“Gotta go.” The archer cuts him off, leaving the guard tower at a fast pace.

He didn't like the ideas Rick put in his head.

“Rick wants to make a room for Carl and Judith on the second floor,” Carol says as you climb the stairs next to her. “So we're cleaning up the cells.”

“Alright.” You don't really want to help. Not today at least. The nap you took didn't help much with the last issue, and you're considering going out tomorrow, just to clear your head a bit. “What do you need me to do?”

“We're just setting things up.”

“Mmm.” You mutter, running a hand through your hair as you follow her pace. Carol takes you to the very back of the corridor, to a pretty isolated cell. “You gonna put the kids here? This cell sucks. It's too–” You stop talking when you see Daryl inside, eyes-rolling. “Look, I won't help if he helps.” It sounds childish, but you don't care. You're far too pissed at the man to be near him.

“Look, I don't care if you guys argued.” Rick walks over you, friendly touching your arm. “You two just have to get your shkt together.” And you're suddenly pushed, almost stumbling inside the cell.

“What the hell?” You shout, but the moment you move, Rick pulls the bars close locking you inside. “Rick, drop it. I'm not joking.” Holding the bars, you shoot him and Carol an angry stare. “Open up.”

“There are blankets and dinner will be brought to you,” Carol says, arms crossed. “We did that because it's the only way to force you guys to talk.”

“Yeah. You'll have the whole night to figure out whatever has you both always at each other's throat.” Rick adds, sliding the key into his pocket. “Have a nice time.”

And like that, both jerks leave, talking something you can't hear. Sighing, you lay your forehead on the cold metal bars, not wanting to look at your company for the night.

“Yer can take the bed.” He says after a while.

“Obviously.” You're quick to snap. “It's your fault we're here in the first place.”

“How's that?”

“If you didn't come back from the run making a hell of a show about something that didn't even happen, we wouldn't be locked up in here.” Turning around, with both hands on your hips, you stare at him.

“If ya had listened to me, ya wouldn't have–”

“And why in the hell do I have to listen to you, Dixon? I know my way out there as well as you do.”

“ ‘Cause I jus’ wanna keep ya safe.” He's yelling again, stepping forward.

“Stop acting like I mean anything to you!” With a finger on his face, you move closer to him. You wish you could look intimidating, but being so small, that's very difficult.

“Maybe ya do mean somethin’ ta’ me! How could ya know that if ya never ask!”

“Well, I–” The answer is cut short when your furious brain processes what he just said. Furrowing your eyebrows together, you shrug your shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“Nothin’.”

“Daryl, what do you mean?” Raising your voice again, you follow him as he moves further into the cell. “What would you answer if I ask?”

“I ain't gonna answer.”

“Daryl–”

“I ain't gonna answer!” He shouts again, turning around to look at you.

Taking a deep breath, you sit on the edge of the bed, folding a leg under you. “Do you hate me?”

“What?”

“Do you hate me, Daryl?” Your voice is lower now because you do want to know.

He remains silent for a while, those blue eyes locked on yours. “No.”

“Then why–”

“I can't lose ya.” He bursts out, eyes now looking at the floor. “At that moment back there, I... I saw it happenin’. I saw ya dyin’, and I... I can't lose ya. I can't see ya gettin’ hurt.”

His voice is so low you can barely hear it. You've never seen Daryl so... Scared. Vulnerable. “You can't protect me all the time, Daryl. Accidents happen.”

“I can. I can keep ya safe if ya listen to me.” You're about to protest when Daryl comes to sit next to you, eyes on the wall across the cell. “I know ya can survive out there. But my mind works in a thousand different ways ta’ get stuff done without anyone gettin’ hurt. I need ya ta’ trust me. Ta’ believe I can keep ya safe.”

“But I need you to believe me too. To believe I can do this.” Turning your body towards him, you friendly touches his arm. “Daryl, I... I like you... A lot. And I admire you, I trust you. You taught me so much and I need you to trust me. I promise I'll be more careful, but I need you to–”

“Don't go out there without me.” He suddenly says, voice heavy. “I trust ya. Yer brave and strong. But if ya go out there and I can't keep my eyes on ya... I'll lose my damn mind.”

“Alright.” Nodding, you sigh, smiling a little. “Just don't yell at me again, Daryl Dixon.”

“Yer almost died and I... Damn it, (Y/N), –”

“I like you too, Dixon.” Standing up to your feet, you smile, looking down at him. “You don't have to say if you don't want to, just... Let's get this over with. The world is a freaking mess and if you like me and I like you we should be together.” You can't believe you're saying this, after so long. But it feels good. You feel good, secure. “Just let me know what you want.”

“Ya.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.” He nods, blue eyes locked on yours.

“Alright.” Mirroring his head movement, you clear your throat, cheeks burning. After a few seconds of silence, you walk to the bars. “RICK! CAROL! Daryl and I are dating now, can we go?” You yell, and the low chattering downstairs goes silent.

“Would it be so bad ta' stay locked in here with me for a night?” Daryl asks, and you turn around, biting your lip to hold back a smile.

“Absolutely not.” Shrugging your shoulders, you slowly move to the bed, climbing on and lying down. “I'm actually sleepy and it's cold so it'll be nice to have someone to warm me up at night.”

“Don't push it.”

“I'm not.” Giggling, you feel as he lies down, close enough so his shoulder is touching your back. “Night, D. It was good to sort things out with you.”

“Good night, pretty girl.” He mutters and you smile, eyes closing and sleep easily overcoming you, thanks to the amazing feeling of having Daryl lying next to you.

[roger-that-cap]

all the flowers will bloom

hades!natasha x persephone!reader

summary: you would have never tried to leave your mother if you knew that bringing that pomegranate tree back to life was your ticket to the underworld. or, maybe you would have, because it turned out that hades was quite the opposite of the evil goddess that you had been drilled to know.

warnings: my own take on greek mythology (apologies to greek people who may possibly see this), usage of both persephone and y/n, angry gods, this is a short series, angst and fluff!!

word count: 4.2k

this is part one!!

please guys i’m so excited for this one, already have so much written and planned!!

You were born from your mother thousands of years ago without so much as a whimper, and when you arrived after a particularly peaceful and short labor,, flowers bloomed for miles. You grew quickly, and you had gained the power of life within everything that grew. Your domain was everything that the light touched and below in the soil, and soon, you were the young goddess of nature and growth. If anyone wanted to find you, they could surely look at the trail of bright flowers that you left with every step of your feet.

The name you were born with was Persephone. But just as the humans wanted to make names for themselves, you wanted one of your own, too. One that was not overshadowed by your mother being Demeter, one of the twelve Olympian Gods, and the ever kind yet harsh Goddess of the Harvest. And so, you changed your name, like many of the others much older than you had done, and all but your mother and the nymphs that she charged to take care of you called you Y/N.

“Lady Persephone,” a soft voice called from behind you as you dipped your toes into your favorite pond, and you sighed when you looked over your shoulder even after recognizing the familiar voice. “Your mother wants you home soon.”

You knew that your mother did. She always wanted you home, away from the outside world- where you truly belonged. She didn’t want you anywhere that she couldn't walk twenty steps to get to you, despite you being two thousand years old. Your mother’s idea of a good day was when you stayed inside, and it wasn’t fair. When you could convince her to let go of your leash just a little, she sent nymphs to watch you, girls you weren’t even close to. They were so focused on not angering your mother that they hardly cared about what you thought. But deep down, you understood. Your mother’s hand was just as gentle as it was harsh, and like the harvest she watched over, she only gave you what you gave her to work with. If you produced her mind with the equivalent of dry soil and broken land, she would be unruly, fickle, quick to fall apart in frustration. If you watered her and gave her the amount of sunlight she needed, she would bless you. She had been that way since the dawn of her time.

“I don’t feel like returning, I’ve only just gotten here.” You weren’t looking at them, but you could practically feel the way that they were eyeing each other, getting more nervous with every passing second. You felt the bottom of the shallow part of the lake that you were in with your foot, and you smiled at the sound of silence, knowing that it would only last for a few minutes.

“Your mother will be quite angry if something happens to you, my lady.”

“Nothing is going to happen for that reason,” you sighed, and when you got a few moments of silence, you knew that they knew you were right.

You walked through life practically fearlessly. From birth, you were deeply connected to every animal . You had no reason to fear even the most vicious bear or boar, and you could not die from poisonous plants of any kind. No minor or major god who knew your mother would even dare come close to you with any ill intent, and humans never came where you liked to be. You were probably the safest god of them all, besides Zeus himself.

“Please don't make me return to that house so early,” you pleaded softly, making sure to not sound too whiny. “I need fresh air. I need to feel grass under my feet. How am I supposed to be the goddess of vegetation if I cannot even see the vegetation?”

If you had been paying more attention, you would have felt the way that the grass started to sway and the whispers of plants all around you. And you surely would have felt the way that part of the ground opened up to reveal your mother, who had heard your entire small speech. “My, what a talker you are.”

You turned around to face her, and she was already giving you a look before she started to talk to you yet again. “I have already told you to not guilt these kind nymphs into doing you any favors. You’re lucky that they still want anything to do with you, you trouble maker.”

“It’s not my fault that you don’t trust me.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I don’t trust men,” she said, her voice hushed. “They are cruel, and they are disgusting. And you are not to be alone when they could be around.”

“There are none here.”

“You wouldn’t know until it’s too late,” she reasoned, and she held a hand out for you. You grimaced when she pulled your legs out of the water and dismissed the nymphs kindly, and they jumped into the water themselves and disappeared. “I cannot trust many with you, my flower. Do not be rude to the very few that I do.”

You scowled as she turned her back, a face that you had never quite grown the courage to make while she was still watching you. You could rattle off many people that your mother had scared away and told you to stay far away from, and that included humans, most men, and a few of the gods that she didn’t trust to not attempt to take you away.

That was her biggest fear, though she never said it explicitly. It was clear that her fierce protectiveness came from her terror. Young girls were always at risk by being taken, by gods and men alike who had no regard for the opinion or feelings of women. It seemed that every hundred years or so, a huge war would break out on earth, and typically, it was because one man’s wife became another’s hostage. And between gods… it was not unheard of for them to take young goddesses and make them bear heirs. None of the ones that you were close with ever did anything like that, but that didn’t make the threat less real. Your mother made sure that you knew of that.

“Don’t speak to Hermes alone,” your mother would say, her voice half full of fondness. “He means well most of the time, but he is capable of fast talking you into selling your time and your soul.” And then there was another string of advice, such as, “ Never go too far out in the sea. Poseidon is moody, and he may not spare you if you start to drown. It takes a village to anger him, but go out of your way to not push Zeus. He is the mightiest of all, and if he wishes to strike you down, he will.” And with every single harsh word about them, she would always say that she doubted that anyone would truly ever wish harm towards you, the youngest of the young gods, the harmless little Goddess of Growth.

Except for Hades.

“She is pure evil,” your mom had hissed out, and you remembered flinching back at how angered she suddenly was by just the thought of the ancient goddess, and you knew from stories that the nymphs used to tell you that your mother and Hades went way back. And though you didn’t know the full story, you certainly understood that they knew each other not in the best of ways.

“She is capable of murdering anything with even a sliver of life in it, and she reigns over the dead. Anyone who is condemned to have such a gloomy job for all of eternity must be evil, and that she is. If you ever see her, or ever start to feel the choking feeling of death in the air and are not with me, you are to run until you cannot run anymore, do you understand me?” She had made you nod and tell her that you understood verbally, and still, even as days passed, the tension never left her body.

Days later, while nursing a flower as slowly as possible from its bud, you called for her. “Mother,” she turned her head and smiled when she saw what you were doing, and then she responded softly, urging you to continue. “What really happened between you and the Goddess of the Dead?” Her smile dropped instantly.

You never really got the full story about what happened.

§§

You had seen what was happening to you happen to others hundreds of times, mostly humans. Your favorite humans were the ones just like you, young women with parents who were worried sick about everything. And soon, you realized a pattern. Every single one of those children had rebelled in ways, some more drastic than others. It took you two thousand years and a few extra nights for you to realize that it was your turn. You were going to sneak out from right under your mother’s nose, and you were going to be back before the morning. Unless, of course, you found something worth staying for. Something worth risking the wrath of your mother for.

It took weeks for her to leave you alone, even if it was for a second. And for that one instance while she wasn’t breathing down your throat, you shot off like an arrow, out of her sight before she even realized that you had been brave enough to run. You hadn’t ever had to run, but it felt exhilarating. You could feel the wind against your skin and the petals of each flower lovingly brushing against your legs. It felt more freeing than growing wildflowers by your cabin, under the watchful eye of an Olympian and her guard dogs that came in the beautiful form of nymphs.

You had never felt so good in your entire two thousand years.

Feeling life had always been something you could do, and you could feel it even more now that you were running, breathing in through your nose and out of your mouth like you had seen soldiers do. With every breath that expanded your lungs, you felt like you could feel trees swaying, or hear leaves singing to you. It grew more addicting, and before you even knew it, you were running until you didn’t recognize where you were. You slowed down with a smile on your face, chuckling to yourself when you thought about how furious your mother was going to be. And then you felt it.

Something to the left of you was terribly, terrifyingly wrong. The life in the area was thriving, but something, a cave it seemed, was crawling with the scary and breathtaking feeling of death. You had felt it before, while discovering lifeless dear or helping your mother bless crops that humans thought had no hope. But you had never felt death on the scale that you were in that moment, and even though the feeling was making you more and more sick by the second, you couldn’t help but approach the cave, the darkest thing in your vision while everything else had enough colors to satisfy your eyes for the rest of your life.

You didn't know what was in the cave. It could have been a dead person for all you knew, but your gift was more or less affecting the cycle of life. You could help. And help, you would. So, you trudged towards the cave and stepped in, your hand covering your throat once you felt the constricting feeling come back even stronger than before. And then, in the dim light, you saw it.

It was a tree, one so dead that it was nearly unrecognizable as one. It had shrunk into itself, almost to the size of a bush, and you could see that the fruits on it had shriveled up, and like the rest of the tree, lost all color. You frowned and uncovered your throat, stepping forward as you watched the dry thing in pity. You reached out for it, bottom lip jutting out as you tried to understand what on earth had happened for it to appear like that. Before you could even ask yourself why you did it, you reached forward and touched the thing with your hand, and like it had known you all along, it started to slowly grow.

It took you a few long minutes to grow it to a point where you recognized the tree, and saw that it was growing pomegranates. The fruit grew redder by the second, and the feeling of death and decay was leaving, but for some reason, traces of it still lingered below, and you figured that it was in the soil. You grinned as you nursed the tree back to life, and the inside of the cave seemed to be just a little brighter.

“I wonder how long you’ve been left here to rot,” you murmured to yourself, your fingers itching to grab one dark purple pomegranate and bite into it, but you knew better. You had just brought it back to life, and eating a part of it would have been cruel. “I wonder if you were even prettier back before-” the ground beneath you made an odd noise, like the earth was taking its first shaky breath, and you braced yourself against the wall of the cave. You gasped when it came back even stronger, and a short scream left your throat when you felt the ground open up beneath you and swallow you whole.

§§

You must have screamed the whole way down, because when you landed harshly on your back, you heard echoes of yourself. You turned and coughed, shaking your head to get rid of the stars that flooded your vision. And then, the second your airways opened, they tightened again, the feeling of death so strong that you thought that you were well on your own way.

You coughed again and clawed at your throat, and then turned on your side as you fought for even just a sliver of breath, and then even with your blurry vision, you saw something huge and dark barreling your way.

“What’s she doing here?” You couldn’t answer. You hardly even knew if they were talking about you. You were still losing it on the ground, gripping at your torn dress and clawing at your throat like that would make it open up.

“She's not human.”

“Wait, wait, she’s not even dead!”

Somehow, the feeling of dread and darkness got even darker, and your eyes rolled to the back of your head at the overwhelming feeling of death surrounding you like a heavy blanket. “What is all the commotion about?”

Wherever you were grew silent. You heard people scrambling away, leaving you alone with the newcomer. The owner of the voice commanded everything, and you heard the distinct sound of heeled feet coming your way, clicking against stone. And then, right before you lost consciousness, there was a feather-light touch on your throat, right where you felt it was constricting the most, and then you felt the weight on your chest lift off all at once.

You barely got in three breaths before someone shook you, and you blinked rapidly before turning your head towards whoever was grabbing you so boldly. Your eyes focused, and then you almost lost your breath all over again.

You had no time to ogle over the obviously powerful woman and the way she looked. Even if you had time, it would have been ruined by the way she was scowling at you like you were the bane of her existence. “How did you get here?”

You took in a choppy breath. “I don't know. I don’t know where I am.” You looked away from the angry woman and saw your surroundings, and immediately, your heart dropped to your toes.

It was gray. Gloomy. Without any sign of life, not even little buds of grass. There was no color besides a lazy river that was the lightest blue you had ever seen, and it added barely anything to the sight in front of you. The entire place seemed to be made of rock, like one big cave, and the feeling you were getting made you sick. You could breathe again, but something was right. Wherever you were, you were absolutely not supposed to be there.

The woman’s eyes were still narrowed on you, but you didn’t miss the way that her face lit up in the slightest of ways, and then rested at a look of understanding. She let go of you. “You fixed my tree, didn’t you?”

“Your tree?” You repeated, shaking your head and hiding the trembling of your hands by playing with the hem of your dress, something that your mother said that you should never do. It dawned on you seconds later, and you frowned. “The pomegranate tree? It was yours?”

“Of course it’s mine. How were you unaware?”

Before you could let yourself get offended by the woman’s harshness, you crossed your arms for a different reason. “How dare you let something die like that? You left it to rot, I could feel the death from miles away,” you exaggerated, but it still didn’t move the woman. “If you plant something and call it yours, it’s your responsibility to take care of it, not to let it die.”

“My plants never grow, young god.”

You scoffed, even though your mother would be embarrassed that you made the sound with such confidence. “Young god?” You straightened your posture even as your fear grew, and the stranger seemed to grow more and more amused by you. “We’ve never met. It’s bold of you to assume my age.”

“I’ve met all the Olympians, so tyou can’t be one of them, and you’re no demigod, either,” she said, and your heart clenched at the fact. You knew no one who had met all twelve of the major gods that wasn’t one. The woman was certainly a god, it was as obvious as anything in the world, but you had no idea of what. “And you glow like the morning sun. You’re a young god.”

“Maybe so,” you said softly. “But I request that you take care of the things you decide to create.”

“Most people don’t get brave enough to request things from me,” she mused, and then her crossed arms went to her side. “Do you lack the skills to look around you and infer?”

“I suppose I do today,” you shrugged, and she gave a light smirk, almost like you were her entertainment for the day. You could hear your mother’s voice in your head though, telling you to run and that this woman was no good, no matter how at ease she seemed in the moment. In fact, the closer she got to you and the longer she stood there, the more you felt death swirling in the air and trying to pierce through some sort of protection and finish you off for good.

“You’re in the Underworld, young god.” Your breath was stolen right out of your chest, and you could barely see the faint look of triumph on her face. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know what that tree was,” she said, and for some reason, her voice seemed to tease you more than reprimand you.

You knew vaguely of what it meant. Now that you knew it was the tree, the one tree on all heaven and earth that you had no business touching, you knew who it belonged to, and what it did. It belonged to the woman before you, the god whose presence was making you more and more terrified by the second. Now, you knew exactly who she was. “You?” You sputtered, and she lifted a perfect brow. “You’re Hades?”

You don’t know what you expected. Maybe a woman dressed in all back wit long, dark hair, and a sickly smile. Maybe you expected for her to look as terrifying as the thought of death was. You expected some one who looked much more terrifying than the red headed woman before you, even though she was without a doubt intimidating. 

“I prefer another name, but that will do from you,” she said, and your jaw dropped. “And you saved my tree.” You knew you had, but the consequences of the far ff tale that you had never imagined would apply to you were running around in your head. You were kicking yourself for being drawn to the tree in the first place, and for your morbid curiosity and the way that you ran straight out of your mother’s suffocating but protecting arms. “Do you know what that means, young god?”

Your voice was shaky, almost not even there when you muttered the word “yes” and stared off into the distance, cursing yourself for not listening to what your mother had told you ever since you could remember.

“I hope you have enough strength for the entire garden, young god.” 

You were bound to Hades and her realm by age old magic, and there was nothing that you or your mother could do until you found a way to do the impossible; make the Garden of Hell grow.

Your blank stare must have made her uneasy, because she snapped her fingers in front of your face. When you blinked, you saw something huge come barreling your way, and once you realized what it was, your heart fell into your stomach. She had summoned a huge, three headed dog to come and lean over the both of you, eyes yellow and staring at you with intrigue that made you want to screech. Instead, you swallowed. “Please. You can let me go, I won’t tell.”

“Its magic almost as old as I am, placed by Hecate. You may know her as Wanda.” She gave you a shrug, but she hardly looked bothered. “Her spell cannot be broken, not even by herself.”

Your breathing was accelerating, and you saw Hades look at you strangely, and you were sure she could sense your extreme fear. You locked eyes with the dog, the dog even you had heard of despite your mother cursing the owner’s name. “I don’t know how I fixed your tree, and I doubt I could do it again. Please, let me leave.”

“By bringing that tree back to life, you’ve made your decision and signed your name in blood.” You both ignored the pitiful sound that escaped your throat. “There’s nothing that I can do about it.”

You gulped. “My mother will come looking for me,” you said, and you watched her unbothered face drop just a bit, and then she tilted her head to the side. You had gotten her. “She won’t stop until she finds me and brings me home.”

“You say this like I should be afraid of your mother, who is no doubt a nymph of some far off forest.” You made a face. She simply shrugged, her shoulder length red hair bouncing a bit. “She’s nothing to me.”

Being a nymph was the furthest thing from dishonorable. They were loyal and always very beautiful. You almost cried when you realized that you would never see your overbearing nymphs again. “My mother is not a nymph.”

“I do not care for whatever minor goddess birthed you, young goddess. Not even Zeus could break this, and you’d best understand that.”

“My mother is friends with Hecate. She will make her find a way to release me, Hades.”

There was a pause in the conversation, but none of the tension faded. If anything, it only built on the silence. “How is it that you’re a god, yet I’ve never seen you?” Hades asked, a frown on her face.

“My mother keeps you far away from me because she despises you.” You spat, and you saw a flash of light behind her eyes, and she breathed out harshly. “I was never supposed to meet you.”

“The Fates have spun your destiny a different way than either of us have hoped, then.” She said, her voice rough as she looked you right in your eyes. It was then that you noticed how pale her blue eyes were, and the emotion that lacked. Her pink lips curled down all of a sudden, and then her eyes were narrowed. “Demeter, isn’t it? She’s your mother?”

You gathered all of the courage that you had left after everything that happened. The feeling of death was still intimidating, and even worse was the way Hades commanded the space with her hellhound. “Yes. And she will find me, and she will take me home.”

“This is a one way ticket until you can fix my garden, flower girl. Believe me, I don’t particularly want you here, either.” She looked you up and down, eyes lingering on the crown of flowers on your forehead and the way you had bands of them wrapped around your wrists and ankles. You were the brightest thing down there, and it was obvious that she wasn’t used to seeing things so… alive. “Your mother is just going to have to be upset.” She gave you one last look, her eyes on the dress made of fabric and flowers for a second too long to be categorized as a fleeting glance. She muttered something in a language that was foreign to you, and her unimaginably tall dog stood all the way up at attention, slightly baring its teeth at you until you forced yourself to look away from it.

And then they were gone. And you were alone. By yourself in the Land of the Dead, the one place a flower would never grow. In the one place where you could truly perish.

                                                 *******

hi guys! i really hope you guys liked this one, this idea has been like swirling around in my mind for months and i can’t get it to leave. it’s s much fun right now to write though, so i hope at least one of y’all enjoyed this lol

if you happen to like this and would like to be placed on one of my tragic tag lists, it’s a definite yes for me! thank you guys for reading this 

[angellesword]

YOUR EYES TELL | JJK (11)

Summary: You live in a world where people see in black and white. The solution to finally see the colors? It’s simple. You need to meet your soulmate and look at him in the eyes, but what if the person bound to you is already contented with the monochromatic world? What if…Jeongguk, your soulmate, is already in love with someone else?

Alternatively:

“A future without you is a world without color.”

Genre: soulmate au, e2l, slow burn, ANGST, fluff, roommate au

Pairing: Artist!Jungkook x Lawyer!Reader

Word Count: 2.2k

SERIES:  CHAPTER 10 | CHAPTER 12

"You don't have to pay me, Guk."

 Jeongguk shook his head instantly. Yoongi was being absurd. How could he not pay his older friend?

 "I know you have the money, but I can't just take ten thousand dollars from you, hyung." The younger boy pouted his lips.

Yoongi should know by now that Jeongguk hated owing people something.

 Debt of gratitude sucked. It couldn't be paid. Ever. Jeongguk didn't want that. He hated sleeping at night thinking that someone out there could manipulate his feelings—this was how he perceived debt of gratitude: a manipulation. It was because he felt like he was bound please the person who helped him. It was as though he needed to act in accordance to the likes of said person.

 "Fine." Yoongi shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care about any of this. "Pay me whenever you want,"

 Jeongguk snorted as your voice echoed inside his head. If you were here, you would tell Yoongi that he couldn't just tell his debtor to pay him whenever he wanted. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

 Civil obligations like this one was only enforceable for ten years. If Jeongguk couldn't pay within the said period, the obligation would then become a natural one—something that would only be paid out of conscience.

 Jeongguk shook his head. Why was he thinking about the stupid law? Why couldn't he stop imagining your pretty smile as you talked about certain provisions? Why was he hesitating to accept his hyung's money?

 And most importantly, why didn't he want to leave you now?

 Your soulmate loaned thousands of dollars from Yoongi just so he could pay the down payment for the apartment that he wanted buy. He promised himself that he would terminate the lease of contract with you after four months. He just couldn't live with you anymore.

 You were supposed to be temporary in his life; however, with the way you were invading his mind even though you weren't around, Jeongguk realized that you were his constant.

 You were the only person who could tolerate his bratty attitude. You were the only person who couldn't get mad at him. You were the only person who made him feel special and needy—Jeon Jeongguk needed your attention so much that he felt like had to run.

 He didn't know when it started, especially because he believed he was not over Red yet.

 Red.

 Was Red the reason why Jeongguk wanted to leave you?

 This was what you thought while clutching the paper on your chest.

 It hurt, but as usual you had to pretend like you were okay.

 "Your parents are back in their hotel," said by Jeongguk the moment he entered your apartment.

 He was back from the thirty-minute drive.

 Your parents were scheduled to fly to Jeju Island tomorrow morning.

 "That's good." You discreetly wiped your tears away, trying so hard to make your tone sound enthusiastic. 

 Your back was facing him since you were afraid to let him see you crying.

 You didn't want to pester Jeongguk regarding his plan to leave. You felt like he wouldn't appreciate the drama you would obviously bring.

  Jeongguk didn't deserve drama—not when it was clear that he was exhausted. He took care of you these past weeks. The only thing you could do was to give him a damn break even if it meant sleepless night as questions like 'why am I not enough?' clouded your mind.

 "Thanks, Jeongguk. Goodnight!" You hastily added, refusing to look at him as you made your way to your room.

 "Wait," he stopped you like the way he did earlier today. This time, however, he stopped you by breaking your heart even more.

 "C-Can I sleep in your room tonight?" Jeongguk swallowed the lump in his throat; his heart was beating so fast.

 You flinched.

 How dare he ask something so insensitive?

 "Why?" Your lips trembled as you finally found the courage to look at him. It was a wrong move, though. You couldn't do it. You couldn't look at him without tears filling your eyes.

 Looking at Jeon Jeongguk made you realize what you could never have: him.

 You were grateful he's averting your gaze. Jeongguk couldn't meet your eyes as well. He was embarrassed and afraid. What if you rejected him? He didn't have any reason to cuddle with you tonight. Jimin was right. Your parents were the solution to help you get back on your feet. It was as though they had some kind of power. You didn't look like you needed your soulmate to make you feel better anymore. 

 You were back to your old self.

 Sadly Jeongguk had no idea that you were just pretending. He didn't know that you were forced to be okay once again. He wasn't even aware that he was one of the reasons why you're acting like everything was fine.

 "I just want to make sure you're alright," his voice was barely audible.

 Jeon Jeongguk was a liar. The truth was you weren't the only one getting used to cuddling with each other. Jeongguk was also craving to embrace you—to listen to your controlled breathing and raging heartbeat.

 "Really?" You suddenly huffed, causing Jeongguk to flick his gaze at you.

 Your soulmate was a good liar, you were not.

 There's a point where pain was too much to handle.

 Jeongguk was staring at you with puzzled expression. His mouth went agape upon seeing the tears streaming down your face.

 "You want to make sure I'm okay so you can finally leave?"

 "What?" He furrowed his brow, clearly not understanding the words you just said. How could he focus on anything when all he could see was your tears?

 Jeongguk wanted to wipe your stupid tears, but you weren't letting him.

 You took three steps backwards when he tried to reach for your face.

 Anger, frustration, and pain. All of these are visible in your eyes. Your thoughts were poisoning your mind—making you imagine what you thought Jeongguk felt.

 "You...called my parents b'cause you're t-tired of me, right?" You slurred.

 You wanted to run to your room since you knew you couldn't stop speaking your thoughts anymore. This wasn't right. You told yourself you weren't going to make this hard for your soulmate, so why couldn't he do the same thing for you?

 Why was he cornering you? Why couldn't he just go away? 

 And why couldn't you stop the venom in your words?

 "You don't want to deal with me anymore. You want to leave but you're guilty. You feel like you are responsible for my pain," this must be it. You kept thinking what triggered his sudden change of behavior. It couldn't be because he finally realized that he liked you too.

 No. That couldn't be right. The only plausible explanation for this was because of the guilt he felt. He only started to act like he cared when you told him that he hurt you too.

 "That's not true..." But Jeongguk was quick to dismiss the negative thoughts inside your head.

 You inhaled deeply. Fresh tears stained your cheeks.

 "What's the truth, then?" You picked up the paper that would prove his intention to leave.

 It was too late to stop now. You were already acting pathetic in front of him. 

 "Why didn't you tell me you bought an apartment?" You continued to ask despite knowing the reason.

 You didn't. You were imagining things. What you think was different from what Jeongguk felt. Admittedly, his eyes widened. He wasn't expecting you to confront him about this. Hell. You weren't even supposed to find out this way.

 Jeongguk was planning to simply sign the contract to terminate your lease agreement with him, leave your apartment in the middle of the night and never come back.

 Guess he couldn't do it now, huh?

 "I-I," he trailed off instantly. How could he explain this to you when he himself didn't know why he wanted to leave?

 Jeongguk wished it was easy to face his emotions. He identified them, but he still didn't know what to do—not even after spending weeks cuddling with you.

 He needed to be alone, he needed to figure out what he felt and what this all meant to him on his own.

 "Is it me, Gukkie?" You sobbed and your soulmate's heart clenched.

 Your back was against the wall, Jeongguk was standing so close to you to the point that he could literally see the tears forming in your eyes.

 It broke him more.

 "Did I cross the line? Am I being too pushy? Annoying? Hard do deal with?"

 Jeongguk could only bite his bottom lip.

 You proceeded to list the things your former maids despised about you.

 "Is Miri too much too handle? Am I picky with the food? Is it hard to wake me up in the morning?"

 Jeongguk avoided your eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

 You noticed that he couldn't speak. Why? Was it difficult to admit the truth?

 "Or am I not buying you enough things?"

 The conflicted boy shook his head vigorously. You did not understand anything.

 "Do you need a new laptop? New clothes? Art materials?" You sounded so desperate. "Tell me, Gukkie. I'll do anything you want."

 "I don't need you to do anything." He said coldly as he moved away from you.

 Pain attacked your chest when you saw indifference dancing in his face.

 "You're still leaving me?" You quivered in fear. You were really pathetic. You said to yourself that you wanted him to go away, but the thought of him actually leaving made your stomach turn upside down.

 "Yes."

 It felt like an arrow shot you in the heart.

 How could he not stutter? Was he really decided to leave you?

 Jeongguk saw how his answer affected you, so he immediately defended himself.

 "I mean it's about right. I told you I'm gonna stay here for a few months. It's over now. I don't want to be your tenant anymore."

 "But why!" You whined. This wasn't fair! How could he decide without consulting you first? This was a reciprocal obligation. You deserved to know his reasons.

 Jeongguk scowled. He wanted to leave now. It was getting unbearable to see you cry—it was as though his chest was going to explode.

 "Do I really need a reason?" His frown deepened. "Can't I just leave because I don't want to be with you anymore?" A lie.

 "You're lying." You refused to believe him even if you knew he was telling the truth. This wasn't you. You weren't like this. It was unlike of you to keep pushing Jeongguk. You teased him all the time, but you didn't mean to make him uncomfortable. His happiness was your top priority.

 You swore you just wanted to know the truth. You deserved a reasonable explanation. He couldn't just say he didn't want to be with you. If he couldn't love you, then he should at least be able to respect you like a normal person.

 "Why would I lie—"

 "Because I'm your soulmate!" You cut him off. Your emotions were overflowing.

 Why couldn't you just let him go?

 "And I love you, Jeongguk." You cried. The table had turned. Just a few breaths ago, he was the one begging to touch you. Right now, however, it was you who was desperately trying to latch on him.

 Jeongguk pushed your hand away. He couldn't have you touching him. It would only make it harder for him to leave.

 "I love you so please don't leave me—"

 "You don't." He cut you off, flinching so hard because of how much he hated your confession. He felt like he was gonna puke.

 "I do, Guk. I love you—"

 "No!" Jeongguk insisted otherwise. He was being stubborn and it was irritating you.

 Who did he think he was to tell you what you felt?

 "You don't love me, okay!? You are wrong in all of this!" He took a step back. He was acting as if your touch was going to burn him.

 "You are delusional. Too caught up with the idea of soulmate that you failed to see the truth!"

 Jeongguk was shaking in frustration. He hated that he had to be mean just to make you understand things—similar to what Red did.

 "I can see the truth! I know the truth!" You carried on.

 He was the one being blinded here, not you.

 "You're just ignoring the signs, Jeongguk. The universe wants us to be together!"

 This wasn't a coincidence. You couldn't be wrong—not when he could see colors because of the love you felt for him.

 But he used this against you.

 "I am not your soulmate." His jaw clenched. "Your eyes can tell."

 You stopped breathing.

 "Your eyes tell." He repeated.

 Your mouth felt dry.

 It felt like you had been stabbed straight in the heart.

 If he was your soulmate, if he ever loved you—or cared, you would see colors by now.

 But no.

 You still see in black and white.

 Your eyes would not lie because Jeon Jeongguk was right....

 Your Eyes Tell.

[ichorai]

the golden daggers ; j.yh

pairing ; enemy!yunho x princet!reader

summary ; in which your kingdom is destroyed, and you come across a soldier from the enemy realm in the forest.

words ; 1.7k

warnings / includes ; mentions of death and weapons but nothing graphic, yunho being a lil shit but also being a softie </3

a/n ; here's my second drabble for @ficscafe's royalty drabble event !! fyi for those who don't know, princet is a gender-neutral term for prince / princess ! i might be turning this into a full-fledged fic, who knows 👀 special thanks to @minghaofilm and @subways-stuff and @gyukult for reading through and tolerating my onslaught of frustrated rambles <33

The brisk morning air whistled past you, brushing against your skin in a wintry kiss. With muted footsteps, you stepped over the forest foliage, gentle and cautious. You lifted your sleek wooden longbow, keeping the feather-tipped arrow nocked. Just in case.

In times like this, you couldn’t be more careful. There could be traps anywhere.

Your kingdom had only just collapsed yesterday. To be quite frank, you had no idea what you were going to do. Where was a royal princet to go once everything you knew burned to the ground?

The memory of smoke and flames still played vividly in your mind, a staggering mirage of harsh ambers and furious carmines and sooty blacks. The smell of death had filled your nostrils, slowly seeping into you, wrapping its grimy dark fingers around your heart as you sobbed over what you lost.

Death had poisoned you, and you just barely managed to pull away before it could see you choke.

That was last night. Today was going to be different. You had nothing left to lose now.

“Your Highness,” a voice rumbled from behind a nearby tree. With your heart thudding angrily against your ribcage, you swiveled around on your heels, watching the man stride out of the shadows with open arms. “Though, just how high could a princet be without their kingdom, hm?”

This man, evidently, was a soldier of your kingdom’s worst rivals. You could tell by the glimmering silver medallion he bore on his jacket, their intricate insignia etched precariously into the metal. Wars were fought for centuries, and thousands of battles found your nation victorious and proudly arrogant. Until… well, until last night.

You wouldn’t be surprised if you were the last survivor of your kingdom.

Without giving it a second thought, your pinched fingers let go of the arrow’s feather-tip end. It sailed through the short distance between the two of you with a resounding hiss, slicing through the air like a hot knife through butter.

A tumultuous concoction of apprehension and awe roiled about you as you watched the man pull two gold-encrusted daggers out of their scabbards, side-stepping at lightning speed and cutting down your arrow as if it were paper.

You paused for just a millisecond, before reaching behind for your quiver, grappling for another arrow. What a fool you were, thinking you could beat him in a game of speed. In just a blink of an eye, he stood in front of you, the cool metal of his dagger rested gently against your jugular. One wrong move, and you would be dead in a matter of minutes.

“I’m Yunho,” he murmured with a sinister grin, blowing a strand of dark hair away from his narrowed eyes. He practically towered over you, glancing down with a mischievous glint in his gaze.

You didn’t bother to grace him with a response, muscles frozen in place.

“Are you afraid of me, Your Highness?” He attempted once more, leaning down slightly to meet your angry stare. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me. Drop your bow.”

With a gentle huff, you slowly moved your hand away from the quiver, coming to slowly wrap around the wrist that held the dagger against you. It pained you to see that your own fingers were trembling uncontrollably. Were you afraid? You couldn’t quite tell. Yunho watched you with a strange look of curiosity, his pupils flitting from your ashen face to your nimble fingers, wondering just what you were planning to do next.

And that was when you jerked your head away, keeping his wrist still with an iron-grip, taking advantage of his momentary surprise. You hooked your leg around his buckling knees, shoving him backwards. Yunho fell onto the damp leaves of the forest floor with a pained groan.

Though he was a giant of a man, you managed to kick the daggers across the damp forest foliage, toeing them farther and farther away from his reach and pinning his hands above him as you situated yourself just above his hips.

“My, my,” Yunho crooned breathlessly, chest rising and falling just centimeters away from yours. “Never thought I’d be in a position like this with a princet of the enemy kingdom. You smell better than I expected. Is that fougère I detect? A hint of honeyed-peach eau, perhaps? Forgive me, it’s hard to tell underneath the stench of burnt fabric, Your Highness.”

“Shut up!” Were the first words you managed to snarl out. “You… you took everything from me.”

“And we had nothing to begin with, princet,” he murmured coolly from beneath you, regarding you with a well-hidden anger broiling in his narrowed gaze. It took all you had in you not to pummel your fists against his perfectly sculpted features. “Are you going to kill me? If so, I ask you to do it quickly. You don’t quite strike me as the torturing type.”

There was a tense pause lingering between the two of you as you huffed out a small breath, hanging your head in shame. It almost physically pained you to let go of his wrists as you clambered off of his larger frame.

“Thank you,” he said.

You remained silent, a frivolous symphony of death wailing into your ears. If you let him go now, you’d be a goner. And despite that, you knew that you hadn’t the courage to end his life.

After all… he had every right to be angry.

You curled your hands up into tight fists, balling up the wet leaves of the forest floor. Yunho watched you with bated breath, arching his eyebrows. “You know I have to take you in, right? You’ll be a prisoner for the rest of your life.” His question was asked softly, tentative. You were no longer the villain he thought you were.

“I know.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

Swallowing around your clogged throat, you bobbed your head once more. “I know.”

The two of you pushed yourselves off the damp floor. After you grabbed your longbow, he snagged his daggers (kicked an impressive distance away), then the two of you proceeded to stride through the forest in unvocalized tandem. Several times, he pried his lips open to say something, but promptly snapped his jaw back shut, a bashful expression gracing his features. You weren’t entirely sure where he was taking you, but you doubted that it’d be anywhere good for you. You could already picture the musty cell they’d throw you in.

Following several tepid seconds, Yunho spoke up to ask with a slight air of curiosity, “you had a chance to be free. Why didn’t you take it?”

You winced slightly, fiddling with the notched wood of your longbow. “I have nothing left, Yunho. What’s the point in running?”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed uneasily. A gentle breeze ran through the trees, tousling the withered foliate hanging on the gnarled branches. Bits of dead canopy fluttered downwards. Out of the corner of his eyes, he spotted a browning leaf catch against the strands of your hair, a minute frown marring your lips. You reached upwards to pluck out the weather-beaten frond, flicking it away in the midst of your silent brooding.

“Stop,” he commanded after a moment’s hesitation, lifting an arm to your abdomen to halt you mid-step. “I can’t… I can’t do this. You have to go.”

Incredulity seeped into your voice. “What?”

In frustration, the giant of a man carded his hands through his ink-hued locks, screwing his eyes shut.

“Yunho—!”

“I’ll pretend like I never saw you. Please, just go. Get on a boat and sail far away from here.” He paused to unsheath one of his gold-encrusted daggers, glinting almost maliciously against the filtered sunlight. You had to hold in a gasp when he held the hilt out to you, gesturing for you to take it. “I hope to never see you again, princet.”

With nimble hands, you slowly curled your fingers against the handle, the cut-jagged gems cold against your skin. You twirled the blade with surprising agility, and Yunho almost found himself grinning at your natural talent.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you letting me go?” You couldn’t help but be slightly suspicious.

Yunho refused to meet your gaze, shame sitting heavily on his shoulders. “I… I don’t want to hurt you. I wasn’t lying when I said that before. You lost everything, and it’s my Kingdom’s fault. My people are proud, and they don’t want to admit when they’re wrong. For that, Your Highness, I’m sincerely sorry. I just… I don’t want to be the reason you’re rotting away in prison.” One of his hands reached out to grasp yours, laying his warm palm over both the dagger and your knuckles. You almost flinched backwards, eyeing him warily. “If you head far enough east to where no soul knows of ridiculous trivialities like Kingdoms and royalty lines, you can… you can start over. No titles, no responsibilities, no ties. I’m giving you a chance to leave behind your bloody past. You’ll be safe. Or, as safe as one can be in these times.”

When he slipped his hands away from yours, you could almost feel all of his warmth pull away. Reality seemed to sink into your consciousness, and you also staggered backwards, sucking in deep breaths of cold forest air.

“Thank you, Yunho,” you whispered, clutching his dagger and your bow. “I won’t ever forget about this.”

He dipped his head just slightly, the smallest of smiles quirking his lips upward. “Have a safe journey, princet. I know I said I hoped I’d never see you again, but… I don’t think it’d be too awful, would it?”

“Far from awful, soldier.” You were pleasantly surprised to find genuine mirth coloring your words.

You were well aware of Yunho’s gaze piercing holes into the back of your neck. There was a queer concoction of relief and dread roiling about in your stomach. Nonetheless, you swiveled on your heel, thumbing the grooves and bumps of the sleek dagger he had given you, striding away from the enemy who let you go.

[elvish-sky]

‘Shush’ and ‘Fuck Off’ Are the Fellowship's Favorite Sayings {Platonic Fellowship}

A.N: Wow! I haven’t written a oneshot or a fic with just canon characters in forever- this was very much needed! I was also cackling the entire time I wrote this, it was so nice to write something funny again. Also, I do headcanon Aragorn as bi- which is very much not relevant until the end of the fic, and this request is completely platonic like asked for, don’t worry! But yeah, this was a true delight to write and I hope you guys love it!

Requested by anon on Tumblr: I wish you would write a (platonic) fic in which Legolas has horrible posture and won't stop slouching and it gets on Aragorn's nerves all the time

Word Count: 1,204

Pairing: Platonic Fellowship

Summary: Legolas’s slouching annoys Aragorn so much that he enlists the help of two hobbits to do something about it.

Warnings: Fluff, Humor, Explicit Language

*******

Shush and Fuck Off Are the Fellowship's Favorite Sayings

“Legolas,” Aragorn hissed.

The elf turned, puzzled.

“What?”

“Sit up straight!”

Legolas rolled his eyes. “Really, Aragorn? This? Again?”

“It’s important to have good posture! You should know that!”

Legolas’ brain flashed back to his lessons as a child. He vaguely recalled something about sitting up straight, but he had never done so just to spite his father. Oh, well, it was too late now. He’d been slouching for thousands of years, at this point. Aragorn would just have to deal with it.

“We’re camping, in the middle of a forest, with only the rest of the Fellowship. Why do I need to have good posture?”

Aragorn sighed, leaving the elf without another word. He’d have to think about this more, but he was determined to make Legolas realize the value of good posture. Even if he had to put a permanent watch on Legolas to make him not slouch.

“Pssst. Merry. Merry!”

Merry turned to see Aragorn, shockingly, lying flat on his stomach behind a rock.

“What?”

“C’mere. Bring Pippin.”

Merry tapped Pippin on the shoulder.”C’mon. Aragorn wants us.”

Pippin’s eyes widened. “What? Why?” His voice dropped to a whisper, “Did he find the beetles? Because you know that was your idea!”

Merry shook his head. “I don’t know. But c’mon!”

Pippin, looking very worried, shimmied down the rock next to Merry, and the two of them crawled, on their stomachs, away from that campfire.

About five feet away from where they’d started, Pippin slumped with a sigh.

“Why are we crawling like this?”

“No clue. That’s what Aragorn was doing, so I figured we should do it too!”

Pippin shook his head. “That ranger is crazy, Merry. Don’t do what he does.”

“That ranger is right here.”

Pippin’s yelp of surprise at Aragorn appearing literally right next to him was stifled by the ranger’s hand slapping over his mouth.

“Shhh.”

Pippin pushed his hand away. “Why?!”

The ranger stayed silent and gestured for the two hobbits to join him behind a large tree, where he finally stood up. Merry and Pippin rose with him, brushing off their clothes and generally acting very annoyed.

“Okay, Aragorn,” said Pippin. “You have us here. Now, what is this all about?”

“Legolas,” Aragorn said. “More specifically, Legolas’s slouching.”

The hobbits groaned.

“Really? You’re still on that?” Merry asked.

“He shouldn’t slouch!!” Aragorn exclaimed. “He’s a prince, for crying out loud!”

Merry facepalmed. “It’s not like he needs to be princely right now! We’re literally in the middle of nowhere!”

“First of all, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, we’re _

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?” Pippin yelled.

“Because I’m smart.” Aragorn shot back. “Anways, secondly IT IS THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER!!”

Merry shushed him.

Aragorn glared at him.

Merry glared back.

Finally, Pippin stepped between the two. “Fine, Aragorn, we’re in. What do you want us to do?”

Aragorn shrugged, “Just don’t let him slouch. Or train him to stop slouching. Do whatever you want, as long as it works,” and then the ranger turned, fell to the ground, and began crawling back to the campsite.

Pippin smirked, looking at Merry, “This should be fun.”

Merry rubbed his hands together. “Yes, it very much should. Shall we get started.”

Pippin nodded, and they both dropped to their stomachs and shimmied back to the campsite.

Legolas was getting more and more pissed off. For the past week, Merry and Pippin had been trailing him like dogs. They followed him literally everywhere he went, and he even swore he’d seen one of them awake while he was on watch- right before a squirrel had suddenly dropped onto his head and and fallen asleep. He’d stayed sitting up stick-straight the whole night so as to not dislodge it, and then, when it woke up, ran down to the river to wash his hair.

The hobbits had caused some sort of commotion every time he’d gone to relax- he was sure it was them, because who else could it have been? Now, he was going to confront them and find out what in Middle-Earth was going on.

Merry shrieked as a blond blur threw him over its shoulder and set off running. He looked to his left, and saw Pippin waving at him from where he was slung over the other shoulder.

“Where d’ya think we’re going?” Pippin asked.

“Wherever Legolas takes us, I guess!”

Because, of course, the blond blur was, in fact, Legolas.

Finally, the elf set them down, then paced back and forth in front of them, frowning.

This went on for several minutes, until Pippin piped up.

“Legola-”

“Shush!” The elf replied.

Pippin turned to Merry. “What is with all the shushing lately?”

Legolas shushed him again, and Pippin sat back, annoyed,

Finally Legolas spoke. “What did Aragorn put you two up to?”

The hobbits looked at each other, and then shrugged. In unison.

“Not a thing,” Merry told the elf.

Legolas approached Merry, annoyance clear in his eyes. As he drew closer, the hobbit scooched farther and farther back on the rock he was sitting on, until, with a yelp, he tumbled right off the back.

Legolas kept advancing until he was standing right above the hobbit.

“What. Did. Aragorn. Make. You. Do?”

“Wellllllll…”

Twenty minutes later, Legolas stormed into the clearing, Merry and Pippin frantically trying to keep up with the elf’s furious strides.

Legolas walked up to Aragorn, staring right into the man’s eyes.

“YOU TOLD MERRY AND PIPPIN TO NOT LET ME SLOUCH?!!!”

“We can explain!” said Merry.

“Shush!” Boromir told him, “I want to see what this is all about!”

The two hobbits went over to sit with Frodo and Sam in a huff. All their hard work to get Legolas to not slouch, and he’d found out.

Legolas continued to rage at Aragorn. “I cannot BELIEVE YOU’D DO THIS!!!! My posture is PERFECT FOR ME, AND I DON’T NEED YOU JUDGING ME FOR IT ALL THE TIME!!!”

Aragorn ws now also annoyed. “Well excuse me for looking after your spinal health! I just wanted you to not have constant back pain, but nooooo, you don’t care! You don’t care about looking presentable, you don’t care about it hurting, you just don’t care!”

“That’s right!” Legolas exclaimed. “I don’t care! I’m an elf, Aragorn, it’s not going to hurt my back. And secondly, who gives a damn about looking presentable in the middle of the woods. Now kindly tell your hobbit posture police to fuck off!”

Aragorn still looked pretty pissed, but backed off. “Fine. But when you get in trouble with your father again, don’t come crawling to me!”

The two went to sit on opposite sides of the clearing, both fuming.

Sometime later, Legolas turned around to see the ranger slouching on his side of the clearing.

Gleeful, Legolas called out “Aragorn! You’re slouching!”

Aragorn’s spine became as straight as an arrow. “Fuck off!!” He yelled at the elf.

As the ranger sulked in the corner, Legolas burst into laughter. The rest of the Fellowship joined in, all cackling at the grumpy ranger in the corner.

Whose spine, of course, was now as straight as, well, not himself. It was, again, as straight as an arrow.

Everything tag: @entishramblings @itgetsatadhazy @boyruins @anjhope1 @kumqu4t @katbby16 @thewhiteladyofrohan @kirstenscaffeinateddisaster @beenovel @shethereadinghobbit @guardianofrivendell @hey-its-nonny

Legolas tag: @from-patroclus-with-love @bitter-sweet-farmgirl

[artzychic27]

Artist Family 1991 movie?

All is more sullen than usual for the Artists. It’s the third anniversary of Rose’s disappearance

Juleka: *Solemnly staring at Rose’s empty room* Think of it That. For years we’ve attempted to contact Rose in the Great Beyond. And for years… Nothing.

Ever since Rose’s disappearance, Juleka has been looking through her spell books for other ways to contact her, but just can seem to find anything

For Marinette, she tries to cope the only way she knows how… Through torture.

Alix: *Tied up: Screaming through her binds*

Marinette: *Aiming an arrow at Alix* Don’t be a baby. I know what I’m doing.

Marc is more unhappy than usual… And it gets Nathaniel in the mood.

Nathaniel: *Watching Marc sleep* Look at him. I would die for him. I would kill for him… Either way, what bliss. *Marc wakes up* Unhappy, darling?

Marc: Oh, yes. Yes, completely. Nathan... The sun. Me atraviesa como un puñal.

Nathaniel: Oh, monochrome. That's Spanish.

Marc: Si.

Nathaniel: *Grabs a bucket of black paint and splatters it all over the window*

Marc: Mi amor... Last night, you were unhinged. You were like some desperate howling demon. You frightened me… Do it again.

Also, their neighbor, a well-respected judge, hates them because Marinette can’t keep her flaming arrows on the Artists’ property. Why does this matter? You’ll soon see.

Nathaniel: *Playing chess with Juleka while Marc snips the buds off of roses* It’s a milestone, Marc. It’ll be our third séance. All those years, gnawed by guilt, undone by woe, burning with uncertainty.

Marc: Nathaniel, don’t torture yourself… That’s my job around here. But, imagine if Rose did return. Half alive, barley human, a rotting shell.

Juleka: *Sighs* That’d be a sight.

Unbeknownst to everyone (Except Félix), Juleka has a crush on Rose.

Later, the Artists’ lawyer, Cecil and his wife Bridgette arrive to ask for a loan. (Wow. Asking for a loan from teenagers? Yeesh.) Why? Because they owe a loan shark.

Bridgette: Why did I marry you?

Cecil: Because I said yes!

While Cecil tries to work out a deal with Nathaniel, Bridgette collects expensive looking items for a charity auction from Juleka, Marc, and Félix

Marc: *As Félix pulls body bags out of a closet* Uncle Niknak's winter wardrobe. Uncle Niknak's summer wardrobe… Uncle Niknak.

Nathaniel: ‘The Rose Artist Off-Shore Retirement Fund’?… A tribute to thee. Some called her inhumanly evil.

Cecil: No!

Nathaniel: Only her parents before she fled her home.

And they make a deal… But…

Nathaniel: It’s going to have to wait, you know the rules better than that. Old business is old business and new business is new business. And this is new business and we do not discuss new business until… The next quarter.

After an unsuccessful attempt at stabbing Nathaniel with one of the many swords in the house, Cecil gives up until Nathaniel mentions going to get money for the monthly expenses from the vault

Meanwhile, Marc shows Bridgette a golden finger trap from the court of Emperor Wu

Bridgette: *Trying to not pocket it and run off* Oh, Marc, this is too extravagant, even for the auction.

Juleka: Let’s keep it.

Marc: Juleka, it’s for charity. *Bridgette gets her fingers trapped* Widows and orphans. We need more of them… Bridgette, about the séance tonight, why don’t you come? It's Nathaniel I'm terribly worried about. He won't eat, he can't sleep, he keeps coughing up blood.

Bridgette: He coughs up blood?

Marc: Well, not like he used to...

Cecil returns to his office with a suitcase full of doubloons from the Artists’ account, no knowledge of how to get the vault open, and in his office is Ms. Craven, a loan shark and her familiar-looking daughter, Willow

After some intimidation from Willow, Cecil gets an idea of how to repay Ms. Craven the money he owes her when he sees how similar she looks to Rose

There’s thunder and lightning on the night of the séance. Perfect weather

Marc: Marinette, Alix, put down that antenna, and come inside.

With their plan in place, Cecil and Bridgette arrive

Bridgette: *Shows Marinette the finger trap still on her fingers* Could you help me? *Marinette removes it with ease*

Marinette: Push, do not pull.

Marc: *With everyone seated around the table for the séance* Harken all souls. Every year on this date, we offer a clarion call to Rose Artist… Alix, drop the cleaver.

Marinette: *Sees Alix aiming the cleaver at her* Stop it.

Marc: From generation to generation, our beacon to the beyond. All close eyes and join hands.

After a practical joke on Bridgette involving That, the séance continues.

Marinette: Let us ransom you from the power of the grave. Tonight, oh Death, let us be your plague.

Juleka: Rose Artist, ceoli couris, ferimani bo… She’s near. *Félix plays a dramatic sting on his organ* Rose! Gather your strength! And knock three times! *One knock… Two… Three*

Nathaniel: She’s at the door!

That quickly goes to unlock the front door. And there, much to the Artists’ disbelief and joy is Rose… Or so they think. And there with her is Ms. Craven, posing as a psychiatrist named Dr. Schloss

Ms. Craven makes up some story about how “Rose” was found in Miami, tangled up in a tuna net. There were psychological tests, and a bunch of crap.

Nathaniel: And now she’s back.

Rose: At least for a week. I’ve got things to do back at the Bermuda Triangle.

Marc: *Sighs* Oh, the Bermuda Triangle./ Nathaniel: The Devil’s Island./ Marc: The Black Hole of Calcutta

Nathaniel: Pardon me for a moment. *Kisses up and down Marc’s arm* Our fifth date.

Marinette: No one escapes the Bermuda Triangle. Not even for a vacation. Everyone knows that.

Any attempts Willow tries at getting a good night’s sleep, it doesn’t work because The floors are constantly creaking, Marinette and Alix keep staring at her from down the hall, and That keep sneaking up on her which causes her to scream.

Nathaniel: … My dear friend. I’ve got goosebumps./ Marc: I know./ Nathaniel: Screams in the night. It can only mean one thing./ Marc: She’s home.

The next morning, Marinette and Alix suspect something is up with “Rose”. Meanwhile, Nathaniel takes “Rose” to the vault

Alix: *As Marinette warms up the electric chair* Do you think that’s really Rose?

Marinette: Nathaniel and Juleka seem to think so. But I think Marc isn’t sure. Now let’s a play a game. Sit in the chair.

Alix: What game?

Marinette: ‘Want to meet God?’

And Nathaniel does take Rose down to the vault, via gondola in the catacombs of the Artist home, only this vault leads to a secret room… That also leads to the money vault when a certain vial of poison is lifted

During that time, while they’re down there, Nathaniel reveals to “Rose” that his jealousy over her catching the attention of conjoined twins Ali and Eli drove her off

~Meanwhile~ Alix: So, if that’s not Rose, then who is she?

Marinette: An imposter. Now give the chair a few more seconds to warm up./ Alix: Why?/ Marinette: So it Can kill you./ Alix: I knew that.

~Later at the charity auction ~

Auctioneer: *Presenting the finger trap on Bridgette’s fingers again* This piece is encrusted with rubies and 15 emerald chips. It was donated by Marc and Nathaniel Artist. Remember, over half our proceeds will benefit the elderly and the mentally disabled. The bidding starts at $5000.

Nathaniel: Five, hah! Not good enough. $25,000!

Auctioneer: I have twenty.

Nathaniel: Twenty-five! *To Marc* Meyn Ziskeyt?

Auctioneer: Twenty five.

Marc: Thirty. *To Nathaniel* My howling demon.

Nathaniel: *voice cracks* Thirty-five!

Marc: Fifty!

Auctioneer: I have $50,000.

Marc: Your turn, my ecstasy.

Auctioneer: Fifty thousand going once, fifty thousand going twice. Sold to Marc Artists for fifty thousand dollars. *looks disgusted as Marc and Nathaniel obscenely make out*

They bought it back as a gift for “Rose”, but… She doesn’t know how to take it off! The Artists are now starting believe that she really is an imposter

Marc attempts to break “Rose” and get her to confess by taking her to the Artists’ cemetery where he reminds her of the credo

Marc: "Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc." "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us." Not just pretty words… Rose. As an Artist, you understand completely.

“Rose”: … As an Artist, I do.

Seeing that everyone’s onto her, Willow calls Ms. Craven and has her pose as the psychiatrist to try and make the Artists none the wiser

Marc: Nathaniel, Juleka, why don’t you speak to Rose? She’s right outside the door.

Juleka: We would… If that were the real Rose.

Nathaniel: She’s an imposter! A charlatan! A sham! A counterfeit!

While wandering around the home, Rose sees Marinette and Alix sword fighting and practicing lines for something.

Ms. Craven successfully convinces the Artists that their reason for suspecting “Rose” is an imposter is due to displacement, and meanwhile, Rose helps Marinette and Alix out with their sword fighting scene for a play they’re in at school. A play she’s not allowed to attend but goes to anyway

Just a few minutes before the play, Mme. Bustier, asks Marc a question about Marinette.

Mme. Bustier: Now, the students did projects on their heroes. Alya Cesaire chose Lois Lane.

Marc: Have you spoken to her parents?

Mme. Bustier: And Marinette did her project on someone named Calpurnia Dupain.

Marc: Oh, her great aunt on her father’s side. She was burned as a witch in 1706. They say she danced naked in town square and enslaved a minister. *Unaware of Mme. Bustier’s horror.* Don’t worry, we told her university first.

And after so many horrible performances, comes the best one yet… Where Marinette and Alix splatter fake blood all over the audience.

Nino: … I suggested a evening in the park, but no. You wanted to see the performances.

Alya: *Spits out fake blood* Shut up.

Furious that her plans to get into the vault have failed since “Rose” decided to go to the play, Ms. Craven insists that “Rose” must leave again… But not before the Artists mark the occasion with a going away party where the entire Artist clan is invited.

Marc: *To Marinette who is dancing with Luka* Marinette, would you go check on Rose upstairs, please?

Marinette leaves (Not before kissing Luka) and overhears Willow and Ms. Craven going over their plan to break into the vault. She quickly runs to go get help.

Meanwhile, Cecil figures out a way to get rid of the Artists for good. And here’s where the judge comes in- He gets a restraining order agasint them so they can’t set foot on their property

After the party, the Artist family tries to find Marinette when they realize that she’s gone missing. But when they return with her, they find that they can’t get inside their own home. And when they attempt to appeal to the judge, he sends them away out of spite.

The Artists are now living in a motel. Nathaniel is in a state of depression knowing they’ve been betrayed, and Marc is just trying to keep Juleka, Marinette, and Alix from going crazy… Er.

Also, he gets a job as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant. Let’s see how that turns out.

Marc: And so the witch lured Hansel and Gretel into the candy house by promising them more sweets. And she told them to look in the oven. But, before she herself could push the children inside, Hansel pushed her, that poor defenseless elderly witch into the oven instead and burned her to a crisp as she writhed in agony… Now children. How do you think that feels? *The children cry* … Exactly.

That gets a job as a courier, and Marinette, Juleka, and Alix sell poison macarons.

Not able to stand the sight of his family in such a state, Marc returns to the Artists home to confront “Rose” only to be captured by Ms. Craven and Cecil. And unknown to Marc, That followed him.

Craven, Cecil, and Willow torture Marc so he can tell them how to access the vault means of torture, but he’s a total masochist and is loving every second of it

That returns to the motel and- through Morse code- tells the Artists that Marc’s been captured

Nathaniel: Mar... Marc... Marc? Marc is what? Slow down, That! It's terrible when you stutter!

*That starts tapping in Morse Code with a pen*

Nathaniel: Marc... in... danger... stop. Send... help... at once... STOP! *He runs out. That collapses*

Nathaniel arrives just before they can try and kill Marc, and engages in a sword fight with Cecil, which he gains the upper hand on, then loses when Ms. Craven has Marc at gun point. She forces him to show Willow the vault or she shoots Marc if they’re not back in an hour

Before Nathaniel can pull out the book that activates the secret door on the shelf, Willow pulls out a different book- A spellbook that projects It’s contents into reality and creates a storm. A bolt of lightning strikes Willow and launches Cecil and Craven out the window and into graves dug by Marinette, Alix, and Juleka

Alix: Are they dead?

Marinette: Does it matter?

Months later on Halloween, it’s revealed that Willow has been Rose all this time, and the story about the tuna net and the Bermuda Triangle were true. She just suffered from amnesia

Bridgette: *To Marinette* Dear, where’s your costume.

Marinette: This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac; they look just like everyone else.

While the others play a good game of ‘Wake The Dead’ Marc and Nathaniel stay behind because Marc has something to tell him.

Nathaniel: Monochrome, what is it?

Marc: I finally received a letter from my mothers, and… *Shows him an ultrasound photo* They said if it’s anything like me, they want us to have it.

Sequel

[rubylane]

*   𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐀𝐑  𝐏𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑  𝐁𝐘  𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐄  :  𝐏𝐓 𝟏   .     lyric starters from solar power by lorde, change as needed.     part  two.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡 .

❛   now  i’m  alone  on  a  windswept  island .  ❜ ❛   caught  in  the  complex  divorce  of  the  seasons .  ❜ ❛   won’t  take  the  call  if  it’s  the  label  or  the  radio .  ❜ ❛   now  if  you're  looking  for  a  savior ,  well  that’s  not  me .  ❜ ❛   you  need  someone  to  take  your  pain  for  you ?  ❜ ❛   well ,  that’s  not  me .  ❜ ❛   ‘cause  we’re  all  broken  and  sad .  ❜ ❛   where  arе  the  dreams  that  we  had ?  ❜ ❛   can’t  find  thе  dreams  that  we  had .  ❜ ❛   let’s  hope  the  sun  will  show  us  the  path .  ❜ ❛   i  just  hope  the  sun  will  show  us  the  path .  ❜ ❛   savior  is  not  me .  ❜

𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 .

❛   i  hate  the  winter ,  can’t  stand  the  cold .  ❜ ❛   when  the  heat  comes ,  something  takes  a  hold .  ❜ ❛   can  i  kick  it ?  yeah ,  i  can .  ❜ ❛   my  cheeks  in  high  color ,  overripe  peaches .  ❜ ❛   no  shirt ,  no  shoes ,  only  my  features .  ❜ ❛   lead  the  boys  and  girls  onto  the  beaches .  ❜ ❛   come  one ,  come  all ,  i’ll  tell  you  my  secrets .  ❜ ❛   i’m  kinda  like  a  prettier  jesus .  ❜ ❛   forget  all  of  thе  tears  that  you’ve  cried .  ❜ ❛   it’s  ovеr .  ❜ ❛   it’s  a  new  state  of  mind .  ❜ ❛   are  you  coming ?  ❜ ❛   the  girls  are  dancing  in  the  sand .  ❜ ❛   i  threw  my  cellular  device  in  the  water .  ❜ ❛   can  you  reach  me ?  no ,  you  can't .  ❜ ❛   turn  it  on  in  a  new  kind  of  bright .  ❜ ❛   come  on  and  let  the  bliss  begin .  ❜ ❛   blink  three  times  when  you  feel  it  kicking  in .  ❜

𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐚 .

❛   the  room  exploded .  ❜ ❛   i'll  never  be  the  same .  ❜ ❛   that’s  when the doors  swung  open .  ❜ ❛   now  i've  spent  thousands  on  you .  ❜ ❛   i’d  pay  it  all  again .  ❜ ❛   i  don’t  miss  the  poison  arrows  aimed  directly  at  my  head .  ❜ ❛   don’t  want  that  california  lovе .  ❜ ❛   all  that  mystery  and  beauty  gleaned  from  desert  flowers  and  gifted  children .  ❜ ❛   it  got  hard  to  grow  up  with  your  cool  hand  around  my  neck .  ❜ ❛   the  garden  grows  up  in  my  mind  again .  ❜ ❛   it’s  just  a  dream .  ❜ ❛   i  wanna  wake  up .  ❜

𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐢𝐥 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧 .

❛   got  a  wishbone  dryin’  on  the  windowsill  in  my  kitchen .  ❜ ❛   just  in  case  i  wake  up  and  realize  i've  chosen  wrong .  ❜ ❛   i  love  this  life  that  i  have .  ❜ ❛   i  wonder  sometimes  what  i’m  missing .  ❜ ❛   my  hot  blood’s  been  burning  for  so  many  summers  now .  ❜ ❛   it’s  time  to  cool  it  down ,  wherever  that  leads .  ❜ ❛   they  will  fade  like  the  roses .  ❜ ❛   it’ll  all  come  around .  ❜ ❛   maybe  i’m  just  stoned  at  the  nail  salon .  ❜ ❛   got  a  memory  of  waiting  in  your  bed  wearing  only  my  earrings .  ❜ ❛   but  the  sun  has  to  rise .  ❜ ❛   i’m  still  crazy  for  you .  ❜ ❛   ‘cause  all  the  music  you  loved  at  sixteen,  you’ll  grow  out  of .  ❜ ❛   make  it  good .  ❜ ❛   i’d  ride  on  the  carousel  ‘round  and  ‘round  forever  if  i  could .  ❜ ❛   spend  all  the  evenings  you  can  with  the  people  who  raised  you .  ❜ ❛   ‘cause  all  the  times  they  will  change .  ❜

𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭 .

❛   to  the  ones  who  came  before  us .  ❜ ❛   we  had  no  idea  the  dreams  we  had  were  far  too  big .  ❜ ❛   and  we  will  walk  together .  ❜ ❛   through  the  halls  of  splendor  where  the  apple  trees  all  grew .  ❜ ❛   you’ll  leave  us  dancing  on  the  fallen  fruit .  ❜ ❛   we’ll  disappear  in  the  cover  of  the  rain .  ❜ ❛   it’s  time  for  us  to  leave .  ❜ ❛   but  how  can  i  love  what  i  know  i  am  going  to  lose ?  ❜ ❛   don’t  make  me  choose .  ❜

𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 ( 𝐰𝐡𝐨’𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 ) .

❛   only  having  two  drinks ,  then  leaving .  ❜ ❛   it’s  a  funny  thing .  ❜ ❛   thought  you’d  never  gain  self  control .  ❜ ❛   guess  it’s  been  a  while  since  you  last  said  sorry .  ❜ ❛   you’ve  had  enough .  ❜ ❛   then  you  blink  and  it’s  been  ten  years .  ❜ ❛   growing  up  a  little  at  a  time ,  then ,  all  at  once .  ❜ ❛   everybody  wants  the  best  for  you .  ❜ ❛   but  you’ve  gotta  want  it  for  yourself .  ❜ ❛   you  can  take  ‘em  if  you  want  'em .  ❜ ❛   these  are  just  secrets  from  a  girl  who’s  seen  it  all .  ❜ ❛   remember  all  the  hurt  you  would  feel  when  you  weren’t  desired ?  ❜ ❛   remember  what  you  thought  was  grief  before  you  got  the  call ?  ❜ ❛   you’re  gonna  wince ,  gonna  feel  the  pain  fighting .  ❜ ❛   you’re  gonna  love  again ,  so  just  try  staying  open .  ❜ ❛   and  when  the  time  comes ,  you’ll  fall .  ❜ ❛   they  won’t  let  you  down .  ❜ ❛   do  your  best  to  trust  all  the  rays  of  light .  ❜ ❛   welcome  to  sadness .  ❜ ❛   the  temperature  is  unbearable  until  you  face  it .  ❜ ❛   your  emotional  baggage  can  be  picked  up  at  carousel  number  two .  ❜ ❛   i  will  leave  you  to  it .  ❜ ❛   you'll  be  fine .  ❜ ❛   you  can  stay  as  long  as  you  need  to  get  familiar  with  the  feeling .  ❜ ❛   we  can  go  look  at  the  sunrise  by  euphoria ,  mixed  with  existential  vertigo .  ❜

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐱𝐞 .

❛   if  i  had  to  break  it  down ...  ❜ ❛   i’d  say  it's  the  way  you  love  to  dance .  ❜ ❛   the  flick  of  the  lights  and  the  world  falls  away .  ❜ ❛   our  shapes  in  the  dark  are  the  reason  i’ve  stayed .  ❜ ❛   i  thought  i  was  a  genius .  ❜ ❛   it’s  starting  to  feel  like  all  i  know  how  to  do  is  put  on  a  suit  and  take  it  away .  ❜ ❛   they  fill  up  my  nights  and  then  they  float  away .  ❜ ❛   i’ve  got  hundreds  of  gowns .  ❜ ❛   i’ve  got  paintings  in  frames .  ❜ ❛   [ i’ve  got ]  a  throat  that  fills  with  panic  every  festival  day .  ❜ ❛   i  should’ve  known  when  your  favorite  record  was  the  same  as  my  father's .  ❜ ❛   you’d  take  me  down .  ❜ ❛   i  guess  i’ll  always  be  this  way .  ❜ ❛   but  there ,  by  the  fire ,  you  offered  your  hand .  ❜ ❛   and  as  i  took  it ,  i  loved  you .  ❜ ❛   you  found  me  clean  as  a  pine .  ❜ ❛   we've  been  through  so  many  hard  times .  ❜ ❛   i'm  writing  a  love  song  for  you .  ❜

[thestuffedalligator]

On a small farm outside of a small town in Canada, a horde of four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers on horseback rode out through a hole in time and space.

One of them had a thick leather glove, on which a golden eagle perched. Its handler reached up, slipped the little hood off the eagle’s head, and flicked his wrist. It took off, caught a thermal, soared in a lazy arc, dove, spread its talons forward, and then hit a window with a thunk.

Daniel DiSebastian, who was fifteen and on the other side of the window, stared. The eagle had managed to sink its talons into the mesh of the window screen before it stunned itself. It was hanging upside down. Over it, Dan saw a horde of four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers standing in formation in his neighbour’s field.

He stared for a moment longer. Curiosity won over self-preservation, and he walked out onto the porch of the house for a better view.

There was a ripping noise, the sound of panicked flapping, and something huge and tawny swooped low over Dan’s head. He ducked and only just managed to see the golden eagle fly in a wide circle back towards the horde of waiting soldiers. He heard a distant shout. Then two-hundred-and-forty of the soldiers drew their bows and fired into the air, creating a screaming cloud of arrows that blotted out the sun before raining down in a lethal shower.

Eighty-seven of these arrows hit Dan.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. When he did, the horde was already gone.

*

Eleven months later, Dan was mostly sure that whatever had happened that day eleven months ago had not, in fact, happened.

He was very happy to accept that it hadn’t happened until he walked into a Tim Hortons for a coffee and a donut and walked out to find a golden eagle perched on the sign for the drive-through.

Dan blinked. The eagle blinked. It took off with a heavy thump of wings, and Dan noticed the four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers on horseback in the parking lot.

There was a whistling noise. Dan was hit by one-hundred-and-seventy-nine-arrows.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. The horde was gone again. One of them had stolen his donut.

*

It was already dark when Dan and Cameron Burnaby walked out of the theatre.

“God, what a bad movie,” she laughed. Her breath came out in puffs of vapour in the November air.

“Like not even so bad it’s good,” Dan said. “It’s so bad it goes all around the world and crosses back into bad.”

“It’s supposed to be the last one, right?”

“That’s what I heard?”

Another puff of laughter. “Hope,” Cameron Burnaby said, grinning. “That’s what you hope.”

A huge bird took off from the sign over the theatre. Cameron Burnaby oohed at the sight and watched as it flew away.

Dan looked at her. This was nice. It was slow, but it was nice. It was nevertheless slightly spoiled by the little anxious voice that banged around in his hindbrain. It had been a year since his last attack. It was bound to happen eventually, and he had no idea how to bring it up in conversation. ‘So, I see you like the Mongolian beef and broccoli. Speaking of Mongolia, have I ever told you that I’ve been killed by Mongols four times?’

He had to tell her. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe they were done. It had been a whole year. Maybe killing him four times was enough for them. Surely killing somebody once was enough for most people, right?

Cameron Burnaby turned back at him and grinned. “So!” she said. “Was it the worst horror movie you’ve ever seen?”

He shook himself out of a vision of archers on horseback. “Nope, not even,” he said, walking forward again. “There was this one movie that came out last year. It’s about a guy who kidnaps tourists and turns them into walruses, it’s amazingly—”

Dan slipped on the ice. His leg flew up from underneath him. He felt sudden weightlessness and there was a crack as he landed on the sidewalk.

Everything hurt. Stars flashed across his vision. They faded to reveal the face of Cameron Burnaby, mittens clasped over her mouth. “Are you okay?” she asked.

No, Dan thought. “Yep,” Dan groaned. He pulled himself up onto his elbows. “Trust me, I’ve had worse.”

Cameron Burnaby offered him a hand. He took it, she pulled him up to his feet, and the two were suddenly standing much closer than he had expected.

Dan swallowed. He was suddenly aware of a thousand tiny details. The snowflakes that hung in her hair. The freckles on her nose. The shape of her lips. The terror in her eyes which were looking at something just over and past his shoulder.

He was briefly aware of seventeen arrows hitting the back of his skull.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. Cameron Burnaby was retching in the snow.

“What the fuck was that?!” she finally said, wiping the corner of her mouth with a mitten.

Dan considered a variety of responses. He decided that they all sounded stupid. He settled for the only one he knew was accurate. “A horde of four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers,” he sighed.

“They – you—” She gestured wildly. “Your face.”

Dan winced and eased himself onto the sidewalk. “I didn’t want you to see that,” he said.

There was a pause. “Has this happened before?” Cameron Burnaby asked.

Dan thought. “Yeah,” he said. “Five times, counting this one.”

“So this is just a thing that happens.”

“It – yeah,” he said. “I think so. It is.”

Cameron Burnaby nodded. “Oh. Okay.”

Another pause. A car drove past. Cameron Burnaby stood up. “I’m going to go.”

Dan nodded. “Right,” he said. “Some other time?”

There was no answer. Dan closed his eyes. He laid down on the sidewalk and listened to the crunch of snow under boots until they died away. Snowflakes landed on his face, tiny pinpricks of cold which stung and faded almost instantly as they melted.

There was a thump. Dan opened his eyes and looked over. There was a golden eagle standing there, twisting its head to glare at Dan.

Dan glared back. “I hate you,” he said. “I really, deeply hate you.”

The eagle, apparently satisfied with the answer, took off.

Another two-hundred-and-forty arrows sprouted from the sky.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. Physically, at least.

*

Dan had made the account because it had been five years since his date with Cameron Burnaby.

He looked it over again. The picture wasn’t great – he had tried several different angles and decided that he just didn’t have any good angles – but he was at least a little proud of the summary. Bi fella seeking someone to run from these time-travelling Mongol hordes with. Is that a metaphor? Contact me now to find out. Likes: coffee shops, people watching, history podcasts, dislikes: horses, arrows, people on horses with arrows, the CW show Arrow.

It was a long and glorious joke. Just like him.

He closed the app when he reached his car. He needed to drive. He didn’t have a specific location in mind. He just needed to drive somewhere. Anywhere.

Sometimes on drives like this, he’d drown out his thoughts with gory history podcasts. This time he let his mind wander.

Here he was. Daniel DiSebastian, twenty-four, killed by time-travelling Mongols twelve times. The butt of some cosmic running gag. Living in a cheap, empty condo in the city.

He turned a corner. Even the streets were empty this late at night.

Supposed to be empty. Dan turned onto the highway and was faced with a horde of four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers.

The car squealed to a stop. Dan stared. He’d studied – or at least, he’d listened to a few podcasts about the Mongols. They could pull back the string of a one-hundred-and-sixty-pound bow twelve times a minute and could carry one-hundred-and-fifty arrows in a quiver.

A part of his brain wondered what they could do to a 2004 Chrysler Sebring.

The rest of his brain said: Fuck it.

What happened next happened very quickly. Dan heard the engine scream as he floored the gas. He heard one-hundred-and-twelve arrows drum on the roof of the car. He saw another twelve as they punched through the windshield. Through the web of cracks he thought he saw movement, saw the cavalry part like a sea.

Then he was in the middle of the horde. Horses and men and spears were tangled around him, a whirlwind of screams and smells. He felt the car lurch as it ran over something. A few bodies threw themselves onto the hood of the car and were thrown off. Something landed with a thump on his roof.

And then he was on the other side.

The car screamed through the dark until it found its way back to the parking lot of his condo. Dan parked quickly, threw open a door, ran out, and retched onto the asphalt.

“Who’s the joke now!” he screamed between gags. “I’M DANIEL MOTHERFUCKING DISEBASTIAN!”

The parking lot echoed his name. His breath was ragged, and his throat burned. He felt his heartbeat slow to the point that he could make out individual beats, and then he noticed the arrow stuck in his sternum.

He touched it gingerly. “Oh fuck,” he hissed. He tried to pull it out. “Fuck me, seriously.”

Something went thump behind him. Dan turned. A thirteenth-century Mongol soldier had let go of the roof of his car.

He was holding a curved knife.

Dan died slowly.

It was, he decided, a lot worse than dying instantly.

So here he was. Daniel DiSebastian, twenty-four, lying on the asphalt, killed by time-travelling Mongols thirteen times. He stared up at the sky, trying to see stars through the haze of the city.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. A profile picture of a man with a beard and a tattooed feather on his neck had sent him a message.

I’ll bite. Is it a metaphor?

Dan looked at the profile picture. He looked up at the sky. He wiggled his thumbs in thought before he tapped out a response. That’s a great question.

*

Their first date was that Saturday.

They went to an old book shop. They bought each other a book. Theo had bought Dan a copy of The Song of Achilles, and Dan had almost managed not to laugh, and promised Theo that he’d explain the joke later.

They walked out of the shop together.

The sun was blotted out.

Dan died instantly.

*

He woke to the sound of running feet.

Panic started to seize up in his chest – oh god they were here they wanted to crush their enemies and see them driven before them and hear the lamentations of the women – when he heard the shrieking giggle.

Panic paused. Mongols didn’t giggle. Did they? No, not as far as he knew. So it wasn’t Mongols. Who giggles? Kids?

The kids across the hall. Of his apartment. Yes. This was fine.

Adrenaline sizzled on contact with relief and boiled into seething indignation. “Somebody’s daddy should have been castrated,” he muttered.

Theo twisted beside him. “It’s like, eleven in the morning, babe.”

Dan glared at the stucco surface of the ceiling. “Fine,” he said. “They get a pass. This time.”

Theo snorted. He turned his phone of with a click, and he rolled to wrap his arm over Dan’s chest. “Don’t get maaad at them,” he said, nuzzling his chin into Dan’s neck.

“I’ll get as maaad as I want,” Dan said, the whine of the defeated.

An hour later, Dan pulled on his pants. “Remind me what we need again?”

“No, I’ll go with you,” Theo said. “I can’t trust you to buy groceries anymore.”

“Rude.”

“Rude and true. We still have fifteen bags of Tostitos.”

Dan sighed. “Is that just going to be a thing now?” he asked. “The Tostitos Incident?”

“I already have your tombstone planned. ‘Here Lies Daniel DiSebastian. He Once Bought Twenty Bags of Tostitos Chips By Accident.” Theo wiggled his fingers in the air to draw quotation marks around the words ‘By Accident.’ “We Don’t Know How It Happened Either.”

Dan wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, it’ll look great next to yours. ‘Here Lies Theodore Oliveira, Stung By Bees Forty-Five Times Specifically On The Crotch.”

“Now hold on.”

“We Don’t Know How It Happened, But We Can Guess!”

Theo shook his head. “Cool,” he said. “Cool, cool, cool. So because I learned a thing about Cleopatra, I’m the guy who wants a vibrator made of bees.”

Dan shrugged as he pulled his coat on. “I mean, you seemed pretty keen about it.”

“Fuck you, Tostitos.”

“Mm. Love you too, Cleo.”

When they were in the parking lot, Theo said, “You know I love you too, right?”

Dan looked over. “Yes?” he said. “We’ve been living together for a year, babe.”

“I know, I know. It’s just—”

“If you didn’t then I’m shit at reading signals.”

Theo grinned. “Yeah, your Bi-dar is total garbage.”

“I can’t connect to the Bi-Fi.”

“You need some…” Theo grimaced. “Bi-focals? To see who’s attracted to you?”

“That was terrible, Theo.”

“Yeah, but you’ll get bi.”

Dan snorted. “Jesus Christ. Anyways. You were saying?”

Theo shrugged. “I dunno. I said fuck you, and you said love you, and…” He blew the air out of his cheeks. “This is the longest I’ve been in a relationship, and I think I know what’s normal for us? But sometimes I’m not sure I know.”

Dan laughed, grabbed the lapels of Theo’s jacket, pulled him down and kissed him. “Fuck, I don’t know either. But I haven’t been normal in years, Theo. This is a ‘not normal’ I can take.”

Theo smiled. “How’re you feeling today, by the way?”

“Good!” Dan grinned. “I’m feeling good.”

There was a thump. Dan looked over and saw a golden eagle take off from the tailgate of a parked truck.

“Actually, hold that thought,” he said, taking a couple steps back.

Two-hundred-and-thirty-nine arrows came screaming out of the sky.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. He heard Theo asking if he was okay.

“Please tell me you saved the donuts,” he muttered.

There was a pause. “Y’know, you keep saying that, and I’ve never actually seen them steal anything from you.”

Dan screwed open an eye to glare. It didn’t last. Theo was squatting on the pavement next to him with his chin in his hand and a smile crinkling the corners of his mouth, and goddammit, he was cute.

He tried anyways. “Excuse you, how many times have you been killed by thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers?”

Theo shrugged. “Exactly zero,” he admitted. “But I’ve seen you get killed by thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers three times now, and I have the benefit of watching what they do while you’re out of it.”

“Oh, what, so someone else stole that donut? Some asshole was like, ‘Oh dope, a dead kid and a donut, yoink!’”

Theo grinned. “I’ve seen weirder things happen.”

Dan stared up at the sky. “Y’know what?” he said. “Totally fair.”

Dan got up and lived.

At least until eight months later. But he’d get better.

[lacontroller1991]

Jealous Much? (Negan x OFC)

Requested by @negans-attagirl​ :After his imprisonment at Alexandria, he is free and alone until he meets OC (in her twenties) and actually saves him from a herd/ he starts to follow her, being a sassy daddy as always and flirts with her but she resists a long time. They meet another survivor (More in oc age) and negan gets jealous and mad. They get lead into an ambush by the new guy, are able to escape and maybe in the heat of the moment the smut happens.

Warnings: Smut 18+ oral sex (female receiving), vaginal sex, cream pie, language

Author’s note: I am so sorry it’s super conversation heavy but I promise the smut won't be 😊

@negans-attagirl​ @not-too-tall-for-trick​

Jess could hear them before she saw them, their groans echoing through the forrest. Climbing up a tree, she looked through the herd, seeing what could’ve gotten them riled up. Raising her binoculars up to her face, she saw a man in the middle, bashing walker’s heads with a metal pipe, although he was getting quickly outnumbered.

“Shit,” she whispered to herself, jumping down from the tree and rushing to the guy’s aid. Drawing out her sword, she was quick to live the walkers’ heads, blood splattering against her face. The guy looked at her for a split second before returning to kill them. After the herd was dead, Jess looked at the guy.

“Hell were you thinking?” She asked, panting and wiping the blood from her blade.

“That’s no way to talk to a stranger,” he replied, “the name’s Negan.”

“The name’s I don’t care,” she spat out, walking away and leaving him alone.

“Hey! What are you doing out here?” Negan asked, tailing Jess.

“Survivin’.”

“By yourself? Surely there's a man with you,” he stated but was immediately pushed against a tree with a blade to his throat.

“I don't need a man,” pulling away the knife, Jess stared into his eyes.

“I don't have no where to go.”

“Not my problem.”

“Can I stay here with you? I can help out with whatever you need,” Negan begged as she pulled her brown hair back.

“What I need is for you to leave me alone.”

“Come on babe, don’t be like.”

“I’m not your babe.”

“But you could be,” and truth be told, Jess wasn't completely opposed to the idea. It's been a while since she’s seen a human, and even longer since she’s had physical touch, but she knew. Everyone dies.

“Fine, but I live in the woods,” she mentioned as he nodded following her closely.

“You know, you remind me of someone.”

“Who?”

“Guy name Daryl. Quiet, tempered, doesn’t take bullshit.”

“Crossbow guy?” Jess asked as Negan nodded.

“Yeah, he's an asshole,” he chuckled as she smirked.

“I know. Was with them back in Atlanta, they were too chaotic.”

“That they are. ‘Specially Rick. Made my life a living hell.”

“They have good intentions, just wrong way of going about it.”

“Very wrong, cost me my life,” he replied as she nodded her head, eyeing a deer. Shushing Negan, Jess slowly crept up to the deer, aiming her bow and releasing an arrow, killing the deer.

“Wanna skin it?” She asked him as he shook his head. Shrugging, she plunger her knife into the deer, spilling out its guts.

“That’s disgusting as shit,” he stated as she let out a chuckle before looking up at him.

“Never done this?”

“I had people for it,” looking down at her, he noticed a small smile that radiated her face.

“Well, it’s dinner for the next couple of days.”

She hated to admit it, but Negan had actually grown on her, never failing to make her smile. She had to constantly remind herself that she could not get attached to him. Not now. As they were walking around, staying out of sight, their attention was quickly grabbed by a cry for help. Jess was quick to rush to the aid until an arm held her back.

“We don't know who that pussy is,” he spoke softly as she looked at him and smacked his arm, “what?”

“I seem to recall saving your ass.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t screaming like a pansy,” she chuckled before running to help the person. Slicing through walkers, she looked down at the guy who seemed to be her age. He had a strong jawline with curly brown hair and green eyes. Offering him a hand, she pulled him up as she dusted himself off.

“Thanks, I could’ve sworn I was about to die,” he mentioned with a smile that Negan could see right through.

“You have a camp?” Negan asked before Jess could say anything.

“I did, got over run by moaners,” he replied, Negan wasn’t buying it but Jess was.

“What's your name?” She asked softly as the guy gave her a smile.

“Jack,” he replied as Negan leaned over into her ear.

“Something isn’t sitting right with me,” he whispered as she shot him a glare.

“Nothing sits right with you.”

“You do,” winking at her, he pulled out a gun he found and pointed it at Jack.

“Woah buddy.”

“Negan!”

“We can’t trust him.”

“I trusted you,” she retorted as he sighed, lowering the gun but never taking his eyes off of the guy.

“He your dad?” Jack asked as Jess laughed, shaking her head.

“Nah, just a stray.”

“Ouch, that hurts,” Negan stated as looked between the two of them.

“Oh hush,” Jess directed at Negan before turning her head back to Jack, “how about you come with us? We have food and water.”

“I’d like that.”

As the weeks passed, Negan was growing antsy. Missing the way that she used to be his and only his, though never officially. He cringed whenever Jess and Jack would flirt with each other, giving each other small touches and lingering stares. What Negan didn’t know was that Jess was just trying to make Negan jealous. He made her feel things she never thought she would feel again in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. For all she knew, it wasn’t working. But it was. She was coming back from a hunt with Jack when Negan pulled her to the side, glaring down at Jack before he got the hint and scurried off to leave the two of them to talk.

“What are you doing?” She asked harshly as he gave her a disappointed look.

“Jess, I get that you’re trying to help this asshole, but doesn’t something feel off to you?��� He reasoned with her while she pondered in thought, trying to think of all the times her and Jack had talked.

“Are you jealous, Negan?” She questioned with a smirk as he groaned and shook his head.

“No, something isn’t right.”

“You’re just paranoid,” she stated as he stared at her.

“You’re not listening to me. He’s dangerous, I know his type.”

“Get over it, he’s staying.”

“Whatever, I need to take a walk,” he mentioned, throwing his hands up in the air as he walked away from camp. She didn’t notice that Jack had snuck up from behind her until he spoke.

“Everything okay?” He asked as she shook her head.

“He’s just being difficult. He’s normally not like this.”

“Come with me, I know a place to clear your head,” Jack replied as she looked at him with concern.

“I don’t know, we need to skin these rabbits before they go bad.”

“Come one, it’ll be fun!” He begged as she let out a smile before agreeing, allowing him to lead her deep into the woods.

It was not fun. Her head pounded as blood flowed down her temple, looking around the underground cell, trying to find an escape. After finding none, she kicked the mattress that they had supplied for her.

“Fuck,” she shouted out in frustration before sinking to the floor, running her hands through her hair. She didn’t remember anything after Jack had led her into the woods and knocked her out. She had no clue where she was nor how she got there. One thing she did know for sure. Negan was right. Slowly, she let her eyes drift close, falling into a dreamless sleep.

She was awoken by the cell door opening. Expecting it to be Jack or one of his companions, she immediately cowered away from the door but a pair of arms wrapped around her in comfort.

“Negan?” She asked, voice cracking from being dehydrated and tired.

“Let’s get you outta here baby doll,” he whispered, picking her up in his arms and carrying her out of the cell.

“How are we gonna get out?”

“I killed them. Once I figured out what happened, I tracked you to here and killed them. They’ll probably be turning any minute now so we gotta move.”

“You were right,” he looked down at her and moved a strand of hair out of her face before kissing her temple.

“It's okay, let’s just go.” Running through the woods with you in his arms, he looked around to make sure no walkers were following them before setting you down in a cave that he had found while tracking you. It would have to do for the night. Removing his jacket, he immediately wrapped it around her as she shook from shock and the cold. 

The air was tense around the pair, Negan desperately wanting to brag about being right and Jess in shame for not listening to him.

“How did you know about him?” She asked cautiously as he handed her a canteen.

“It takes one to know one. I’ve seen many people like him so I just figured, plus he’s strong, if he couldn’t take care of 10 walkers by himself then something must’ve been up.”

“I should’ve listened. I’m sorry,” shuffling closer to him, she leaned her head on his shoulder as he let out a sigh.

“Don’t be. You didn't know,” he commented, wrapping his arm around her smaller frame, pulling her in closer for heat. She looked up at him with a small smile before placing a gentle kiss on his lips.

“Thank you.”

“Well shit, if I had known saving a pretty thing like yourself would’ve gotten me a kiss, I would do it a thousand times over,” he stated as she let out a snort before shrugging his jacket and arm off, straddling his lap, her face being illuminated by the soft glow of the fire place.

“I was flirting with him to make you jealous,” admitting to her little secret, he looked up at her with a smile.

“It worked.” Crashing his lips to hers, his arms immediately wrapped around her waist as she deepened the kiss, placing her hands on his cheeks, running her hands through his stubble. Pulling away, they gasped for air while Jess’s hands moved to her shirt. Tugging at the hem, she quickly pulled the shirt over her head, leaving her in a bra.

“Are we doing this now? Because I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about this,” he whispered as she smiled down, reaching back to unclasp her bra. 

“Shut up and make me feel good,” she commanded as he gave a mock salute, turning them over and running kisses down her jawline and onto her chest, leaving open mouthed kisses along her breasts. She arched her back into his touch, needing to feel more, and judging by the growing bulge in his pants, she knew he needed more too. Moving his mouth to her nipple, he swirled the bud around his mouth as she released a moan, clutching her hands in his hair, tugging at the slightly greying strands that reached the back of his neck. He moved off of her before trailing kisses down to her waistband and looked up at her. With a nod in confirmation, her skin shivered with anticipation as he undid the buckle and button. Pulling down her pants, he took a moment to admire the view of her panties soaked with her arousal.

“All that for me baby?”

“Negan, please,” she moaned as he smirked, removing the pants before placing a kiss on her covered clit. He groaned when he could taste her wetness through her underwear. Moving her underwear to the side, he laid his tongue flat against her folds as she gasped out loudly. Moving his tongue up and down, he collected her wetness before stopping and removing her panties. Going back down, he placed his mouth on her clit and began sucking on the bundle of nerves, swirling it around his tongue as he entered a finger inside of her, causing her to start panting heavily.

Adding another finger, he began pumping them in and out, fingers wet with her juices. Curling them inside of her, he continue to lap up her clit as her hands found their way back to his hair, messing up his neat hairdo, not that he minded. Groaning against her, he could feel the ache in his pants getting more painful with all of her sounds he was eliciting. Suddenly, he blew on her clit and flicked it with his other hand and he could tell she was getting close by the way her walls were starting to constrict around his fingers.

“Cum for me baby,” he commanded, pulling at her sensitive spot before she let out a shout and came over his hand. Coaxing her through it, he saw her smile down at him, a thin layer of sweat forming against her body. Pulling his fingers out, he licked them, letting out a moan before moving down to his tent and rubbed his dick, trying to release some pressure.

“Oh God, Negan. I need you.”

“Say less,” he chuckled, moving his hands to unbutton his pants and pushing them down. Grabbing her hips, he moved her up to his lap, rubbing his dick against her wet folds.

“You ready?” Nodding her head, he gently pushed his tip in, both of them groaning at the sensation before he pushed in farther, giving her some time to adjust to his size.

“You can move,” she stated, relishing in the feeling of him completely filling her out, causing her walls to stretch around him. He pulled out before slamming back into her as she moaned, moving up so that she was now on top of him. 

“God baby, you’re sexy as fuck,” he groaned out as he clutched her hips in his hands, pushing her down onto him. She clutched onto his shoulders as he thrusted up into her. He watched the way her boobs bounced with each thrust and with each thrust he was getting closer as was she. Moving her off of him, he laid her down and wrapped her left on his waist while the other went on his shoulder, allowing him a different access angle that had them both panting messes. Pivoting his hips, he thrusted back in, hitting her g-spot. 

“Harder,” it was barely a whisper but it was loud enough for him to hear as he continued snapping his hips against hers, creating a friction against her clit. Reaching down, her hand gently touched her clit and rubbed it harshly, trying to reach her orgasm. 

“Negan, I’m close,” he understood those words perfectly clear as his thrusts became more erratic, trying to help her reach her high. Her eyes closed in bliss as her walls clamped down on his cock, coming over it. His hands went to her breasts and grabbed them, not slowing down as he was near the end. 

“Cum inside of me.”

“Ya sure babydoll?”

“Oh my God, yes, please, yes.” Pumping into her a few more times he released his load with a loud groan. He looked down and saw his cum to start dripping out of her. He swore he could come again at the sight. Pulling out of her, he continued to watch the way her pussy pulsed out his cum before collapsing next to her and taking her hand in his, gently kissing her knuckles.

“That was fun,” she commented, trying to catch her breath as he looked over at her.

“Much needed and waited.”

“Tell me Negan, have you thought about fucking me this whole time?”

“Every fucking night,” he admitted, thinking back to all of the nights he had to sneak off to relieve himself. 

“Good, because this is not done.”

“Wouldn’t count on it baby girl.”

Author’s Note: AHHH. HOPE YOU ENJOYED

[shera-dnd]

Had to split a simply colossal chapter into two smaller ones, so here is the first of those

Now featuring the faes’ true forms and an ungodly amount of simping

“I believed we had our winner when Lady Polendina got that perfect bullseye,” Weiss retold as she walked with her companions through the festival grounds, “but Lady Rose managed to, and I still cannot believe it, split her lover’s arrow with her own!”

“I’m certain there is an innuendo to be found there,” Ilia commented, earning her an offended scoff from the would-be-knight.

“Must you?” Weiss asked in exasperation.

“Believe me, Lady Gigas, she most certainly must.” Blake assured her, “but please continue. I’d love to hear more about our favorite couple.”

“Well, after they had finished utterly humiliating me in the shooting range,” she regaled, “they decided it was time to do so again in the sparring fields.”

“What is it with you knightly folk and sparring?” Ilia asked, seemingly annoyed, “is this your means of courtship? Were Lady Rose and Lady Polendina inviting you to join them in their tent?”

“It is a means to maintain our skills while coming to better understand each other!” Weiss countered, “and just because I now know where my preferences lie does not mean I’ll fall for the first woman to best me in combat!”

“Of course,” Ilia replied, though Weiss found no reassurance in her tone, “after all that honor would fall to Lady Blake, and we all know her preference is for women two times your size.”

“I have never claimed otherwise,” Blake replied with a shrug, “now would you mind procuring us some dinner, before you make our friend pop a blood vessel.”

“Very well,” Ilia sighed, as if she had been burdened with a terrible quest, “I shall meet you both back at camp. Please, do torment the Schnee in my absence.’

She offered them an over exaggerated bow and made her way deeper into the festival grounds, quickly disappearing amidst the crowd.

“You do know I could have just made us dinner, right?” Weiss asked, annoyance clear in her tone.

“And I’m certain it would have been delicious,” Blake replied, “but I’m not certain it would have been worth your sanity.”

“Of course.”

She hated to admit it, but she did not mind this at all. In fact she quite enjoyed the little trading of barbs that they partook in every day. It made for some interesting entertainment, and it allowed her to know Ilia a little better.

She was also quite enamored with the little laughs that would escape the fae whenever she got Weiss to make a fool of herself. No, she most definitely did not wish to question why she found Ilia’s laughter to be so endearing.

Definitely not.

Weiss decided then to archive those thoughts, and focus instead on the second most embarrassing topic in her mind.

“Thank you,” she muttered as they began making their way back to camp.

“No need to thank me,” Blake waved off, “wouldn’t want you two to strangle each other.”

“No, I meant…” Weiss sighed, “thank you for calling me a friend.”

Blake offered her a soft smile that only served to embarrass her further.

“I’m glad I got to call you that,” she replied, “and I’m sure Ilia thinks the same, even if she’ll never admit it.”

That got Weiss to smile back. Her life so far had been one of isolation, she had barely met anyone outside of the few select guests her father would allow into their manor, and had failed to find anyone who cared for her with the exception of Winter and Klein. But now she had been able to adventure beyond the walls of Atlas and find people who she could call friends.

Without Ilia with them to incite arguments and pester her, the rest of the walk back to camp was held in a comfortable silence. Though Weiss certainly missed the opportunity to get back at her friend for the earlier annoyance.

“If I may,” Blake began as soon as they arrived at their camp, “would you mind if I spent the night in my own skin for a change?”

It took Weiss’s mind a long moment to register what she meant by that request, but when it did she jumped to attention.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” She asked, looking around to make sure no one had heard that.

“Our camp is secluded enough,” she shrugged, “and no one ever comes here uninvited.”

“If you’re sure,” Weiss replied, “then I would not mind.”

Blake smiled at her in thanks and began undressing herself. Weiss promptly turned to look away, eyes focusing on anything but her naked companion. What followed was a series of noises that she would fail to describe, though they tempted Weiss to look back at her, if only to make sure that she’s okay.

After a moment of silence she heard the heavy thump of something heavy hitting the ground, followed by Blake’s familiar voice, “you may look again now.”

Where once stood the proud Black Knight of Vale now sat something else entirely. Her form had grown tremendously, now easily challenging that of Lady Xiao Long, and her body had grown completely covered in black fur, with a small white spot on her chest and two others on the back of her now clawed hands.

Her hair too had grown longer and wilder, and the face that hid behind it now took the features of a feline, especially her golden eyes which now reflected the bonfire’s light with an eerie glow. Behind her sway a long black tail, though mostly catlike it was adorned with thorns and purple flowers.

No, not adorned, that plant was as much a part of her body as her tail.

Stunned was perhaps not enough to describe the state in which Weiss found herself right now. She had been raised on stories of the terrifying and monstrous fae that hid in the forests beyond the walls of Atlas, and though Blake’s true form definitely fit that description, she still carried herself with the same grace and nobility that she did in her human skin.

She was still a knight, and she was still Lady Blake.

Unfortunately Blake seemed to take notice of all the staring, “if this causes you discomfort, I could change back.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Weiss assured her, “I was simply unprepared.”

Pleased with that response, Blake began to vigorously stretch herself as if she had spent many hours locked inside a tight space - a comparison that was perhaps too appropriate for her much smaller human form - and behind her her tail swayed happily.

“I haven’t been able to don this form since we arrived for the festival,” Blake informed, “it is good to feel like myself again.”

“It won’t be good for long if the local knights decide to take our hides,” the familiar and ever cheerful tone of Ilia’s voice called as she approached camp and unceremoniously dropping a basket between the two of them, “though do enjoy your dinner while you can.”

“Thank you, I certainly plan to,” Blake replied, seemingly unfazed by Ilia’s usual foul mood, “now come, sit, take off that damned glamour for once.”

Ilia stared at her, as if she was trying to will her fellow fae to stop with this nonsense.

It did not work.

“She will not give in, Lady Ilia,” Weiss said, “we’ll already be in plenty of trouble if we’re found in the presence of one fae, a second one won’t make a difference.”

Lady Ilia was unamused by Weiss’s commentary, “and what, pray tell, is your plan in case they do find you in the presence of not one, but two fae?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She asked, standing up so she would be on the same level as her, “I’ll have a heroic last stand where I’ll fight off a dozen knights, before rescuing you on horseback.”

“Is that so?” Ilia asked, trying to keep her lips from twitching.

Weiss stepped closer.

“Oh yes, and then we’d ride off towards the sunrise and you’d…” she paused for a moment, trying to remember something, “what was it you said? Swoon and praise me for my strength and bravery.”

“Didn’t you say you held no attraction towards swooning maidens, Schnee?” Ilia teased, her smile slowly beginning to take hold.

“I’d be simply fulfilling my knightly duties, Lady Ilia,” Weiss insisted.

“You know what, Schnee?” Ilia began, with a smile on her face as she closed the ever shrinking gap between her and the Schnee, “I think I will doff this damned glamour, if only so I can watch you get skewered by those dozen knights while I flee on horseback by myself.”

“I’ll make sure to make it entertaining to you, my lady,” Weiss assured her, now face to face with the smiling fae.

A chuckle escaped Blake’s lips, earning her the most terrifying glare from Lady Ilia. The knight was, of course, unimpressed, seeming to consider a comment in her mind before reconsidering and letting it die without being voiced. A decision that Ilia greatly approved.

“Now will you please cast away that glamour of yours and relax for once,” she said instead.

“Very well,” Ilia surrendered with a sigh.

For a moment nothing seemed to happen, but then it was like the Ilia Weiss had known had shattered like glass, and what stood behind the illusion could only be described as breathtaking.

Eyes of light blue turned into pure glowing white, freckled skin turned to thousands of scales woven together into a tapestry of color. On her forehead now stood two large thorns, almost like a pair of horns, though they exuded the same regal air as a proper crown.

Lady Ilia then disposed of her - now much bleeker looking - dress to reveal a growth of leaves and vines covering her more...intimate places. Still it was not her crown nor her naked form that had Weiss in awe, it was her wings.

They were not unlike those of a butterfly, though no butterfly could ever hope to match their beauty. They were the light of her eyes fractured again and again into more colors than Weiss's mortal eyes could see, all of them weaved together in a pattern that could make even the stained glass of Atlas's grand cathedral look plain by comparison.

It took all of Weiss’s will not to fall to her knees in worship of the beauty she had been given the privilege to bask in. Though it didn’t seem she was able to completely hide her reaction, as when their eyes met she saw surprise in Lady Ilia’s face, and for a moment it was as if every fragment of color in her body had turned to the brightest of pinks.

“Should I give you both some space?” Blake asked, tail swaying slowly behind her.

“Absolutely not!” Lady Ilia shouted, sitting back down and refusing to look back at the still stunned wannabe knight.

It was now Weiss’s turn to shift through several shades of pink. She whispered a silent prayer that the gods would return to Remnant if only so the God of Destruction could completely remove her - and her shame - from the face of this world. This gave her some time to recover, at least enough that she could sit by the campfire with her companions again.

Unfortunately for the both of them that awkward tension lingered over the camp like a thick fog. It did not help that neither of them found it within themselves to look at or even address each other. They left it all to Blake to rescue them from their self imposed punishment.

“Ilia,” she called, “I believe you had questions for me.”

Lady Ilia seemed to take a few moments to recognize that she was being spoken to, but bolted up in attention as she understood the opportunity that was being given her.

“You’ve yet to tell me how you came to join the humans,” she reminded, “or why iron doesn’t burn you.”

That piqued Weiss’s interest as well. She knew Blake had to have some kind of magical trick to don her armor without burning herself alive, perhaps if she could share that secret they could use it to help those fae who wished to live among humans.

“This isn’t some trick you can replicate, Ilia,” Blake explained, killing Weiss’s plan on the spot, “this is not a weapon the unseelie can use.”

Ilia let out a sound not unlike a growl, showing that her teeth were much sharper than before.

“Not everything I do is out of spite for humanity!” She almost shouted, and her body shifted into bloody reds and harsh yellows. Though that display clearly failed to intimidate her fellow fae, earning herself only a raised brow, a reaction that caused her to change colors once more, this time to pinks and blues. “You left us. I want to know why.”

“But I have already--”

“No,” she interrupted, colors shifting over and over through her body, unable and unwilling to settle, “you don’t just change your mind like that for no reason. I want to know what happened.”

Blake sighed, tail wrapping around herself as she seemed to deflate, “this story is quite long, Ilia.”

“So is the night,” Ilia countered, “come, tell us.”

Blake looked at her, then at Weiss, who offered her her most reassuring look, “very well then.”

[starofroselight]

Title: He Calls You Theseus (Now Call Him Odysseus and Welcome Him Home)

Chapter 1: In Which Technoblade's Narrative Crumbles    

Summary: Technoblade's language is the art of combat and weaponry. Tommy doesn't understand, so Technoblade speaks in a way they'll both understand. Or, Technoblade’s been having strange visions while taking care of Tommy.

Tags: Technoblade, TommyInnit, SBI fic, Introspection, Flashbacks, Found Family, Brothers, Trauma, Alternate Universe, References to Greek Myth, Sleepy Bois Inc. as Family, Sleepy Bois Inc. Angst, Chat as Ghosts, Rose AU

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786947

Author’s Note: This is my baby. I’ve worked for this on a while, and it’s about 5.1k words. I hope you enjoy the first chapter, I plan for around five in all.

A flurry of snow buffeted the snow banks around Technoblade's retirement home. 

Technoblade had decided teaching Tommy the art of arrow fletching was important. He had come to immediately regret that decision. Tommy’s loud mouth and shaky hands were something manageable in the best of times, but when the time came for work to be done they became hindrances. Liabilities.

Technoblade didn’t take in liabilities. 

“How’s this, big man?” The tooth-gaped teen asked smugly, holding up a shoddily constructed arrow as if it were made of gold.

Technoblade briefly considered how much easier this would have had he cleaved Tommy’s head clean off in the hole under his house.

> You can’t!

> The most efficient way to grind out arrows is village trading. Make one of your downstairs hostages a fletcher, trade sticks, build rapport, then trade in for arrows.

> Tommy pog

> would’ve been funnier if you did

“Chat, do you see what I’m dealing with?” He mumbled to himself. 

“Oi Chat! Hey Chat, do you think Technoblade is a big bitch?”

“Tommy, you’re giving me a headache.” That wasn’t all that was giving him a headache: voices, the thousands of voices which were riled up by his every interaction with another living soul. Each voice was vying for a spot to influence his words, to have any effect on the outside world like they once were able to.

And the voices really liked Tommy.

“All I want’s an answer.”

He wouldn’t get one.

"How am I better at this with hooves?! Here, let me show you one more time.” Techno squatted beside where Tommy was sitting on the stone brick floor. “Two ties on each side over the flint. Three sharp cuts into the wood. Feather goes in between. Look, perfectly functional arrows! What part of this aren’t you getting? It’s not that difficult!”

Tommy picked up the tools from the fletching table. He took one look at the sticks, then picked up a fistful of feathers.

“Right—”

“Okay, that’s enough, I’m not going to let you keep massacring my feathers like this. What even is this?" He picked up a feather from the floor. It hung limp between the heel of his hoof, frayed and torn. "These chickens died for nothing!"

“What am I supposed to do while you do all the work if I can’t help?” Tommy was pouting, his face so full of vibracity and energy it looked as if he was choking.

That was it. Techno's face twitched. 

“Maybe if you sit down and stay quiet for a minute, I can come up with an idea!”

Surprisingly, Tommy did. His face flushed red with embarrassment. 

And Technoblade realized he had screamed at a scared, struggling sixteen year old child covered in scars. 

> do you feel powerful now

> OOOOOOO

> You should kill him

> Betray Tommy!

> betray tommy

He dragged a hoof over his face. The gesture was easier with hands.

"Look. . . Tommy. You're clearly not good at fletching arrows. Why don't you go lay down in your racoon hole?"

Technoblade’s plan had been, surprisingly, one of altruism. He wanted to teach Tommy how to make arrows so he could value the ammunition. He had a tendency to complain about. . . well, everything, but specifically running out of supplies. Techno hoped this would teach him how valuable they were. Not in resources, but as assets. In the heat of battle, every shot mattered.

After Tommy had made a quiverful of arrows, Technoblade planned on taking him out to his practice range. Inexperienced hands nocking an arrow were shaking and quick to flinch. Archery hurt. It was a difficult skill to master; the art of shooting an arrow required the fletching to run through the archer’s fingers. If their hands were smooth and uncalloused, the projectile would cut through their fingers like a blade in water. His hands (and hooves) were roughed up to the consistency of leather from arduous repetition. Tommy hadn’t had that experience.

Technoblade had made leather gloves for that exact reason.

And now that plan was ruined.

While his retirement home was the definition of picturesque, Tommy had come to ruin that as well. The foundation had made Techno's house uneven. The ground was unstable and it had started to sag north. 

Tommy had literally dug up and unsettled his life. 

Somewhere in there was a metaphor and a moment for some much-needed introspection. Technoblade ignored it. 

Snow had sloped onto the roof heavy, the sound of monsters outside crunching feet of the stuff. The cold had choked out the will of any invaders at the cost of isolating them together. The house’s floor was insulated with stone, then covered with wood. The chimney doubled as a source of light, warmth, and a way to heat the floor. Technoblade had learned how to make heated floors from Chat. The quality of life improvement was immense.

Tommy hadn’t understood how, but he did enjoy it. Too often he had slept in his boots, curled up into a jacket or blanket or whatever he could find. But this? This was a luxury that could lull him into a rest like no other.

And Tommy needed a good sleep after Logsteadshire.

Still, his spirit reignited despite his body's protests. He stretched his arms upward in attempts to hide his yawn. 

He stomped his foot. 

"I'm not tired! We need supplies, we need—We need to get back the discs."

That was going to be a hard habit to kick. The kid needed a break; his eyes were ringed in black. He sat hunched over with awful posture, looking pitiful. Technoblade held back the urge to call him a racoon again.

Despite the warmth, Tommy was shivering.

Exhaustion. Techno knew it all too well.

The Piglin man took off his cape, folding it over his arm. It helped increase his bulk, his size when intimidation was necessary. When he was home its purpose became a blatant unnecessity. Still, he often found himself falling asleep in it, curled up in a tiny pile against the wall where no one could hurt him. 

It was important.

And he tossed it to Tommy. 

"We'll get back the discs after you go to sleep. If you fall asleep in the snow you'll freeze to death and die."

Then he stoked the fire with an iron pole, minding Edward's head. He couldn't be bothered to kill the creature just yet. The flames roared up, consuming the cold air in the room and up the chimney. 

Tommy held the crimson cloak in his arms. He stared for a second, then twisted to wrap it around himself. It was enormous, swamping his thin figure in fabric and comfort unknown for weeks in exile. He pushed himself further into the corner with the fletching table, close to his hiding box.

"The 'and die' is kind of redundant, 'innit?" Tommy muttered, head poking up from the fluff of the cloak’s collar.

Technoblade sighed. 

They were going to keep talking in circles. He would make a general statement, Tommy would overload him with non sequiturs and nonsense sentences until Technoblade tuned him out with Chat. However, he couldn’t ignore Tommy here. If he did, the boy would never go to sleep, and the cold of the night didn’t need a cold shoulder on top of it. A cranky Tommy and an annoyed Technoblade was a recipe for disaster, overthrowing governments or otherwise.

There was only one way he knew how to talk in times like this:

“Let me tell you a story.”

It was an offer more intimate than Tommy knew. 

Naturally, he rejected it.

“What if I don’t want to hear a story?” Said teenager shifted in his cozy corner. 

“Too bad.” He pushed the crown up from where it was slipping off his head. If he was going to coax the world's most energetic child to sleep, he needed to let down his guard. 

“Why do you even wear that thing?”

“What, the crown? It’s not like I use it in combat or anything, it's just for fun. Fun is banned? You're banning fun now?" He laughed. "Good luck getting anyone on your side."

“I don’t have a side. Or rather, my side is your side? Now you’ve gone and got my head all confused.” Tommy’s voice had grown softer. 

Techno couldn’t have that.

“There’s no ‘our side’. We are not a team.”

Tommy huffed. “Until we get the discs back.”

“Will you let go of the discs for a minute? They’re not going anywhere.”

“Could go into a fire.”

Techno huffed heavier. Puffs of true flame curled out from his snout. Not the metaphorical risk clouding Tommy’s mind. He was already headed towards the pitfall he wanted to avoid. It was time to change the subject.

“Considering your limited knowledge of Greek classics, you wouldn’t happen to know Homer?”

“Who what now?” 

A solid ‘no’ would have sufficed, Techno thought.

“You probably haven’t heard of Odysseus, then.”

“With a name like that, I reckon I should of. Wait, this is one of your myths again, isn’t it?” Tommy kicked himself up, back against the wall to look at Technoblade as they spoke.

“I like a certain section of stories. Is that so wrong?”

“Is this story about you?”

The Blade tutted. “No, no, no. I don’t have any family. Orphans killed my parents. Family is useless, it slows you down unless you’re exacting revenge. In that case, family is excellent. Nothing better than dead family.”

"That doesn't make any sen—"

"Keep interrupting and I'll make you sleep in Carl's stable."

Tommy pouted. His hair stuck up in every which way, active as he was.

“Odysseus was a king of his own island. He lived in peace with his family on Ithaca, and he was known as a wise man.” It had been a while since Technoblade had told a story like this. His rhythm was lacking. “He was the favorite of Athena, the goddess of battle and wisdom.”

“Gods aren’t real.”

“You’re looking at one.”

Silence. “Yeah, right.” 

"Moving on.” He wasn’t willing to indulge Tommy in that story when he was preoccupied with telling another. “While Odysseus was a king, he wasn’t the chief king. At that point Greece was broken up into various city states, other little countries that refused to be conquered. While it was all Greece, there was a difference between a Spartan and an Athenian. Too many fights for power and the geopolitical landscape had torn them apart. Odysseus had his friends, though it would be more accurate to call them his allies, his country with whom he had sworn an oath to fight alongside. Each of those kings would be headed out their own separate way.” That felt right to Technoblade. “They were brothers in arms, finally called to war for the sake of their nation. But Odysseus ended up alone.”

“Why?”

“The people around him broke the rules. They went up against the sun god, and so they were punished.”

“What’d they do?”

“Oh, uh. Ate his cows.”

Tommy gasped.

“No!”

“Okay, so you get it. The Pet Skirmishes but on a much, much bigger scale.”

“Where’s Sapnap?”

“Tommy, it’s a myth, it’s not about your friends. They’re gods.” 

“Dunno why you’d tell a story about a bunch of boring, stuffy gods. Hey, why’re you such a bad storyteller?”

That was it. "I'm trying to monologue here! Chat, Chat see how impossible this is?"

“Tell chat that you’re a pussy! And I’m the coolest! TommyInnit is the coolest, got it?” Tommy’s eyes, which had held the murmurs of sleep, were now alive and vicious.

Undoing all of Technoblade’s work. And proving he didn’t understand Chat.

“Bruh.”

“I am!”

“For the third time now, if you will let me talk, I’m trying to tell the story.” 

“Right, right, sorry.”

“Odysseus was the only one who knew the warning signs. He had encountered the gods before, and he would rather starve to death than offend them. Because sometimes, Tommy, not offending people is a good thing, and making needless enemies makes the situation ten times worse.”

Tommy bit his lip. 

Techno continued.

“But no one ever listens to Odysseus. That’s one of the ironies of the story, Tommy. Often being right lets the hero escape with his life. Doesn’t mean he can save anyone else. Most of the time he doesn’t even save himself.”

“What?”

“I mean, I tried telling you. Heroes are doomed the moment they call themselves heroes. Odysseus never did, he was smart. It was the people that came later and told the story that did that. A hero is born through the crossing of the stars, something divine. Special. For all of his worth, the burden of expectation is put on his shoulders and then he battles with his pride. The Greeks had a word: hubris. It’s the hubris that strikes the killing blow. It’s never the beast or the gods themselves, it’s someone the hero has wronged. Odysseus wronged a monster, a cyclops, but even that was too far.”

Tommy was quiet. All of his focus was pooled into Technoblade.

“Odysseus played the part of warrior. Now it was time for him to be a survivor. See, it didn’t matter what the gods put him through, the trials or the tribulations or the meaningless delays. He had a mental image of what his home was. Ithaca. It had stopped being a real place. Instead it was an idea. A concept.”

“Oh.”

“And even when he was gone, trapped by witches and beasts, he kept that vision of home in his head. Because he was going to get there no matter what. It was all he had left of the world he knew. Even when he was offered another life, another world in what might have been a better place, he turned it down. Because it wasn’t what he wanted. He learned what being a hero meant, and now what he wanted was the opposite: to go home. To be normal. But the thing is, life doesn’t wait around for us to come back.”

Tommy glanced down to his neck. The lodestone compass shimmered in the dim light. His Tubbo.

“The world doesn’t care what your aspirations are, your nation, or your ideas. It doesn’t even care about your friends. The world doesn’t care if what you want does not want you. It doesn’t care, period. It’s cold. Survival is survival.”

-

"I want to be a hero when I grow up!"

"Oh, you do?" The man chuckled, furloughing his spade to sit down on the steps beside him. 

"What's the point of having a name like Technoblade if you're not a hero?" He shut the book in his lap, face beaming.

The young man's mouth opened before a scream rang out from inside the house, followed by shouting and yelling. 

The blond haired man sighed. He smiled back, then rolled his eyes. The man reached out and tousled his hair.

Techno laughed as the man’s voice echoed:

"How are ÿ̸̻͓́̑͐́͗̽͝͠ö̶̝͖̱̫̈́̑́͌͒̋ǜ̴͍͖̝̑̋ ̴̢̛̛̮̼̲͖̠̻̼̝̥̗̻̩̲̼̂̽͌̾̇͂̈́̾͐̅͘̚t̷̤͔̥̤̫̫̟̀̐̈́̿͐ḧ̴̡̘̦͔̠͎̰̬̼̜̺̮͎͚͛̈́ͅȩ̵̦̦̠̬̼͔̰̩̯̻̍̈́͐̌̓͆̀̉̑͗ ̸̪̤̣̏͒̚͜ͅm̸̗͇̘̮̥̮̪̤̯̤̞͉͗̾́͜ą̸̡̖̭̣̭͉͎̥̫̑̿̅̄̓͐̽̊̂͂̆͠͝ͅ��ţ̶̮͚̰̂̀̈́̐͆͑̍͆͗͝͠ü̶̢̻͔̼͓̹͖̺̯͙̅̂̔̊̐̅ͅr̴͔̐̾͛ẽ̴̱̰̣̀̓̉̀̆̓̈̄ ̸̛̱͇̺̂̿͑̏̍̋͊͊͗̋̇̆͝o̴̬̙͚͇̳͎͆̇̌̐̿͂̓̄͛͝ͅn̵̨̈́̈́̂̋̐ͅe̷̛̟̱͖͙͙̩͆̊̆̓̂͒̈̍?̸͖̟̺͇̬̗̰̭̺͇͆͐̀͊́̄̍̀̅́͜

-

> home. 

> Tommy's still looking at you, you haven't spoken in a minute

> do you feel sick?? whats going on i just got here

“Blade?” And there was Tommy, with a drop of concern in his voice.

Technoblade shook his head. Late joiners. The memory crumbled to dust. 

He continued. “The Isle of Ogygia. That was where Odysseus’s survival took him. He stayed there, in the lull of the witch Circe, who wanted him for herself—”

“That’s sexist.”

“W-What?”

“The witch!”

“You think the witch is sexist?”

“No no no, the hero! He gets called upon—lured—by this woman just because he’s what, the hero?”

He could not believe this. “Tommy. I didn’t write it.” 

“I’m just saying!”

“The Isle of Ogygia. Or Atlantis, some people think it could be Atlantis, it honestly depends on what version you’re reading but that’s not important. Odysseus spent countless years there, safe but soulless. His heart was gone from his body, kept at bay with thoughts of home. Of family, of kinship. He was out of his body and mind for seven years. He was at the gods’ mercy, but fortune smiled upon him and he escaped.”

Techno took a moment to return his attention to his listener.

Tommy was transfixed, eyes wide.

For some reason, that made him smile.

“He made his way to one of his allied kingdoms. The gods, though, had shifted his appearance. This was to know how he still stood in their eyes. When so much time passes, relationships and bonds fade. Only his dog recognized him. The home he’d wanted for so long was plundered, practically destroyed. His wife—”

“He had a wife? That’s unrealistic.”

Technoblade repeated, annoyed: “His wife and his son didn’t recognize him. Only the dog.”

Tommy continued to ignore his point.

“Well dogs are good like that. I reckon dogs are better than most people."

Moving for the first time since the beginning of the story, he took a step towards the corner.

“Tommy, I’m trying to tell you that even though he won—He got everything he wanted, he got to go home—He didn’t win. His home was different. And he wasn’t the same man.”

“That’s—That’s sad.” 

Tommy stood up and Technoblade crossed his arms.

“It’s not a happy story.” 

"Then why are you telling it?"

“Forget about it.” If Tommy didn't understand, he wasn't going to waste any more time explaining. 

Tommy moved, shifting the cloak on his shoulders crooked. He opened the spruce doors, a strange expression on his face. Like a mixture of horror, fear, and anger. Technoblade recognized the anger first. Tommy looked back, stepped into the snow, then shut the door.

Techno thought, what? He’s going to throw a tantrum because a story doesn’t go how he wanted—

-

A white substance flitted down through the air like snow. Small, unburnt hands grasped upwards to try and catch it. They had only seen snow, never this new, fluffy, off-white plume.

The boy coughed up ash. 

“Hello? D̸̫̦̳̰͐̉ã̸̲̦̞̺͆d̶̗̒̐̕̕?”

-

Technoblade grabbed the edge of the box, stumbling. 

The memory—No, vision—was incompatible with reality. How would he have gotten to the Nether as a child? And Techno never had a father, never depended on anyone, never needed—

Before he could even begin to understand the implications, he was thrown back in.

-

He was lost. 

He was alone. 

And he couldn’t have known that enough inhaled ash will scar your lungs, burn your skin, and bury you beneath a mountain of suffocating fire the moment you stop moving. He couldn’t have known that the Nether contains biomes of this stuff.

Ash has suffocated him. It burns, searing his skin and cooking him alive. It’s like the fall of Pompeii. He read a book on Pompeii once. Perhaps in some distant time an archaeologist will discover the hollow shell of his remains and theorize what happened here, or a traveler, a survivalist happening along the same paths years later when he’s just a mound.

He read another book, once. About a volcano. It’s similar to that pyroclastic flow, a mix of awful molten core and heat. There’s no way to swim in lava, not truly. It doesn’t stop a thirteen year old boy from scraping for the surface in a pit.

He was going to die here.

It’s his coat that saves him. Handcrafted and made with love. The bottom half tears, and he loses a precious gift but gets to keep his life. 

Everything is burning. Is he screaming? His clothes are torn and he’s burning, he’s burning—

-

As quickly as it had come, it was gone.

Technoblade was instantly brought to the sensation of cracklings coals. He jumped at the sound, then looked down at his hands.

Hooves, right. Hooves.

This was too much to process.

Techno looked up.

He watched Tommy waddle to the front of the house in front of Carl’s stable, trudging through the snow the most inefficient way Technoblade could imagine. He was wiping his face.

For some reason, he thought it was something his good friend Philza would have a laugh at.

> PHILZA!!!

> Philza Minecraft?

> Philza would love it here

> The child is annoying, I hope he freezes to death

> I miss Philza

> Countdown to Philza visiting!

“Chat, you’re screaming into my ear right now.” He needed clarity, not a thousand voices in unison chanting for a friend.

Even from here, he could see that tears were pooling in Tommy’s eyes.

Technoblade didn’t bother with a coat. He ignored the sounds of the fire and how the heat made him feel uneasy, instead opting to climb down the ladder and go out the front door. Tommy was muttering to himself, a hand petting Carl.

“‘s not a happy story—What’s the point of telling a story if it’s not happy? I reckon he’s just one big downer. Downing all the time.”

It was then Techno decided to speak. 

“I’d say talking to yourself is a bad habit but since I can’t really do that without coming off like a hypocrite, I’ll tell you that being quieter usually means people can’t overhear sensitive, secret information.”

Tommy didn’t jump, but his shoulders hitched.

“I don’t care about secrets.” Tommy crossed his arms.

“Everything’s a secret when you can’t understand basic information people are telling you.”

“You don’t tell me anything!”

“I’m trying to tell you why people tell sad stories.”

“If I were his family, I would have recognized him.”

“No you wouldn’t have! That is literally the point of the story. You’re like five now, you think you’d recognize someone you saw as a baby?”

It happens a third time and Technoblade’s world spins.

> Recognize recognize recognize

> Is he finally remembering????

> idk, not yet?

> Ugh, someone get me when something interesting happens

> your dead, whats stopping you from watching all the time?

> It’s actually ‘you’re’

> where

> where?

> WHERE DID I ASK—

-

There is a house on a hill in the forest. It looks familiar, with a basement, a middle floor, and a top floor with stairs leading up from the outside.

There is a house beneath a hill in a fierce tundra. 

There was a house on a hill in a forest. It was a home too, once.

Both can theoretically exist at the same time. The house on a hill in the forest is perfectly ingrained in his memory, enough for him to replicate it bit by bit.

There is a boy with a beanie, taller than him. He wears a scowl.

There is a boy smaller than him with a bandage on his cheek.

Sunlight flows through the curtains like honey, oozing in warm delight. There is something resting on the bridge of his nose, and his fingers fly to adjust it.

He laughs.

The tiny freckled boy smiles and it shows his tooth gap.

A deep, tenor voice calls from downstairs and they rush to where storage is, the chests the dining room.

Their father is tired. There are bags under his blue eyes, but his smile lights up the room like the honey-light and like his brothers’ faces. He takes off his hat to sit at the table, a cape swishing behind him.

They’re singing at the table. Four humans with perfect harmony. They sing together all the time, how could he forget?

 The candles on the cake are flickering, and it’s a world away from the fires of the Nether.

“Happy birthday T̶̡͆̋́͝—”

-

Nothing else but static noise and Chat going wild.

“I’m sixteen! I am an adult man!” Tommy’s fists are balled as he stands, beating against his chest to each word and anger burns in his eyes until he sees his hero’s face. “Technoblade?”

His heart pounded.

-

The boy that Technoblade has been seeing through the eyes of is not an adult. Now he is a teenager. He is taller, the clothes more unfitting than before. There are stitches to fix the jacket, now forced to be a half-coat that tucks into his shirt.

He looks like the mockery of a man.

Actually, he doesn’t look like a man at all.

-

Technoblade remembered this part.

The rest had to be a daydream, the machinations of a tired mind. Separating his identity from his mask is impossible.

Literally.

-

He has forgotten what snow feels like. He has forgotten snow. There are many things Technoblade has forgotten, but the name of snow sticks. Snow. It sounds like a dream, like the deranged ramblings of a piglin who lost his mind, and like a fairy tale all at once.

He liked fairy tales, once. 

Now they’re just unrealistic.

The piglin group he is trailing turn to look at him. He’s been following behind them, scavenging whatever food they decide to discard and bartering whatever he can get his hands on. Their eyes are vacant, white. His eyes are present, despite his appearance. Alert. He has to be, it’s one mistake and death. 

The Nether is not forgiving.

He notices when their behavior shifts.

The piglins decide to attack. 

Technoblade sighs.

He doesn’t want to attack this one. There have been too many packs, too many attempts at communication, too many tries at a family.

Technoblade has no tools. He’s forced to work with his fists and some metal the pigs scrapped, which with enough tempering he’s made into knuckles. Netherite knuckles, but that knowledge will evade him until years in the future.

He busts one of the pigs’ heads open, then shoves another’s head into the netherrack wall. Blood spills on his boots. A tusk is embedded in his hand; he puts pressure on the wound then yanks it out, stabbing it into the head of the third. The fourth pushes into his back, and Techno slams his head back into its skull until it fractures.

The fifth runs off. 

And all at once, an uproar, a chant from a place and group he cannot see or hear.

It sings that Technoblade never dies.

-

All at once Chat was unanimous:

> Technoblade never dies.

> TECHNOBLADE NEVER DIES

> technoblade never dies

> blood for the blood god!!!

> Techno never dies

> Technoblade never dies!

He nodded in agreement.

“Technoblade.”

Tommy laughed.

Techno realized he had convinced the child he was fine.

“Is that how you get the girls, Blade?”

“I’m not interested.” The art of combat and potato farming interested him more than girls. Or anyone, for that matter. 

“Are you crying?”

“No.” Tommy sniffed. 

“Here, let go of Carl.” Technoblade pulled Tommy away.

“But I wasn’t—”

“I killed everyone that ever touched that horse.”

“Okay, fine.” Tommy doesn’t move.

Techoblade can’t sigh because he’s already sighed too much and anything that exacerbates the situation will give him a headache. Instead, he picks Tommy up and lifts him over his shoulder. He chooses to say nothing in response as Techno headed inside and down, down, until they were both in Tommy’s little nest of shiny things and stolen goods. 

Tommy struggled to stay on the bridge of consciousness. Technoblade takes his hand and walks him all the way there, staying down in the pitiful hole until Tommy has tired himself out from the sound of his own voice.

It was hours before he risked stepping away from the bed.

Snow fluttered down. It was cold and wet, but it was snow; a miracle all the same. 

Technoblade stretched out a hoof. It was not the hand of a small child that was trapped in the Nether. It was a Piglin beast who had believed he'd never feel the cold again. 

Technoblade glanced out the shutters. Tommy was inside, falling asleep. The silence of the home told him as much. 

He pulled his hand back inside. 

The fire of the top floor crackled. Techno dipped his head forward. His hands clasped around an invisible buckle, hidden underneath his hair. 

As easy and simple as changing clothes, Technoblade the human stood in his retirement home. His height was the same, scars still present, but now a long unkempt braid of hair trailed down his back. It was ill-maintained, tangled and disgusting. A liability.

Without thinking twice, Technoblade took his sword and slashed the braid off.

-

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?!” Dream yells. It feels like the ground is shaking beneath them.

Techno stands firm. He’s towering above him, sword at his side.

“Nope. I’ve been told it’s one of my best qualities.” His voice is monotonous as always.

The green fiend stood hunched over his stomach, shoulders rising and falling to the tune of his ragged breaths. He knew that they didn’t need to breathe. It was all theatrics, even in the middle of a fight. Still, Dream’s voice was frantic, jittery, shaking, and loud; something Chat assured him they altogether had never seen in their combined existences.

Technoblade felt smug.

Technoblade made the grave mistake of hubris.

In a flash, the god is behind him. The god that can see the straps of his mask, the god that slices it off with a well-placed swordstrike and grabs him by his braid.

“Y’know, I really didn’t want to kill you. I’ve heard about you, a little bit. I just didn’t care.” He whispers into Techno’s ear as the pain tears into his scalp.

It only took a half-second for him to find a solution.

Dream was guarding from the left, expecting another hit to his mask. 

Technoblade swiped at the right.

In a flash, he’s cut off his braid of pink hair and freed himself from the clutches of his enemy.

He smirks, and pulls out his axe. He doesn’t need the mask to fight, it’s already a part of him.

“C’mere, Dream.”

-

That one. That memory is real and he has all the proof he needs of that. He turned over his hand and pushed up the brass knuckles to see the gashes along his finger from where he held the grip. He sets the hand-to-hand weapon on the crafting table as he massages his hands.

Soaking his fingers in instant healing should alleviate the pain. Even for a moment. 

Dream hit hard. The wounds never left. 

But Technoblade hit harder.

A burned hand reached out to the snowfall. 

The snow didn't burn back. 

"He's not me, Chat. We're keeping it that way."

If there was one thing Technoblade was good at achieving, it was his goals.

[aecs-multy]

I'd make the devil prostrate before you

Summary:

When Merlin wakes up and Arthur is not by his side, he know that he's going to have to get him back. The bandits aren't the ones that should be scared of him, it's the king who should be for being such a reckless idiot and going to fight them alone instead of bringing Merlin with him.

---

Merlin was going to murder him. Screw destiny, screw Albion, screw everything. If the bandits didn’t kill Arthur, he would. More than once. He was going to bring him back to life time and time again and he would kill him in every possible painful way he could come up with.

When he had been informed that the king had gone missing and no one knew where he was, Merlin had already come up with a thousand ways of making him regret the day he chose to ignore the sorcerer’s words.

“That idiot never listens to me. Become the court sorcerer. People will listen to you. You will have influence,” Merlin muttered under his breath while he packed some essentials for the trip. “Well, all that is worthless if the freaking king goes and doesn’t listen to me, that clotpole!”

Merlin was aware he was receiving weird looks from the stable’s boy, but he couldn’t care less. He was bristling with energy, his whole body vibrating with the magic that cursed through his veins, alert, ready for anything he commanded it to do.

He mounted his horse and went in the search of Arthur, begging to The Triple Goddess that his love was alive. He wanted the privilege of murdering him for himself.

Merlin would be lying, though, if he said that he wasn’t afraid. His heart seemed to beat too fast and too hard for it to be normal. He was feeling cold all over even under the heat of the summer sun. His hands trembled in the reins of his mount.

Despite the paralyzing fear that he felt, the sorcerer put on a brave face and hung on to the almost-blinding rage that had been fueling him since the news of the king’s disappearance. No one would touch Arthur and live to tell the tale as long as he walked the earth, even if he had to burn the world to ashes to find those who had brought harm to his other half.

oOoOo

“The mighty Arthur Pendragon,” The man said, circling around him and hitting him in the stomach, making him groan and loose his breath for some seconds before being able to look back up at the man with all the hatred he could muster. “Defenseless against me. The king of Camelot rendered powerless without his knights and his precious sorcerer.” The man’s laugh echoed around the room. “You’re nothing without them, poor little boy.”

As if to prove his point, his last word was accompanied with a blow to Arthur’s face, and soon the coppery taste of blood blossomed in his mouth. His shoulders and arms ached with the strain that came with being chained to the ceiling by his wrists. That was nothing, though, compared to the pain that he felt on his side, where he was certain that he had several broken bones from the maze used to torture him.

“At least I’m above the lot of you, so scared of one man that you have to chain me. Afraid that I’ll humiliate you in a fair fight?” Arthur mocked with ragged breath, earning himself another hit. He should have learned that talking back was of no use, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t, let them break him. His body might be mauled, but his spirit was intact.

He just had to wait for Merlin, and that scared him more than this bandits ever could. Just the thought of it made him shiver. He was in big trouble, and that had nothing to do with being kept captive by some bandits. He feared the moment Merlin came to save him, certain that whatever the sorcerer had planned for him was a million times worse than this.

Arthur should have listened to him. He knew better than to come here alone, but he just couldn’t let the bandits trade for the life of his sister as if she were an object. As soon as he had received notice that the bandits had captured Morgana and asked for him to come unescorted to pay for her ramson he had had to do something.

Obviously, Merlin was against the idea, but he slipped away in the darkness of the night and went to the location the captors of his sister had told him they would be waiting. To his surprise, they didn’t have Morgana, but now they had him.

Merlin was going to skin him. He almost wanted to ask the bandits for protection against his court sorcerer. Maybe he would even have, but soon something seemed to shake the whole room. Hell, the whole building seemed to tremble. Several guards fell to the ground when they lost his footing and even the leader hat to grab Arthur’s chained arm to avoid falling.

Shit, Arthur thought. Merlin was here. He sighed and closed his eyes, accepting the fate that awaited him.

oOoOo

His magic was flowing out of him, surrounding the small castle and searching for Arthur. Bandits tried to stop him, but they barely took one step before they were thrown away with enough force to make cracks in the walls they collided with. He could sense the vibration of the ground beneath him, reacting to all the energy emanating from him.

An arrow flew towards him, but stopped a mere meter away from his head. He reached for the core of his power and with just a thought, the rest of his magic inside of him exploded, sending everything and everyone flying.

When his magic recognized Arthur, he walked that way, leaving a trail of unconscious bodies behind him. Soon, only a door stood between them and his magic burst them open without a problem. Dust was floating in the air and falling from the cracks in the ceiling with every tremor of the castle. Right now, Merlin was the one that kept it from crushing to the ground.

The expressions of the bandits were full of fear, terror dripping from them in waves. Good. His power lashed out and made them all fall to their knees, pressing them down and down until they were lying motionless, unable to move even an inch.

When his gaze focused on Arthur, stronger tremors shook the castle as his magic flowed from him like the waves of the ocean crashing against the shoreline. At least the prat had the decency of looking apologetic. Well, apologetic and about to empty his bladder in his torn pants if the panic in his face was anything to go by.

Merlin’s heart softened and ached when he finally noticed the state his lover was in. Several bruises and cutes adorned his body, the sight making his magic reach out to soothe him. He could see how the tension in Arthur's shoulders ebbed slightly and how his eyes became glassy as a small smile appeared on his face.

He went to stand in front of him and softly cradled Arthur’s face, his thumb brushing carefully over a bruise that was starting to form in his cheek. The king bowed his head and said, “I’m sorry.”

Merlin used his magic to make the chains disappear and held Arthur against his body when his legs gave out after hours of being held on his toes. He pulled him into a hug, with Merlin’s arms around his waist, and Arthur hid his face in the crook of his neck.

The sorcerer felt how Arthur’s arms moved to circle his neck as he returned the embrace.

After restoring the building enough to be sure it wouldn’t collapse, his magic slowly retreated to circle around both of them, making sure that Arthur was safe, alive. With a content sigh, Merlin started focusing on healing the body in his arms, noticing how Arthur sagged against him more and more with every injury that he healed.

“You’re in so much trouble that you’ll need your whole life to make it up to me, but right now, you’re safe. I’m here, love, you’re safe with me,” Merlin said, kissing Arthur on the top of his head.

oOoOo

Arthur’s heart swelled with emotion at his words and found himself speechless. He knew he was safe with Merlin. His arms around him were like a fortress, keeping the threats of the world away from him. He had never felt safer that with Merlin, and not only because of his magic but because Arthur had given him his heart, and the sorcerer protected it with everything he had, making him know how loved he was.

Even when the castle seemed to be about to crumble down, Arthur had known that nothing would happen to him. Merlin’s magic was like a hurricane, able to destroy everything that would dare approach him, but it worked as a shield too, because he kept those he cared about in the eye of the storm, where they were safe from the winds that would crush anyone that wanted to cause them harm.

For a moment, he forgot where they were when lips pressed against his hair and just enjoyed his rapidly recovering body and the man that held him, but that didn’t last long.

“Look how cute, the princess needed to be saved,” The leader of the bandits said.

Arthur stiffened when he remembered where they were and took a step back sharply, as if he had been jerked awake from a good dream.

He looked at the man and the bandit’s eyes were full of a hatred that he returned tenfold. Before he could say anything, Merlin stepped in front of him.

“It seems like you are the one that needs saving,” Merlin said, and Arthur smirked when he heard the venom that laced with his words. “You know, after the ban against magic was lifted, I finally was able to learn a lot of things about my power. There are many spells, but I can think of one that I’m sure you’ll love.”

Arthur loved the way the man’s face paled even more. He knew what it was like to face Merlin’s anger, having been there before, and it would make even the bravest of men run away in fright.

“I will bind you to this castle so that you can never leave its walls, condemned to stay here for the rest of your life.”

“What? No! Please, have mercy, please!” The bandit pleaded, but with a movement of Merlin’s wrist, no more sound came out of his mouth.

“Adiuro vos in loco isto ut non numquam etiam,” Merlin said, and with a flash of golden in his eyes, the spell was cast.

oOoOo

They camped half way to their home because Arthur was too tired to make the trip in one go. Merlin had healed his body, but he could see how the captivity had affected his king, so he decided that resting would be the best.

Now that the worry had faded away after rescuing Arthur, he had started to feel relief, but also the anger that he had felt before. Merlin knew why he had done it, but it also hurt that he had been left behind, especially when he could have helped and all this problem would have been avoided.

Arthur was silent, sitting beside him, his focus on the flame before them. Merlin could actually feel the guilt that emanated from him, but it did nothing to dissipate his anger. Several minutes passed where the only sound that they could listen was the sound of the fire, but then Merlin heard Arthur sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He kept quiet for a long time, pondering everything he wanted to say, all the arguments he had come up with during Arthur’s search, but when he spoke, it was only to say, “Why?”

Arthur looked at him with his head tilted to his side, his emotions clear on his eyes, and Merlin saw the flicker of confusion at the question.

“Why did you leave without me?” Merlin clarified, and then Arthur looked away, a blush of embarrassment clear in his cheeks even in the night.

“I… I just- I don’t know, I-” Arthur stuttered, but then he closed his mouth and run a hand to his hair, clearly distressed. Merlin waited, but Arthur didn’t attempt to say anything again, so he decided to do it instead.

“I told you to wait until the morning,” he said, barely over a whisper, but in the silence it almost seemed too loud. “I told you that we would both go there to help Morgana. I know how worried you were because she is like a sister to me too, but I knew that going to get her in the middle of the night wouldn’t solve anything because we needed to rest. You sneaked out ignoring everything I told you.” His voice had started to get louder, more irritated as his emotions took hold on him. In the distance, lightning struck. “You got captured because if you had waited until morning like I had told you, you would have discovered that she escaped and was back in the castle before the sun rose. All you did was useless because there was no one to save! You got yourself tortured for nothing!”

Merlin stood up and started pacing, not trying to control himself as he ended almost yelling, the fear and worry he had felt when he had woken up alone in their chambers coming back to him. “I could have lost you! Do you know how worried I was? I knew where you were, but not if you were safe, not if I would be able to arrive in time. If you were going to go anyways then you wake me up and we go, together-”

“I’m fine now, I’m alive, so stop shouting at me! I know I made a mistake, but everything is alright now, so stop worrying, I’m not a kid you need to take care of!” Arthur yelled, standing up too and standing in front of him.

“Then stop acting like one!” Merlin yelled back, his voice cracking. The tears he hadn’t known he had been holding back since he had woken up finally spilled and run down his cheeks. “I know you’re alright now, but I didn’t know that before, when I was riding in your search. I didn’t know what they would do to you, and I was scared, Arthur. You’re the king and you have a responsibility to your kingdom, but you’re also so much more to me, my partner, my best friend, my everything, and I couldn’t bear to lose you.” He said softly, his anger deflating until there was nothing left in him but such a deep ache that came with the knowledge of how wrong things could have gone. “I love you, so much that it hurts to even think of being apart from you. And it also hurts that you would leave me behind, because I thought we were past keeping things from each other and going behind each other’s backs since you discovered my magic. Guess I was wrong,” he finished, and now that he said it out loud, he noticed that most of his feelings revolved around that, about Arthur not trusting Merlin enough to tell him that he was going to go anyways.

He felt drained of all his energy and he sat down back again, cross-legged, with his elbows resting on his legs and his face hiding behind his hands. Merlin didn’t hold back, letting the tears flow freely as his body shook. He guessed he deserved it, after all, he had hidden his magic from Arthur, so it’s only normal that Arthur would hide things from him too.

He had been so foolish thinking that things between them would be alright, but how could they when Arthur didn’t trust him? It was all his fault. He should have told Arthur, but fear had stopped him, like something had stopped the king from asking Merlin to come with him.

“You’re an idiot if you think I don’t trust you,” he heard Arthur say, and he lifted his head to look at him.

oOoOo

Arthur felt something squeezing his heart when he saw the miserable look in Merlin’s face, and soon he was blinking back tears of his own, but he continued talking, regardless of how difficult it was to get the words out when his throat had seemed to close up.

“I trust you with my life, with the life of everyone in my kingdom, with the future of Camelot, with my heart. What I did wasn’t out of a lack of trust, it was out of fear. I thought Morgana was in danger, and I couldn’t let any harm come to her,” he said, but when he tried to open his mouth to speak again, Merlin cut him, his voice so weak that it hurt to hear it.

“But why didn’t you bring me with you?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it and that you would argue. You had told me to wait, but I couldn’t and I didn’t want to waste any more time,” he said, desperately trying to make Merlin see why he had done it.

“You could have taken me, you know that if you asked me I would move the mountains, conquer the sky and tame the sea for you. If you had told me how you felt I would have helped you without a word,” he said.

“I…” Arthur knew that, but in that moment all that he could think about was rescuing Morgana, he didn’t think about anything else, and that was the problem, “I didn’t think, I just acted.”

Tense seconds of silence passed where Merlin looked at him with so much pain in his eyes that Arthur wanted to hit himself for being so stupid. He could almost feel Merlin’s pain as if it were his own, because he knew how he would have been if the roles were reversed, if it were Merlin that had disappeared in the middle of the night.

Arthur would have gone mad with worry, no matter how capable Merlin was of taking care of himself.

“I’m sorry, I really am,” he said, crouching down in front of the sorcerer and taking his hands in his. “Never think that I don’t trust you, because I do, more than I trust myself. And you’re right, we’re past the hiding and all that, and I should have told you, for that, I’m sorry. I never meant for it to end like this, I just wanted to help my sister and I forgot that I had you by my side.” Arthur kissed his knuckles and smiled sadly at him. “Come on, I’ll let you call me a dollophead without sending you to the stocks.”

That managed to get a chuckle out of Merlin and with the sound some of the tension in the air dissipated. “You really are a dollophead,” Merlin said, and Arthur could hear the fondness in his voice.

“I don’t know what I did in my other life, but it must have been legendary because I certainly haven’t done anything worthy in this one to deserve you,” Arthur said, moving to stand up and pull Merlin with him by the hands.

“You’re right, I’m too good for you,” Merlin laughed wetly, sniffing and brushing his tears with his forearm, not letting go of Arthur.

Arthur gaped at him through his smile and said, “You can’t address me like that,” remembering the words he had said the first time they met.

Merlin didn’t disappoint when he answered, “Sorry. You’re right, I’m too good for you… my lord.”

“You were such an idiot back then,” Arthur laughed, throwing his head back, feeling lighter than before and dizzy with relief, knowing that they would be alright.

“You were such a prat back then, although, now that I think about it, you haven’t changed much, have you?” Merlin mocked, both of them chuckling, and Arthur shook his head.

“I love you so much,” he said, his heart so full of affection towards the man in front of him that he felt like it would burst any moment now.

“I love you too,” Merlin replied, a smile on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. “but if you pull something like that again I swear the torture methods they use will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to you.”

“Well, you can always bind me to your bed, can’t you?” he whispered next to Merlin’s ear and enjoying way too much the shiver that run through the sorcerer’s body.

“I- Wh- I-” Merlin stuttered, his eyes wide and dark, probably having imagined the situation. “Oh god, you’re in so much trouble.” He finally said, a grin so wide in his face that it might split it open.

They kept staring at each other and soon they were resting their foreheads together, slowly moving to embrace each other. Arthur drank in the feeling of being in Merlin’s arms again like a thirsty man seeing water for the first time in days.

“Never leave me again, please,” Merlin said, his breath tickling the skin of his neck, his tone full of vulnerability.

“Never again, I promise, love, never again,” he said in earnest, vowing to himself that no matter what could happen in the future, they would deal with it together.